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Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge browsers may be near the bottom of their unprecedented crash in user share, measurements published Sunday show.
Analytics vendor Net Applications reported that the user share of IE and Edge -- an estimate of the proportion of the world's personal computer owners who ran those browsers -- dropped by seven-tenths of a percentage point in December, falling to a combined 26.2%.
That seven-tenths of a point decline was notable because it was less than half that of the browsers' average monthly reductions over the last 12, six and three months, which were 1.9, 1.8 and 1.5 points, respectively. The slowly-shrinking averages over the three different spans supported the idea that IE and Edge may be reaching rock bottom.
Microsoft's browser collapse has been unparalleled. In 2016, IE and Edge -- Net Applications pours their user share into the same "bucket" -- shed 20.1 points, representing 43% of its December 2015 share. No other browser has bled that much user share that quickly, with the possible exception of Netscape Navigator in the 1990s.
I know we love to hate Microsoft in general and IE in particular, but is Edge that bad?
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @07:49PM
Yup.
As a rule, MICROS~1 doesn't build device drivers.
Redmond relies on the hardware manufacturers to support their own stuff.
The Linux kernel team would like to see this kind of support from every manufacturer of hardware but, alas, some hardware manufacturers refuse to offer proper support for their junk.
We should note that The Linux Driver Project is generally able to get get stuff working.
The best and quickest results come when, again, the manufacturer (not willing to do the work itself) is helpful and supplies the LDP with full specs for the gear.
Sometimes the LDP has to grope around in the dark and reverse-engineer support for an item.
(They need to have a sample of the gear to do that.)
Overall, Linux has the best hardware support of any OS.
(Linux has support for lots of old gear, which the currently-supported MICROS~1 OSes typically don't.)
N.B. I noticed that that page listed Broadcom as the vendor for both wireless and Bluetooth.
Broadcom is notoriously Linux-hostile; anyone who gives good money for their junk is just stupid.
...and, as bob_super said below, if you buy a pig in a poke without even trying a live version of a distro, the fault that the gear won't work as expected is on you.
...and let me say that I really hate shitheads who use graphics [archive.li] to do things and who don't use alt-text so that the page will work in ALL browser setups.
Debian is not exactly an alternative browser
Well, if you're going to pick a nit and stay on-topic.
As you said: FUD.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:09PM
Before hardware manufactuers make drivers for you you've got to be relevant and professional. Uh oh.