What's better for Linux

[Pjotr]

Format, delete,

If this childish troll tripe is the best you can produce (I've checked your recent other posts as well), you'd better format and delete your immature forum presence. Go and leave this forum to the grown-ups. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

[michael louwe]

M$'s Windows has dominated the world market for desktop OS for decades with about 90% marketshare today.
....... Similarly, with Google's Android for mobile OS with about 80% world marketshare today.

Seems, anti-forking policies have been very successful in the mass-market, compared to the forking policies of the Linux desktop OS with about 2% world marketshare, a minuscule % that even has to be shared by tens of various forked Linux distros, eg Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Suse Enterprise Linux, Manjaro Linux, Archlinux, Linux Lite, etc.
....... Being spoiled for choice does not work well for the Linux desktop OS - "Too many cooks spoil the soup."

Welcome to the real world, where the majority wins and the minority loses or has to tolerate and wait for his/her turn, which may never come.

"United we stand, divided we fall"
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P S - The Linux OS was begun by Linus Torvald in 1992. After 26 years, why is the Linux desktop OS still at about 2% world marketshare.? Does that compute.? When will be the year of the Linux desktop.?
....... Maybe, for the good of Linux, Linus should copy Google-Android or M$-Windows, eg impose some kind of anti-forking policies.

[BenTrabetere]

M$'s Windows has dominated the world market for desktop OS for decades with about 90% marketshare today.
....... Similarly, with Google's Android for mobile OS with about 80% world marketshare today.

Seems, anti-forking policies have been very successful in the mass-market....

A locked ecosystem does not guarantee success or world domination: consider MacOS, Windows Phone, OS/2, NeXTSTEP, etc. Also, Windows success can partially[/sarcasm] be explained by Microsoft's established, largely unchecked and unchallenged, anti-competitive monopoly status.

IIRC, an Android fork was what drove the Amazon Fire Phone ... before it sputtered and died. I am pretty sure there have been other, equally unsuccessful, Android forks.

[michael louwe]

Also, Windows success can partially[/sarcasm] be explained by Microsoft's established, largely unchecked and unchallenged, anti-competitive monopoly status..

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During the early 1980s, M$-Windows started from zero world marketshare. Apple-Lisa/MacOSX led the race with her proprietary self-built Lisa/MacIntosh computers. Computers then was an expensive hobbyist or niche market, ie cost above US$2,500 per computer. ....

The Lisa was first introduced on January 19, 1983, and cost US$9,995 (approximately US$24,600 in 2017 dollars.) It was one of the first personal computer systems with a graphical user interface (GUI) to be sold commercially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
....... Unlike Apple and IBM, M$ decided to license Windows cheaply to the OEMs, eg US$30 per license. This brought down the costs of each OEM Windows computer to about US$1,000 and brought computers to the mass-market = personal computers. At the same time, M$ made computers very user-friendly to the average home and office users by developing many programs/software/apps/tools as GUI-based, ie simple point-n-click. CLI-based ones, eg Linux apps/tools, were non-user-friendly.
....... In no time, M$-Windows dethroned Apple-MacOSX and IBM-OS/2, and achieved a market-monopoly, starting with Win 3.1 during the early 1990s. M$-Windows's market-monopoly continued with Win 95, Win 98, Win XP, Win Vista, Win 7 and Win 8.x(= 2014), ie the masses willingly flocked to buy OEM Windows computers and willingly shunned Apple computers and non-user-friendly Linux. There was no forcing and anti-competitiveness on M$'s part.

Otoh, Win 10's forced auto-updates and personal data collection is another story.
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IIRC, an Android fork was what drove the Amazon Fire Phone ... before it sputtered and died. I am pretty sure there have been other, equally unsuccessful, Android forks.

Google's Android mobile OS has a world marketshare of about 80%. Doesn't this mean that Google's Android Anti-Forking Agreements imposed on the OEMs have been a success for Android.?

[BenTrabetere]

Also, Windows success can partially[/sarcasm] be explained by Microsoft's established, largely unchecked and unchallenged, anti-competitive monopoly status..

During the early 1980s, M$-Windows started from zero world marketshare.

The biggest reason for THAT is Windows was not released until 1986 and did not achieve anything close to success in the market until 1990 with the release of 3.0.

Apple-Lisa/MacOSX led the race with her proprietary self-built Lisa/MacIntosh computers.

Nonsense. The Lisa never dominated any market, if taken strictly by itself it was an absolute failure, and about the only thing that gives it significance is what followed.

The personal computer market during the Lisa's reign [/sarcasm] was dominated by Commodore, the C64 was the dominant PC well into mid-1980s, and it continued to have a significant market share well after the IBM PC became the entrenched market leader. With the exception of the iPhone, Apple has always been slightly better than a rounding error in the overall personal computer market.

It is a bit disingenuous to compare the Lisa OS to Windows. Windows 1.0 was released 1.5 years after the introduction of the Lisa, and it took 5-years and the release of 3.0 to become viable.

Unlike Apple and IBM, M$ decided to license Windows cheaply to the OEMs, eg US$30 per license.

