DesktopLinux.com has launched its 2006 Desktop Linux survey, asking users of Linux desktops to identify what distributions they use, as well as their choice of windowing environment, web browsers, email clients, and Windows-on-Linux solutions.
DesktopLinux.com has launched its 2006 Desktop Linux survey, asking users of Linux desktops to identify what distributions they use, as well as their choice of windowing environment, web browsers, email clients, and Windows-on-Linux solutions.
It was interesting to look at the year to year differences between each application, Firefox really dominates the web browser and thunderbird the email client, but the year before they came out it was mozilla, kmail, and evolution.
How logical it is.
Even if Firefox was born as Phoenix is september 2002, it wasn’t really ready for end-user until firefox 0.8 in february 2004.
Ubuntu, Firefox, Thunderbird, Wine will dominate the survey
Ubuntu, Firefox, Thunderbird, Wine will dominate the survey
Lol, have you been peaking at last year’s results?
Actually, I think Debian will dominate the survey, as it did last year, if you include all its derivatives, like Ubuntu. In fact this indicates that a split may be emerging, between “the Debian way”, loosely, for solo home users and those who want free serverware and the rpm way (Red Hat and SuSE) for the pay-for corporate bunnies. Just a guess.
No.. I just vote and see the current results. for example, Ubuntu is in the top of distrowatch.com for long time =)
We will see.. =)
My stack … and I guess a lot of other peoples
Interesting to see KDE infront once again, dispite the fact that all the hype distros are generally gnome focused (ubuntu, sled).
Wonders how kde4 will make a difference for next year, seeing how its bound to be alot better than 3, and i dont see gnome comming up with more than incremental changes.
Interesting to see KDE infront once again, dispite the fact that all the hype distros are generally gnome focused (ubuntu, sled).
Maybe the primary target user of SLED, Ubuntu and others are not people who spend their times voting on web polls (that is, enthusiast Linux users). Maybe their primary target doesn’t even know what half of those entries are, and SLED and Ubuntu think GNOME is a better environment for these kind of people?
Wonders how kde4 will make a difference for next year, seeing how its bound to be alot better than 3, and i dont see gnome comming up with more than incremental changes.
I don’t see how that works. Just because KDE is having a longer development cycle doesn’t mean they’ll code more than the GNOME devs in the same time period; however, they will “lose” a lot of that time by doing things that don’t directly impact the user, like porting to a new API.
If you don’t like 6 month cycles you can just skip a GNOME release or two. In fact, it’s kind of fun to see the progress from, for example, GNOME in NLD9 and SLED10.
Personally, I find KDE similar to Windows and GNOME similar to MacOS, although given that KDE menus can be moved from the app to the top of the screen, arguably KDE is in some ways more Mac-like. And most businesses making money out of Linux are trying to make it easy for Windows users to switch. So I really can’t see why GNOME is the desktop of choice for these people; Qt licensing issues seem to be long-since dead.
BTW, does anyone know how to post feature requests to the kde team? Maybe I’m just a plank, but I can’t find a place on kde.org to do it.
Go to http://bugs.kde.org/ and post a new wish.
Ta very much! I never thought of a feature request as a bug!
Maybe the primary target user of SLED, Ubuntu and others are not people who spend their times voting on web polls (that is, enthusiast Linux users). Maybe their primary target doesn’t even know what half of those entries are, and SLED and Ubuntu think GNOME is a better environment for these kind of people?
This is an often used explanation for this by various people. Unfortunately, when people learn more about desktop Linux, learn about the desktops and the wider community it seems that an awful lot do pick KDE.
Basically, what you’re saying is that some organisations seem to have made a unilateral decision, without the research to back it up, about using Gnome and they’re telling people who don’t know any better that that is what they’re going to be using.
“””This is an often used explanation for this by various people.”””
It’s hard to believe that people are actually *arguing* over the validity of an online poll.
Time for a reality check, I think.
Basically, what you’re saying is that some organisations seem to have made a unilateral decision, without the research to back it up, about using Gnome and they’re telling people who don’t know any better that that is what they’re going to be using.
