Submitted by “Who is Microsoft fooling? Other than on the desktop, Linux is eating its lunch, and it’s only going to get worse for Microsoft.”
“Who is Microsoft fooling? Other than on the desktop, Linux is eating its lunch, and it’s only going to get worse for Microsoft.”
…This isn’t even an article. Hell, it’s barely a sentence. Wait, I just wrote more than the article and my post contains more content.
What a troll! (and yeah, I bit)
yeahh… what is this story about? It’s once sentence with no links.
So umm.. what is this about?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linux-snickers-at-microsofts-…
Would you believe me if I told you that the link was actually there ? Forgetting a space somewhere is all it takes to break HTML code…
Edited 2011-08-16 17:44 UTC
Edit: Too late
Edited 2011-08-16 17:11 UTC
just like most of you, I wouldn’t call it an “article” either, but he does have a point. I mean what else is there to say? Of course we can point to tablets and phones (even Chrome Books) and the diminishing importance of the desktop .. but we all know that, right?
In the good old days linux and F/LOSS fans like me would have jumped at Microsoft’s bold announcement. Now, most reaction is a weak “meh”! I don’t think Microsoft’s posturing merits anything longer than this minimalist “article.” It’s a good example of how much we care about it
Also the article mentions the browser and more than 50% of all webusers use a non-Microsoft-and-open-source browser (Firefox or Chrome (that last one is based on 98% or so open source code)).
I think there was no link because the article was so crap.
Yeah, but does MSFT really need to beat Linux everywhere? For them to succeed, they just need to beat Linux where their core money-printing-machine is: Windows and Office.
As long as they’re able to do so, they should be fine. We already live in an era where the web is entrenched in our lives (i.e. we’re past the point of saying “the web is where everything is going to”) – and the smartphone market, while on meteoric ascension, still is not mature enough for us to declare Google/Android/Linux and Apple winners (although I believe this will happen in 2-3 years). MSFT still has time to catch up with linux on mobile and print huge amounts of money.
Please note that I haven’t used a Microsoft product (Xbox included) in the last year or so – I believe that today they are nothing more than patent trolls who stifle innovation. Nevertheless, they’re not as dead as I hope they’ll be.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking they were talking about. Linux has never been a threat on the desktop, and probably never will be. Hell, we don’t even have Windows vs Linux on the desktop pissing contests here, as opposed to the old days where it would happen almost daily
Wishful thinking. Every time a new technology comes around (web, mobile, tablets, etc), pundits are always quick to predict the end of the desktop. It hasn’t happened yet, and won’t any time soon, so long as the desktop continues to be the best way to get real work done.
Once upon a time it looked like OEMs might actually give people a choice of OSes on the desktop, then they eventually just caved to Microsoft. Dell, HP, etc. made the choice for us.
People would opt to use Linux if it had decent hardware support (out of the box AND by third parties) and a good third party software portfolio that a user can choose from.
I’m going to be down voted to oblivion but it is abundantly clear the majority of people here have never hung out with ordinary people and what they want to use their computer for – clue to the clueless, they don’t want to spend their whole afternoon trying to work out why their printer doesn’t work with their Linux machine even though some dick on linuxprinting.org said that the printer would be compatible. The average user doesn’t want to waste half their time stuck between a project releasing a new update to fix a bug in a piece of software and the brain dead distributor who refuses to recompile the new version of the application to correct said bug (oh nose! I might have to provide an upgrade to software in my distribution! I can’t just compile some shitty old version with 10000000s of custom patches! I’m looking at you Red Hat and your shitty custom patched riddled software you ship as ‘commercial’ versions).
I mean, come on – I know it is ‘cool’ to hate on Microsoft and Apple but how about some Linux advocates take responsibility for the sorry and pathetic state that Linux is in when it comes to addressing real users needs – if you don’t want ‘ordinary users’ then by all means do what the BSD fans do and be happy with what you have but don’t turn around whining and whinging then demanding that you want the desktop and the whole world to magically change to your way of thinking.
I mean honestly, it is taking till 2011 before someone *FINALLY* created a replacement for Xorg that not only doesn’t suck but actually has some traction? Holy shitballs mate, this it the kind of stuff that should have happened 11 years ago. It is going to be another 11 years before Wayland finally gets off the ground and then another 10 years before GNOME and KDE stop being a pack of douches and work on a single project together that works towards a coherent package.
That is what consumers/endusers want – a coherent top to bottom package – they don’t care about the “linux way of doing things’ where you build a system from the ground up, the end user wants something that works out the box on day one with minimal fuss and bother but it appears that the Linux advocates here have absolutely no clue what so ever.
