Is Apple Killing Linux on the Desktop?

Domains May Disappear writes "Chris Howard has an interesting commentary at Apple Matters on recent trends in OS market share that says that while OS X has seen continual growth, from 4.21% in Jan 2006 to 7.31% in December 2007 at the same time, Linux's percentage has risen from only 0.29% to 0.63%. The reasons? 'Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn't; Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn't; Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn't; Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not,' says Howard. 'Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Linux was it. Nowadays, an Apple Mac is undoubtedly the alternative and, with its resurgence and its Intel base, a very viable one.'"

The Universal Platform

[gbulmash]

When it came time for me to buy a new machine, and I was dead set against another Windows box, I bought a Mac. It gave me the best of both worlds. I get most of the best non-GUI Linux packages (or at least most of the best) via the BSD ports collection, a number of Linux GUI packages with Apple's X interface, great integration of virtualized Windows applications with Parallels, all the Mac specific software, and the Apple store is a 5-minute drive away if I need more help than I can get online.

I can run Linux in Bootcamp or Parallels, so if I really want something only Linux can deliver, I can have that too.

Mac is sort of the "universal platform", IMO, and a year later, I consider it a very worthwhile investment.

Greg

Point of view

[reynaert]

Linux market share has increased by 117%, while Apple's increase is only 74%.

Advertising

[Ren.Tamek]

I see Apple iPods on the street every day. I see Apple iPhones on the TV constantly. I know Apple is the company to buy my technology from, because everyone else does. Therefore, when I come to make a purchase as boring as a new PC, I know Apple will make one I want to buy.

Sincerely, the average consumer.

Yes, for me at least.

[MBCook]

I liked Linux and was slowly switching until I got to see how nice OS X was and became (as it was released/updated). There is a very good chance I spent most of my time on Linux at this point if it wasn't for OS X. My brother is probably the same was, as are many others in small IT department I work at. OS X provides us the unixy goodness we love (command line and such), with a great GUI that's easy to use and commercial software and things "just working". I've been on a Mac for a few years now, yet I still discover nice little things (like my Mac keeps separate mute statuses for when I have headphones plugged in and not plugged in, so it adjusts automatically as soon as I plug my headphones in.)

If you are not a hardcore FOSS person who wants the source to everything they run... OS X provides a fantastic environment for a great many people.

Who uses support?

[magister159]

Honestly, I have never thought of calling my operating system manufacturer for support.

Perhaps it's because I work in IT, and I'm smarter than your average Tier 1 support monkey... But I can't imagine a normal person saying "I can't connect to the Internet, let me call Microsoft".

Then again, I could be completely off base.

Eee PC will change that

[flyingfsck]

The Eee PC is slated to sell 5 million units in 2008. That is more than Apple sells in a year.

Nuf sed.

Not Quite Universal

[PrescriptionWarning]

if there's one feature about Ubuntu that I love more than my Mac is that you can install a TON of applications from Synaptic or via the awesome Add/Remove app. OSX on the other hand, if you want to install some new piece of software, be prepared to pay for it, or to get a really useless trial version.

The reason people are buying mac is because they want something new, and when it comes to purchasing a computer your only choices are OSX and Vista for most people. I'd bet anything that if we saw more linux pcs at stores like best buy and walmart, the cheaper linux PC would CLOBBER in sales, because people really do care about cost.

Re:Linux market share?

[linuxrocks123]

The stats are global, but they're from HitsLink, http://marketshare.hitslink.com./ [marketshare.hitslink.com] This site is known to overestimate Mac market share and to underestimate Linux market share.

Re:Does it really matter?

[garett_spencley]

VMWare will not run Mac OSX. Well, it will but not very well.

First off, it's not supported by VMWare (I've heard due to legal reasons but I don't know for sure). So there are no VMWare tools and it runs rather slow. Plus I couldn't get sound or networking to work at all. Sound I can happily live without but no networking + the extreme sluggishness made it completely useless.

If you've gotten OSX to work with networking, sound and no sluggishness then please correct me and link to a "how to" because I would love to get it working.

Re:Biased, however....

[Otter]

Obviously Apple Matters is going to have a bias towards OS X and that should be taken into account. However, that said we've been reducing both our Windows and Linux systems in favor of OS X for some time now for many of the reasons outlined in the referenced article.

