Linux Turns 30 as Windows Market Share Falls Below 30%

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2021-08-29 11:03:24 UTC
Modified: 2021-08-29 11:07:13 UTC

Video download link | md5sum ea4893af387306b6eb8e46e9d2d32748

[video width=480 height=340 webm="http://techrights.org/videos/linux-30th-anniversary.webm" poster="http://techrights.org/videos/linux-30th-anniversary.gif"][/video]

Summary: Linux is 30, Android is Linux-based, and Windows is smaller than Android in terms of market share; but the biggest challenge right now is bringing software freedom to more people

EVERYBODY has been speaking about Linux turning 30 (although the actual anniversary of importance is debatable, as Alex Oliva explained last week).

"...Android is one of the Linux-based operating systems that harm one's privacy and freedom (even if AOSP is mostly Free software) because it comes with loads of proprietary "apps" and typically tracks locations."No doubt Linux "has won" so to speak; but Linux is not software freedom, it is just a GPL-licensed kernel which many freedom-respecting operating systems use for practical/pragmatic reasons (Linux has very extensive hardware support that is almost impossible to match). As noted in the video above, Android is one of the Linux-based operating systems that harm one's privacy and freedom (even if AOSP is mostly Free software) because it comes with loads of proprietary "apps" and typically tracks locations (see "Google's Software is Malware").

The Linux (or GNU linux-libre) work by Oliva mostly involves 'taming' Linux to make it more freedom-respecting, in turn allowing freedom-oriented distros to avoid the more malicious parts of Linux. Oliva's work is invaluable!

"The Linux (or GNU linux-libre) work by Oliva mostly involves 'taming' Linux to make it more freedom-respecting, in turn allowing freedom-oriented distros to avoid the more malicious parts of Linux."In the video above I've repeatedly alluded to how ubiquitous Android became (one might say "popular", but that's not the same thing). Android news is everywhere, all the time, very likely outpacing Windows 'news' (mostly paid-for vapourware and puff pieces) because billions of people care about their phones and tablets more than laptops and desktops. There are also tons of anniversary articles about Linux, including some from Android-focused news sites. There's growing recognition that Linux "has won" in some sense or some senses.

At whose expense?

Mostly Windows!

Android versus Windows Microsoft is doing so poorly that it's buying vendors and rebranding them "Azure" (in order to fake 'growth'), pretending that Azure is somehow an "operating system" now (it is not; they also reused the brand "Surface" in this way). Things have gotten so bad for Microsoft that we caught Windows at 28% market share earlier this year (here's the latest data in OpenDocument format) and right now it's still hovering around 30% while Microsoft constantly makes false claims about its market power, in effect defrauding shareholders. Here's Android/Linux versus Windows, as per the end of August; if Android is combined with ChromeOS and GNU/Linux ("proper"), we're talking about something close to 50% market share. ⬆

Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software: Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
Links 27/09/2023: 3G Phase-Out, Monopolies, and Exit of Rupert Murdoch: Links for the day
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More: Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards: This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family: Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware: They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up): There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware: There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site: This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation): Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism: There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back: We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links: There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging: We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site: We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding: some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows): The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies: SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux: It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025): We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered: Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products: Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window): They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash: Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful: We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware): Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot: Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either: the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers: In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users: Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer

Linux Turns 30 as Windows Market Share Falls Below 30%

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts