The Market Has Rejected Linux Desktop's

[#1]

Quote...I’ve been running Linux on PCs since 1998, when Red Hat still cared about the desktop and Mandrake was supposed to be the distribution that was going to bring Linux to the masses. That was also about the time that the mainstream media got infatuated with the story of the free operating system from the Finnish hacker that was going to bring down Microsoft Windows.
Spoiler alert: I’m going to give away the ending now. It never happened. In the decade since it was first proclaimed as the “Windows killer,” Linux on the desktop has made virtually no progress in real adoption numbers. According to market share trackers (based on real PC activity and not just sales) such Net Applications, StatCounter, W3Counter, and others, the market share of Linux has been hovering around just 1-2% of total PC operating system installations for a decade.
Even in the past two years since the netbook phenomenon began with Linux as its primary OS, Linux market share has failed to make a major jump. The chart below, based on Internet visitors tracked by Net Applications, shows the trajectory of Linux desktop market share over the past 24 months.End of quote..
More details here..http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=3372

[#2]

In that article, http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/enterprise-linux/can-ubuntu-linux-become-a-windows-killer/ says:-

Quote

The open source community has gotten behind Firefox, and its market share has grown from 3.6% in 2004 to more than 20% in 2009. This could also happen to the Ubuntu client operating system with Linux community support. If Ubuntu client could garner 10% of the client operating system market by 2014, over 25 million copies of Ubuntu client would be sold, giving Linux client the volume that it needs to generate serious revenue and placing it on track to become a real competitor to Windows. At $5 per subscription(??), Ubuntu client would generate $125 million in 2014. Today, the average selling price of Linux client is under $10.

It's true what this crazy guy says.
I "bought" all my copies of Ubuntu for $0-00 and I suppose that is "less" than $10

[#3]

Quote from: steve74

[...] the market share of Linux has been hovering around just 1-2% of total PC operating system installations for a decade.

That's prbably more than the *BSDs and OpenSolaris have.
*BSD and OpenSolaris users probably couldn't give a toss, either.  

[#4]

I agree that 10 years ago it wasn't ready for the main stream.
NOW .. Well I switched nearly 3 years ago and when I have to fix a M$ users problems of malware/virii (Or a fubared install) etc I can't see me EVER going back. 
There have even been a few converts on here, people who a few years ago wouldn't have known what Linux is are now happily using it.
Depends on what you use your  PC for, if you are a hard core gamer then Linux is not for you, If you want to surf safely then it is.

[#5]

Ive tried a lot of flavours of linux and they are really pretty good and very secure but unfortunately with  windows i can do more things  and most things are only compatabile with windows although as the future progresses so fast its fair to say it depends on one's needs,not just hardcore gamers turn to windows,i myself just keep going back to windows,i guess it must just be a second nature thing going on.
However this news ive posted originally has to be a great thing for linux users right?not popular=no attacks?

[#6]

Linux and OSX suffer from the same problem, the "I just need to boot up Windows for....".  Be it via virtual box / bootcamp / vmware / whatever, Linux and OSX still have that problem.  You never see a Windows user say "hang on a sec, just got to boot up Linux to do...." because everything you can do on Linux or OSX you can do on Windows.  Web server?  IIS supports PHP but Linux doesn't support fully the features of IIS and the .NET framework for aspx.  Web design?  Dreamweaver used to be king (might still be, not sure).  Development, Visual Studio destroys XCode.
It's all good saying "there are alternatives" yeah, there are, but switching to Open Office from MS Office isn't really a good switch, Office does so much more.  There are some darn fine open source applications for Linux, and I'm sure there are probably a couple of applications for OSX that are probably decent but there are millions of Windows applications, heck, we even have hundreds of thousands of viruses that Linux users don't have, and I bet you feel left out with that too!
Until such a time as the office worker, gamer etc.. can boot up Linux/OSX and *not* have to use Windows for *anything*, the 2 OS's will stay as a minority (though my fingers are crossed that Apple gets destroyed by Nokia, the EU, the DoJ etc.. Apple is evil and I hate my iPhone).
Firefox is one example of how OS can challenge Microsoft though, they offered a system which was (by default - you can make IE more secure than Firefox) more secure (as Linux is) but also offered more than the competition, so people didn't need to switch to IE to do this, that or the other, because if people constantly have to fire up an alternative browser/operating system, what's the point, why not just stick with the one you are constantly booting up?
I like Linux, it runs the programmes I use the most, FFXI and Chrome, but I also use Steam and play a ton of other games, I use MS office and Visual Studio so Linux is never going to be my primary OS until the applications are not just an alternative (at least for me) but better than the offerings that Windows has.

