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http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-3p-Browser-Market-Share
According to Net Applications' Netmarketshare, the Linux market share on the desktop as judged by browser interactions may now be above 3%.
The company is reporting a 3.37% Linux marketshare for August 2017, a rise from 2.53% a month prior and the first time they have reported the Linux desktop marketshare above 3%.
They report Windows meanwhile at 90.7%, macOS at 5.94%, and the other operating systems statistically at zero. Their monthly report can be found here.
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Linux Browser Marketshare Strikes Above 3%
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2017, @04:05PM (11 children)
These data aggregation outfits use JavaScript to do the counting. Right?
About 96 percent of Linux users block scripts by default. Right?
I also remember a comment in a thread on a ZD site where the poster noted that he worked for one of these outfit and they would only count as Linux, instances of a few of the big distros; all others became "unknown".
(Ziff-Davis personnel deleted the comment within a few hours, of course.)
Some site devs still deny non-Windoze users access to their sites.
Linux users who want to use those sites will spoof the user agent string (after which, the sites work just fine).
How many lazy users don't bother to make a separate browser profile for that and don't switch the user agent string back after dealing with the bullshit site?
Now, how many of you have gotten tired of dealing with M$-related nonsense and have switched the folks whom you support to Linux so that you won't be getting those weekly calls about somebody's Windoze box getting pwned?
How many have run into boxes that won't run with a currently-supported version of Windoze and have just put Linux on that box?
Mostly, here, it sounds like somebody's method of counting can't even be relied on to give useful results--before we even get into this particular month-to-month aberration.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Sunday September 03 2017, @05:24PM (10 children)
I admin a public library with the lab computers running CentOS. In the dark days we kept Crossover Office + IE installed. But IE quit working on Crossover so we just quit and kept Firefox, Chrome and Konquerer. No complaints. The days of putting an IE only website onto the public Internet had been ended by the iPhone. Not saying the situation is equally rosy worldwide, but speaking as an admin here in the U.S. I can say for the record that hundreds of patrons come in and do all sorts of things daily and the biggest tech support problems I deal with involve printing.
The days of trashing Linux on the desktop on the grounds of being unable to browse are over. Flash is dying so little new content is being created that pushes the current Linux version to breaking, Java in the browser is dead. LibreOffice opens enough Office documents that we don't even worry much about that problem anymore. We do still have some circulating laptops (donated by the State Library) with Win7 + Office that we can offer as a solution the time or two per year somebody gets a 'must have' file we just can't open. And of course we sometimes have to use one of the laptops when we proctor tests since the special lockdown software only runs under Windows. That sort of thing will never run with WINE / CrossOver.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Sunday September 03 2017, @05:37PM (2 children)
Not true, I can't tell you how many women I provide support for who can't live w/o their daily dose of game playing [pogo.com]. Every time a java vulnerability is exploited they're always the first to get infected.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Sunday September 03 2017, @08:51PM (1 child)
Just went there. Flash. Brave fails (not unexpected) but after lowering the shields a bit Firebox fired up Plants vs zombies there. That is the sort of stuff I see running all day out in the labs, although most seem to get to their games via facebook. :(
No browser ships Java support, Chrome pretty much forbids it, IE is getting there and Firefox soon will, and of course iOS bans it. That is a menace that has passed. May Flash soon join it in the dustbin of history!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @12:06AM
And JavaScript too!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2017, @08:42PM (2 children)
My bet is school just started. Chrombooks seem to be the teaching fad this year. Would bet cash they identify as a linux box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2017, @10:32PM (1 child)
...except that these stats are -last- month's numbers, when school was out in the Northern Hemisphere.
...which is not to say that Chromebooks can't accomplish what is required.
...and those do run a Linux kernel.
the teaching fad this year
When the vendors of those start giving away hardware in order to lock in schools to a particular payware software ecosystem, as M$ has done, we'll have a starting point for a discussion.
In the meantime, there's folks doing a cost/value comparison with the Good Enough factor at play.
...and folks have installed GNU/Linux on these things. [google.com]
Would bet cash they identify as a linux box
Why not? Didn't Windoze RT devices identify as Windoze?
...even though none of the "Windoze" software you had paid for[1]/collected for your x86 box would run on the RT device.
[1] I would say "bought", but you never really own closed-soure software.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @08:00PM
There are all sorts of teaching fads. I have seen them come and go. A few years ago it was iPads. Many years before that it was IBM PS/2s (computer fads have been going on for a *long* time). This year it is chromebooks.
except that these stats are -last- month's numbers, when school was out in the Northern Hemisphere.
School starts anywhere from early august to early September. It depends on your district and school.
Why not? Didn't Windoze RT devices identify as Windoze? and we'll have a starting point for a discussion.
Are you 15? Grow up. I did not mention windows at all. Look if you want to bash on windows go right ahead. But you are veering closely to off topic.
I would say "bought", but you never really own closed-soure software.
I would say open source is bringing us even MORE closed ecosystems. With a veneer of 'you can change it'. Yeah if you have 20 years background in reverse engineering and the very specific tool chain they used. Every company I know and have worked for is using the hell out of it with 0 contribute back. They build their closed systems on top of it. From a pure business POV open source has just automated the 'redundant' stuff with low cost. Linux has pretty much dominated everything more than windows ever could dream of. Yet 99% of it is locked in firmware blobs that no one can really get at. It is being used by hit and run companies to create an avalanche of IoT shit that will cripple our internet in a few years. MS is going nowhere yet all the companies that did embedded OS's are.
My point was school recently started. Hence the bump. This is not some magical bump from people 'jumping ship'. It is just a fluke in the stats. You can try to pretend otherwise. But then again... log in. You take the time to sign everything. You can do better.
