With Vista's View Getting Dimmer, Should You Give Linux A Chance?

Quoting:A majority of the unwanted software written is written for Windows because it has about 98% of the end user market. It doesn't pay for someone to write popup javascript or annoying programs that you get unwanted ads from for less than 2% of the entire computing world.

Now that Windows has 98% of the market and Linux 2% I guess Apple will now have to liquidate, as they are no longer selling Macs.

The Argument from Marketshare has always struck me as a form of special pleading for Microsoft. As in the whole thing isn't testable. There's no way to reverse a given situation and see what results.

Oh, wait. Except in the case of web servers: Apache rules with about 70%, and has for the longest time. No plague of special "Apache Viruses" or worms or what have you.

Actually, the 2% thing is probably a little bit of an overestimate for most things. Take email clients for Linux: alpine, pine, mutt, thunderbird, mailx, nail, etc etc etc (sorry if I don't mention your personal fave). There's probably hundreds, and each one is in use in many versions. Not to mention the vastly more configurable Linux app vs the minimally configurable MSFT app.

Perhaps the article should have said something like: "With a highly diverse application ecosystem, in terms of applications and versions of applications and application configurations, it's almost impossible to write an exploit that reaches enough susceptible programs to cause an epidemic."

Quoting: "With a highly diverse application ecosystem, in terms of applications and versions of applications and application configurations, it's almost impossible to write an exploit that reaches enough susceptible programs to cause an epidemic."

Diversity, whether genetic, technical or cultural, benefits survival and makes everything a lot stronger, so long as you don't fear it.

Don't fear the penguin!! (Unless you're Microsoft!)

It's always funny to me as well that some people think market share should add up to 100%. You mean you can't have two OSes on the same computer?

I only know (in real life) a handful of full-time Linux users. On the other hand, I know many, many who have at least tested Linux, and quite a few that play with it on a separate partition or inside VMWare. For instance, my wife always says she hates Linux, but is not willing to use Windows for online commerce. When she got her Vista laptop, it was her idea to set up a Linux dual boot (partially because she has no Vista printer driver).

Every machine I've got can dual-boot Windows. Does that mean I'm 100% Windows and 0% Linux?

This market share crap is just that, and it's time a proper study of it was done

The market share argument doesn't make sense anyway, since Web browsers are not operating-system dependent. Aside from that, it's a good advocacy piece with some good suggestions, which would also be good to notice as well as the one flaw :)

Quoting:Every machine I've got can dual-boot Windows. Does that mean I'm 100% Windows and 0% Linux?

You make a great point bigg.

I have an HP laptop that came with XP on it and I have since dual-booted it with SuSE, Red Hat (Fedora), ran Knoppix and DSL live for weeks on end and now as of recent fallen in love with PCLinuxOS on it.

I have my main desktop that has XP on it that has had too many different flavors of Linux to count, that I have been dual booting Debian testing on for some time now. My Friend jimf helped me with that. I have recently bought a Compaq desktop that has Vista Home Premium on it, for now. I have the two desktops hooked up via a KVM switch.

What does that make me? 60% Windows, 40% Linux? God I hope not, because that would suck. :-)

@TC yes it is actually a good advocacy article, inspite of the flaw.

Sorry Scott, but one little poopy contaminates the whole pool, so that makes you 100% windows.

Now I understand how you count market share

well, is any of you going to write an article about the proper definition of market share , or not ?

Scott...remember my joke-analysis ?

Mac had 14% of retail sales as measured in Feb 2008. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/03/17/apple_snags_14...

and 6.6% for the first quarter of the year in another study: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/16/apple_snags_6_...

I don't think any one study can show the whole picture.

I Think I am going to write an article about this nikkels. This is going to be fun!

Interesting juxtaposition:

"Seems like Mac have simply disappeared" "And saved consumers $60 billion"

Hmm ;)

Scott, make nikkels write it. The unwritten rule of volunteer-supported sites is "the person with the bright idea gets to implement it."

Good call Carla.

OK nikkels, now get to writing. If you need help, let me know. :-)

Quoting:The unwritten rule of volunteer-supported sites is "the person with the bright idea gets to implement it."

The CEO of my last job subscribed to that. At least I didn't have to pay for that spindle of CD-R's that I burned through trying to implement my "bright idea."

Now if you really do not want to write it nikkels, I will carry you.. LOL!!

I am writing an editorial on this, should be out today.