You seem to assume I wouldn’t agree with you. I do for the most part. The hardware support does need to be better, and who better than OEMs to push hardware manufacturers to include Linux drivers? If a larger company like Nvidia can put out the effort, than smaller companies have no excuses. The printer is a very good example. I’m the defacto IT person at the small family business where I work, and I would have loved to switch one of the people there to PCLOS just so I could stop have to clean malware off their machines. For what she needs the computer for, Linux would have been just fine and no more confusing for her, than Windows is (which is very). And it’s not just her, I know a lot of people like her who need to be shown even simple things like how to copy and paste, etc. But alas, no Linux drivers for her printer. Getting her to finally switch from the admin account to user was the best I could do, but for people who don’t like change, even that took convincing. These are the ordinary users you’re talking about.
Heh, 2001 called, they want their FUD back. Seriously, mate, this is ancient stuff you’re spewing.
Nowadays a well-polished distro pretty much works out of the box. The rare cases when something does not, you don’t “recompile” anything, at most you google a bit or ask the friendly nearby geek, which is the same most Windows users do as well.
And the even more rare cases when even that does not work are offset IMHO by the various Linux advantages. Things like the fact it doesn’t take 20 GB just for the naked OS, instead it uses under 5 GB for the OS plus all the hardware drivers you need, plus 30k software packages (of which I can quickly count 100+ useful apps in Software Center) AND keeps it all updated seamlessly at all times. Or the fact it doesn’t suffer from “Windows rot” where you have to reinstall every once in a while. Or that the deskop apps menu is actually sanely organized, not everything dumped together. Or that the desktop effects actually strive to be useful not just eye-candy. Or the lack of spyware, malware, need for antivirus, firewall etc.
Low Linux adoption on the PC desktop is a fact, but arguing it’s about hardware support or that the desktop experience is not up to par is stupid. I’m not even going to argue this anymore, anybody who’s willing to slap a Live install on a stick can see for themselves.
Low adoption is due to other factors. Such as the fact a mega-corporation like Microsoft has been doing everything in its power for two decades not to let it happen, where on the other side you have mostly volunteers or companies who are looking to get stuff done and put products out and move on, not battle FUD. Look at any technology field where Microsoft has no stake, everything from media players to the route display in your bus, and you will find Linux. I wonder why.
The PC world is the most retarded of all consumer technology fields because of it. Apple may lock you in but at least they innovate like crazy, with Microsoft it’s just the lock-in and no reward. They barely cared to start upgrading Windows and IE recently because they were starting to lose it badly, and Office is still essentially the same as it was 20 years ago, only more bloated, with just the ribbon to show for “innovation”.
Enjoy your Microsoft dominated desktop, but I say we’d all be better off if there would have been proper competition allowed. Only I guess we’ll never know.
Edited 2011-08-17 13:31 UTC
Ehm, excuse me? Linux supports way more architectures, way more network controllers, SCSI controllers, graphics adapters (through X.org and DRM), way more sound cards, way more scanners (through SANE) and even much more exotic hardware than Windows ever supported or will ever support.
Hell, Linux even supports hardware which hasn’t even been released yet [1]. I’m too lazy now to look for a current article, but if you are constantly reading Phoronix and similar sites, you read these articles very often. Also, AMD also integrated drivers for Radeon chips they wouldn’t release before 2012. Linux was also first to support USB 3.0.
Yes, there is some hardware which is not supported by Linux. But seriously, who gives a f*ck about GDI printers, cheap scanners and crappy webcams which cost 20 bucks and won’t last longer than a summer. Why would anyone make a hassle writing drivers for that.
Also, when you buy hardware, you actually check if it’s supported by the software you’re using _before_ you buy it, not afterwards. And, yes, even computer-illiterate can read the description on a package and see if it says “supports Linux”. If not, they’re free to ask people at BestBuy or where ever you buy your stuff.
But I guess some prejudices NEVER die off. It’s like trying to explain to explain cleric folk in the 15th century the earth is not a flat disc but a sphere, they still insist their old information is valid. Because they don’t give a damn actually start THINKING.
Adrian
[1] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzMxNQ
Maybe that’s your problem right there. Too much Phoronix and the likes of it will make you lose sight of what’s real and what’s not.
Well, are we trying to have a discussion here or is this just a war over which toy in the shelf Kindergarten is better?
