resexcellence.com(mac users) continue the trend of mac-to-linux conversions

Resexcellence ^ | July 24, 2006 | Bryan O'Bryan

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

The great experiment

I was going to write up a big thing to post here. I was going to be all crazy eloquent and whatnot… then Chris wrote this as a draft of what he’d like to say. And his words cut to the point incredibly nicely. So here is what Chris has to say (and he speaks for both of us):

You have ruined this for us.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

This article is more about the aftermath. The flames, hatred, they sound like a bunch of liberals to me.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Isn't this the third one I've posted fairly recently about mac-to-linux conversions? I'll have to look into that............

Here's the original article, for those interested.

http://www.bryanobryan.com/?p=28

Something I'm increasingly noticing is the reference to macs becoming a fashion statement for the snobish.

Computers are still tools you know.

[HAL9000]

Nobody is switching from Mac to Linux. But Windows users are switching to Macs in droves.

Linux remains in distant third place on desktop computers, with little growth in the installed base. But Linux is doing very well on servers, where it belongs.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^^^Nobody is switching from Mac to Linux.^^^^^^^^^^

http://www.bryanobryan.com/?p=28

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks

http://news.com.com/Torvalds+switches+to+Apple/2100-1003_3-5606030.html

[HAL9000]

Apple Q3 Financials - Live Update

~ snip ~

Retail stores demonstrated 29 percent growth for the quarter — $715 million. The company ended the quarter with 155 stores, Oppenheimer reported — the stores averaged $4.9 million each. More than 17 million customers came through the stores’ doors during the quarter. The new Fifth Avenue store in New York City has become Apple’s highest volume store. It’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and only opened in mid-May.

Oppenheimer also noted that nearly 50 percent of Mac buyers at Apple retail stores are new to the platform — a moderate increase over past quarters, perhaps explained by an increase in interest on Intel-based Macs and Apple’s advertising of Macs on prime-time television.

~ snip ~

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

I know. So what?

Gonna bring that 2% marketshare back to 2.1?

[HAL9000]

"Gonna bring that 2% marketshare back to 2.1?"

Articles posted last week -

‘Fantastic quarter’ helps Apple double share of U.S. retail notebook market to 12%

Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 4.6% U.S. market share in Q2 06

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

That's about right.

And worldwide?

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, isn't 4-point-something percent what your.... what is it, netstats webpage says that OS usage is?

I appologize if I've got you mixed with another poster, it's been a while since I've seen those links.

[Golden Eagle]

Something I'm increasingly noticing is...

How some treat their foreign O/S like a religion.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Sorry to bust your pre-concieved notion, but my OS is domestic.

http://www.novell.com/
http://www.opensuse.org/

My last OS was domestic as well.

http://fedora.redhat.com/

and I don't treat my OS like a religion either. But past proof has proven repeatedly to be irrelevant to you GE, as demonstrated by not just myself but also quite a few other posters.

One day liberals will realize that history doesn't start today.....................

[Golden Eagle]

Linux is from Finland, created by a foreigner who didn't want to pay for US products. The main American behind Linux is Richard Stallman, the biggest leftist in tech. Funny watching you try to deny it.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^Linux is from Finland^^^^^^^^^^

Linux by itself is simply a kernel. But surely you knew that.

^^^^^^^^^The main American behind Linux is Richard Stallman, the biggest leftist in tech. Funny watching you try to deny it.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So where did I say Stallman is a right winger? This I've gotta see.

The main entity behind linux is IBM. IBM is a great success story in *AMERICAN* technology. And of course the main linux-only company is Red Hat. another american success story.

Funny watching you try to deny it.

[Golden Eagle]

IBM has more employees outside the US than in. FYI the "I" is for "International".

And Red Hat was founded by a foreigner, Bob Young. Time for you to face the facts.

[bigdcaldavis]

Spare us your allusions of "Linux is communist". Linux is about freedom. Freedom to choose. We are free to choose what operating system we wish to use. Microsoft is a globalist empire created by a four-eyed globalist UN ass-kisser who only got laid because he's filthy rich. If it weren't for the money, Bill Gates would be a 50+ year old virgin.

