Published by Robert Pogson May 24th, 2013
in technology.
While IDC had counted GNU/Linux as 3% of desktop PCs back around 2003, StatCounter today showed that level on USA daily webstats:
I still have no idea what caused these two “jumps”. It doesn’t look like any migration I have ever seen but StatCounter swears it’s not a glitch…
It’s huge, though. Along with this substantial rise in GNU/Linux, they show a huge rise for MacOS and a drop from 82% M$ to 72% M$. If that’s real, it shows consumers want anything but M$’s “8″. If XP’s heartbeat means anything it’s that business just will not allow it to die… I would have thought folks would migrate from XP to GNU/Linux but it seems they are migrating from “7″ to GNU/Linux. Whatever works… 
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 20th, 2013
in technology.
If 83% of Canadians use the Internet then there are about 24million users. According to StatCounter, there has been a doubling and a redoubling of GNU/Linux users in Canada in the last couple of months:
The sudden increase by 2%, ~480K users, can only be a whole province’s schools or the Government of Canada. Nothing else is large enough for the sudden change. Even Dell could not do that pushing GNU/Linux at the retail level. The Government of Canada has been considering use of GNU/Linux for more than a decade but certainly not globally. They even considered dual-booting rather than one OS or the other per user. In 2011, Transport Canada documented how severely they were locked in to that other OS. There’s no way they suddenly switched. Recently the government rewarded a teacher who developed a GNU/Linux laboratory. They may have read about GNU/Linux and studied it but they don’t seem to have any motivation to switch despite having an estimate of break-even of 18 months for migration.
The only conclusions I can make are that this phenomenon is either some glitch in StatCounter’s collection method or StatCounter’s bias is showing some smaller rollout as being much larger than suggested by their numbers. Perhaps StatCounter realized they were undercounting GNU/Linux and changed their methodology. There’s nothing on their webpage explaining this phenomenon. I have sent them an inquiry.
UPDATE I received a response to an inquiry to StatCounter on this phenomenon:
“Hi Robert,
Thanks for your email.
Nothing has changed in our methodology that would explain these variations. As far as we can see, this is a genuine trend, and have no reason to suspect any error at the moment. We will of course keep an eye on it.
Niall Heaney
—
StatCounter Global Stats”
We live in a Brave New World apparently where trends develop in a week rather than a year. It must be a very large organization to make such a rapid change or a “popular uprising”… I have long predicted a gradual or rapid collapse of Wintel. I never would have predicted a doubling and redoubling of GNU/Linux share in a few weeks. I still have no idea why “7″ and “XP” danced the way they did. Did some large organization revert to XP + GNU/Linux? That makes sense but there is not even a whisper of that on the web. Could all of the college students in Canada have returned home with a zeal for FLOSS???
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 20th, 2013
in technology.
"We suspect that open source is practically non-existent", explains Fabio Leli, one of the activists for the Five Star Movement in the city. "This is absolutely unacceptable, for there are municipalities much smaller than ours, that are reporting significant savings by using open source."
see Five Star Movement urges Italian city of Bari to move to open source.
These guys are serious. In four years they went form nothing to 27% of the vote. The folks who resist moving to FLOSS risk losing election. The prime motivator seems to be wasting taxpayers’ money. Other cities are saving a lot by using FLOSS and the Five * movement wants Bari to do the same.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 13th, 2013
in technology.
HP May recommend that other OS but they are glad to sell you whatever you want:
“Operating system Preinstalled:
Windows 8 64
Windows 8 Pro 64
Ubuntu Linux
FreeDOS 2.0″
see HP 255 Notebook Datasheet
I guess they noticed the slowdown in sales of PCs with a more limited choice. This is HP’s first notebook to be shipped with Ubuntu GNU/Linux. This is part of Canonical’s plan to take over the world.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 10th, 2013
in technology.
“It will cost Boston around $800,000 to move over to Gmail, Google Docs for word processing, and Google’s cloud service for storing documents. But by dropping some Microsoft products, the city government will save at least $280,000 a year.”
see Boston dumps Microsoft Exchange for Google Apps
It sounds like “search” all over again. M$ spends hundreds of millions spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about Google and people still love the value they get from Google. The negatives of using M$’s 365 “solution” solve nothing but how to keep M$’s cash-cow delivering. Having to install local applications just to access the cloud is just plain silly. M$ had better decide whether to stand on the boat or the dock because the boat is leaving. Users get nothing from supporting M$’s desktop monopoly, office suite and then paying more for the cloud… The whole idea of the cloud is to cut cost and complexity. M$ is increasing both.
“We had been using Microsoft Exchange for more than 14 years and it was starting to outlive its usefulness. Tools that we relied on in Exchange 2007 didn’t work when we upgraded to the 2010 version, calendaring was messy and mobile syncing was even tougher. Our Sharepoint server – the center of collaboration for the company – was just not working.
Our search for a cloud-based email and collaboration system came down to Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. While our 1,200 employees were used to Microsoft’s tools, we weren’t convinced their solution fully understood the cloud; Office 365 still required us to install software and hardware. Google Apps was entirely cloud-based and offered everything we needed with a single license – it was the right way to go for us.”