From walking around the MIT campus, it seems like there's been a huge increase in uptake of Macs around there, by everyone from fresh-faced undergrads to grizzled beardos. It used to be that the biologists were the only ones who had them.

That's just laptops, though; I have no idea how it translates to desktops.

Re:only if the user can afford to...

[arivanov]

Most people I knew to run Linux did not run it for the costs (me including). It is a tool of the trade and my optimal working environment. So 500$ is not going to phase me if it does the job. Windows simply does not.

As far as the article, frankly it is based on the "optimistic" stats. A while ago there was another article on Slashdot which was on Vista vs MacOSX based on browser usage. It had some striking stats. A nearly direct correlation between "all others" and MacOS growth along with no correlation between Windows XP decrease. Essentially looking at those stats it was clearly obvious that the primary source of MacOS growth in the beginning were not Windows converts, but Unix converts:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=5 [hitslink.com]

I switched

[Lemuel]

I switched from Linux to a Mac a couple of years ago. What I found was that I was spending a lot of time on system administration and wasn't benefiting myself or anyone else. There were too many cases where things wouldn't work unless I dug down and found an obscure file to update to make things work. And no, I'm not talking common ones like /etc/resolv.conf. The free software answer is to modify the code to improve the programs, but I don't have the time to do that. I tried a Mac that I inherited, then bought a Mac Mini, then finally a MacBook Pro. I still have my Linux computer, but it is in my closet turned off for over a year. I've installed Linux on a couple of desktops at work but don't really use them much, and when I have problems I'm reminded why I switched to a Mac.

I will say that Ubuntu is a lot more convenient than the plain Debian I used to run and I might like Linux on the desktop if I tried it again. I've found, though, that I have a lot more apps I rely on on the Mac than I did with Linux so it would be a lot harder to convert back to Linux than it was to come to the Mac.

the reasons

[vajaradakini]

The reasons? 'Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn't; Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn't; Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn't; Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not,'

...Apple spends a pile of money on advertising and producing pretty, slick, expensive machines, Linux does not.

I also wonder how these people take into account the number of people who run linux on macs. One of my friends was running gentoo on his macbook for a while.

Re:The Universal Platform

[nine-times]

When it came time for me to buy a new machine...

I think this opening is crucial, though. When buying a new machine, Apple is an option, and a good option at that. However, if you'd like to upgrade from Windows XP on an existing computer, OSX simply isn't an option.

Being an IT person and talking to other IT people, it seems to me that a lot of people are feeling like XP is falling slightly out of date, but that Vista isn't a good upgrade option. This is a big opening for Linux to make some headway in gaining market share. There really are people (believe it or not) who are evaluating Linux as an OS "upgrade" to existing hardware for their company.

Ultimately, there are lots of people are at least mildly interested in moving away from Windows right now. As attractive as OSX is, I think there are lots of people who won't want to be tied too closely to a single hardware/software vendor for all of their desktop machines, at least not without an escape plan.

And while I say this, I admit that I'm a very happy Apple customer, and OSX is my desktop OS of choice. I use Windows, Linux, and OSX every day, but ideally, I'd like to use only cross-platform applications, and then be free to choose which operating system I want to use willy-nilly without any vendor forcing me to a single platform. Unfortunately, very few software developers really develop cross-platform. I think Firefox is the only app that I find sufficiently native on all 3 platforms (grouping Linux with other Unix stuff as one platform). OpenOffice still doesn't have a real Aqua port (though NeoOffice is very usable), and Adobe doesn't support Linux yet. I'll have to check Office 2008, but I don't find Entourage 2004 to be a sufficient replacement to Outlook. Of course, you might consider Adium a port of GAIM, but there are some very drastic differences.

...wait... am I rambling? Sorry.

Re:my rebuttal

[abigor]

Ha, I own one for that exact reason: it's the best machine for me, a non-Windows, Java/Python/C programmer, that I've found. To each their own, I guess.

Re:hmmm

[Yaztromo]

But isn't OS-X...under the Aqua interface basically a *nix platform? So in a way, can't we possibly...if we wanted to be REALLY anal about it and help shove it down the throat of M$.... claim that with the migration of the Apple OS to the OS X platform from the classic OS (os 9 and prior), that we have actually dramatically INCREASED the adoption of *nix on the Desktop??