The relative merits of GNOME and KDE aren’t important, they’re both perfectly suitable for everyday use.
The tendency towards GNOME is is actually really easy to understand – though admittedly backwards in our Free Software world. GNOME is licensed under the LGPL, allowing closed-source apps to be built using GNOME.
KDE – well actually, QT – does not (without paying Trolltech for a QT license). KDE has absolutely no chance on the corporate desktop.
The tendency towards GNOME is is actually really easy to understand – though admittedly backwards in our Free Software world. GNOME is licensed under the LGPL, allowing closed-source apps to be built using GNOME.
KDE – well actually, QT – does not (without paying Trolltech for a QT license). KDE has absolutely no chance on the corporate desktop.
Wow. And just when I think this issue has been beaten to death. It’s really hard to believe that Trolltech continues to grow year over year despite the existence of gtk and other free frameworks.
Suffice to say that price and value are seperate concepts in business. Something that is free can cost a company more than something that is not, otherwise they’d all be running *buntu by now. Think about that for a minute.
Or consider that many companies, developers and software companies would prefer having a support infrastructure that goes beyond mailing lists and forums. Certainly Novell, Red Hat, IBM and a whole host of consultants can provide commercial support for GTK, but they’ll charge more than Trolltech will.
Or there’s always the fact that since commercial developers don’t work for free, a company may prefer to pay for a product that makes them more efficient and hence cost-effective. This could possibly explain why some companies purchase Qt even for Windows-only development.
There are many valid points to compare KDE and Gnome on from an enterprise point of view, but seriously, toolkit licensing is not an issue.
*sigh*
Huh? GNOME had 36.9% while KDE had 35.3% last time I checked.
Huh? GNOME had 36.9% while KDE had 35.3% last time I checked.
Yeah, somebody posted the link to the survey in the Ubuntu forums a little while ago. That should help ensure it’s statistical relevancy.
That should help ensure it’s statistical relevancy.
One which never existed in the first place. It is just sad that some people always use these meaningless online polls to justify their hate or zealotry. That kind of behaviour made me loathe them (the polls that is).
These online polls are a good barometer of what people are using daily. If anybody chooses to use them to “justify their hate or zealotry”, you should loathe these people, instead of the polls. The polls in and of themselves do not do anything harmful, but do serve as an indicator of the state of the Linux desktop.
“but do serve as an indicator of the state of the Linux desktop.”
They do not, that’s the point. Aside from the fact that they are less than accurate (reconnect, vote again…), they always depend too much on who’s actually visiting those web sites. Readership is usually already biased towards a certain kind of user (very technical in any case) and then you get certain usergroups manipulating the polls by sharing the link. It always happens to some extend, not just when people notice it (as in the case of Yoper or the Ubuntu forum in this case).
If GNOME should win this time, I bet this will be used over and over again by trolls against KDE in the future, just like it has been used against GNOME before. It’s quite annoying. You can’t change people, but you can change what you put on your website and how you present it. So I prefer to loathe the polls.
Wonders how kde4 will make a difference for next year, seeing how its bound to be alot better than 3, and i dont see gnome comming up with more than incremental changes.
Real usage, quality etc doesn’t make a bit of difference.
This survey’s always been about hype. Which fanboy hordes will win the mobilisation wars this year?
And if this actually makes the digg frontpage, we will see a Linux usage survey where 90% of the participants don’t use Linux but just think it’s cool to seem to be “in the know”, you know.
I fail to see how you can reach that conclusion. The survey is about what you use. It’s not about quality, something that is highly subjective when it comes to DEs.
I use Ubuntu and GNOME. Therefore, I voted accordingly. Does that make me a fanboy? Most certainly not! If KDE met my needs better than GNOME, I would switch in a heart beat. Same goes for another Linux distribution that surpassed Ubuntu.
Just because you’re favorite distro/DE/app isn’t the most popular doesn’t make others fanboys.
