Linux hits nearly 4% desktop user share on Statcounter

Quoting: slaapliedjeConspiracy Mode; Have you ever wondered if one of the main reasons Office and it's ilk are moving to cloud based systems is due to Linux finally getting to the point where it can run stand alone Office? I'm pretty sure the latest version runs fine there now... (I still don't know why macOS got a port of Office, and Linux never did. You'd think MS would want Office on all the platforms they could to make more money... but then again, they figure they can force people to also buy Windows... greedy Mofos).

Funny you should mention that. Microsoft Word has had an official version for Macintosh since initial release in 1983. It predates even Windows; it was MS-DOS back then. Microsoft Excel was released for Macintosh two years before a Windows version appeared. So you could say one of the reasons is Linux didn't actually exist back then.

This was a few years after Microsoft abandoned their UNIX OS, XENIX.

I've gotten Microsoft Office to work under CrossOver but Word was the only one that worked decently. Powerpoint was very crash-happy. Excel was fine, but I didn't use it much. I wonder if the Affinity Suite will be usable and stable in Wine before Microsoft Office is...

Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnyway, nearly 4%. I've never seen a number that high for Linux desktop use. And while OK, the latest month was a big jump, that general trend looks really nice. Not only is it an upward slope, but it seems to me that it's slightly upward curving. We are starting to get into traditional MacOS territory; one or two more percentage points and Linux becomes something general software companies may start paying some attention to.

It's interesting to see what happens in January and February. December means more people at home and fewer in the office. This jump could mean that corporations' OS use is biased more towards windows, and home computers more towards Linux.

QuoteLinux hits nearly 4% desktop user share on Statcounter

My reaction to winning the OS Wars after all these years, Mein Führer...! I can valk!


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 4 January 2024 at 4:53 am UTC

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: slaapliedjeConspiracy Mode; Have you ever wondered if one of the main reasons Office and it's ilk are moving to cloud based systems is due to Linux finally getting to the point where it can run stand alone Office? I'm pretty sure the latest version runs fine there now... (I still don't know why macOS got a port of Office, and Linux never did. You'd think MS would want Office on all the platforms they could to make more money... but then again, they figure they can force people to also buy Windows... greedy Mofos).

Funny you should mention that. Microsoft Word has had an official version for Macintosh since initial release in 1983. It predates even Windows; it was MS-DOS back then. Microsoft Excel was released for Macintosh two years before a Windows version appeared. So you could say one of the reasons is Linux didn't actually exist back then.

This was a few years after Microsoft abandoned their UNIX OS, XENIX.

I've gotten Microsoft Office to work under CrossOver but Word was the only one that worked decently. Powerpoint was very crash-happy. Excel was fine, but I didn't use it much. I wonder if the Affinity Suite will be usable and stable in Wine before Microsoft Office is...

MS Write was also available for the Atari ST (I think that's what it was called before they changed it to Word). I don't think it was ever available for the Amiga though.

Ha, had to look that up, as the Machintosh wasn't available in 1983.. Word was available on Xenix first. Classic Mac got it in 1985, Atari ST got it in 1988, OS/2 in 1989 and Windows (also 1989). The wikipedia article states that you can run Word before 2013 on Linux via Wine.

Microsoft pissed me off back in '97 after I bought 'Home Essentials' because I needed a word processor (with aspirations of becoming a writer). Paid $100 bucks for it (which was a ton of money for my crappy job at the time) and then a month later they released Office '97, with no upgrade path...

These days, I think I'll start doing my writing with Atari Works. :P

Quoting: slaapliedjeMS Write was also available for the Atari ST (I think that's what it was called before they changed it to Word). I don't think it was ever available for the Amiga though.

Amiga users didn't need MS Write. We had the clearly superior WordPerfect. :P

Typed a bunch of my school essays on my Amiga 500 and printed them out with a very noisy Star LC-10 dot matrix printer.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: slaapliedjeMS Write was also available for the Atari ST (I think that's what it was called before they changed it to Word). I don't think it was ever available for the Amiga though.

Amiga users didn't need MS Write. We had the clearly superior WordPerfect. :P

Typed a bunch of my school essays on my Amiga 500 and printed them out with a very noisy Star LC-10 dot matrix printer.

Ha, so true. I've been looking into just setting up an old PC with Corel Linux and WP8 for Linux (last version that was native). I sort of got it working on a modern Debian, but the nostalgia of old KDE and everything sounds tempting!