That’s a quote from a long time customer. Did you hear that, M$? That’s the sound of the door closing in your face and true openness in IT taking the place of needless complexity and cost.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 10th, 2013
in technology.
“Contributing to the inertia are concerns about the cost and hassle of migration, the impact on users who have often grown up with the Microsoft toolset, and the perceived level of disruption that would arise from document compatibility issues both internally and when dealing with customers, suppliers and partners.
Of course the number of organisations that have successfully migrated to alternatives confirms that none of these things are showstoppers in practice, but when you have limited resources, a backlog of project work to be done, and resistance to change within the user base, you have to choose your battles wisely.”
see Office Software Checkpoint • The Register
After agreeing to allow M$, who sponsored the report, contact me, I found these interesting nuggets:
- 50% or more users in larger organizations use company e-mail, office applications, shared calendaring, contacts directory, audio conferencing and IP telephony.
- only e-mail and office applications are used that much in smaller organizations.
- 60-70% of organizations have x86 machines for nearly everyone.
- virtualization of desktops is used about 40% of the time by large organizations and much less by smaller organizations.
- most see no change from desktop-based applications in the near future but ~20% see a change to web-based applications.
- ~60% don’t care much about full functionality across all devices.
- ~75% of Office 365 users find it good enough.
Of course the document touts the prevalence of the “Windows PC” and that the majority consider other personal computers as accessories but we knew that already. The report is a description of the present not a prediction of the future.
I recommend anyone who wants freedom from monopoly to choose a different client OS, office applications, and cloud provider than M$. It’s amazing how much better the world of IT has become since the rise of GNU/Linux in education, government and business.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 6th, 2013
in technology.
I’ve know for years that GNU/Linux delivers on client, server and network. It turns out that while I was learning that, so was big business. According to Jack Wallen “it’s the enterprise that has evolved to finally see that Linux and open source does, in fact, live up to the demands of large-scale computing.
- High-availability
- Clustering
- Web-based applications
- Security
- Reliability
It’s all been in place since the early days. Open source has always been ahead of the curve — and finally, enterprise-level companies are seeing that. It’s just a matter of time before this enlightenment trickles down to medium and small-sized businesses.”
see How Linux found its home in the enterprise
I expect that that message will percolate through to small and medium businesses too and yes, even into consumers’ desktop.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 5th, 2013
in technology.
There are a lot of reasons why GNU/Linux makes sense in IT today whether on the server or the desktop/notebook:
- It’s great software developed by millions of developers around the world and distributed widely on the web with a Free Software licence that allows you to run, examine, modify and distribute the software.
- It’s fast and efficient because the priority is speed and efficiency, not marketing.
- It’s easy. Even my young grand daughter has no problem running it. Students, teachers, bankers, clerks, managers, writers, artists, photographers, videographers, etc. use it with no problems at all.
- It’s infinitely customizable if that’s what you want. Never again do you have to accept a single concept of an OS. GNU/Linux can be anything you want simply by removing one package and installing another. If you can’t find the package you like, you can write your own or hire a programmer. That’s unlikely to be necessary because there are hundreds of distributors and each distribution is customizable.
- There is a huge set of applications for GNU/Linux. In the past year a couple of gaps have been filled: gaming and video editting. If you want just a few applications or if you want hundreds, it’s easy to create the system you need.
- Package management means it’s simple to install/remove applications or to update your entire system with just a few clicks.
- You can manage 1000 PCs/servers as easily as one making GNU/Linux suitable for individuals or large organizations. It’s a true networked OS which allows secure management of all machines from any machine using openSSH and the package manager.
- Worried about malware? Malware is almost unheard of in GNU/Linux. I have been using GNU/Linux for more than a decade and never seen any. The bad guys make malware for that other OS because it’s such a fat soft target.
- It costs almost nothing to use, because it’s free for OEMs to install, or costs $0 for a download.
- You can buy it retail/pre-installed. You just have to look. Where I live that’s mostly on the web but it is available everywhere. If you’re lucky enough to live in Brazil, Russia, India, China and Malaysia etc. you can find it on retail shelves.
“Most of the reasons why people think they can not use Free and Open Source Software, and particularly GNU/Linux, is that they are thinking about the GNU/Linux of fifteen years ago, and not the GNU/Linux of today.”
see Ten Reasons Why You Can't Use GNU/Linux
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 5th, 2013
in technology.
For much of the last year FUD has been spread about the viability of GNU/Linux on the desktop. Either the FLOSS developers are amateurs, the ecosystem is too diverse, there’s no money to be made or it’s just broken… That’s all FUD. GNU/Linux desktops are going places. You can see that on Wikipedia and other webstats. Nowhere, not in any country Wikipedia lists is Linux below 1%. Their global average is 7.55%. Some of that is Android/Linux but they haven’t sorted that out properly. For example they show Apple’s share as iPhone 16.13% + iPad 9.05% + Mac 6.71% + iOS 0.66% and total share of Windows is 55.73%. Clearly, it’s Windows that is in decline. A year ago they were 73.38%. Nowhere is GNU/Linux share declining even as the world pumps out hundreds of millions of legacy PCs and smart mobile thingies annually. In fact it’s growing. All the major OEMs produce GNU/Linux desktops/notebooks. Some retailers even sell them. Imagine what the share of GNU/Linux would be if retailers put a fraction of their advertising money to the task. The present share is achieved with almost no advertising, just what’s on the web.