I think this is an important detail. While OS X may compete in some peoples minds in the desktop realm, in actual fact they are complimentary. While some OSS advocates may decry OS X as "proprietary", the fact is that Apple releases a lot of the core of their OS as OSS, uses a lot of OSS software in OS X, and they embrace standards (as opposed to trying to co-opt them).

What this means in practical terms is that OS X and Linux integrate together quite easily. For example, stick netatalk and Avahi on a Linux system, and you have a really easy and Mac-friendly file-server.

I won't claim that Apple is always perfect, but at least it's fairly easy to use OS X with other OSs, especially when it comes to Linux.

(I've had the thought int he back of my mind for some time that if I had the time and resources, I'd love to fork a Linux distro to create a Mac-friendly-Linux distro. All the parts are there -- it just takes someone to put them all together).

Yaz.

Re:Not Quite Universal

[vux984]

For me, however, I simply wasn't willing to invest the absurd amount of energy and time to get my development environment going on it that would have taken me an hour from start to finish on any given linux system.

I can understand why you wanted this, but I don't really grok why you thought it would be easy. Unix and Linux are similiar, but they are not the same. OSX is Unix. Never forget that.

Its absurd to expect exactly replicating a Linux dev environment on Unix would be easy. Getting a LAMP stack going in OSX or Solaris, or even windows is pretty trivial. Getting your exact linux lamp stack going in OSX, or Solaris, or Windows is not.

Whatever

[mooreti1]

I'm not a Linux fanboy, even though I use it. Conversely, I'm neither a Windows or OSX hater, though I don't use either one. The fact is this, I don't have a grand in US dollars to spend on a really pretty PC (Apple). I could, however, scrounge up enough spare parts from around and about to build my own PC. However, again, I didn't have a couple of hundred dollars, minimum, to buy an operating system and associated office software (Windows and Office). I did, though, have access to a broadband connection at a friends house who also owned a DVD burner.

Thusly, I have a really inexpensive PC with a damn good Linux distro (openSuSE) that provides me with everything I need while I pauper myself through college as a middle-aged white guy (MAWG).

So, to Apple and Microsoft; bite me.

I'm just saying...

Re:Not Quite Universal

[TheRaven64]

There is a Adobe Photoshop codebase that works on Unix based platforms. When you ask for a copy for your Linux desktop, the reason the answer is no is because even though we've invested the effort and could give you what you want, for business reasons we choose not to do so at this time.

If Photoshop used POSIX and Cocoa APIs on OS X then you might have a point since the POSIX APIs exist on every *NIX platform and the GNUstep implements a large portion of Cocoa and someone like Adobe could relatively cheaply implement the others.

This is not the case, however. Photoshop on OS X is a port of the old MacOS Classic one. This originally used the Mac Toolbox. It was then ported to Carbon, which is very similar to the old toolbox APIs but tidied up a bit. When OS X was introduced, the few MacOS 9 dependencies were removed and it was recompiled for OS X. No implementations of these exist for any *NIX platform other than OS X. It would be easier to port the Windows version of Photoshop to Linux/BSD/Solaris using Winelib than the Carbon version.

Of course, now Apple have effectively deprecated the Carbon APIs (no 64-bit version) and added a lot of things to make it easier to move apps from Carbon to Cocoa, this may change.

Re:meh statistics

[easyEmu]

:) Thank God someone posted this! I was looking through all the decent posts to see if anyone pointed out the simple fact that, according to the numbers stated in the article, Linux experienced a significantly bigger growth than Mac. Conclusion; the article is not worth reading.

Re:my rebuttal

[Teilo]

Yes, thank you! For every barrier in Linux desktop adoption there are ten thousand Linux ideologues insisting that the barrier is a good thing, and you are just stupid if you can't deflibberate your cronoodleblitz.

I ran exclusively Linux on desktop and laptop for 3 years. I ran Gentoo. I deflibberated many many cronoodleblitzen. I loved it. Still love it. Still manage 6 Gentoo servers.

I currently run Leopard an a Macbook Pro.

