Linux Marketshare

This article is little more than Linux-bashing tripe from an Apple apologist. It does state that part of what gives Mac a leg up over Linux is that MS Office and Adobe tools are available for Mac OSX, but not for Linux, which is true.

The article uses statistics that are from a source which ... well... I don't quite get. For example, How are they figuring market share? I work in an office with 10 desktop PCs, all running Linux. There are a couple MS Windows VMs in there too. We all connect to the Internet through a NAT. Are they figuring market share based on the requesting IP address? If so, they're seeing one machine which flip-flops between Linux and (occasionally) MS Windows. I have 6 Linux PCs at home, from which I access the Web. I access the Internet through a NAT. Are they seeing my 6 machines as one?

And here's another thing. Not every machine used as a desktop computer is used to browse the web. I have a couple machines at home, which are "desktop machines" in that they have GUIs installed, with the full spread of standard desktoppy apps, but I rarely browse the web from them. My studio machine is mostly used for audio, video and image editing. My current HTPC is used for viewing movies.

Linux desktop adoption statistics will likely always be a little shady, and widely varied. Anybody can pull a rabbit out of their ass from such a pool of statistics and present a statistic that supports their own position. Statistics, in general are suspect by the very nature of how they're compiled. Linux desktop adoption stats are almost useless.

From my personal experience, Linux has about a 99% desktop market share. There are no Macs in my home or office, and 1 machine running MS Windows on hardware.

This, of course, is to say nothing of servers. We have 10 servers in our office, and 25 at our IDC running Linux, and about half of them are running 2 or more Linux virtual machines. I administer around 100 running Linux images... 1 MS Windows, 0 Mac.

So... Like I said to my girlfriend's mother about presidential candidates, figure out what works for you, and then pick the one that fits your needs. The advertising and the statistics and all the rest of it means nothing. Try it out. Give it a fair shake. If you like it, use it. If you don't like it, don't use it.

I run Linux all over the place because it works for me. Your mileage may vary.

PS I'm writing this on one of my eeePCs.

REVIEW: The ASUS eeePC

I'm writing this on my brand new ASUS eeePC. This thing is pretty spiffy. They keyboard is, admittedly tiny, but certainly serviceable. With built-in wireless, OpeOffice.org and an easily available terminal (with SSH built in) this little baby rocks. It's got a solid state hard drive, which is great for battery life, as well as lightning-quick boot-ups. The downside of the solid state drive, tho, is the limited write lifetime of flash memory. This should be mitigated through judicious use of off-board flash drives.

I have to admit that I was a little uncertain, when I heard that ASUS has skipped over the normal “desktop” metaphor, but as someone who's worked ona variety of GUIs, going back to Tandy DeskMate and MS Windows 3.1, the tabbed “Program Manager” UI is a bit out-of-fashion, but perfetly apt for the screen resolution of the eeePC.

Once one gets past the seeming awkwardness of the tabbed app picker thing, the eeePC is a delight. The 900MHz Celeron, while not exactly super-computer-class hardware, is definitely adequate for mobile word-processing, web-browsing, emailing and so on. One should be prepared for a little reduction in desktoppiness in a tiny $350 potable computer, but this machine definitely delivers a good level of laptop capability in a super-portable very-well-built package at an outstanding price.

Oh, and the really great news is that this is one among an increasing class of OEM computers being marketed to consumers with Linux pre-installed. I bought two, and plan to use them in my DJ business, when I start it. I may get a couple more just to keep in my car and truck... 'cause you never know when you'll need to compute ;)

I was considering the iPod Touch and the Nokia N800 for quick and dirty internet access and SSH connectivity, but with the iPod in the $300-or-better neighborhood and the Nokia about the same, both with no keyboard, and the eeePC at $349, with basically everything I need in a laptop and not much bigger of a package than the Nokia... um... it was kind of a no-brainer. OK, the eeePC is bigger than either of the other two, but I don't need to carry a separate Bluetooth keyboard, and don't have to wait for Apple to open up their SDK, or risk bricking the stupid thing to put Linux on it. The eeePC has linux on it already (albeit Xandros), and if I want to put another distro on it, there's really nothing standing in my way. Having said that, i think I'll stick with the pre-installed software (at least for now), as it seems to have all the hardware stuff already worked out... like the Wi-Fi drivers, the function keys and power management... so...

The only gripes I have with it so far are:

• I can't seem to connect to NFS shares on my home network. Prolly something I'm doing wrong.
  
• I ran updates, which made Firefox segfault. I easily found a workaround on a forum (forum.eeeuser.com).
  

All-in-all, after a mere 4 hours of use, I give the eeePC a four and three-quarters stars out of five.

I'll see about udating this a little later, after I've have more time to put this little honey through its paces.

... A quick post script: laptop bags for a machine this tiny are a little tough to come by, but portable DVD player bags work great. The CompUSA near me is going out of business, and I managed to pick up 2 such bags for $.98 each!!!!!