you add up windows & mac OS (& possibly IOS etc) and its prolly less than that

OS X is Unix. And many of the devices you assume running Linux are probably running a Unix-based OS.

Wow great, now pull out the "runs on routers" thing. Because those are clearly "fully featured computers".
Good to know about Android. I wonder why they had to branch it.
Personally my quality of life has greatly improved since linux in so more part of the picture.

I'm still wondering why Linux still doesn't give a crap about casual computer users.

Any notion that Microsoft [Windows] is losing popularity however does not seem to me to be well founded

well founded? Its proven! check statcounter.com for data, esp western countries.
Personally though I think windows is the best OS, I only use a mac cause Im developing for IOS
[/quote]

I looked at the stats on statcounter.com



I'm not sure that you and I have the same standards of proof.

I'm still wondering why Linux still doesn't give a crap about casual computer users.

That's asking the wrong kind of question. Linux is just the operating system, more precisely the kernel. A lot of people confuse this, I remember reading "Windows 8 is so great, it has a cool new Task Manager and new features in Explorer" in another thread. The task manager is just a rather unimportant utility program, it is not the operating system. Explorer, likewise, is just a file manager, which is in principle swappable. The same goes for the task bar / start button or the new tile interface. These are as much "the operating system" as the desktop background image.

GNU/Linux on the other hand (note the "GNU/" part) is something that has "free Unix" (hobby) Enthusiasts as primary target group. Obviously, although not stricly opposite, this is not the same group as "casual home users".

You should be asking why there is no major distributor who cares about casual home users. Though I remember SuSE being like this, 10-15 years ago. It used to be "put in CD, click install button, and it just works, and works well". Of course that was at a time when Windows sucked ass, Apple failed big time on PowerPC, and no such thing as a GPU existed in a PC. SuSE at that time was a hundred times more stable and user friendly, and more performant than anything else (except for some unusable geeky Linux distros). No manual unpacking tar files from floppies, no editing /etc/fstab and /etc/password in vi. Insert CD, and there you go.

In the mean time, Windows has become perfectly stable and (at least up to version 7) usable, and in constrast to any Linux distro, every single piece of cheap (or expensive) hardware that you plug in comes with working IHV drivers. There is no thing that you can buy in a shop and plug into your PC that doesn't work with Windows.

Ubuntu used to be somewhat like "the new SuSE" until a year or so ago, and it even had accelerated graphics with no hassle (big, big plus). This changed drastically when everyone jumped on the "must make desktop like tablet" train, starting with Gnome 3, later copied by KDE and Unity, and finally stolen by Windows. Now all operating systems / distributions suck the same, because they have the same stupid user interfaces. Which would be fine if every computer was a tablet (then those interfaces would make sense!), but trying to make a desktop computer a tablet is just stupid.

I remember trying to install a recent SuSE version on a virtual machine not long ago. The wizard required me to click on a button somewhere on the bottom, and moving the mouse onto the button made the window manager zoom out the Window and show the action button interface or what it's called -- how fucking stupid do you have to be as a developer to ship a thing like that? I mean, they really don't want you to install their stuff, do they?

I looked at the stats on statcounter.com
[...]
I'm not sure that you and I have the same standards of proof.

Hahaha, I was going to post that, too... but you should have posted the "worldwide" graph, which is even more telling. Basically that one says "Windows 7 constantly gains with XP slowly diminuishing, Apple is stagnant around 6-7%, and everything else below 1%".

you dont realize android et al are based on linux, andriod activations each day = 1.3 million.

And it's just the kernel (which is Linux itself), not the whole environment you usually find in distros. Moreover, the way Android is designed is such that Google could easily replace Linux with any other kernel (no matter how different it is) and it wouldn't matter at all, so may as well forget the fact it's using that kernel.

I'm not sure that you and I have the same standards of proof.[/quote]
youre not seeing the whole picture
look under mobile vs desktop
jan 2009 - mobile 0.6% desktop 99.4%
nov 2012 - mobile 13.38% desktop 86.62%

considering windows phone is prolly ~1-2% of mobile
that is a massive loss for windows relatively quickly, if it keeps up like this desktops will be smaller within a couple of decades (no wonder MS is doing everything to get into mobile)

look at your numbers at the top of the page
2003 - windows 95.2% -mac/linux 4.8%
2012 - windows 86.3% - mac/linux 13.7%

you were saying?

You're missing the core point though, which is that for the vast majority of end-users, OS is irrelevant. People don't actually care about it, they don't care about whether or not they can study and modify the source code; the one item that the open source communities value the most is something that most people don't actually give a flying one about.

Android is a great example of this. I see figures of something like 500 million devices, but of those, what percentage of users actually bought into it because of a Linux kernel? I'll give you a hint - it's less than 1. The important criteria for a smart phone are something more like: can it make calls? Can it send SMS? Can it take photos? Can I sync it with my email? Can I browse the web on it? Can I play Angry Birds on it? Answer "yes" to those and it doesn't matter if it runs on Unix, Windows or magic jellybeans - you've got a sale.

Android is not a victory for Unix; it's a victory for the applications and services provided by the platform, and if they weren't there it would have crashed and burned. None of this is about Unix versus Windows versus iOS versus whatever tomorrow's flavour of the month is; it's all about the applications and services you give to the user, and those run on the OS, they are not the OS itself.

I'm not sure that you and I have the same standards of proof.

youre not seeing the whole picture
look under mobile vs desktop
jan 2009 - mobile 0.6% desktop 99.4%
nov 2012 - mobile 13.38% desktop 86.62%

considering windows phone is prolly ~1-2% of mobile
that is a massive loss for windows relatively quickly, if it keeps up like this desktops will be smaller within a couple of decades (no wonder MS is doing everything to get into mobile)

look at your numbers at the top of the page
2003 - windows 95.2% -mac/linux 4.8%
2012 - windows 86.3% - mac/linux 13.7%

you were saying?
[/quote]

One question, what are the totals? The percentage is lowering but are the numbers declining?

One thing I dislike about this is, Linux crowd, where are your "killer aps"? Where are your "killer games"? All these years complaining and talking nonsense and yet, absolutely nothing to make me even think about trying the OS. Windows 8? I tried it as soon as I could. Linux(anything)...why bother?

Question two, Why even bother with something like Linux?

Question three, Why does it matter to game developers? I mean, Windows 8 is already a viable platform isn't it? Its almost as high as a 3DS, it just came out(!) and obviously higher than a PS Vita. Much higher than an Ouya will ever be. And in a year or two, much higher than this current gen of consoles put together. And that's just Windows 8(and its own Store).

My view is, MS is king on the PC. I have no reason to switch. I would like an ARM based fully functional Laptop tho. Not here yet. x86 Windows 8 Pro it is! =P