iOS nearly doubles Linux

[cowboy]

Not shocking at all when you think about it. But interesting to see in print. Market Shares of major operating systems including Windows flavors, MacOS, iOS, and Linux.

http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/04/20/ipa ... computers/

The iOS figure is solely for the device-that-may-not be named. The Linux numbers seem low, though I guess it explains why the virus writers simply do not focus on our favorite OS.

In the United Kingdom, iOS makes up 0.94%, versus 0.74% for Linux.
In Canada, iOS makes up 0.91%, versus 0.76% for Linux.
In Australia, iOS makes up 1.19%, versus 0.66% for Linux.
In the Netherlands, iOS makes up 1.16%, versus 0.81% for Linux.

Remember, the device-that-may-not-be-named has only been out a year or so.

[nooby]

Is it true that the kernel is linux but the OSX is a kind of proprietary overlay in same way as Android has a Linux kernel and the Google part was to add teh Android proprietary overlay? maybe the word overlay is not proper word. I refer to what is needed apart from the kernel to make an OS.

So the Phone that we should not name to in order to not boost it's ad presence on the net is more like a Brand name loyalty that has fanatic fans all over the world waiting for hours to buy the latest gadget from them.

I see it as a Harry Potter thing. It is the in thing among those who are into such .And the Gadget guys are into such or they are into HTC or some other Brand. The important thing seems to be part of the gang of Fans and always defend the Brand Name. If one don't belong to the loyal fans and try out such a computer or phone then one feel so bad about the experience that one never want to touch them again ever

Could it be about faith in the Brand or something. A kind of delusion?

Apart from that. First there was Unix and then there where BSD? and then Minix for University courses and then Linux Thorvald? an Stallman had visions and them made efforts to spread that message and we had Linux.

But apart from Unix derivates and DOS derivates like Ms Windows there seems to exists no advanced enough OS that works for Desktops?

Doesn't that mean that to make a OS is so extremely difficult that only two of them survived? I mean or else there would be 5 or 10 or 100 or more different OS but there are only these two that are well spread.

[Luluc]

Nothing strange about this. What's really happening is that there is a fad of tablets going on right now. First people adopted smartphones in droves, now they are adopting tablets, I suppose because of the larger screen, more adequate to certain activities. Summing up, the world is embracing more mobile computing, a continuation of the previously/already existing trend. As it turns out, the Piece of Crap® is the one model that sells more than the other tablets. Since Linux does not advance in market share, it is overtaken.

[2lss]

Is it true that the kernel is linux but the OSX is a kind of proprietary overlay in same way as Android has a Linux kernel and the Google part was to add teh Android proprietary overlay?

OSX uses the "open source" Darwin kernel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28 ... %29#Kernel

On to the article...

We noticed an interesting thing the other day that we’d like to share with you. However, if you’re a Linux enthusiast, you may want to stop reading now…

Why is that? We can't handle the truth?

Why do I care if consumers are wasting money on iOS devices? That doesn't affect me.

I would still take a linux distro over an OSX style operating system any day, regardless of how many people are using it.

Not only is iPad now so widely used that it shows up in this list, iOS for iPad has managed to pass Linux as a “desktop OS

[noryb009]

2lss: http://w3fools.com/

The results come from StatsCounter (or something). It tracks page views. It tracks 3 million websites (they say). It's hard to say if the results are accurate or not with such a small sample of websites.

[DMcCunney]

Is it true that the kernel is linux but the OSX is a kind of proprietary overlay in same way as Android has a Linux kernel and the Google part was to add teh Android proprietary overlay? maybe the word overlay is not proper word. I refer to what is needed apart from the kernel to make an OS.

Technically speaking, Linux is the OS kernel (vmlinuz). The other stuff that makes it Gnu Linux are third party programs compiled to run under Linux and included in most distros. If it uses a Linux kernel, it's a Linux system. (My wireless router is a Linux system. There's an embedded Linux kernel under the hood.)

OS/X does not use a Linux kernel. The OS/X kernel is based on BSD. It is not a Linux system, even though it includes many things found on Linux systems.

So the Phone that we should not name to in order to not boost it's ad presence on the net is more like a Brand name loyalty that has fanatic fans all over the world waiting for hours to buy the latest gadget from them.

Smartphones are fashion accessories. In most instances, the user gets what is considered cool, and may not be aware of what OS is under the hood. Fine by me. Frankly, the users shouldn't have to care what OS it runs - only what it can do.

Apart from that. First there was Unix and then there where BSD?

