heatlesssun
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There's how many Windows laptop models and how many Chromebook models?
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2013: The Year You Switch To Linux?
- Thread starter HardOCP News
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There's how many Windows laptop models and how many Chromebook models?
You can say the same thing for Apple, but when laptop sales are down 26% and most of that is Windows while the others (chromeOS, OS X) are gaining market share, you'd have to reconsider your stance here.
heatlesssun
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Even if sales were up 26% a single Windows laptop is just a drop in the bucket.
Yet when the others are up and Windows laptops are down 26% then it points to a trend that you'd rather ignore or deflect: people don't give a fuck about Windows. One PC running Windows is enough and doesn't need to be upgraded for a period of years. The next upgrade is less likely to be Windows.
heatlesssun
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Well in terms of absolute numbers on the desktop, people don't look to give a fuck about Linux, which Windows 8 surpassed last month or OS X which Windows 8 will probably surpass this month.
leezard
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Were are you getting people dont give a fuck about windows? You may not, but you are not mr or mrs average user. I assure you they do in fact give a fuck about windows and they make up the majority of users.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&qpcustomd=0&qptimeframe=Y
That figure includes all the previous versions as well.
Consumers do care about Linux. They're using Android, aren't they? ;p
When sales today are down for Windows-based PCs but up for everyone else then that's a sign that people care less about Windows than they used to. It no longer presents substantial benefits over the others. This really this boils down to tablets and smartphones overcoming PCs as the go-to computing device for most folks, and as PC sales are cannibalized by tablets and smartphones, MS loses its edge as it no longer has anything to offer in a market where it's about as large as Linux is on the desktop.
People aren't buying Windows tablets and Windows PC sales are dipping quickly, do you guys really think Microsoft has anything compelling to offer anybody anymore?
Consumers do care about Linux. They're using Android, aren't they? ;p
When sales today are down for Windows-based PCs but up for everyone else then that's a sign that people care less about Windows than they used to. It no longer presents substantial benefits over the others. This really this boils down to tablets and smartphones overcoming PCs as the go-to computing device for most folks, and as PC sales are cannibalized by tablets and smartphones, MS loses its edge as it no longer has anything to offer in a market where it's about as large as Linux is on the desktop.
People aren't buying Windows tablets and Windows PC sales are dipping quickly, do you guys really think Microsoft has anything compelling to offer anybody anymore?
heatlesssun
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I said on the desktop. People care about Linux because they have an Android phone?
Direct X and its developer community. Im sold.
That's Microsoft's problem. As the desktop gets tipped off its pedestal, so too goes MS. The x86 legacy goes from being an advantage to becoming a hindrance (have you seen how large the Windows 8 installs are on tablets?)
Unwittingly, yea =P They don't know it's Linux but they know it's Android.
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Zarathustra[H]
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the only reason I never bought one, was because I expected a good portion of the license savings to be passed on to me.
If I were to buy a windows license, it would cost be about $100.
Now I know the big OEM's don't pay retail costs for MS Products, but I expected at least some savings from going with a Linux machine.
So, when I bought laptops (I build all my own desktops, so this is really only relevant for laptops to me) I always opted for the versions with Windows anyway, and manually installed Linux. That way, if I ever wanted to sell the laptop, I had a license of Windows ready to reinstall.
Zarathustra[H]
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I use Linux for most things.
There used to be three things that kept me from going 100% Linux.
1.) iTunes: I hate iTunes, but it was needed to backup/flash my iPhone at the time. I have since switched to an android phone and no longer need iTunes.
2.) MS Office: Open-Office and later Libre Office are both pretty good, but I always had compatibility problems with specialized spreadsheet formulas from Excel. Then I discovered Crossover-Office which works really well, so now I can have MS Office in Linux.
3.) Games: Lately the only thing that has kept me booting back into Windows, and many times staying there, because it's a pain to booth back and forth. Hopefully with the release of Steam for linux, more and more titles will support Linux, and this will go away as well.
I would love to be able to completely get rid of my Windows partition.
There used to be three things that kept me from going 100% Linux.
1.) iTunes: I hate iTunes, but it was needed to backup/flash my iPhone at the time. I have since switched to an android phone and no longer need iTunes.