[#7]

I have just tried to update Google Earth, on the first page is a tick box, install Google Chrome, I an quiet happy with firefox, so un ticked it, two stages of the install of Earth later it failed as  I didnt have Chrome, a well by by Earth

[#8]

Firefox 1 - 0 Google

[#9]

I run a linux server. I wouldn't put windows on it, I wouldn't have a clue how to do half the stuff I use it for on a windows box, plus I'd need to pay for a license.
I run windows 7 on my main rig because it's main use is for games.
Does that 1-2% of the market share include servers? I doubt it. Suspect that's just desktops. But as ever, it's simply a case of using the right tool for the right job.

[#10]

Quote from: dgwebb

Linux and OSX suffer from the same problem, the "I just need to boot up Windows for....".  Be it via virtual box / bootcamp / vmware / whatever, Linux and OSX still have that problem.  You never see a Windows user say "hang on a sec, just got to boot up Linux to do...."

Well ... check <a href="http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,81612.0.html">here</a> There is a Windows User needing to boot up Linux  

[#11]

The trouble is that when people use Linux to repair Windows they often try to shift as much work over to Linux.
Hence the occasional boot into Windows.

[#12]

Quote from: biker955

Well ... check <a href="http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,81612.0.html">here</a> There is a Windows User needing to boot up Linux

I stand corrected   Almost.... In that thread they didn't technically boot from Windows to use Linux, they couldn't boot Windows in the first place

[#13]

Another example - a colleague had an external hard drive that Windows wouldn't recognise, despite the fact it was supposedly FAT32. I suggested he use an Ubuntu boot CD - problem solved!
So what exactly can MS Office do that Openoffice can't? Or, put it another way, what else can it do that is worth spending lots of money on  :)? I use Openoffice all the time, and have yet to find anything important it can't do. I used MS Office 2007 for a while, but gave up and uninstalled it because the interface looked pretty at a glance, but it was hard to find things and was impossible to customise.
I think the main reason Linux hasn't been taken up en masse is simply that retailers don't offer it, because they can't make money on selling it. If you have specific applications, games, whatever that only run on Windows then fair enough use Windows, but for the majority of general computer use Linux is just as easy to use, if not more so, than Windows.

[#14]

I agree that MS Office has been a bloated package for a long time.
From my experince of watching / helping users - / receive files from people using MS Office,
most people onlyu use 5% or less of the programmes capability.
The reason that they keep upgrading it is to persuade users that the new version has wonderful new features that they simply must have.
OK there are some useful little improvements - but not worth upgrading at each new version.
I have both Office 2003 and 2007 and even though I've used 2007 for almost two years - I still find things that I can easily do with 2003 - that I need to lookup in help if I need to do the same in 2007.

Open Office too is very bloated - but at least it is free.

[#15]

Lets keep my thread on topic please and thankyou,the problem is most things are compatable with windows and not linux,hence why windows is the most popular,i also see that some are taking this thread to heart and defending linux and the linux users have not even answered my question near the top of this thread,when i used linux i had too boot into windows for certain things,when i used windows i did not have to boot into linux to do anything(simples)