In spite of all the bitching...

This article is telling.

The "mainstream" IT press has been saying that Linux is not ready for prime-time since 1992.

As some are aware, it's not just what you say, but also what you don't say, that says a lot.

In this article's 20 most annoying products, notice:

• 5 MS Windows releases or components thereof
  
• 11 (or so) add-on software products exclusively for Microsoft Windows (4 (or so) published my Microsoft)
  
• 3 Apple products
  

There is not a single Linux distribution on this list. There is not evidence on this list of annoynaces that Linux even exists. Linux clearly exists. I'm writing this blog post on FedoraCore 5 Linux. Could it be that no one else uses Linux? Well... Not especially likely, given that everyone in the office where I work uses at least one copy on their desktops... and I have 10 machines at home, all running various flavors of Linux. Then there's servers... At work, we have 20 or so servers running Debian Etch. Another 30 or so running on VMware Server. So... I'm regularly in contact with somewhere around 70 Linux boxes, all purchased with no OS or with Linux installed after-market. Now, admittedly, I can't be typical of ordinary Linux users, but I'll bet for every machine sold with Linux pre-installed by the manufacturer (which actually show up in sales figures) there are hundreds, perhaps thousands... maybe, just maybe, tens of thousands... of machines out there running Linux as a replacement for "some other pre-installed Operating System" or installed directly on machines assembled "a la carte". Because of this "hard numbers" for market share are hard to come by.

This anemic (or concise) blog post from 2005 predicted that Linux's Desktop marketshare for Servers would be 33% this year, and Desktops would be up to 6% by next year. This is based on sales of systems with Linux pre-installed. So if your machine came wiht MS Windows pre-installed and you stripped that off and installed Linux, it still counts as Windows market share, because market share counts sales. If you built a machine from new parts with no OS, and installed Linux (assuming that, like most people, you downloaded a Linux ISO image for free (which is perfectly legal if so licensed) and installed it, that, also, does not count as a "sale" and, therefore, does not show up in marketshare figures.

Further, in my experience, the hardware replacement cycle seems to be slower for Linux users than for users of other Operating Systems. I have a couple machines in my personal fleet that are over 10 years old, which I purchased new and are still doing valuable work. One (among other activities) serves my personal website. I also have newer machines, doing heavier lifting, like video editing and multi-track recording.

The point of all this is that the installed base of Linux systems is probably significantly larger than the "market share" numbers might lead you to believe. With that in mind, I think it's interesting that, among PC World's readership, there were no statistically significant complaints about Linux. It's certainly not the case that PC World denies the existence of Linux. A cursory search shows they report (or at least redistribute) stories on Linux and related issues. Could it be that PC World's readership is Linux-ignorant? Not likely.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that Linux is free of annoyances. It's a product of human effort and human minds. Complaints from MS Windows apologists I hear about Linux are things like:

1. I shouldn't have to edit xorg.conf (or any other config file) by hand.
   
2. There's no good software for Linux.
   
3. I don't have time (or interest or need) to learn a whole new Operating System.
   
4. It's too much like DOS.
   

...To which I usually respond:

1. In most situations and with most modern distros, you don't have to, but it's nice to be able to if you need to.
   
2. What? Like Sasser, LuvBug, Gator, BonziBuddy, MS Bob and SoftRAM? I have a perfectly serviceable office suite, web browser, email client, IM client, games, media players, remote access software, image manipulation software, PDF generator and so on, which I am allowed to use and redistribute at no charge in perpetuity. Would you like a copy?
   
3. What's to learn? There's one big filesystem instead of all your little drives. Slash instead of backslash. Case sensitive. The rest you can pick up painlessly as you go.
   
4. Oh, you mean with the GUI and the windows and buttons and the mouse and stuff? Yeah, I see what you mean. You sound like the way Mac people used to bitch about MS Windows, until THEY got a Unix command line, too, and started running on Intel chips
   

Linux adoption seems to continue. While "Sales" of desktop systems with Linux pre-installed are still very slow, this can be be attributed, at least in part, to Microsoft's oppressive OEM licensing contracts forcing most large (non-Apple) OEMs to offer nothing but MS Windows to the general public.

Yet, in spite of all the bitching about Linux that non-Linux people seem to do when they talk to me, when asked by their own group what annoys them most, Microsoft and its illegitemate progeny seem to take the cake.

Good work, Steve. Congratulations, Bill.