I use Ubuntu and GNOME. Therefore, I voted accordingly. Does that make me a fanboy? Most certainly not! If KDE met my needs better than GNOME, I would switch in a heart beat. Same goes for another Linux distribution that surpassed Ubuntu.
If you don’t like the word think of it as self-selecting biased sample.
One year there’s a big thread about the survey in the Mandrake/Ubuntu/Gentoo forums and one year later there isn’t. So suddenly you have massive shifts in usage that aren’t justified by the world at large.
Just because you’re favorite distro/DE/app isn’t the most popular doesn’t make others fanboys.
That’s not the point. The point is that whatever app is the most popular isn’t the most popular *in the survey* because it’s the most popular overall but because the survey’s been pushed on sites that have an audience with a strong preference for certain apps. You can have a fanboy horde without every individual being a die hard fanboy, if the common factor of all visitors of a page pushing the survey is relevant to the survey; if you only did the survey because you saw the thread on the Ubuntu forums you are part of a fanboy horde because you took the survey only because you’re using Ubuntu (otherwise you wouldn’t visit the Ubuntu forums and wouldn’t have seen the thread there – if you’re really into nitpicking replace all absolutes with “95% of…”)
It’s simply got no relevance.
Agree’d. I don’t know why people even consider Gnome as a contender; except that it is one of the Desktop Environments in Linux. EVERY SINGLE survey I have ever seen (And there are LOTS OF THEM) has had KDE as the top choice in every one. Its amazing that distros even use Gnome as the default anymore…
Edited 2006-08-22 22:41
Its amazing that distros even use Gnome as the default anymore…
They do it for Gnome users.
IMO Gnome is chosen more often (not by much) by people who want popular distro with good support, many packages etc. KDE is more popular among tinkerers who prefer smaller distros that suit their needs.
When I voted :
Gnome : 36.5%
KDE : 35.4%
So, which one will be the winner ?
GNOME is a much more usable desktop for me. The reason is that I’m interested in just getting work done, and am not too bothered with how much tweakability my desktop sports. I’m happy with sensible defaults, and tend to just stick with what comes out of the box.
With most GNOME distributions, this works well and I’m happy with the environment as it is. I’ve never quite taken to KDE in the same way. The nice thing of course is that the choice exists. There are users like me who just like sensible defaults, and this is usually where GNOME shines. There are those who love to tweak everything to the max, and that where KDE comes in.
GNOME is a much more usable desktop for me. The reason is that I’m interested in just getting work done, and am not too bothered with how much tweakability my desktop sports.
I don’t like it how people always insinuate that those interested in configuring their desktop according to their preferences are not interested in getting work done but just playing around.
I did extensive modifications to my enlightenment and KDE configs and it definitely tooks some time to do so… years ago. There weren’t any major changes to my KDE config since 3.0 and my ~/enlightenment is at least 5 years old.
You’re reading way too much between the lines. My original comment is that “I’m interested in *just* getting work done…”
That does no imply that others who choose to tweak their desktops do not get any work done. The difference is that I am not bothered with how my desktop looks, only that it is functional for me with a minimal amount of tweaking. Don’t read too much into my comment inorder to make it an insult to those who use KDE.
OMG, another KDE/Gnome war?
I’ll try not to contribute to this too much, but why do people have to state stuff like Its amazing that distros even use Gnome as the default anymore
I use Gnome and I know KDE is better at some things. I just like the way Gnome looks and feels. But I guess that’s a stupid reason to you?
Yet I wonder what else a GUI was ever invented for. It’s great to have some KDE/GNome competition, all monopolies are bad. Both are great projects.
I’m curious to know how and why various OS News readers voted.
Q1 My distro of choice is Xubuntu — So I chose Ubuntu — which has the lead.
Q2 My Desktop environment seems to be steadily gaining ground on the encumbants as I use XFce — I am an XFce fan boy.
Q3 My favorite browser is the clear leader, as I chose Firefox — but I also use Links from the command line quite frequently, and I didn’t see a representative of the text based browsers listed.
