The Real Reason Linux has a small market share.

[thedreampolice]

It has nothing to do with ease of use or the price or whatever. Red hat, SUSE, Mandrake all work great out the box. You can easily Do all your office work, scan, work with digital cameras, mp3 players, watch video, IM ETCH, ETCH.... The main problem is that people don’t mind pirating software, 1 in 4 windows are not legal. The computer industry is the ONLY industry that customers openly admit to theft. I have people come in the shop all the time saying "I borrowed that office cd from a friend, Microsoft will never know". Man if you went into Wal-Mart and said "I ripped off a DVD player from best buy and I am looking for some 5.1 speakers." you will get a much different response. So to this end Linux has a large up hill battle because people don’t care if it’s free. Windows already is.

[salil]

My opinion : Your argument may be right for older versions of Microsoft Software, but I think it is really not that easy to pirate recent Microsoft Software. Every product has to be activated after installation, by sending some information to Microsoft. This helps them track piracy.

Thats why Linux will be the next best thing in the computing world!

[Icarus]

To bad Microsoft released "Corporate Licenses"

These licenses do not go through Redmond to be activated, they work like the old license keys. With these it is the companies job to keep track of how many systems they have using the key. These keys have been leaked

We won't go into the "MS is spying on it's users" which everytime a Windows Update is made it sends the computer info to Redmond...

[scott_R]

Here's another look at 'Market Share' that you might like.

http://www.oscast.com/stories/storyReader$419

[Tesl]

windows is free right now for a lot of people, but for many its not. For those who buy their PCs from a large retailer like PC world, they are paying for windows whilst thinking its free with the PC. If they were to use Linux, they would save

thats a bit of a different debate though, there are many many reasons why people dont buy Linux from these places, but nvm

Windows is crackable, and it will be for a while. With Palladium and .Net however, security will be massively increased. The average user wont be able to install and use pirated software as easily.

at this current time i think M$ are happy to let a smaller degree of their software get cracked, as long as it keeps their market share. Especially when they know these people will possibly then pay M$ in other ways. For now i think they wont clamp down on cracking windows too much, so that they have as many people with them with the inclusion of Longhorn/Palladium/.net

[jedthehumanoid]

Originally posted by salil
My opinion : Your argument may be right for older versions of Microsoft Software, but I think it is really not that easy to pirate recent Microsoft Software. Every product has to be activated after installation, by sending some information to Microsoft. This helps them track piracy.

Thats why Linux will be the next best thing in the computing world!

Well kind of. I mean the main reason I started venturing into the linux world was because after buying win xp, it crashed so many times to bsod, that I had reinstalled it a good 20 times. (no exageration.) Now, after 3 times, you can't register it online, you have to call and talk to a person, to get it taken care of. This is obviously meant to prevent one from installing on multiple pcs. But they can't ever tell the rightful owner not to install it. I mean they'd ask me why I was installing again, and I'd say because your f&*kin' OS sucks and it broke again. And usually the response was pretty humble. They're kind of chasing thier own tails on this one.

[spiderbaby1958]

I've said this before: Digital Rights Management is going to prove to be a huge mistake for Windows. I've got a cousin who argues with me all the time about how windows is everything you need, Linux is crap, etc, but take it from me, this guy isn't gonna pay for windows. He'll go over to Linux the minute Bill figures out how to force him to pay... and this is gonna be bad for windows, cause the only good reason to pay money for windows is that everybody in the world is using it.

However, I would disagree that piracy is "the real reason" why Linux hasn't overtaken Windows yet. The "real" reason is that Windows comes preinstalled with every computer. Most non geeks find the prospect of installing an OS-- especially a dual boot, for those who don't want to throw all their expensive windows data away-- to be an intimidating prospect, to say the least.

This is changing in a big way. Most famously, Walmart is now selling computers with preinstalled Linux on their website, and at least one computer is available with no operating system at all. I suspect that many many people don't know how much of the hefty price-tag of their computer goes to the software, but I suspect they're going to find out. Walmart's Linux computers start at 200 hundred bucks!

[pr0c]

IMHO the direction of windows is heading it will blow itself out.