2.) MS Office: Open-Office and later Libre Office are both pretty good, but I always had compatibility problems with specialized spreadsheet formulas from Excel. Then I discovered Crossover-Office which works really well, so now I can have MS Office in Linux.
3.) Games: Lately the only thing that has kept me booting back into Windows, and many times staying there, because it's a pain to booth back and forth. Hopefully with the release of Steam for linux, more and more titles will support Linux, and this will go away as well.
I would love to be able to completely get rid of my Windows partition.
Seeing how you can't click to find the break down of OS individually by version then I will do it for you, your welcome.
heatlesssun
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Again my point is that if no one cares about Windows on the desktop, God help other desktop OSes. As for the disk space that Windows 8 takes up an a tablet, yeah, it's a lot bigger than most mobile OSes but heck I've got full Office 2013 professional, Visual Studio 2012 for Windows 8, about 120 Metro apps, gigs of OneNote notebooks and other data I still have 10 GB free on my 64GB 500T and about 8 GB is the recovery data I believe. In any case I can stick 64GB microSDs into the thing and it hardly matters.
This is a tech enthusiast board, people care about this stuff here. You say I'm delusional but most people I know getting Android smart phones are getting freebies with new contracts, not because of any love for Android or Linux.
Well Photoshop works in WINE. This is kind of a strange argument because, at some point, your existing programs will be incompatible with a new version of Windows and you will have to upgrade/replace them anyways. For example, Photoshop 1.0 does not work with Windows 7 x64.
I've done IT for both GNU/Linux shops and Windows shops. GNU/Linux workstations, in my experience, require far less maintenance and cause far less trouble. Having maintained hundreds of Windows computers, I've seen plenty of registry corruption and infections (not even a virus scanner prevents 100% of infections, especially with the stupidity of the average user).
You're forgetting that GNU/Linux is the dominant Internet server operating system. Servers are a far more tempting target than the average desktop/laptop, given their above average processing power and access to far greater bandwidth.
Since I do not own BF3, I would have no way of trying this (I refuse to install the Origin Spyware on my computer).
A native GNU/Linux program would never expect to use ASIO. ASIO doesn't exist on the Mac either and yet a lot of people use those to do music production. ASIO is a technology created to work around the limitations of the Windows audio stack. GNU/Linux and Mac OS X both support low-latency audio without special drivers.
WINE offers a drop-in ASIO "replacement" for Windows programs.
I'm sure that's what reviewers have claimed as well. Who cares if it takes up half of your 32GB just to install Windows, right? It's not like you planned on using that space anyway.
It's just really nice for them to be making such decisions for me so I can not bother to think about that stuff.
Good point. Maybe I'd like some of that space back, please.
First, you're still paying for it but you're paying monthly. That's partly why your bill is so high. It's not free, it just provides an incentive for the consumer to buy into a contract where they'd be completely unwilling if there were sticker shock involved (go check out how much those phones cost when unlocked). These "Android smart phone freebies" end up costing as much or more than Apple equivalents (see Galaxy S3)
Secondly, quite a few people do look for Android or iOS. Windows Phone 8? not so much. That tends to happen when a person is looking for an upgrade but doesn't want to lose all of their apps and time invested in a platform. MS's job is to convince them to do so... with higher prices, fewer choices and no real tangible benefit.
RanceJustice
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I think it is important to note I've seen a pretty strange double-standard when it comes to how people view Linux on the desktop, especially with regard to criticism.
When using a program or driver on Windows that tends to be crappy, non-existent, or doesn't serve your needs, many people rightfully consider that it is the fault of software developer or hardware manufacturer. Likewise with Apple products; which despite their often insane pricing in comparison and crappy ports, people are willing to put up with to a greater extent than anything else. However, when it comes to Linux, people seem to talk as though it is deficient because "it doesn't support X driver or Y program". That's not really fair.
People should direct their ire to the driver/firmware/software manufacturers that choose not to support Linux; its not the other way around. Linux has the least barriers of all for development; there is no patent encumbrance, required development programs/licenses, or particular languages necessary in order to interface with it. Everything is open and documented. When developers properly support Linux (see: Intel chipsets, and even video) the experience is often greatly superior to other OS. Much of the time support is merged into the Linux kernel itself, or some other part of the OS and thus "it just works". Hell, despite the fact that the distributions are also "free as in beer", even when developers don't even consider Linux, there are enterprising individuals who manage to support a great deal of the hardware and find ways to run software that were never meant to run on the platform!