Q4 I don’t like using email clients, because my domain hosted gmail account ROCKS!
Q5 I do not run any MS Windows apps on my box, but I started a new job today that is threatening to force me to use WinXP — I may ask if I can use Crossover for whatever apps they require as they do require Outlook
I’m right there with ya on everything but gmail. I’m a thunderbird/enigmail whore.
Q1 My main system runs Debian unstable. (No stability problems.) (I was running Gentoo from 2004 to early 2006. But I got sick of compiling all the time and didn’t see any benefits to Gentoo. So I went back to Debian.) I run Ubuntu on my iBook and on my wife’s Dell laptop. (I run OpenBSD on my server and FreeBSD on my Vaio laptop.)
Q2 My main system runs OpenBox – so I chose other. Since the question stated “Which windowing environments…” (plural), I also chose BlackBox and IceWM because I do use those *regularly* as well. (Not just every now and then, but pretty much every day.) My main system has 3 LCD panels connected to it so I run a variety of window managers. I also use evilwm and jwm. (Plus a few others like qvwm, flwm, Window Maker, pwm and pekwm. But I don’t use those often enough to even consider them as “other”) My iBook/Dell runs Gnome (via Ubuntu) so I also chose GNOME.
In case your interested in what my setup looks like, I actually made a video just yesterday because I was trying to explain to a friend of mine how to use 2 different window managers on the same system at the same time:
Part 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0DcCXBB3KM
Part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCrpu0egr9o
Q3 The only browser I use is Firefox. I don’t consider myself a fanboy really, it’s just that Firefox works for me on all platforms … so no need to mess with anything else.
Q4 I wish I could say I use mutt because I think e-mail is just a way to send plain text messages to other people, and receive plain text messages from other peopel. But I just can’t train myself to use mutt no matter how hard I try. My e-mail needs are pretty basic, and mutt just makes everything seem 10x harder than it needs to be. Plus I don’t know how to make it work with my OpenLDAP server. So … I chose thunderbird. That is the e-mail client I use. I don’t need/want the GNOME integration that Evolution has. Especially on my main system … I try to avoid GNOME dependencies at all costs.
Q5 Fortunately I don’t need Windows apps for anything.
Q1: I haven’t run Linux in almost 4 years. The only free OS I use OpenBSD. :/
Q2: WindowMaker. It generally stays out of my way, and is a minor improvement over the default of fvwm.
Q3: Firefox. Why use anything else?
Q4: Gmail. I’ve never met an email client that I’ve liked.
Q5: None.
Q1: I’m using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4.4 here at work. It’s not that bad, but I’d rather be using Debian stable. RH can put out some really hairy updates.
Q2: I’m using Gnome. It’s not that I particularly prefer it over anything else, but 90% of the apps I use are GTK based, and it’s the default on RHEL. It’s nice though, and it doesn’t get in the way.
Q3: Opera is my browser of choice on Linux. (When I have to use Windows, I’ll use Firefox, and on Mac OS X at home I’ll use Safari or Camino, depending on how I’m feeling)
Q4: I use Thunderbird on my desktop here at work. (At home I use Mail.app on Mac OS X.)
Q5: A Windows box and a KVM switch!
Q4: I have been using VM, a lisp application under Emacs, for email for 6 years. That’s longer that I’ve been using GNU/Linux.
I would like to find a graphical email client that would let me use emacs key bindings, but I haven’t yet. It should also let me select which inbox to check: home or work.
Q1 I use a mix of two distros on the desktop on my older hardware: Mandrake 8.2, and Puppy 2.02.
Q2 My main desktop of choice is a mix between Fluxbox and JWM. I like what Puppy uses these days, which I think is JWM + ROX.
Q3 Favorite browser is Firefox, followed by Links in text mode.
Q4 I tend to use Pine when/where I can, but I’ll use Thunderbird or Seamonkey’s client in a pinch. My ISP has a Horde-based webmail interface which is very nice, also.
Q5 I don’t run Windows apps on my Linux boxes.
