open source touches us all in some way or the other. firefox is one of the most fastest growing and trusted browser. open office is also used by a small but increasing number of home and office users. there are plenty of music players, file compression utilities, etc - which can be used without having to crack or use shareware - which potentially have malware or annoying software tagging along.
open source does not only mean linux. its beyond that. government offices can easily adopt linux, popular distribution like ubuntu, red hat, or the more polished suse, are freely available. at least those works which need a web browser (which many offices are shifting over to (web based applications), can easily shift over to linux. even an average home user can shift over to linux with the same amount of trouble to learn as like a windows system. with lesser hassle of virus and malwares. of course there's a small learning curve, but it well worth it - rather than going in for a formatting of the pc every 6 months (many many typical households go in for the solutio, also - easy for the pc assemblers to go in for a format, rather than recover stuff!)
Linux is not the 2nd most prevalent OS after Windows, that would be Apple's OSX (iPhone/Mac/ IPod Touch). Even if he's including the server sales too, this cant be right. All the worldwide deployments of Linux servers cant be more than a quarter sales of a Mac. Open source was said to be the future since the mid 90s, we are still waiting. Instead what we are seeing is people like Google or Apple & even Microsoft gaining ground. Google picks open source stuff & then closes them. Apple picked the Unix code & made it proprietary. Linux on the desktop remains for a few techies & Linux in the Enterprise has replaced Unix. I'm all for an open source OS & free never hurts. Linux in the current form is a huge headache if you want to run it at home. Almost nothing works with it. Even getting it to connect to the net is not possible with none of the Indian ISPs releasing drivers for Linux. Till Linux sorts out these issues, Microsoft rules.
Re: A lie
by Devdutt Nayak on Aug 03, 2009 11:49 AM
as far as bridging the digital divide goes, if you plan to start a company based on Linux, or opensource, it is a real headache to sell things on Linux because just about everyone is purchased over by Microsoft.
Our penny wise pound foolish investment mentality does not help either - for example an HNI or a proprietor will happily invest lakhs in the volatile stock market and even take a few losses in tens of thousands in his stride, but he will not invest even 1,000 in a startup that plans to use something and do something new. At least not in Mumbai. I dont know much about Bengaluru and Chennai, but Mumbai is full of penny-wise-pound-foolish investors. The Indian crab mentality is on full display in Mumbai. Any students or entrepreneurs in Mumbai, note this:
APPROACH SOMEONE IN BENGALURU OR CHENNAI OR KERALA. THEY MIGHT HELP YOU EASILY. YOUR NEIGHBOUR IN MUMBAI WILL NOT. THIS IS FROM YEARS OF EXPERIENCE. AND AS LONG AS SOMEONE LIKE TATA OR RELIANCE DOES NOT START A REALLY HUGE MICRO VC FUND, MUMBAI IS GOING TO REMAIN A PAIN AREA FOR STARTUPS.
IGNORE THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Re: A lie
by koora on Aug 03, 2009 11:45 AM
Ahh!!! You are a hell of string of wrong information... Too complicated to start from a point.. You are awesomely ignorant buddy, COOL. There are OSes other than the ones running on the big box in front of you in your workplace =)) LOL...
Re: Re: A lie
by Manoj M on Aug 03, 2009 12:10 PM
Of course there are thousands of OSes, but does anyone care? Remember news in Times of India about somebody in Bhopal writing an OS much 'better' than Windows? Anybody heard of it again?
Re: Re: Re: A lie
by koora on Aug 03, 2009 12:25 PM
C'mon man... You always miss the point, again your thought areas of computing are confined to that big machine only. Are you are .Net developer (just a guess, not for any insult) ;)
Re: A lie
by Priyank Raj on Aug 11, 2009 01:07 AM
Apple is barely 2% of the market dude. Its no-way the 2nd most prevalent OS. I run linux on both my laptop & desktop and it runs just fine. But yes, connecting to the net as you say might be a problem, but the problem lies with the ISPs and not linux. Microsoft may rule, but Linux is the real provider.
Re: A lie
by koora on Aug 03, 2009 11:54 AM
Don't get frustrated with that under-utilized Linux box while learning. Would suggest you to stick on to console only and learn Linux. Once you get going you will fell the power of it.
Re: Re: A lie
by Manoj M on Aug 03, 2009 12:08 PM
Now you want to count those DVDs too to increase the count of Linux? Not to mention the hardware devices. Wouldn't it be a stretch to call them an OS considering the very limited use to which they are put? All claims are false, typical open source proponent. Just yell at the top of your voice. Never give any supporting facts, just outshout somebody who differs. Ignore the inconvenient truths. Keep on with it. But guess what, consumers dont play ball with your propoganda, they would go with closed source even if they have to pay for it.
Re: Re: Re: A lie
by satish balachandran on Aug 03, 2009 12:18 PM
IF you don't know what linus is - then better dont comment. I am on a 64 bit Ubuntu - doing my Web development [LAMP], Desktop publishing [Scribus] and along with that i play online games, watch movies [mplayer/vlc player], listen to songs and do my clerical tasks in open office. I am able to chant to my yahoo/msn/google/skype clients also. And its all FREE
Dont blame linux just becaue u hav no ideaabt it :) Learn it and enjoy working on it.
Re: Re: Re: A lie
by wizardo id on Aug 03, 2009 12:14 PM
linux does not have any industry backing it with money, like how MS does. MS sponsors its own studies fairly regularly, and uses scare tactics - to lure consumers away. at the far end of the curve, people have been slowly shfting over to linux, that of course happens to be the fairly technical crowd. the home users still grovel and slave away with virus/ malware grinding their systems to a crawl in many many PCs.
of course, not all of it is because of MS, but the culture of unsafe computing was promoted by microsoft.
Re: Re: Re: Re: A lie
by Piyush Ranjan on Aug 03, 2009 12:57 PM
actually not. A lot of big companies like IBM, Novell, Google etc are supporting linux. I have been using linux since 2001 and have not used windows in about 4 years. I still survive and survive well
Re: Re: Re: Re: A lie
by Manoj M on Aug 03, 2009 12:30 PM
That is not correct. Some of the biggest names like IBM, Oracle, Google are Linux proponents if not distros. Many of the contributors to the Linux kernel are employed in these cos. Heck, even Microsoft contributed to the Linux kernel. Dude, the day Linux gets the market share of Microsoft, let me assure you there will be plenty of viruses & malware. Right now, nobody is bothered to write one for Linux which is why it's safe.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A lie
by satish balachandran on Aug 03, 2009 12:37 PM
microsoft has only one root- linux comes with roots from all over the world as its developed by many. Its a dedication and nothing for money. So linux will be stable always. And M$ will go on patching the patches! MS office - softare worth Rs. 8000/- comes with 900 bugs minimum! Why should you pay for a buggy thing?
Re: Re: Re: Re: A lie
by Piyush Ranjan on Aug 03, 2009 12:57 PM
actually not. A lot of big companies like IBM, Novell, Google etc are supporting linux. I have been using linux since 2001 and have not used windows in about 4 years. I still survive and survive well
Open source is going nowhere. I won't spend money on something for which the fixes bug fixes come once in a blue moon. Oh yes....i have to shell a lot for the support.
I fully agree that open source is the way ahead. I am a RHCE myself, this gives immense confidence and helped me shape my career. LAMP(Linux, Apache,MysQL,PHP) has become the defacto standard for open source web development. There is so much of development happening using these technologies.