While there are some semi-legitimate criticisms (though many of them I consider unacceptable and fall into basically shortsighted greed, the desire to enact control through proprietary lockdown and other issues) about why some developers fail to support Linux and thus leading to your favorite program, driver et al not being supported properly there, it is important to remember that for whatever reason, the cause lies at their feet - not some deficiency of Linux itself.
When using a program or driver on Windows that tends to be crappy, non-existent, or doesn't serve your needs, many people rightfully consider that it is the fault of software developer or hardware manufacturer. Likewise with Apple products; which despite their often insane pricing in comparison and crappy ports, people are willing to put up with to a greater extent than anything else. However, when it comes to Linux, people seem to talk as though it is deficient because "it doesn't support X driver or Y program". That's not really fair.
People should direct their ire to the driver/firmware/software manufacturers that choose not to support Linux; its not the other way around. Linux has the least barriers of all for development; there is no patent encumbrance, required development programs/licenses, or particular languages necessary in order to interface with it. Everything is open and documented. When developers properly support Linux (see: Intel chipsets, and even video) the experience is often greatly superior to other OS. Much of the time support is merged into the Linux kernel itself, or some other part of the OS and thus "it just works". Hell, despite the fact that the distributions are also "free as in beer", even when developers don't even consider Linux, there are enterprising individuals who manage to support a great deal of the hardware and find ways to run software that were never meant to run on the platform!
While there are some semi-legitimate criticisms (though many of them I consider unacceptable and fall into basically shortsighted greed, the desire to enact control through proprietary lockdown and other issues) about why some developers fail to support Linux and thus leading to your favorite program, driver et al not being supported properly there, it is important to remember that for whatever reason, the cause lies at their feet - not some deficiency of Linux itself.
Red Machine D
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Saw this on Imgur, thought it fit into this convo pretty well.
SkribbelKat
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I'll just leave this here:
Source
So, you pay $499 for a 32 GB Windows tablet (RT...the situation is almost as dumb on a Windows 8 tablet with the same amount of storage) and get less usable storage space than on a $250 netbook AND you have to supply your own keyboard too! Go tablets! Yaay!
On the other hand, the OS, LibreOffice, GIMP, chat and social networking, etc only needs about 6 GB of space if you use Linux Mint 14. I know...I just installed it on my Pentium M Sony Vaio laptop with it's 80 GB HDD and even though it's like 6 years old, it still has more free storage space than a 1 month old Windows tablet. Tablets are profitable because stupid people pay more to get less. Fool..money...blah, blah, blah.
I'll just leave this here:
Source
So, you pay $499 for a 32 GB Windows tablet (RT...the situation is almost as dumb on a Windows 8 tablet with the same amount of storage) and get less usable storage space than on a $250 netbook AND you have to supply your own keyboard too! Go tablets! Yaay!
On the other hand, the OS, LibreOffice, GIMP, chat and social networking, etc only needs about 6 GB of space if you use Linux Mint 14. I know...I just installed it on my Pentium M Sony Vaio laptop with it's 80 GB HDD and even though it's like 6 years old, it still has more free storage space than a 1 month old Windows tablet. Tablets are profitable because stupid people pay more to get less. Fool..money...blah, blah, blah.
But! But! it's for all teH "legacy" softwarezzz
I love Linux. I use it all the time for computationally intensive work as do many other people in science or engineering fields. I particularly have come to appreciate using the shell for many tasks, in particular managing the file system. However, I will probably be sticking with Windows 7 on my personal desktop for a little while longer for a few reasons:
1) Gaming, obviously. I am not a hardcore gamer by any means, in fact quite a few of the ones I do play (Minecraft) run just fine on Linux. But most games still only work optimally on Windows, and WINE is a pain in the ass. Seeing Steam coming to Linux makes me a little more optimistic about the feature, but given how far the Mac version has gotten, I am a bit skeptical.
2) Device Support. Yes, Linux has come a long way in this regard, but in my opinion there are two devices that receive noticeably inferior support on Linux compared to Windows. One is video cards. Even if there were more games available that run natively on Linux, they will still perform worse than their Windows counterpart due to poorly optimized drivers. The last time I installed Mint on my desktop, I had two choices as an AMD user, which were to use the open source or proprietary drivers. This forced me to consider the pros and cons of each heavily, because while the proprietary driver had superior gaming performance by a mile, the 2D (Desktop) performance was utterly choppy compared to the open source driver. I have heard that despite the fact that Linus gave the middle finger to NVIDIA quite recently, driver performance is generally better, so I will probably have to test it again sometime soon.