Edited 2006-08-23 16:52
1. Ubuntu (Kubuntu) and Mandriva
2. KDE
3. Firefox and Konqueror
4. Kmail (though I use it less and less with Gmail being so good)
5. VMWare and Crossover
Sadly, most of my replies are ‘other’. My main computer runs T2 with ROX Desktop installed via Zero Install. My laptop is more conventional running Ubuntu with XFCE. For Windows compatibility I run a few programs through Wine and run instances of Windows 2000 on QEMU. And all email is through Web mail systems or Sylpheed.
They don’t appear to list Epiphany as a browser…
I entered the following:
1 – Ubuntu & Slackware
2 – Gnome
3 – Firefox (& Epiphany if it was there)
4 – Evolution
5 – VMWare (player)
Since VMWare practically became free, I only use Linux from within Windows, and guess what folks, Windows does about 99% of the things I need.
Linux is great for the commandline and running some servers, but the desktop esperience still has a hell of a lot to be desired IMHO (My computer is supposed to work for me, not the other way around).
>Since VMWare practically became free, I only use Linux from within Windows, and guess what folks, Windows does about 99% of the things I need.
>Linux is great for the commandline and running some servers, but the desktop esperience still has a hell of a lot to be desired IMHO (My computer is supposed to work for me, not the other way around).
I have the flip side to this interesting position. Just got a new job in a Windows only shop, and they supplied me with a nice new Dell laptop. IT guys cleaned the Dell crap off, and gave me clean, complete XP Pro install.
Put it on my home network, connected to a network share with some video recorded off-air in avi format, clicked on a video, Media Player 10 launches and can’t find the codec!! F__king Windows media!! Codecs not avialable from Microsoft!! No DRM, so I guess they weren’t interested.
Put in a used DVD-RW to re-record. Windows knows about the drive, but includes no software that is aware of RW DVD media. Had to use the copy of Nero Lite that came with the drive in my main Linux machine.
Windows is WAYYYYY easier than Linux….. right!
Actually, just because a file is AVI, does not mean it was encoded so WMP can read it, there is many ways to encode an AVI, and not all of them are MS. Just because WMP cannot read it, you shouldn’t blame MS. It’s not DRM, it has to do with compression, bitrate and other factors. Not all AVI’s are created equal.
>Actually, just because a file is AVI, does not mean it was encoded so WMP can read it, there is many ways to encode an AVI, and not all of them are MS. Just because WMP cannot read it, you shouldn’t blame MS. It’s not DRM, it has to do with compression, bitrate and other factors. Not all AVI’s are created equal.
Don’t patronize, pal. I know the nature of the problem, found a solution. The POINT is, it is NOT easier in Windows!
Downloading codecs from unknown sources for Windows is a hell of a lot riskier than getting the same from Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva repositories.
For your information, .avi is a Microsoft extension that can indeed hide a number of formats and codecs. THAT’s the point — figure it out, if you can.
“Hard truth” is a little bit misleading when it’s personal opinion.
I use KDE 3.5 at work and home, and also WinXP at work (a little at home as my wife still uses it). And, frankly, I find KDE quite a bit better for general use. I’ve tried GNOME, and decided it appeals to a different audience — it’s intentionally simplified, but to the point that it interferes with the way I work. KDE exposes quite a bit more functionality at the expense of simplicity, but that’s the sweet spot for me. I suppose it depends in part on the default desktop configuration for whichever distribution you use is.
Both KDE and GNOME are simple enough that using apps in either is not so much different from the Windows experience for most users. There are differences, but not enough to be a barrier.
Not “hard truth”, but rather “personal opinion.”
Since VMWare became free, I no longer dual-boot. I find that Linux (with Crossover) does about 99% of the things I need.
Since KDE 3.5 came out, to me the Linux desktop experience is far better than Windows XP. My Linux computer works for me.
Moral: to each his own. Now, can we get back on topic, please?
As of 4pm PST, 9% of respondants said they used XFCE as their environment.
I wonder what that percentage would be like if there were no Xubuntu.
