Few, I guess. People tried before buying and they worked better with GNU/Linux than that other OS. I paved several XP machines.

Beggars cannot be choosers…

Though I wonder how many were paved over with windows, eh Pog?

You will find we will not. We accept code patches from Microsoft and other companies we don’t like. Even if you made us not like IBM we would skill be doing business with them.

Part of doing business is dealing with companies that have bad track histories.

IBM track history is very interesting. Its no where near the worst the FOSS world accepts patches from.

According to M$’s fans here, no one wants GNU/Linux so those machines should not have been accepted by anyone. They were accepted, gladly. No one forced folks to take those GNU/Linux machines but they sold out.

Linux is atonement, well, according to you and your crowd of sycophants.

This link directly links to Magellan. The personal there are now working on Manuals for LibreOffice so they can drop MS Office Dependency.

This has started due to the first step.

So the effect of significant market share is already under way in Portugal.

I said from 6-11 represents about 10 percent of the total desktop market in that country.

All the early machines were duel boot for that grade area. Its still about a 10 percent presence and exposure.

Magellan computers basically document enough units for a 10 percent presence in that area with Linux. Lot grater than the 1.5 claim and the numbers that show up in web stats from that area you use.

–If people are booting to Linux, then Microsoft can’t do anything about that.–
Exactly.

Chris Weig
–And there was then no choice of any kind involved, and you can’t speak about a 10 percent market share.–
Get this threw your thick head. All the stats you use don’t measure those who have free choice alone. There are almost no stats that do that.

Reality most computer OS selection is not free choice. School chooses MS windows and MS Office result is almost students use that. Next result is almost all businesses getting students from that school also will decide on the same OS. Staff in most businesses don’t have free choice of what OS they use.

If you are talking about computer market share and free choice you are a twit.

About 40-60 percent of the personal computer market is mandated purchases forced on people.

So getting to 40 percent market share Linux does not have to win over the general public at all. That is just winning over the penny pincher money managers that it is productive enough.

So Linux desktop is not dead while it can still win 10 percent market share in particular areas.

Seriously, I’m talking against walls here.

This is about the document to which you linked.

They had 600,000 computers to give away. From these 600,000 computers 60,000 by one manufacturer were Linux-only. All of them were given away (it doesn’t matter if for free or for money). Since you are an astute fellow, Pogson, you will without a doubt recognize that the 10 percent “market share” is in this case an inherent property of the antecedent. It would’ve been a different story if for all of the 600,000 computers a choice between Windows and Linux would’ve been possible. But that was not the case. 60,000 computers were Linux-only. Therefore:

60,000 students ended up with Linux-only computers no matter what.

And why do you assume that? The document merely states that the laptops are dual-boot systems. If people are booting to Linux, then Microsoft can’t do anything about that.

Having Grades 6-11 in fact could be enough for 10 percent total market share. Reason lot of people out in workforce don’t use computers. The highest usage in population is education.

You also don’t get it. From the 600,000 computers or so given out to students, 60,000 were Linux-only. Since all 600,000 computers were given away, the 60,000 computers were, naturally, given away, too. And there was then no choice of any kind involved, and you can’t speak about a 10 percent market share.

With the Magellan computers it’s a different story, as they are dual-boot systems. But I don’t suppose that there’s some kind of tracking software installed on them to find out which OS is booted.

Not so. Students got to choose. The machines were sold at different prices. Even the ones who got them $free paid for Internet access.

All the machines for Early Years now dual boot “7″/Linux so one cannot make the distinction but over 1 million machines have been distributed for all grades.

In addition to the plan in Portugal, Venezuela took an addition million GNU/Linux machines. That was their choice.