Sorry, but TFA's right. I run CS3; I develop in Eclipse; I have Terminal open almost all the time; I run Parallels w/convergence and effortlessly run Access databases with no library/3rd party control weirdness such as WINE/Crossover gave me.

My business needs are broad. I live in a mixed Mac/Windows/Linux office environment. I commonly am required to mix graphics design, database, and server work all together into one project (image personalization, data scrubbing, variable data printing, bulk snail-mail processing). I need all the above tools. I could do almost all of the above in Linux, and spend hours being unproductive while I was just trying to make things work. Or I can just use a Mac.

Someday, when life is simple for me again, I may go back to Linux on the laptop. (As it is, I occasionally fire up an Kubuntu VM in Parallels for certain things). But until then, I am very content with OS X.

The world is more than the west

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just returned from a small town in the middle of the Philippines. Recently, two interesting things have happened. 1) XP will no longer let you get updates if it's been pirated, 2) the software police have been raiding even nothing little towns, and *confiscating* computers with pirated software. They are forced to pay ~$250 US on each copy of Office and they don't get media. They have to download it for every machine, which is really hard when you have slow and unreliable internet access. Microsoft is forcing them to look at alternatives, and OpenOffice and Linux are being looked at, and used in some cases.

My point is that in the West, OS X is great, and is so much better than XP. In some parts of Asia and elsewhere, OS X isn't really an option. They just don't have the money. The way it appears to me is that in a few years, Linux will be the only viable option in some places, and many of these places have a *lot* of people.

Re:Yes, for me at least.

[TechForensics]

I'm the opposite of you. I was trying out OS X after years with Windows and signficant experience with Linux. Even with Fink, not enough good Gnome and KDE GUI stuff runs under OS X... you still have to buy software for many uses. The Mac GUI is beautiful, slick and elegant, but it is a bit paternalistic, too-- no easy / safe way to stop a file move or copy, no easy way to shut down when an app that's running is not in the mood to let you, and lots of delays with the twirling pinwheel disc and no way to kill the app (short of finding the PID via top and typing "kill" in a root console window). At the end of the day, for me, Debian Etch is better, and I find myself booting less and less into OS X and more and more into good old Debian. Amarok is far better than iTunes, in my opinion. Photoshop, etc.? I still have my old Windows box for that. A KVM switch completes the setup. For what I do every day, you cannot beat Debian for responsiveness, control, transparency, and price.

Re:Not true!

[phillymjs]

Being Windows Vista the crap that it is, I don't understand why Apple doesn't release a Mac OS X version for the PC.

Because Windows suffers for its "it'll run on damn near anything" design. It's designed for lowest common denominator, and it's impossible to test every possible combination of hardware.

Mac OS X has the "it just works" reputation it does because it's written for very specific hardware and can take full advantage of all the capabilities of that hardware. As soon as you can install OS X on any shitbox you can cobble together, you lose that.

The closest you'd ever get would be like the post-black-hardware NeXTSTEP days, when the OS supported certain motherboards, CD drives, etc, and you had to use what was on the NeXTSTEP HCL, or you were SOL. But don't hold your breath-- since Apple makes most of their money from hardware sales, they'd be cutting their own throat. Like when they allowed Mac clones and the cloners nearly bled them to death.

~Philly

Re:Scientists are buying macs in droves

[larry bagina]

I used to use NeXT slabs (loved the display postscript), then moved to Sun (with X support for display PS). I tried linux but display ghostscript was inadequate. These days, I'm using OS X and display PDF is sweet. I'm no longer scared of PDF web pages either :-)

Re:Not Quite Universal

[Sheik Yerbouti]

I run Photoshop CS2 (Which no kidding I actually paid 600 bucks for) on Ubuntu via WINE just fine. Other software I paid for on Linux includes noise ninja (great noise reduction software for pro photography), and Bibble Pro (raw conversion software) and I will probably buy a LightZone license for Linux when it comes out of beta. I am not concerned about cost as much as I am about a stable, reliable, usable Operating System infrastructure that is open and allows competition around a standard OS platform. This is something neither Microsoft or Apple provide.

Re:~150 Linux desktops migrate to OS X

[Jesterboy]

Well, no offense, but I think you might be a bit of a special case [slashdot.org]...