Probably smaller, but not exactly because of “Xubuntu”.
I’m Guessing most Xubuntu users already knew Xfce (I may be wrong, its a wild guess based on the ones I know).
But what I believe Xubuntu adds to the Xfce community of users is shipping the recent beta, which is way better than the old 4.2 (which I like, too… just not nearly as good as 4.4)
Exactly. I can only speak for myself but I went with Xubuntu specifically because I didn’t have to build XFCE 4.4 on another distro and maintain it myself. (Yes I’m a lazy bastard). Just so happens that I found Xubuntu to be an awesome distro after the fact.
I used Xubuntu for a couple of weeks recently, even though my desktop is and AMD64 4000+ with 2GB ram. And I must say I was impressed. Even on this machine it had a crispness the Gnome and KDE lack. Nearly everything was instant. But what really impressed me was that I didn’t miss the features of the heavier desktops that much, because most everything was there in XFce.
My major “gripe” would be that adding a launcher for a common app to the panel is more difficult than it needs to be. But that is not a major technical shortcoming.
I finally did move back to Gnome. Mainly over niggling things. But if my hardware were less capable, I would definitely have stuck with XFce.
Most impressive considering its relatively light footprint.
>My major “gripe” would be that adding a launcher for a common app to the panel is more difficult than it needs to be. But that is not a major technical shortcoming. <
Drag an app from the app-finder to the configuration box for a new launcher. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. It would be nice if I could drag an app directly from the menu to the bar, but it’s not a necessity.
I use xfce on gentoo at work, kde on gentoo at home.
It’s peoples loss if they dont use Epiphany or evolution, but I guess “names” mean alot more than content. Evoloution(new vertical mode is real nice) is so much better IMHO, fully HIG, better intergration.
I’ve got better things to do that vote in pointless polls who we know the winners are. People use Firefox and Thunderbird because they are best known, not because they are better.
Edited 2006-08-22 23:07
Hey, give people a little credit for being able to make their own informed choices.
I’ve used and supported all of those packages. I use Thunderbird and Firefox because they are the best for my needs. Evolution absolutely sucks at imap. And I don’t know why people stand for pop3.
FF vs Epiphany is a closer race, but I prefer FF.
You might want to try Evo again if it’s a while since you did. The IMAP code got completely overhauled lately. Recent releases (especially the current 2.7 development series) are excellent.
“””You might want to try Evo again if it’s a while since you did.”””
I’m trying it as we speak. 2.6.1 in Dapper. It’s spent the last 23 minutes sucking… something… down my 9mbit connection (768k on the server side)
No status indication. Just sitting there doing nothing except pulling something unspecified down the wire. Won’t let me view any mail. Just stuck.
Once it finishes (If it finishes), I’ll check to see if the spam filtering works for imap mail. It didn’t used to. And whether filters get automatically applied to imap mail, or if I have to run each one manually every time. That’s the way it was last time I tried it.
I suspect I won’t be switching from Thunderbird any time soon.
Not that Evolution doesn’t work well for some people. I have clients that use pop3 and need calendar and scheduling and it does OK.
Edited 2006-08-23 00:11
I can’t really say I know Epiphany… Last time I checked this browser they were still trying to decide wether to use Galeon or Epiphany in gnome… go figure…
But hey, there are plenty of reasons, other than “being better” or something like that to choose one over another: As an example, I couldn’t care less about Epiphany, as I run no gnome library at my system and I just want a browser that works the same way at home (my Arch linux) as it does at work (a Win2K Workstation).
See… it is not just because of the “names”… different people happens to like different stuff, just accept it and the world is a nicer place to live: no religion wars, no flame wars, no text editor wars, etc
Bullshit. I use Thunderbird because it has sweet pgp integration as well as not jacking up the format of ssl certificates that get emailed to me at work. I got tired of digging through Evolutions data directory with grep to recover the damn things in un-fornicated-with text.