Which was part of the "largely unchecked and unchallenged, anti-competitive monopoly status" I mentioned earlier. Microsoft also made it very difficult for manufacturers to offer anything other than DOS and Windows, and took great steps to ensure its applications ran better than its competitors applications.

In no time, M$-Windows dethroned Apple-MacOSX and IBM-OS/2, and achieved a market-monopoly, starting with Win 3.1 during the early 1990s.

Apple never has had anything close to a significant share of the market, let alone a "market-monopoly." As for OS/2, the biggest reason for its failure was IBM; the PC group refused to support it, and there were several models of IBM PC that was difficult, if not impossible, to get OS/2 to run. And it came at a time when IBM marketing plan for fried chicken would be "dead chicken parts, dredged in batter and cooked in hot fat."

IIRC, an Android fork was what drove the Amazon Fire Phone ... before it sputtered and died. I am pretty sure there have been other, equally unsuccessful, Android forks.

Google's Android mobile OS has a world marketshare of about 80%. Doesn't this mean that Google's Android Anti-Forking Agreements imposed on the OEMs have been a success for Android.?

No. First, I am not sure OEMs are under anti-forking constraints. And even if they are, Android's success can be linked to many factors other than the lack of forks.

[michael louwe]

The personal computer market during the Lisa's reign [/sarcasm] was dominated by Commodore, the C64 was the dominant PC well into mid-1980s, and it continued to have a significant market share well after the IBM PC became the entrenched market leader.

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Like I said earlier, M$ was instrumental in bringing computers to the mass-market by making them affordable to the masses at about US$1,000 each and by making them user-friendly to the masses = GUI-based. In no time, M$-Windows-OEM computers gained a mass-market-monopoly during the early 1990s starting with Win 3.1.

The Commodore 64C, even though affordable, was mainly a CLI-based computer that was non-user-friendly to the masses and the Apple !! MacIntosh computer, even though GUI-based, was way over-priced for the masses at above US$2,500 each. Both failed to bring computers to the mass-market = they were only a niche market for mostly hobbyists, tech-geeks and rich folks. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

The key word here is mass-market.

The Linux desktop OS of the 1990s, even though free, was very unuser-friendly to the masses, ie lack of GUI = a minuscule world marketshare.

An analogy, it is quite pointless for Porshe or Ferrari to dominate the niche market for luxury sportscars of about 500,000 units sold per year while Honda or Toyota is dominating the mass-market for ordinary cars of about 90 million units sold per year worldwide in 2017. Over-priced Apple-iOS iPhones are like the former while more affordable Google-Android OEM smartphones are like the latter.

[BG405]

....... Maybe, for the good of Linux, Linus should copy Google-Android or M$-Windows, eg impose some kind of anti-forking policies.

You mean modify the GNU Public Licence agreement which states that you can copy, modify, distribute etc.. ?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Gener ... ic_License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is a widely used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software.

Strike out  modify  and  share  & this change could potentially enable any "entitled" party e.g. MS to take control & effectively ownership of pretty much the entire Linux ecosystem!

[michael louwe]

You mean modify the GNU Public Licence agreement which states that you can copy, modify, distribute etc.. ?

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Yes, but there is nothing stopping all the Linux developers from coming together and uniting under a single popular Linux distro, eg like the formation of a trade union or USA. The UAW united US auto-workers.

[BenTrabetere]

You mean modify the GNU Public Licence agreement which states that you can copy, modify, distribute etc.. ?

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Yes, but there is nothing stopping all the Linux developers from coming together and uniting under a single popular Linux distro

Nonsense. Some of those developers work for companies that have a vested interest in a specific distro. Some of those developers work for Canonical, Redhat, OpenSUSE, Oracle, et al.

[smurphos]

Some of those developers work for Canonical, Redhat, OpenSUSE, Oracle, et al.

Add Google, Microsoft and Amazon to the list....

[smurphos]

there is nothing stopping all the Linux developers from coming together

Two things - egos and differences of artistic or technical opinion. The brightest and best rarely want to be a follower (unless being a follower is paid very well) - they want to be a leader. I don't think that will ever change.

I very much doubt that Linus cares a hoot about Desktop Linux - the kernel is a tool for others to build on.

But I think people disregard how much collaboration and idea sharing between distos and developers goes on behind the scenes along with the occasional bun-fight.

[lsemmens]

Operating systems are no different to the motor vehicle manufacturer "wars". Some people are happy to drive a Toyota others want a Ferrari and then there are those of us who want to customise and build our own. If you want a hot rod, you can't buy one off the lot. Some people think a model is super reliable, whilst others will beg to differ. Those of us who have found Linux know the truth, others, just have yet to see the light.....

[BenTrabetere]

Some of those developers work for Canonical, Redhat, OpenSUSE, Oracle, et al.

Add Google, Microsoft and Amazon to the list....

I almost included them in the list. IBM, too. I left them off because, the best I can tell, they tend to support the major distributions.

I considered mentioning the "State-sponsored" distributions, the plethora of architectures Linux supports, or the shear cost of retooling an Ubuntu deployment to a Redhat deployment, but stopped when I got bored with this "one distro to rule them all" discussion.