However, it is the mouse support that really bugged me. In particular, dealing with the sensitivity was just really weird. I would find that no matter what machine I was using, mice were always more sensitive than on Windows because the acceleration was set significantly high by default. Additionally, this was not something I could fix with a GUI but rather a shell script. However, what was not fixable at all was the scrolling sensitivity. My mouse (the G9x) scrolls incredibly slowly in Linux. Of course, I have to partially blame Logitech for this because I needed to use the setpoint drivers to adjust scrolling in Windows. Unfortunately there is no Linux variant, and GNOME (specifically GTK) does not have any scroll wheel adjustment in GUI. KDE does, but of course I think KDE has its own quirks which make me not want to use it.
So naturally, I think that it is really up to the hardware and software manufacturers to provide better support for Linux. I am glad that Valve has taken a stand recently with Steam, but I think others need to follow suit.
1) Gaming, obviously. I am not a hardcore gamer by any means, in fact quite a few of the ones I do play (Minecraft) run just fine on Linux. But most games still only work optimally on Windows, and WINE is a pain in the ass. Seeing Steam coming to Linux makes me a little more optimistic about the feature, but given how far the Mac version has gotten, I am a bit skeptical.
2) Device Support. Yes, Linux has come a long way in this regard, but in my opinion there are two devices that receive noticeably inferior support on Linux compared to Windows. One is video cards. Even if there were more games available that run natively on Linux, they will still perform worse than their Windows counterpart due to poorly optimized drivers. The last time I installed Mint on my desktop, I had two choices as an AMD user, which were to use the open source or proprietary drivers. This forced me to consider the pros and cons of each heavily, because while the proprietary driver had superior gaming performance by a mile, the 2D (Desktop) performance was utterly choppy compared to the open source driver. I have heard that despite the fact that Linus gave the middle finger to NVIDIA quite recently, driver performance is generally better, so I will probably have to test it again sometime soon.
However, it is the mouse support that really bugged me. In particular, dealing with the sensitivity was just really weird. I would find that no matter what machine I was using, mice were always more sensitive than on Windows because the acceleration was set significantly high by default. Additionally, this was not something I could fix with a GUI but rather a shell script. However, what was not fixable at all was the scrolling sensitivity. My mouse (the G9x) scrolls incredibly slowly in Linux. Of course, I have to partially blame Logitech for this because I needed to use the setpoint drivers to adjust scrolling in Windows. Unfortunately there is no Linux variant, and GNOME (specifically GTK) does not have any scroll wheel adjustment in GUI. KDE does, but of course I think KDE has its own quirks which make me not want to use it.
So naturally, I think that it is really up to the hardware and software manufacturers to provide better support for Linux. I am glad that Valve has taken a stand recently with Steam, but I think others need to follow suit.
Red Falcon
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Red Falcon
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I just discovered PlayOnLinux, which uses WINE 1.5.5 and takes longer to download than install.
It was very simple to use, and once STEAM was installed (Windows version), I was able to play almost all the games in my library, the Windows library, not just Linux.
My gf and I have been playing FEAR all night on the system in my sig with Ubuntu 10.04.
The whole STEAM on Linux is awesome, but the lack of a library of games kind of kills it; since it's still in beta though, it's forgivable.
PlayOnLinux, try it!
I just discovered PlayOnLinux, which uses WINE 1.5.5 and takes longer to download than install.
It was very simple to use, and once STEAM was installed (Windows version), I was able to play almost all the games in my library, the Windows library, not just Linux.
My gf and I have been playing FEAR all night on the system in my sig with Ubuntu 10.04.
The whole STEAM on Linux is awesome, but the lack of a library of games kind of kills it; since it's still in beta though, it's forgivable.
PlayOnLinux, try it!
I have read up about it, and it sounds promising. I think I'll try it after I install the next version of Mint. Out of curiosity, how have more recent games performed on PoL for you?
heatlesssun
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The original FEAR is a fantastic game, one of my all time favorites, but it is over 7 years old. Anything more recent that you can play with that setup?