(Score: 2, Troll) by aristarchus on Monday September 04 2017, @07:55AM
Wholey shit! Do they know their admin is a Nazi? You really need to fess up on this, jmorris, before they find your face on the newsfeed of some white supremacist march somewhere!! Other than that, I agree entirely with your post, and would mod it up as at least "interesting", if not for the fact that I spam modded The Mighty Buzzard, and allegedly some admins that were not him banned me from modding. And here it is, the second time I have had reason to upmod the jmorris, and have had no ability! Oh the hugris! Oh, the Pathos! Oh, the miscegenation!
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday September 05 2017, @07:50PM (2 children)
If I may ask (multiple questions), why did y'all choose CentOS, over other available distros? Which desktop environment(s) do you use (and how did you decide which to use)? Do you use a thin client, kiosk, something-like-Deep-Freeze, standalone or other model for your PAC lab?
Do your staff machines run CentOS as well (my library is pretty much locked into Windows, as the ILS on which our consortium runs only works on Windows and Mac)?
Looking at your website, it's obvious that your system is much larger our local network of small independent rural libraries, but any information on what works will help--I've been trying to move away from proprietary to FLOSS, at least in the PAC area, and had some success, at least until smartphones/tablets and Win10 threw everyone into walled gardens.
At least now, the patrons are more comfortable moving between different OS interfaces, so it might be a good time to reintroduce them to the world of Linux...
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday September 05 2017, @10:21PM (1 child)
CentOS 6 was the natural choice in the progression from RHL 6.0 to various RH derived distros since, including my own WBEL3/4/5. (5 was never completed for a public release but good enough for internal use for a bit.) But CentOS 6.x is the end of that line because beyond that lies Systemd and GNOME3 madness.
We default to GNOME 2 because that is what has been the default for a long time. KDE is installed and we have one staffer who uses it but I don't know if any patrons do. All staff and patron machines run as fat clients imaged from a common master and rsynced from it with a few per host customizations for ssh keys, a couple have local printers, etc. We run two entirely segmented networks, staff and patron with NFS/NIS servers on each. That means patrons do have persistent homes with everything that implies. The UNIX security model has so far been sufficient lockdown and we provide the 'full UNIX experience' including the dev tools.
We have GDM 2 hacked up a bit to cope with guest logins, a special autologin card cat profile, etc. so any replacement really needs to have that available. PCLinuxOS is our current evaluation target for a next gen replacement since it seems to be checking all the boxes so far, just replacing GNOME2 with MATE as the default desktop so nobody will notice anything but the names of things change. Time is ticking since Chrome stopped being updatable. But once we can get PCLinuxOS out we will be able to offer at least Firefox, Brave, SeaMonkey, Chrome, Chromium and Konquerer. Hope to also finally ditch NIS for Kerberos.
Our ILS is Evergreen so we can of course run that on pretty much any client. My ISO 28560-2 RFID add on only works on Linux at present. I think it could be ported to Windows / Mac with medium effort, I just lack the knowledge of those legacy platforms. I'd need a way to identify the right window, focus it, feed it keystrokes and then see if it spawns a child window. Basically a Win/Mac replacement for xdotool. Still the only library system in the area converted to the full ISO standard vs just using the tags as glorified barcode stickers.
Our system isn't that large, anyone can benefit from the penguin. One central library plus four branches with the fifth being replaced because we lost the building and are building a new one. The beauty of Linux is the ease of maintaining things. Even with SSDs, storage is cheap so each machine has a spare copy so if one goes bad anyone can just punch reset and pick "Rebuild" from the GRUB menu. They automagically update themselves nightly and turn off. If a drive dies I stuff a new one in, boot the "magic USB stick" and in a few minutes it comes back to a login prompt or if it is a critical (i.e. checkout or something) station we usually have a cold spare handy and deal with getting the original back up after closing. Network mounted homes means nothing on a workstation matters. The servers are SAS drives in a RAID5 and copied to a machine with big cheap drives nightly (rsnapshot, with daily, weekly, monthly copies of files available) then critical staff files go to a rotation of USB sticks so we can keep a fairly recent copy of things offsite. When your main branch has went through a fire you get paranoid about that sort of thing.
The only Windows in line of business use are some VMs running our accounting system. That pretty much has to be Windows based since the government gave a monopoly on payroll / tax tables to people who only support Windows. There are no viable accounting systems on Linux and anything cloud based would be a nightmare with the privacy laws we have to deal with, plus I simply do not trust the Cloud. Our data stays inside the building. Except the offsite backup and it stays in town.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Wednesday September 06 2017, @12:38AM
Thanks for the info--We are a rural, one-room (15-20K volumes), 1 paid staff (me), library with 4 PACs and 2 Staff machines. I maintain the network myself, with the help of a local tech guy who volunteers to work on the machines and network in his spare time--he runs his own growing business, so that time slowly decreases...
Anyway, after seeing some at some larger systems in the state, he's been aching to try out a thin client setup for our PACs, as our current machines are getting to their end-of-practical-life, but all he's looked at are a couple of proprietary packages which, A) are more expensive over the long term than I am comfortable with, and B) are proprietary (and Windows-based).
I think he also wants us to serve as a test bed, to develop a package he can then sell to other small libraries with him as support staff.
OTOH, I'm looking to simplify my life, but at the same time, introduce more people to the penguin--as well as the concept that F/LOSS is available, useable, secure, and a good (or better) alternative to the usual suspects (most of my patrons have now been trained to use Firefox, even on their home machines, though I'm not sure how long that's gonna last with Mozilla constantly changing things). I also want to keep the ability to admin my own network, as at least I know I'm there if something goes wrong.
So--thanks again--you gave me several good ideas I can investigate, especially the one of running the necessary government Windows-requiring crap in a VM.