Out of all the platforms out there, the Amiga seems to be the only one that never had an Office suite made by (or at least bought by) the owner. Like there are a couple of them, but they were all made by third party companies. Atari had Works, Mac bought Claris, and even the Apple IIGS has a version of that. It's just one more checkbox in the 'Commodore didn't properly support the Amiga'.

Quoting: slaapliedjeThese days, I think I'll start doing my writing with Atari Works. :P

Joke aside, look into LaTeX! Such a relief not getting bogged down with formatting vs WYSIWYG.


Last edited by ShabbyX on 5 January 2024 at 8:43 am UTC

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI'm willing to accept this if programs built for ChromeOS work on Linux distributions like Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE. Is that the case?

That way round is trivial: ChromeOS uses web apps. The other way round is harder, but ChromeOS has been able to run Linux applications in a container for around five years. Work is ongoing to make Steam and Steam games on ChromeOS a thing.

Well, sure, web applications work on everything. The New Java. I'm sure that's what's at least partially motivating Adobe to port Photoshop to the Web in some limited form.

I've never owned a Chromebook—surely there are native programs on there not accessible from the web? I know CrossOver has its own ChromeOS version. I know the main point is the web, but since you can install Steam and play Steam games, that's at least one program you can use.

But the way you phrased it makes me think native ChromeOS programs don't actually work on Linux

If Adobe comes out with its entire suite for ChromeOS (namely After Effects) but it doesn't work on Linux, I would not consider ChromeOS a Linux distribution, because it being "based on Linux" would mean nothing for the effective market share of Linux.

maybe not directly but it could have some indirectly, like having better support for game engines like unity or unreal as result of then having an similiar base.
or more games using vulkan

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI'm willing to accept this if programs built for ChromeOS work on Linux distributions like Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE. Is that the case?

That way round is trivial: ChromeOS uses web apps. The other way round is harder, but ChromeOS has been able to run Linux applications in a container for around five years. Work is ongoing to make Steam and Steam games on ChromeOS a thing.

Well, sure, web applications work on everything. The New Java. I'm sure that's what's at least partially motivating Adobe to port Photoshop to the Web in some limited form.

I've never owned a Chromebook—surely there are native programs on there not accessible from the web? I know CrossOver has its own ChromeOS version. I know the main point is the web, but since you can install Steam and play Steam games, that's at least one program you can use.

But the way you phrased it makes me think native ChromeOS programs don't actually work on Linux

If Adobe comes out with its entire suite for ChromeOS (namely After Effects) but it doesn't work on Linux, I would not consider ChromeOS a Linux distribution, because it being "based on Linux" would mean nothing for the effective market share of Linux.

i agree but it would have some indirect effects, like more game engines supporting linux, or better support for linux (since the base is the same), or more games supporting vulkan/with better vulkan support, or more developers learning it.

Quoting: WorMzyWho makes up these percentages? People checking statcounter.com to see who's checking statcounter.com?

just like ads pay people to host their ads, they put javascript code in thirdy party sites (probably paying then to host it) so they can get this date, or purchase this info from someone who gather this data.

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: CatKillerNope. Until last year ChromeOS the UI and ChromeOS the browser were exactly the same binary. The change last year to separate them was to make ChromeOS more Linux-like.

They dabbled with having web-apps-but-packaged-differently for a while but dropped that (as Google tends to do) a few years ago in favour of just-web-apps.

This is mind-boggling. And makes me all kinds of confused. I skimmed the Ars article at the time and figured it could only be good.

Is the Steam program for ChromeOS just some kind of weirdly packaged webapp pretending not to be a webapp? Can it not run normal binaries? What about CrossOver? On the one hand, so long as web environment integrity is not a thing, that's great for compatibility for all OSes. Rising tides and all that.

But why would you purposely GIMP your OS like that?? It's one thing to be web-first, but web-only is something else...

(with apologies to the current GIMP maintainers)

Quoting: CatKillerThe thing that ChromeOS can do that desktop Linux can't (but which Windows can) is run Android applications. But people generally don't think of Android (or Windows) as a desktop Linux OS.

I remember there being something that could do that on Linux. Waydroid?

1)security, you only have to deal with one attack vector.
2)convincing developers to target the web seems to be way easier than convincing then to target linux (not to mention linux is not a single target)
3)google had an google "control" over the internet, more people using it would mean more space for then to fill with ads or to collect data.
4)??
5)profit