SkribbelKat
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I just discovered PlayOnLinux, which uses WINE 1.5.5 and takes longer to download than install.
It was very simple to use, and once STEAM was installed (Windows version), I was able to play almost all the games in my library, the Windows library, not just Linux.
My gf and I have been playing FEAR all night on the system in my sig with Ubuntu 10.04.
The whole STEAM on Linux is awesome, but the lack of a library of games kind of kills it; since it's still in beta though, it's forgivable.
PlayOnLinux, try it!
Why u no play Vega Strike?
Red Falcon
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FEAR 2 and 3, and Dead Space 1 and 2, for starters.
Yes, everything runs fantastically, as well as my system will allow.
However, with your system, I'm not sure if Tri-SLI is supported officially under Linux.
Just one of those GTX680's would be more than enough for many titles on a single monitor though.
Red Falcon
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Why u no play Vega Strike?
Space shooters aren't really my thing.
Looks neat though.
SkribbelKat
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It's less vomit inducing to play than FPS...plus sandboxy space trading games are the domain of "real" men or something. It'll turn you into a giant hairy thing out of Star Trek that can only grunt even though that carbonite guy understands you perfectly.
Red Falcon
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I should add that the games feel like they are running natively on a Windows OS.
The only thing between them (and Steam) and the hardware is WINE, but it doesn't look like there is any emulation lag at all.
WINE has really improved in the last few years.
Even my GPU folding has been running in Linux via WINE 1.2 for over a year now with high success; my GTX480 will occasionally push over 28,000PPD, depending on the work units available, with an average of 20,000PPD.
The only thing between them (and Steam) and the hardware is WINE, but it doesn't look like there is any emulation lag at all.
WINE has really improved in the last few years.
Even my GPU folding has been running in Linux via WINE 1.2 for over a year now with high success; my GTX480 will occasionally push over 28,000PPD, depending on the work units available, with an average of 20,000PPD.
Red Falcon
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heatlesssun
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Thanks for the info. I don't think supporting these very exotic technologies is a big deal.
SkribbelKat
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Mixing your Chewbacca with your Star Trek there?
Nice reference there, Solo.
Star Track, Star Wars...they're all the same.
And it's not like the situation is much better on Windows 7.
Here I have a "System Volume Information" directory that takes up 5.2 GB and I can't even view it with the administrator account to see what's in there.
"NVIDIA Corporation" takes up 2 GB. Seriously... WTF?
"Windows\system32" takes up 4.6 GB.
And my new favorite, "Windows\winsxs" hogs an increasingly growing 8.4 GB.
Altogether the "Windows" directory takes up 20 GB... and that's w/o a hibernate file.
And to top it all off the Backup program reliably runs for a full hour to only puke out the conveniently-descriptive error message "0x80070015". Apparently backing up to an external drive isn't very reliable. Of course I would back up to the network... if the $100 version actually allowed such an esoteric concept.
Don't mind me... I'm just whining. But some of these stories about Windows being immune to extreme PITA-ery just compound a recurring myth.
SkribbelKat
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Oh, I understand. Windows 7 is just as bloated with junk that does who-knows-what and takes up far too much storage space as well as needs way too much RAM to operate. However, modern tablets are selling with very limited amounts of internal storage which generally can't be upgraded so the problems with Windows 8 and RT tend to be more easily noticed. Netbooks that shipped when Windows 7 was first released generally had 160 GB drives so the OS taking 1/10th of it isn't as big of a deal as taking 1/2 of a much more expensive tablet's storage.
SkribbelKat
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I've been playing with Mint for about 2 weeks. Coming from Slackware and lean OSes like TinyCore, DSL, and Puppy, I really like it. Get the Cinnamon UI version of 14 if you have a choice.
Personally, I think it's a lot more efficient and faster than XP on the same hardware (Pentium M @ 1.7 GHz, 2 GB DDR2, 80 GB 5400 RPM laptop HDD, Intel GMA 915). I switched because I was getting lots of BSODs that were seemingly related to the laptop's video driver and Intel hasn't shipped a new one in years. It idles at about 200 MB of RAM used and where XP couldn't handle full screen YouTubes at 320, Mint seems happy at full screen 480. You can try the live disc, but you'll feel lots of lag if you do it from optical media that you won't see if you install it to a hard disk.