You know that a lot of very big companies have adopted Linux, right? Be it Google, Amazon, Samsung, Sony, LG, Intel, AMD and more.
I bet that you actually use more Linux computers everyday than you use Windows machines, but you’re simply not aware of that because Linux isn’t that heavily advertised as proprietary software is.
The fact is that Linux is the dominating operating system everywhere except on the desktop, but at the same time the sales for desktop computers are dropping year over year [1] [2], so it’s not really a market Linux vendors have to worry about. But, in fact, it’s Microsoft who need their a**es going and investing into new areas. Up to now, they have failed (server operating systems, mobile etc).
Adrian
[1] http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/wintel-share-global-pc-industry-fal…
[2] http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1744216
So what? Please remind us that Linux runs supercomputers too. Please.
Sure, if you’re gonna come up with something like “everytime you surf the web you’re using Linux” or some other nonsense.
So we’ve miserably lost the war, let’s hope we can change the battlefields.
This is actually a symptom of a problem rather than an advantage. This is what happens:
Commercial enterprise software often undergoes long testing periods, typically 6 to 24 months before they are released to the public. This means that they are tested against what is stable at the beginning of the test period. At the time of release it has been tested against 12 to 24 months old linux distros. If the new hardware is not supported by these old kernels then different hardware will be acquired. So for a hardware supplier in the server and embedded space it is better to release a buggy, crappy driver early than to make a quality driver up front.
This is because for linux fixing an existing driver is much easier than getting included in or backported to an old kernel. So you see a lot of half assed drivers in linux that nobody cares much about.
I voted you up because I agree with you on the Wayland thing. I believe it should have be done 10 years ago, but it’s never too late…
The big PC manufacturers didn’t cave in to Microsoft, they caved in to customer demand.
Only a very few people actually want to use Linux as their operating system. Everyone else installed an old pirated copy of Windows XP, had a friend do it, or returned the machine.
The only people who were totally happy with the Linux Eee PC netbooks were those that had a friendly local Linux user to help them out. I knew a lot of people who didn’t care for the experience, but went along with it because that was what you got for $280. Once Windows netbooks were available they switched.
That was also because they used a terrible distribution of Linux. If they’d just slapped stock Ubuntu on there, people would have been happier with it.
Don’t for a second think that the ASUS product designers loved the crappy Xandros on the early eeePC’s.
Using Ubuntu had 2 key problems at that point:
1: No access to repositories so the ASUS developers could not commit changes needed for the Netbook to run acceptably well.
2: Ubuntu does not test much before release, meaning any update at any time could have created a tsunami of eeePC recalls, for example a busted WIFI driver would have been a disaster.
Xandros solved both those problems for ASUS.
The desktop will diminish when cloud related technologies have proliferated enough to make the average user care less about software and data on his local system. It’s starting, but it’s a long way to go.
My prediction is that the first thing to go in the desktop computing is the departmental server, as it’ll be replaced by a high bandwidth connection to a private or virtual-private cloud system.
Next will be the full blown desktop computer to go. That has partially started in more advanced organisations – Citrix “replacing” local OS or thin server. But it will be more like Android/iOS – locally apps(incl HTML5 stuff) provide GUI and input, while all heavy lifting is done on the server.
Back to square one then? Plus a hefty $99 annual subscription, thrown in there for good measure for the consumer
It looks to me like we’re trying to throw out everything local just because. Just because cloud and HTML5 sound so cool. Nevermind that some of these things have been done decades ago already and we progressed past that.
It’s like that 99% of what we do. But revisiting things from the past does not imply they will not stick today or tomorrow.
Too bad that the sales for normal desktop PCs are on the fall:
http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/wintel-share-global-pc-industry-fal…
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1744216
You know, pride goes before a fall. Microsoft is losing market shares and if they don’t get their a**es up soon and get seriously moving, they’ll be doomed for decline.
Remember, there were other companies like Commodore, Atari, Sun and SGI that were acting with similar arrogance and eventually went bankrupt or were bought up.
Microsoft is not invincible.
Adrian
The issue for them is that they are under threat of any good enough free alternative. You don’t need to be the best to oust Windows/Office. A surprising small amount of people use MS Office to it’s full potential. OpenOffice/LibreOffice and even Google Docs can handle 99% of what MS Office is used for.
Yes, but as a previous poster pointed out, it’s about a package that “just works”. I’ve given people Open Office in the past, and they complain because they save a document, send it to someone who is then unable to read it in Word. All it takes is a Save As and change the filetype, but that’s an extra step people don’t need when they use MS Office. And so it stays.
Flamebait deluxe
Why do you post such garbage?
I have to agree. I normally try not to second guess the OSNews editorial decisions–even if I don’t agree, it’s usually a good read–but this is just incoherent chest-thumping from an insecure fanboi. Linux is doing great, and it’s so refreshing from where we were a decade ago, but shite articles like this actually take away from that sense of progress.
I think what bothers me the most is that the hack that wrote this is the one who submitted the article. If you look at his submission history, the majority of everything he’s ever submitted is his own intellectual refuse. He’s essentially using the site an an SEO tool–someone should at least add nofollow to the link.
Frankly, given that he’s been abusing the site for years, I’d prefer to see him blacklisted, no matter who submits the article. There may be a chance he writes something worth reading, but I’m willing to call that a calculated risk.
Linux started out as having UNIX on your PC at home. Linux on the desktop failed, year after year despite each year being the year of the Linux desktop for some reason.
Linux now runs almost everywhere, but perhaps apart from servers I doubt anyone in the early days foresaw this.
Where it now runs with success it mostly benefits the money making businesses, not the community that started working on Linux in the 90s. Most people could’t care less if their VCR or fridge runs Linux, in most cases you can’t even tell.
The desktop is where Microsoft makes a lot of money (Windows and Office). If they claim victory there over Linux they are right.
Lots of people foresaw that. On the basis of Linux’s modularity many people predicted it would be a major player in the forthcoming development of smart devices. This was a common view ten years ago.
Hmm. At least Torvalds claimed that he never expects Linux to run on anything but 386 machines and supporting AT hard disks. He said that when he was announcing version 0.0.1 on the Usenet [1].
Also, when IBM started porting Linux to their machines, Torvalds was heavily opposed to that idea since he thought that Linux would never scale enough to run on such big hardware.
So, at least Torvalds himself was never expecting Linux to be so versatile.
Adrian
[1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/msg/b813d52cbc5a044b?p…
It’s a reminder that this is still OSnews and not Mobile Litigation News. Once upon a time (before smartphones became sacred relics), this was a site for OS hobbyists.
You are right, but if you look OSnews right now, there are a lot of interesting articles submitted today (about HTML5, BFS, IE9, etc.).
Yeah, but gone are the days when there was a multitude of articles about BeOS, BSD, SkyOS, Syllable, Amiga variants, etc. And giving way to phone OSes at that.
Well, they do pop up from time to time, but I for one would like to see more of those. But perhaps not much is happing on those subjects.
If you know of anything there is a ‘Submit News’ at the top of every page.
Also you can contact the editors of the site and I’m sure you can send them site links and RSS-feeds with interesting news that you think is missing.
“Big” alternative operating systems seem to be less of a hot topic lately. Not only when it comes to capturing attention of audiences, also when it comes to actual activity of projects (heck, some of those that you mentioned are themselves gone!). Not long after we possibly hit the “good enough” territory (kinda like with qwerty), at least apparent one.
OTOH, with the flurry of activity around mobile OSes…
I for one am sick of hearing “Desktop Linux is a failure because they don’t have any market share.” This sort of thing only matters for a commercial product. As long as there are people willing to use GNU/Linux on the desktop it has not failed. and by that metric and giving Linux’s lead in the server room I don’t see the usage of desktop Linux dieing completely.
Really it’s a result of all the “Year of the Linux Desktop” talk. People were misguided. Linus himself said he didn’t care about defeating Microsoft, but not enough people were paying attention. They should have been focused on the real point which was seeing what a community effort could achieve, not in market share percentages, but in a simple expression of creativity.
I recall “year of desktop Linux” being mainly a media buzz phrase of the early 2000’s And yes I will agree Linux has had its annoying zealots (as has every other platform for example Windows has Monkey Dancing Steve)
Personally I say use what works best for you For me that is GNU/Linux for someone else it may be Windows 7 Monkey Dancein’ Steve addition
Oh but he is AWESOME! ;>>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE
http://www.lastfm.pl/music/Steve+Ballmer
(bonus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86j8zOsmNFE )
Edited 2011-08-16 21:12 UTC
In 2003 there were for instance Libranet or SUSE 9.0 which were better than XP from virtually every point of view. Linux lag behind only when it came to proprietary plugins.
There were other great distros, Mandrake 9.1, Red Hat derivatives (anybody remembers JAMD Linux?)
I believe 2003 was the year of desktop Linux.
But then things began to go horribly wrong.
