2011 August 07 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for August 7th, 2011

GNU/Linux Desktop: Not Dead. Thriving.

Published by Robert Pogson August 7th, 2011 in technology. 43 Comments

Articles continue to be written that GNU/Linux is dead on the desktop. see Graham Morrison – Ignore the speculation, Linux is far from dead

He confuses the Linux kernel with the GNU/Linux operating system:
“What most of us forget now is that Linux was never created to compete with Windows. The first major release of the kernel, 1.0, came only a month after Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Those two technologies couldn’t be more different and, despite appearances, they are just as different today.”

Of course a kernel was not created to compete with an operating system. Free Software, as defined by RMS was intended to compete with non-free software and it does very well.

The example of netbooks is described as a “failure” even though M$ lost $1billion paying OEMs to install XP instead of GNU/Linux. What other products have such impact in their first year as GNU/Linux had on netbooks? The current share of netbooks is a staggeringly great success considering there were very few netbooks shipped with XP in the first year of the netbook. In that first year, ASUS shipped millions of netbooks with GNU/Linux. Now, more are shipped each year than ASUS did. Then about 1 million netbooks shipped in the first quarter. Now the world ships 7 million netbooks a quarter and a good percentage of them run Linux. What has changed is that more OEMs are shipping GNU/Linux.

Further, GNU/Linux ships on desktops, notebooks and tablet computers using x86 and ARM processors. GNU/Linux remains the lowest cost option for all kinds of computing, desktop or not. W3Schools and Wikipedia show visits by GNU/Linux systems steadily growing. The market leader’s share constantly falls. There’s no sign of GNU/Linux slowing or stopping for sure.

- Robert Pogson

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.