Look at it this way : Microsoft is not in the business of providing top-quality software. They're in the business of making tons of money, even if they have to resort to putting out a crappy product which they sugarcoat with stuff like "Windows can play DVDs out of the box" and "Windows can play MP3s out of the box". I've spent enough time with Xandros Linux to know how to get DVDs to play with Xine, and MP3s already play out of the box.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^IBM has more employees outside the US than in. FYI the "I" is for "International".^^^^^^^^^

Wow, you're really run out of straws to grasp at.

^^^^^^^^^^And Red Hat was founded by a foreigner, Bob Young. Time for you to face the facts.^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So what?

[Golden Eagle]

Use Apple or Sun Solaris if you don't like Microsoft. They are bonafide American Unix, not a foriegn fake.

[rzeznikj at stout]

And Linux was based on Minix, which was written by Andrew Tannenbaum, a professor at Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands.

Minix was written to teach the basics of an operating system by providing a simple OS based on SysV Unix.

For the record, while Prof. Tannenbaum lives and teaches in the Netherlands, he retains his U.S. citizenship.

That's right. The guy who inspired Torvalds to create Linux is an American.

[rzeznikj at stout]

Thread Jester Ping

A low-volume pinglist dedicated for all the thread jesters out there--you know who you are...8^)

FReepmail rzeznikj at stout or MikefromOhio to be added or struck from the list...

[MikefromOhio]

Use Apple or Sun Solaris if you don't like Microsoft. They are bonafide American Unix, not a foriegn fake.

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rzeznikj at stout]

Yep...

But where's the grammar police?

[MikefromOhio]

LOL

The statement is so ignorant on it's face the horrible grammar is excused :)

[antiRepublicrat]

Corrected: Linux is from originated in Finland (although most of the current code is not from Finland), created by a foreigner who didn't want to pay for US foreign products.

It cannot be ignorance on your part since I've corrected you before, so it must be something else, maybe stupidity.

[zeugma]

I see that the Brass Buzzard is back to its old tricks. Seems like the last moderator slapdown it got has worn off. Too bad. There have been some good tech threads recently. Hopefully the short leash the moderators have it on will be jerked again soon.

[zeugma]

where's that "not this crap again" graphic when we really need it?

[zeugma]

After being sidetracked by our resident thread jester, I took the the time to read the original article (and many of the replies). Pretty interesting. I don't know if what he's saying about the Mac community is true, but if what he described is true, one can hardly blame him. 

I think you can see pretty nasty behavior from just about any community. I've talked with some folks who do development in the Linux space, and they sometimes have similar complaints. Many say that it is the occasional "attaboy" that keeps them going. 

So, I'd like to suggest to those out there who use some of the nifty utilities that make whatever computing platform you choose to use, be they freeware, shareware, or even commercial products, that you take a moment or two to write out a quick note and send it to someone affiliated with the software to let them know that 1) you like the software, 2) you're glad someone took the time to write it, and 3) thanks for doing it.

I'm going to choose the nifty little wysiwyg editor I'm using to compose this message as a starting point.

It's an extension for Firefox called "Xinhahere!"  and it works great. Highly recommended for posting to sites like Freerepublic!

[rzeznikj at stout]

Gotcha...

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^I think you can see pretty nasty behavior from just about any community.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I can agree. I've seen it myself among linux usergroups and used to see it when I was part of the windows crowd. But not to the extent that the mac community does. The mac really has become less about computing and more about looks and status, by and large. Freeper-mac-users seem to be the exception, you don't have one because of some mythical status, you have it because it's useful.

You don't ever.... *EVER* tell someone really into clothes and shoes and having the best label that their stuff looks like crap. They own flamethrowers like no others. :-P(I'm sure you catch my drift)

[zeugma]

I'd like to follow up to my post above briefly. 

Last night I sent a note to the lead developer of the Quanta html editor, which is a Linux KDE program that is a part of the KDEWebDev package, and already got a note back from him this morning with some suggestions of how to make the "fish://" protocol work better for me, as I'd mentioned trouble I'd been having with it in relation to Quanta. I didn't expect alengthy reply as I'd just mentioned that I was playing with fish:// to make editing remote documents easier, but his helpful suggestions have already let me set up things here in the house so I can edit documents on my server from my laptop as if they were local files. This rocks!

Any KDE users out there who haven't played with fish:// should check it out. Drop me a line for more details if you need it. I can't code, but I can help others as I've been helped in the past.