Nice to know your opinion, but I use firefox and thunderbird so I have the same apps on every platform I use, Kubuntu, FreeBSD and Windows. I also use Gimp, xchat and Gaim on all three, that way, I have exactly the same capabilities on each system. There are plenty of reasons to use a particular tool over another one, I prefer to use the one that matches my needs, not what you think is better, you go ahead and use Epiphany or Evolution, I won’t tell you that your choice is wrong
Do you read email on all 3 platforms?
Do you leave your messages scattered on all three, or save them to a central server?
In my case, and my choice is tbird too for it’s platform-agnosticism and wonderful gpg integration, I keep my mail folders on a fat32 partition and use it from each OS. Multiple OS, multiple tbirds, one place to store and read. And since fat32 is not the safest place on this planet, I make a weekly backup and also my mails get forwarded to a gmail account.
I use Imap mail, and store them on a central server. even if I popped it I could still leave it on the server
I keep hearing Epiphany is better, but everytime I try it, I can’t stand to use it. I really want to as its a little faster, but its missing critical features. I don’t get the drop downs for autocomplete, Alt+D doesn’t select the address bar (Ctrl+L is awkward to me and both IE and Firefox and Opera and Konqueror all support Alt+D, Epiphany is the first browser I’ve used that doesn’t). I want to use it, but its not ready yet.
Epiphany isn’t ready because a key binding is not what you are used to?
Now that’s a creative reason, but it shows how difficult it is to please users who are comfortable with another tool. Epiphany is not in the business of emulating IE (or these days Firefox) behaviour to convert users. But once you get used to it, Epiphany is really excellent and Firefox will feel at least equally awkward after a few months. Of course there is nothing wrong with it if you don’t want to get used to it.
I was surprised by the number of votes on the question that asked how you run Windows apps on linux. At the time 37% or more said they didn’t run Windows apps. I thought for sure Wine would have been in the lead for that. Either linux just has all the Windows comparable apps now or people just don’t want to use Windows apps in linux.
Or wine is too complex for most to use.
Wouldn’t want to run Linux fulltime until there are superior choices to Miranda IM, uTorrent, foobar2000 and so on. I don’t know if it’s even possible to write such light weight, fully featured and fast apps using Gnome.
Or wine is too complex for most to use.
How so?
Wouldn’t want to run Linux fulltime until there are superior choices to Miranda IM, uTorrent, foobar2000 and so on. I don’t know if it’s even possible to write such light weight, fully featured and fast apps using Gnome.
It must be possible, and if there are no equivalents, run them in wine, it’s fast enough.
The question is, why does wine not come pre-installed on every distro?
wine is too complex ? What a joke. I remember very old version of wine which were pain-in-the-ass to run !
Well, I am using Ubuntu Linux for 3 months, and I never used any windows based software on my computer.
IM => Gaim
Torrents => azureus beats up this crappy little thing called uTorrent.
Search apps and you’ll find them.
Why not preinstalled ? Because some people don’t care a shit wine ?
1. openSUSE/Ubuntu in this order
2. KDE/Gnome
3. Firefox/Konqueror (imho better for pages containing lots of pdfs as well as when I’m navigating my files and just need to google something so it’s not always worth starting FF
4. Web based
5. VMWare
Guess what, Anon, Linux does about 99% of the things I need
I feel a lot safer when using Xp under VMWare – if I need to get things from the net than I simply drag them on my usb stick and let windows read it.
The poor thing doesn’t even know my pc has got a networkig card
If we take the reboots into account I’d actually say Windows is FASTER under VMWare…
Once upon a time, comments like “Windows is easier to use than Linux” were valid; however, these days, I think (everything else being equal, and if you ignore the virus and trojan problem), if you woke up in a parallel universe where LinuxSoft manoeuvred PC makers into installing Linux (any of the top-tier distros, or Xandros/Linspire) on just about every PC sold, and Windows was the upstart, you’d be getting “Windows is just as easy to use as Linux” comments and “Windows is NOT harder to use than Linux” comments.
* tsclient/Terminal Server
* Dual boot.