Correct. When Unix was created, AT&T was still a regulated telecommunications monopoly, and was not permitted to sell software. They could give Unix away in source form to accredited educational institutions, and several universities took them up on it. In particular, the Computer Research Group at the University of California at Berkeley grabbed the code and started hacking. The end result was BSD Unix, or "Berkeley Standard Distribution". Various things that wound up in AT&T Unix originated there, like the vi editor and the C shell, both written by Bill Joy, who was chief architect of BSD and a computer science grad student. Bill went on to co-found Sun Microsystems, and unsurprisingly, Sun chose the BSD flavor of Unix for its early offerings.

BSD Unix found a home in university and R&D environments. Back then, you have to have an AT&T source license to run it, as it included AT&T code. In recent years, the AT&T code has been removed making is possible to redistribute without restrictions. There are three open source BSD variants at the moment - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. They all use the Gnu utilities and other things familiar to Linux - the difference is the OS kernel.

The split between AT&T Unix and BSD hampered the Unix world for years, as there were significant differences between them, and code written for one would not run on the other. The Solaris OS offered by Sun is the result of an effort by AT&T and Sun Microsystems, led by Bill Joy at Sun, to create a converged Unix OS that would reunite the two flavors. Unfortunately, it ran into opposition from IBM and HP who had their own Unix flavors, and never really became what was hoped for.

and then Minix for University courses and then Linux Thorvald?

Roughly. Minix was written as a teaching tool for courses in OS construction. Linus decided to use Minix as his starting point when he embarked on the development effort that became Linux, because he could get the code, and didn't have to start from scratch. Like Richard Stallman, Linus wanted a Unix like OS to play with.

an Stallman had visions and them made efforts to spread that message and we had Linux.

Linux happened to some extent despite Stallman. Stallman wanted to have an OS that resembled Unix, but which would be freely available in source form. He wanted to create an independent OS kernel called Hurd. (See http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html for info.) While under active development, it has yet to achieve a stable release. Most folks use Linux or a BSD variant. Stallman has previously stated that the Gnu effort did not intend to adopt Linux as its official kernel.

But apart from Unix derivates and DOS derivates like Ms Windows there seems to exists no advanced enough OS that works for Desktops?

There's OS/2. There are an assortment of others. But the problem is that an OS is no use without software that runs under it. Users don't buy OSes. They buy tools to do jobs, and what they get will be determined by whether software exists that does what they need to do. The OS with the biggest base of software available for it wins. On the desktop, that's Windows.

Doesn't that mean that to make a OS is so extremely difficult that only two of them survived? I mean or else there would be 5 or 10 or 100 or more different OS but there are only these two that are well spread.

Yes, making an OS is difficult, but what you see now is inevitable evolution. Even if you had 5 or 10 or 100 different desktop OSes, the number would shrink, as a few of them became popular and that's where the development centered. See above about why users buy computers.

And while you could decide to write a new desktop OS, why would you bother? What would you be able to offer that doesn't already exist?
______
Dennis

[alexandrion]

that few users use linux? how could this be? what website were they using to create the statistics, microsoft.com?

[DMcCunney]

that few users use linux? how could this be? what website were they using to create the statistics, microsoft.com?

Nope. They used stats from statcounter, widely used by websites to monitor what visits them.

Yes, that few people use Linix on a desktop/laptop/netbook. A lot more use it in other things, and might not even be aware of it. Many wireless routers, for example, use an embedded Linux kernel. So do dedicated ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle and B&B nook.

The enormous success of the eye-pad*, and the fact that browsing the web is one of the main things you do with it has brought its usage to the point where it gets into the stats over Linux. So what?

Linux has always been a techie toy. It has not, and will not, achieve any real degree of penetration as an end-user OS. But depending on how you define "user", you might say Linux is the most used, as the majority of the sites on the web people visit run on Linux based servers, and hundreds of millions of people every day access sites running linux, and even use [programs hosted on those sites. (Think Google docs.)

It will be more interesting to check these stats a year from now, as more of the flood of Android based devices get into use. Android is a Linux system, and we may see interesting changes in the numbers.

* So who was the site moderator that implemented the code to replace the actual name of the product of the Apple product with "piece of crap" when the user tries to post? Really, really bad idea...
______
Dennis

[8-bit]

That trick with eye-pad was Flashes way of hitting back to an extent against the spammers that post on the forum.
I think it is funny.

We learn to live with the forum and things that happen to our posts.
I have seen some call for no editing or deleting of posts, but if that were to happen, then should spam posts be left alone too?
I would rather see a forum where Puppy is the main subject in one way or another and flame posting taken to another forum or a chat site.