[DesScorp]

"Nobody is switching from Mac to Linux"

Yeah, that's almost laughable. Sorry, I'm a Linux user, and the only people that use Linux are technically adept people that prefer the Unix world over the Windows World, and while OSX is based in a Unix hybrid now, they go to great lengths to hide it, so the traditional "I need a computer so easy to use it's stupid" crowd would never go near Linux with a 10 ft pole; if anything, I've seen lots of Linux users migrate to the Mac because it gives them the best of both worlds....Unix and commercially supported GUI envirnoment.

"But Windows users are switching to Macs in droves"

Ummm, define "droves"? I don't see that many Windows users making the switch, sorry. Apple still has, what, 4 percent of the PC market? 5 at the most? They're making money, and their influence is far above their true market penetration, but for the most part, Windows people stick with XP.

[HAL9000]

Ummm, define "droves"? I don't see that many Windows users making the switch, sorry.

About half of the Mac sales are to people switching from Windows, so on Apple's scale, that is a large amount. It's still a small amount in Microsoft's world, but it seems that Dell is starting to lose a significant number of sales to Apple.

[bigdcaldavis]

Ummm, define "droves"? I don't see that many Windows users making the switch, sorry. Apple still has, what, 4 percent of the PC market? 5 at the most? They're making money, and their influence is far above their true market penetration, but for the most part, Windows people stick with XP.

If anything, most people who have bought the new Intel Macs have probably installed Boot Camp and have OS X and Windows XP on their machines. There was somebody who tried to use Boot Camp to install Linspire on their new Intel Mac...it didn't work, but I have heard of people installing the x86-based Ubuntu distros (Ubuntu, Kubuntu) using Boot Camp.

[HAL9000]

Apple Rumors Editor Switches to Linux!

[HAL9000]

According to the July OS Share statistics at Net Applications, the new Intel Macs, which have been available for only a few months, have already passed the entire installed base of Linux.

When the PowerPC Macs are added to the Intel Macs, the installed base of Macs is many times greater than Desktop Linux.

[Señor Zorro]

How some treat their foreign O/S like a religion.

It's funny that you mention that, because you, in your anti-Linuxism (a new word that I added to the English language about a minute ago), are the most zealous one here.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Thanks. As I said, your netstats page is useless for anything else other than the american market.

3.8% + .5% is 4.3%, which is *very* close to Gartner's predictions of the US market. The co-relation between the numbers is too close to be ignored.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1672182/posts#6

I stand by what I said at post.... 4?(mebbe post 5)

Apple has around 2% worldwide. Linux is above that, at around 2.5.

It'll be nice when Google does it's next Zeitgeist. Your source is unreliable for worldwide numbers. I've not really doubted that Apple has more of the american market. It'd be nice if you stopped with that bait-and-switch.

Remember, according to Apple themselves, they've got around 25 mil users. There's more linux users than that. Though in america, there'd probably only be 5 or so mil. If it's even that.

[HAL9000]

Thanks. As I said, your netstats page is useless for anything else other than the american market.

So what? The overwhelming majority of FReepers are Americans. We're not going to switch to Linux just because it is more popular in Communist China.

Currently, Apple's marketing efforts are focused on North America, Western Europe and Japan. At an appropriate time in the future, Apple will expand their international marketing efforts to other regions.

I recommend Macs for Americans. In the unlikely event that you need to call tech support, you'll be talking to a fellow American, not some Dell Dude in India.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^So what? The overwhelming majority of FReepers are Americans. We're not going to switch to Linux just because it is more popular in Communist China.^^^^^^^^^^^

I wouldn't expect a freeper to switch based on popularity in any shape or form.

I'd expect them to switch because it's a better product, better put together, faster, has more features, easier to use, and other reasons.

^^^^^^^^^^^I recommend Macs for Americans. In the unlikely event that you need to call tech support, you'll be talking to a fellow American, not some Dell Dude in India.^^^^^^^^^^

If it weren't for Apple's closed nature, I'd do the same. It's too bad you can't install OS10 on something else.

[HAL9000]

I'd expect them to switch because it's a better product, better put together, faster, has more features, easier to use, and other reasons.

Those are reasons to use a Mac, not Linux.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Those are reasons to use a Mac, not Linux.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Those are reasons to use *BOTH* over windows.

[freedumb2003]

Why would someone want to Resex? Most of us, except the freaks, live with the sex we were born with.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

ummmmm............

resexcellence.com....

That's res-excellence