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Many decisions and opinions in the Linux world are justified by the idea that the decision will help attract new users to Linux, but why should anyone care at all if other people use Linux? KillaGeorge recently posed the question directly in response to a recent post, titled “A Simple Feature of Ubuntu 8.04 That Could Be So Important:”

“I always wondered why linux users are always trying to convert microsoft users. Whats the deal with that? Who cares what other people use. I use linux and i’m happy with it. If my friends don’t want to use it then no sweat of my back. Who cares?”

The main reason for wanting more users to switch to Linux is that the more people use an operating system, the better it will be supported by hardware and software companies and, in the case of open-source software, there will also be more people to develop the operating system. In fact, a good example of this showed up earlier today.

With AMD open-sourcing their graphics drivers, many people are looking to nVidia to see if they will follow suit. Earlier today, an open letter to nVidia was posted that has already received 547 signatures at this time, yet even if this number grows to 1,000 or more, nVidia may still never respond. With Linux’s current market share, nVidia can continue to ignore people for as long as they want. That does not mean they will, but even if nVidia listens, they are only one of many companies that do not have open-source drivers or do not have Linux drivers at all. If Linux had a larger market share, companies would finally have to pay attention to the Linux world and release drivers for Linux.

Unfortunately, the issue is not as simple as more users being better. If Linux ever achieved a large market share, it would become the target of viruses, much like Windows is now. The question is how to find the perfect balance, so that Linux is widely supported, but not the target of viruses and spyware. Right now, Windows is obviously far over that perfect market share and Linux is way under. The closest may be the Mac, since most companies do support OS X, but, so far, there are no viruses for OS X in the wild. If you think I am advocating everyone switch to OS X, however, you are wrong. Apple has no intention of stopping their growth. Any day now the viruses will start to come for the Mac and each day it just gets more and more likely.

Hopefully this will not happen to Linux, but it seems hard to escape. Once an operating system gains enough momentum to make it to a significant market share, it is unlikely to stop and no matter what you tell me about the security of Linux, someone will find a way around that security. Perhaps Linux will really find a way to avoid this .

http://www.linuxloop.com/news/2008/02/29/why-attracting-more-users-to-linux-matters/

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If this sounded very familiar , it is because this point had been reached in Linux to some degrees. At the heart of the United Linux project as well as other Linux distro projects was the Linux Standard Base (LSB) which was set up to define common specifications for Linux distributions ( Linux distros) and Linux application programs. The LSB had the support of all the major Linux makers. Its stated aim was to develop and promote a set of standards that would promote compatibility among Linux distributions and enable the software applications to run on any compliant Linux systems. The stage was set for a major computer OS software platform for functionality and some standardizations.

This was a fairly big overlap , for the United Linux project, but it went a lot further. The LSB specification covered the Linux application programming interface with a view to allowing software and project developers to create applications that could well be deployed across all LSB compliant operating system platforms.

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The first part of the plan was for the four partners to pool their development resources to create the U.I. ( United Linux) core. This was a single CD containing the basics of the operating system drivers and at that time a state of the art linux installation program. The whole distro was meant to be an enterprise grade solution , which as a start was based around SUSE’s enterprise Linux Server product of the time. The core application itself was based on work already completed by the Linux Standard Base of that time and was to be compliant of the then current standards for things like web services. authentication and file system hierarchy , it was intended in the first instance on x86-32 , IA64 , and X86-64 platforms and was aimed predominantly at business users and useage

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– Microsoft Corp. yesterday said that it expects Windows XP, the operating system supposedly made moot by Windows Vista, to make up a significantly larger part of sales in the coming year.

During a conference call with analysts following the earnings results release yesterday afternoon, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said the company has changed its fiscal year 2008 forecast from an 85/15 split in sales between Vista and XP to a 78/22 split. Windows XP sales will, in other words, be nearly 50% higher in the next 12 months than Microsoft had estimated earlier.

“We fine-tuned the Vista/XP mix for next year” during the company’s usual budgeting last month, said Liddell. “We changed it from 85% to 78%. Now, it’s a lower number [for Vista], but it’s still a very high number overall from our perspective, so 78% Vista mix in terms of sales next year.”

According to Liddell, Microsoft will generate the same revenue, more or less, under the new Vista vs. XP numbers, although there might be some slight differences because Vista sales have tended to involve more of the higher-priced versions, dubbed premium by the company, than has XP. The financial forecast didn’t spell out that directly, however. The only clue was a $120 million difference in what Microsoft pegged as the “undelivered elements” it assigned to unearned income for the coming year.

“Undelivered elements” are revenue set-asides to account for as-yet-unknown upgrades and enhancements to software. The set-aside shrunk from $660 million in the last 2008 forecast to $540 in the estimate presented yesterday.

“Because of that change [in the OS split], then the amount of undelivered element that comes from Vista is slightly lower than it would be otherwise,” Liddell explained.

His remarks caught the attention of Michael Cherry, analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Wash.-based research company. “What that seems to say is that XP has stronger legs than you would expect after the release of a new operating system.”

Clues that users aren’t ready to ditch XP have not been hard to find. In April, for example, Dell Inc. retreated from its earlier Vista-only position and announced it would return XP to the operating system choice list for consumer PCs. Three months before that, Microsoft extended support to Windows XP Home and XP Media Center to match Windows XP Professional’s drop-dead date of April 2014.

“Most of the machines I see pitched in catalogs are in the $700 range, certainly under $1,000,” said Cherry. “Computers with that amount of hardware are a better fit for XP. With Vista’s requirements, people may be thinking about sticking with XP, and putting less money into the hardware.”

It’s possible, Cherry added, that Microsoft might find itself forced to recognize more reality in the future. “At some point, they might have to consider limiting the availability of XP” to push people to Vista

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Badger Linux