The key to growing the share of GNU/Linux desktops is not in radical change in the ecosystem but getting retailers to demand GNU/Linux. That’s happening this year as ChromeBooks made a dent. Even the big box stores in North America were selling them.
Some are even selling Android/Linux on notebooks. The retail world is ripe for innovation and retailers will sell GNU/Linux globally sooner or later. I think it will be sooner as they try to move product where “8″ is floundering. No retailer wants to be paid to reserve retail shelves for a dead product. Retailers value turnover, recycling their capital multiple times with tiny margins to be competitive.
Proof that retailers can and do sell GNU/Linux can be seen in the Dell/Canonical relationship in India and China and Walmart selling tons of GNU/Linux legacy PCs in Brazil. Brazil has its own OEMs and global OEMs have to go to Brazil to play in that market.
The problems with wider usage of GNU/Linux lie not with anything in the GNU/Linux ecosystem but external forces: M$’s marketing strategies to exclude competition and retailers’ unwillingness to escape M$’s traps. In India and China most retailers and other businesses are not locked in as the market is young and growing rapidly. In Brazil government tariffs exclude most importations and the government promotes FLOSS so it happens. If governments everywhere enforced anti-competition laws, the problem would evaporate as retailers see higher margins with FLOSS.
The FUD is fuelled by web statistics that show an irrelevant ~1% share for GNU/Linux. Those are clearly wrong. One can see it in the share claimed by MacOS which is larger than what Apple claims… or the fact that in countries where GNU/Linux is flying off retail shelves there’s hardly a flicker in the statistics.
On the business side, the following link points out that businesses are not interested in M$’s marketing bling but want stuff that works and works more or less the way Lose ’95 worked. Businesses don’t want to change OS just because M$ wants more money. They are fed up with the Wintel treadmill and are ready to migrate to GNU/Linux just to avoid Wintel. A lot of mission-critical applications on servers have been migrated to FLOSS and there’s little reason to retain that other OS on clients. Businesses are using web applications, clouds and thin clients where M$ has no monopoly. That trend has been growing for years and there’s no end in sight.
For a thorough discussion of some of these issues, see Is the Linux desktop becoming extinct?
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 3rd, 2013
in technology.
The thing that M$ feared when it started the “browser wars” has come to pass according to Simon Phipps:
“the focus on desktop applications, coupled with the idealistic expectation that Windows will be displaced, has led many to overlook or even dismiss the category where Linux actually has taken over the desktop.
That’s in the browser. Think about it: When did a new process or service you wanted to use last come as a Windows application download? When it did, what actually was that application? An increasing number of desktop applications are just containers for HTML5 Web apps. The real powerhouse behind those apps is usually Linux, accessed over the Internet, along with other elements of the modern LAMP stack.”
see The Linux desktop is already the new normal
That’s not unreasonable and with FLOSS browsers taking a good share, it is reason to celebrate, but M$ still taxes too many PCs even when folks don’t run that other OS. That’s worse than paying for M$’s OS and browser and using both. At least then the user gets something along with all the pain and restrictions. That burden is not eased much with a few FLOSS applications. No, let GNU/Linux have some retail shelf-space. Then I will celebrate. Slaves might be happier with increased rations but they would be a lot happier with proper freedom. Instead of real freedom we have that other OS on top everywhere except Western Sahara according to StatCounter… That’s just wrong considering price/performance.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 3rd, 2013
in technology.
“Why should we have to replace our computers at the convenience of the software manufacturer?”
see With No Cash for Upgrades, Local Government to Disconnect Some PCs from Net and Tape up Ethernet Ports
Several Japanese local governments are in the same boat. XP dies a year from now and they have PCs that are too young to die. Too bad they are not aware that they could run Debian GNU/Linux for $0 as long as they want on as many PCs as they want any way they want. Too bad they do not understand freedom.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 1st, 2013
in technology.
Fishermen always have some fish that get away. It’s the same with monopolists like M$. Bill Gates’ idea of perfection was one hardrive, one licence paid for that other OS. According to StatCounter, there are a few countries that got away. GNU/Linux gets close to 10% rather than ~1%.
Cuba was embargoed by the USA in a dispute over who owns the country. Venezuela supported Cuba and helped Cuba modernize. Venezuela’s government decided to go with GNU/Linux for good reason as well as antipathy to USA and M$. Uruguay distributed GNU/Linux PCs to students. Whatever works, keep on doing it.
These three countries, alone, account for most of Statcounter’s rise in GNU/Linux usage globally the last few months. It’s about time the rest of us saw the light.
- Robert Pogson
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