Think about this... Microsoft sucsessfully stops piracy of its OS.. BOOOM! There goes more than half of its users. Where will those users go? Now suddenly linux has a larger market share... where will the software developers go?

At some point Microsoft will realize that if they stop piracy they will lose a lot more than leeches, they may have already realized that.. why else would they continue to 'leak' software and keys?

[jedthehumanoid]

you know my dad got a computer about a year or so ago and it was a Gateway that was not exactly state of the art and he paid a large amount of $$ for it. (frankly, it bothers me to say this but I think he got seriously taken.) And my Dad knows quite a bit about computers. Hell, where it not for him, I wouldn't have grown up with one always in the house. I don't think most people realise how cheap computers are right now even with windows. I mean a flat panel monitor is typically twice the price of a new box!My point is that most of the world doesn't have a clue. They simply can't find a typewriter in stores anymore!! They don't give a damn how e-mail works. Or the internet. They just know it does. Period. THAT is why Windows has the market.

[synecdoche]

I agree with Spiderbaby. I am new to Linux and am slowly learning. However, I think that if the first computer I had purchased had come with Linux on it, I would have learned it just as naturally as I would have DOS.

The biggest hurdle I (and many other newbies) have when I migrated to Linux was and is expecting it to behave like Windows. If instead of learning DOS when I used my first computer so many years ago I had learned bash, I'd be fine now.

I mean, even now, if you put an average computer user in front of a dos prompt and told him or her to bring up a list of files in a particular directory and then copy all the text files in this directory to a different directory, he or she would be a little lost.

-dave

[Modorf]

They don't give a damn how e-mail works. Or the internet. They just know it does. Period. THAT is why Windows has the market. [/B]

If that was the case, Mac would have won the war years ago.

The problem I feel goes back to, buy for your home what you use at work. I work with a mixed group of people, designers, sales, and internet programmers. Each group has a different nich and preferance of system (Mac, Windows, and *nix). My father bought an IBM XT clone back in 1987 due to the fact his office was running PCs. This allowed him the ability to take work home and "telecommute". I asked why he didn't get an Apple (due to the fact that was what my friends and school were using) and that was his reason. And his office got PCs because of the price and software available. Then for compatablity purposed his office upgraded to different generations of Intel systems along with my house.

Now I feel to make the migration incentive for all, there needs to be the killer app. The piece of software that will make every user in the world drool to have and that will drive "sales". Until that time, I don't think there will be a big demand for change. Though the os is free, the time to re-educate is not.

Nathan.

[pr0c]

It all comes down to 1 very simple perception....

Windows came free with my computer.


Is it true? no but thats what i'm guessing 90% of windows users think. EULA? Whats that? ...

Igornace put windows on top and so we must remove ignorance i think.

[Nuada Storm]

Originally posted by salil
My opinion : Your argument may be right for older versions of Microsoft Software, but I think it is really not that easy to pirate recent Microsoft Software. Every product has to be activated after installation, by sending some information to Microsoft. This helps them track piracy.

Little flaw with this though... Microsoft only holds 4 months of activation information. After that it is purged. If you install it on one machine and then another 4 months later, it will activate just fine. I had read this and even tested it out before I wiped my new machine and installed Linux on it.

[thedreampolice]

Sadly it does not make allot of sense (yet) for a VAR (or white box manufacturer) to push Linux hard. Don’t get me wrong I think Linux is the future and I love it, but to change from a system people know to one they don’ti s tough, they are calling you saying I cant get my new $29.95 digital camera to work, or they game I just bought at Wal-Mart going, It just does not pay to tech support (how to setup winex for example) Lindows is SO close but still missing a bit. Also check on KAzaa for xp cracks it’s all too easy to do. For me my main Mandrake system rocks for %75 of what I do, the other %25 is multimedia type applications and guess what windows xp pro it is. I hope this can change soon. Yes People do think Windows come's free with the system, they don’t want to know or care in general about "most" of the Microsoft politics. They just what to check the frickin email and have it be easy to do.

[CMonster]

1 in 4 windows are not legal.

....if you count people who "upgrade" their Windows w/o paying for it, or what is going on in places like China, I'd have to say the ratio is more like 3 out of 4.