Seriously. Rather than going through the all the hassle of trying to maintain multiple copies of Windows for Windows compatability testing for users, it’s just easier (and cheaper!) to have one big terminal server, and let everyone log in to that.
Except for the odd app that requires administrator accounts, like OpenSTA, and scanners without Linux drivers (big HP job with multi page feed).
At home, it’s just easier to dual-boot for the odd occasion I play games.
When did Safari become a linux browser?
Did anybody else notice that on the list?
And how many OSnews linux users are posting from within their safari browser? I’d like a reply if you qualify.
Thanks.
Edited 2006-08-22 23:37
If apple did not take KHTML to make it better, there will not ever be Safari.
So, if you want safari rendering under linux, try konqueror 3.5.x
Fedora/Ubuntu, GNOME, Firefox, Sylpheed-Claws, no Windows
and Puppy, jwm, Sea Monkey, no Windows
Wish you could see the results again, if you’ve already voted. Instead of showing you the results it shows you the poll again, if you try and vote it tells you you already voted…but doesn’t let you see the results. Meh.
(btw, to answer the guy above, I voted Mandriva (duh), GNOME, Firefox, Evolution, and don’t run Windows apps).
1. Kubuntu
2. Firefox or Konqueror
(either is fine for me, but Konq doesn’t like some of my CSS)
3. Kmail (kontact) for Work E-Mail, and a combination of Thunderbird/Gmail for E-Mail (Evolution is nice, but I like the portability offered by t-bird + gmail)
4. Crossover for Photoshop (Can’t stand Gimp.. sorry gimp fans)
On another note, this is a great setup for web development. I can see my work in Firefox, Opera, KHTML, and IE (under crossover) without running around to different computers.
As for productivity, Koffice works fine for me….scribus is nce for print layout, and the PDF driver for CUPS produces PDFs without the need to purchase Acrobat.
In all, Linux is pretty decent for web development and graphic arts.
1.Gentoo
2. Ratpoison
3. Firefox
4. Thunderbird
5. Wine
If you love ratpoison I recommend that you check out Ion: http://www.modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/
You can do all things that you can do in ratpoison with it, and more (e.g. very good scripting support).
Mandriva
KDE
Konqueror
Kmail
None (and that’s a pity, Wine never worked for me, and I would need it).
openSUSE
KDE
Firefox
Kmail
Wine
“which will be the winner?”
seeing as the poll link was posted on the ubuntu forums a while back (alleged) then i guess Gnome will ‘win’ the DE question in the poll.
Q1. Does not apply. I use Windows and OS X.
The subsequent answers naturally will be “Does not apply”, since the question is always “on Linux Desktop”.
Q2. Does not apply. OS X Aqua
Q3. Does not apply. Is there Safari on Linux? Why it’s in the choice list?
Q4. Does not apply. I use Mail, and Pine, but it’s on FreeBSD server.
Q5. Does not apply. Parallels on OS X.
Why are you bothering to post? It is clearly about the Linux Desktop and I’m pretty sure the people who run the survey aren’t interested in what Windows/OS X applications you are running.
Troll elsewhere.
Don’t we just love the OSX fanboys.
Not all OS X users are fan boys like the OP. Some of us do use other operating systems, and don’t have a propensity for spewing nonsense.
Ubuntu
Gnome
Firefox
Sylpheed
None
Other
Other
Firefox
Does not apply
None
Work:
Suse 10.0
KDE
Opera
Opera and Thunderbird
VM Ware
Home:
Xandros Deluxe 3
KDE
Opera
Opera
Crossover Office (rarely)
i’m a little sceptic with this kind of survey
http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey.cgi?view=archive&…
most used desktop distribution is debian….. don’t think is the reality
There doesn’t seem to be a choice of Ubuntu, Mepis, Xandros, Linspire, Freespire, or others based on Debian on that list. So unless they are clicking on “Other” (which doesn’t seem likely as it comes to only 1.1%), I bet users of those distros are clicking on Debian.
Gentoo or SUSE
KDE
Firefox
Evolution
None