First of all the Ubuntu buzz. Come on, a distro based off something (Debian Sid) which is unstable by name and by nature? And the minimalistic approach? And the ugly look? That, among others, killed the SUSE or Mandrake boxes, which were an absolute pleasure to own.
Later came KDE 4, and eventually GNOME 3.
It is Linux which has committed suicide on the desktop, not MS which has won. For me Windows 7 is still crap, to be used very occasionally because a few programs don’t have an exact equivalent in other OSes. And no, Crossover isn’t a solution either.
In the meantime I have moved permanently to OS X, as have many others who know better than me, people who used to be Linux or *BSD developers or writers.
You jumped too early. It’s a pretty cool time in alternative DEs and WMs, since a lot of what you used to need GNOME or KDE for is being re-implemented in code that doesn’t need 400MB of dependencies. Some good examples are udisks for easier mounting, ConsoleKit for multiseat support, cpufreqd and cpufrequtils for power management,and wicd and its two UIs (ncurses and Gtk) for easier network management. Lash those together with a good window manager like Window Maker, Fluxbox, or Awesome, and you have a pretty complete desktop environment without all the cruft. Three years ago I used to lament the fact that I had to use GNOME to get more than 90 minutes of battery life on a laptop capable of twice that. Now I can get my charge’s worth without even running startx if I’m feeling extra-nerdy.
I actually agree with that, I almost said it in my previous post. The best distros seem to be the ones which don’t use GNOME or KDE: Knoppix, Sabayon Xfce, Ultimate Edition 3.0 “Gamers”…
Linux had a great chance to steal marketshare from Microsoft back when MS released the sorry excuse for an operating system known as Windows Vista. Not even Ubuntu could convince enough users that it was time to ditch Windows rather than just staying with XP, which is what most users ended up doing. Then came Vista-done-right, aka Windows 7 and why would a user want to switch to Linux now? So yes, Microsoft can breathe some relief… for now.
We’ll have to see how many users get irritated by having a tablet UI forced down a Desktop PC in Windows 8 and decide it’s time to switch to a more desktop-like OS. Will Linux deliver then, or will they try to cram a tablet-like UI into their distros to copy Apple and Microsoft?
GNOME 3/GNOME Shell feels like a step in that direction if you ask me.
Windows 8 will be the new Vista. So there might be another chance.
No, I think Microsoft learned their lesson from Vista. Windows 8 is going to be targeted at tablets and netbooks on the low end. I predict that it’s going to run faster and lighter than even Windows 7.
It’s going to require heavy GPU acceleration, but that’s a given these days.
In fact, I believe that the new AMD chip designs for tablets and netbooks combined with Windows 8 is going to give the iPad some real competition.
Microsoft does learn, when kicked in the head hard enough.
Linux really doesn’t matter on the desktop anymore. There will be no year of the Linux desktop because the desktop is being replaced by mobile. Apple, Android, and Microsoft are all moving to a unified platform around mobile technologies. The new interface for Windows 8, its all javascript and html5. The new release of Lion: geared toward iOS friendliness and the app store. Android 4: will combine tablet and phone into a single platform for developers. More and more people are using their mobile devices for doing work. Android is in a very strong position for the future. Microsoft could soon become obsolete if they don’t get their devs in gear.
“Apple, Android, and Microsoft are all moving to a unified platform around mobile technologies.”
I don’t think you know what unified means 😉
I do know what unified means, maybe you don’t read so well. Each group, Microsoft, Apple, and Linux, are moving their platforms toward a more web friendly, mobile design. Mobile is the future, not the desktop.
I understand what they are doing.
Maybe I’m wrong as english is not my first language, but unified sounds like they are working together on the same thing to me.
Which they are not.
Am I the only one who saw “Linux Snickers” and thought mmmmmm packed with kernels, Linux satisfies?
Seriously… GNUstep. I’ve seen what can be done, The lack of a browser threw me previously, but now I know. Linux has an API more powerful than anything Windows will ever get supported by Microsoft. It’s only a matter of time until it becomes a working Desktop environment. There are big things moving in GNUstep land
No browser? What about everything ever written for Cocoa? What about Firefox, which works just fine in Qt and GNUStep environments as in GNOME? What about lynx?
On a less silly note, can you provide a link to a mailing list where said big things are happening?
Edited 2011-08-17 04:30 UTC
Microsoft bureaucrat with no motive to fib or spin whatsoever: “Linux is no longer a desktop threat.”
ZD Tweedle-dee: “Linux is no longer a threat! Haha, suckers, the computing world is ruled from Redmond (except for servers and smartphones and everything apart from desktops).”