I had a friend who managed a network for an academic institution. In total, it was approximately 60 user systems in all, about 40 Windows, 20 Linux. The servers themselves were primarily Linux, but also included several legacy Solaris systems, a few multi-terabyte RAID arrays, and some printers / plotters. It was, for the most part, a smoothly running network. However, once a few of the people bought Macs as their workstations, chaos ensued. Despite my friend's considerable Mac experience, he spent 1/10th of his total time support 1/20th of the users, ignoring server administration and hardware tasks. This never seemed very "cost effective" to me.

Of course, perhaps this wasn't a normal occurence case. I just hope your "lower cost" isn't based only on your laptop incident; you can't expect Steve Jobs to handle ALL your support calls. ^_^

Re:my rebuttal

[MachineShedFred]

And OS X (at least 10.4) still can't reliably connect to a network share (the network browser is *really* bad) while I can type ftp:// [ftp] [ftp] or smb:// in any Linux desktop.

Not sure how you could use an OS for an entire year without discovering the "Go > Connect to Server..." command where you can type in ftp:// [ftp] or smb:// or nfs:// or afp:// exactly the same...

Re:my rebuttal

[Tom]

Apple might be good for a grandma or for a graphic designer, but for a programmer it's an annoyance.

Really? Weird, I beg to differ, and so do lots and lots of other programmers.

TextMate is a wonderful editor, tell me an equivalent on Linux.
The Apple Developer tools are said to be excellent, but I've not tried them.
3rd party development environments like Unity blow away their windos and Linux counterparts.

You may not personally like it, but there are enough programmers using Macs on a daily basis that your claim "for a programmer it's an annoyance" is solidly debunked.

How does Open Source have any market value?????

[nisquallypauli]

Its easy to compare market values for Microsoft and Apple. Since they
both are sold on the market. Linux based software isn't all commercial,
and being Ubuntu has the ability to run Office suite, with the only limitation
being having the MS Office license agreement. How does one honestly compare
market values???? I run multiple partitions on my Windows machines so I
have the ability to run anything I want. 98% of the time I use the Linux
base distros - with the ability to run the MS products also. I use the wording
ability to run. But with the advent of OO.org I have no limitations.
I have no expense limitations also. And beside I never access the internet with
my windows partitions, mainly for security reasons. Secondly Linux base distros
operate so much more effectively and faster on internet and/or network connections.
Apple? Now that the mac is a dual core pentium and OSX is unix based. Why not
it works and a lot of open source is available for this nice OS too. And
one can add partitions and install ubuntu with it also, or better yet
us Vmware Fusion, and run anything you want. Cost factor. Open Source Linux
Distros - Run better - Cost less in the long run.

Until We Meet Again.
Nisqually Pauli

Re:my rebuttal

[DA-MAN]

I bought a Dell Vostro 1400 with a Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs of ram, 14" 1440x900 gloss screen, 120gb HD, 2 Megapixel webcam, Bluetooth, 11g Wifi and DVD Burner for $650 last year.

Apple's nearest competitor doesn't come with a high resolution screen. To me, Apple just can't compete on price, nor is its software compelling enough to switch.

Re:my rebuttal

[dbIII]

Actually if OS X actually had a reasonable X Windows it would be a good replacement for every desktop in the office I work at. There are a lot of remote applications in use so MS Windows is not very good at it (even with hummingbird exceed) and even gnome has problems with it occasionally.

Re:my rebuttal

[gfxguy]

Agreed... and I can boot to Windows if I have to, but that's rare.

I like Apple a lot, and like Mac OSX, a lot! Some of our workstations at work have it, and we've got lovely 30 inch widescreen monitors that look phenomenal with the Mac.

Sadly, price is a huge deal for me. When I bought mine for less than $1k, there were no Apple laptops anywhere near that price. The laptops that look compelling to me now are all sub-$1000.

If I had no wife, no kids, etc., etc., an Apple would be great.

Not exactly

[Chris Snook]

In my anecdotal experience, desktop Linux is driving Mac sales. Whenever I point a frustrated Windows user towards Linux, they never go back to Windows. Some of them stick with Linux, and some of them buy Macs, but all of them learn that it's not really all that hard to switch. Those that end up as Mac users will have no difficulty switching back to Linux if Apple stops being worth the price premium to them.