ZD Tweedle-dum: “Haha, you fool, this is a Linux world! Microsoft is vanquished! Except on the desktop, of course.”
OSNews: “You clearly need some hits for your ads.”
Me: “I must outline this cleverness so we know where to look for more of it.”
*facepalm*
Talk of “Jailbreaking” and “Linux” in the same conversation makes a very strange conversation. But that is what you hear when the subject is Android and Chrome.
The embedded Linux OS in your Internet-enabled HDTV, home theater receiver, Blu-Ray player, video game console, or set-top box is – practically speaking – about as accessible as the interior of Fort Knox.
Which is why your grandad at seventy-five will be streaming Netflix to the video players aboard his boat or RV while you are still waiting for a native Linux client for the MythTV box in your basement.
The point I am trying to make here is that success in the server rooms and success in mobile doesn’t translate to the freedom the geek had – or at least thought he had – on the desktop.
The community-oriented Linux distribution – the desktop client OS – is in very deep trouble.
With a global market share of less than 1% when you look at StatCounter or Net Applications, and, like it or not, market share matters.
97% of the Moz Foundation’s funding comes from the add-click. From placement on the Windows desktop, for all practical purposes.
And it is worth a cool $100 million a year.
If Firefox is beginning to look more like Chrome there is a reason.
If Net Applications is right, Internet Explorer is going to prove a very strong and resilent contender on Windows 7 and 8.
Meaning that Mozilla cannot afford to lose significant market share on Windows to Chrome.
It has nowhere else to go.
I use Ubuntu and Mint and they are far better than windows 7. I only keep a virtualbox with windows just in case I want to remember old times. Android which is Linux based is much better than the I-phone and I have heard that there is a windows smart phone but I have never seen one; not even a picture.
Linux did not won desktop wars for content consumers or office workers. But if you’re an engineer, you’re working on big servers, you’re processing lot of data, Linux on desktop is nowadays the only way to go. So for the people who are coming from UNIX workstations, who are using terminal a lot, Linux is king of the desktop and will hardly ever go away.
Unfortunately, for Linux, those people are in the minority compared to the average joe computer user.
Yeah, but they have a lot of money to spend and they buy expensive high performance hardware.
Notice that Nvidia provides Linux binary drivers of the highest quality, equal to their Windows drivers. It’d be interesting to compare their sales of Quadro GPUs with Linux use. I bet that the correlation is quite high.
Sure, but the question is, if Linux should become everyones darling OS at all. Look what happens with MacOSX right now, more and more professionals are leaving the plattform.
…Snigger means “to laugh” in the sense this article means and “Snicker” is the dumb name they gave to the Marathon bar.
cf:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/snigger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snickers – specifically:
I’d never even heard of the term “Snickers” outside of confectionery till the Internet boom in the mid 90’s.
It’s very popular in The Netherlands. Snickers, Bounty, Mars and Twix (f.k.a. Raiders) are the usual suspects in any place they sell candy bars.
Sniggers satisfies?
For the record, Sniggers is not in my English (US) dictionary.
Though I agree with you, besides, US English < UK English.
Why do linux advocates have to redefine what linux means in order to prove a point?
Linux on super computers are one off custom software. Researchers use linux here because its source is freely available at no cost. These are forks of mainline linux, and only uses the kernel.
Linux on cell phones are Android (almost exclusively) Android is a fork of mainline linux, and the only thing linux about android is the kernel.
Internet servers, because the only place in server space where Linux are dominant is the LAMP server. This means a minimal user-land and AMP applications only.
Linux as a kernel is successful but as a general purpose server OS it is not very successful and as a desktop OS it is an abysmal failure.
What do you mean abysmal failure? It’s my preferred desktop for the workplace as a development environment, and often been my favorite at home with the Mac tied for anything sound-related. Spreadsheet jockeys and people chained to Outlook can do what they want, gamers can do what they want. Most of the people around me are using Linux to get things done.
If you’re defining success as being a dominant desktop that you can cart junk from GameStop onto, Crossover and Cedega do a great job of running games these days. You know, if that were important to me and others were pointing at slightly lower benchmarks, I’d sooner fork over cash for a nicer video card than a Windows license.
What I care about is a decent environment that gives me a smooth upgrade path and lets me get started on whatever code I want to write or tweak, and any dependencies are just an apt-get away. Mac Ports could be this good, Cygwin could be… but Linux distributions have got this covered.
If someone wants to best Linux at this, please, go right ahead.