The State of the Operating System Market

Here's exiting news. For the first time in 15 years, the Windows market share fell below 90%. On the upswing is Mac OS X with 8.87% of the market, and Linux at 0.83%. Source

These numbers are important for a number of reasons. For starters, Microsoft is gradually loosing it's grasp on the operating system market. Apple is doing a fantastic job of nipping Microsoft's monopoly.

As for Linux, you may noticed that it enjoyed 0.93% market share in August. I suspect this has been due to the release of UMPCs like th Eee PC. As the fad cooled down, chances are the sales cooled down as well. However, while visiting Future Shop on the weekend, I saw five UMPC with two of them running Linux. That's a 40% market share for Linux just there ;). As I predicted earlier, the rise of cheap computers will continue to hurt Microsoft as they are struggling to compete against free and open operating systems.

To put the numbers in perspective, here's a little report I put together with my trusty OpenOffice Calc:


A couple of interesting trends to notice.

Windows has been steadily loosing ground. This year alone, they've lost 2% of their market share. The year before that, 1.94%. Ouch! I can see why Microsoft was in a rush to deliver Vista. They needed something to help them regain the ground that they are loosing to other operating systems.

Apple has more than double their market presence over nearly five years. I personally attribute this to Mac OS X and Steve Job's marketing genius. Mac OS X is a true Unix operating system with a gorgeous interface slapped on top of it. This means that newcomers to computer have a system which is simple and inviting, while power-users have a solid Unix machine to hack. Personally, I feel that this has been a stroke of genius on Apple's part. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, or adopting Windows, they took advantage of FLOSS to custom build a rapidly growing operating system that is leaving Windows in the dust.

Linux is still barely a blip on the radar, but is still growing. Between this year and last year, Linux enjoyed a growth of 30%. I feel that this is important, since Linux is already well established on the server, but is struggling to gain traction on the desktop. I'm of the opinion that this increase is due to the UMPC explosion earlier this year. Linux is slowly by steadily spreading to the desktop.

What remains to be seen is how next year will play out. Windows 7 is due out in mid 2009, and sounds like Microsoft may actually get this one right. I don't expect to see the same level of anticipation as there was with Vista, since Windows 7 sounds like the Windows Vista that customers where expecting to get in the first place.

Linux has definitely penetrated the market. It is becoming more and more of a household term but retains a mythical aura. It has become one of those buzzwords that folks like to throw in conversation.

I'm a very poor prophet of the future, but I would like to predict some exciting movements next year. I believe that Mac OS X will continue to climb. I suspect that Linux may drop a bit, now that the UMPC buzz is dying down. Windows may regains some of it's share. I would even go so far as saying that Windows' market share will remain stable next year — that is, no significant drop or rise.

However, in the years to come, as cell phones are starting to overlap desktop computers in terms of functionality, I suspect that this is where we will see Linux shoot up. Reading about the buzz on Windows 7, I'm getting the impression that Microsoft is positioning Windows to be a competitor not to Linux or even the Mac OS X, but for the iPhone. Unfortunately, I don't think they are going the right way about it. Microsoft's vision seems to be focused on the tablet PC. Windows XP running on a tablet PC was introduced in 2001 by Bill Gates. However, seven years later, tablet PCs failed to make a dent in the market.

The reason tablet PC have not replaced laptop is due their limitation. As cool as they look, they are nowhere near as useful as a regular laptop. For instance, most do not have a keyboard, or a cover for the screen. Also, a tablet PC cost considerably more than a regular laptop. As for competing with cell phones, a tablet is simply too bulky to haul, and whip out whenever you need it. Thus, the tablet PC is not the best of both world. It's just an expensive toy.

I have no doubt that multi-touch displays a-la-iPhone will become de facto in a few years. But once again, Microsoft is playing catch-up since Apple has already invested heavily in the technology, and has already benefited from the fruits of their research. Linux is also multi-touch aware, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the community builds with the technology.

One more OS to note is OpenSolaris. When Sun Microsystem initially decided to open-source their flagship operating system, I was skeptical. My original impression is that Sun was hoping to breathe back life into the venerable but ailing SunOS before it sputtered and died. To my surprise, it looks like OpenSolaris could quickly become competition for the likes of Ubuntu. As much as I like Linux, I'm please to see solid competition on the horizon. I would go as far as to say that OpenSolaris is an operating system you may want to keep your eyes on.

Good News All Abound

Yay!

OOXML has been formally appealed by South Africa, Brazil and India. Microsoft has announced that they will support ODF 1.1 in Office 2007. However, they will not even support OOXML until the next version of Office.

To keep up with the good news, Internet Explorer 8 will finally be standards compliant. As a web developer, this is such a relief! No more double standards for web pages.

Furthermore, thanks to the success of the Eee PC, Linux is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Desktop Linux is, in my (no so) humble opinion at a level that is above that of Windows and the Mac. Not only do you have choice, but if you compare the ease of use of Gnome or KDE, I think that Linux is a powerful contender. The only obstacle that remains is education. Windows users need to unlearn things like C:\ drives or the pain of running setup programs.

Finally, even Novell is reporting success in the Linux front. I took the plunge and installed Novell's openSUSE, and thus far I'm greatly enjoying it. As much as I like Ubuntu, I would hate for a single Linux distribution to become the 'defacto standard,' just like I would hate to see Gnome or KDE displace one or the other. Choice and competition are good.

I'm so excited to see real competition gearing up in the world of informatics. I'm afraid that the Microsoft monopoly has set us back a number of years from where we could be in terms of technology. For example, it if hadn't been for Internet Explorer slowing the adoption of standard HTML, then CSS, where would the web be now?

Oh well. That's water under the bridge. Now that we are freeing ourself from the Microsoft stranglehold, who know what real innovation we are going to see in the world of computing.

Microsoft Windows for (Nearly) Free?

This is a follow up to Microsoft Windows for Free?

Shortly after I wrote this entry, a couple of interesting events occurred. As I predicted, Microsoft went ahead to compete with Linux on ultramobile PCs (UMPC) like the Eee PC. They are now offering Windows XP Home for $32 US. It's not free, but it's getting close to cheap. Actually, it's not free in either sense of the word, since Microsoft dictates what it considers a UMPC. The maximum specs are: 1G of RAM, 80G of hard disk space, single-core processor running at 1Ghz, screen size of 10.2 inches and no touch screen capability. Anything higher than that requires the vendor to buy Windows XP at their regular price.

That's fair. It's their product, so they can choose how it's licensed. However, I fail to see how they plan to compete with Linux on this field with those restrictions. Furthermore, the $32 US is only for Windows. This means that if you want Word or Excel, be ready to fork out more money. I'd be surprise that Microsoft would allow the vendors to ship Windows with OpenOffice prepackaged. Have fun playing Minesweeper!

With Ubuntu, I have a full fledged desktop with my office suite. The full install that takes up less disk space than Windows — And the $32 stays in my pocket.

Another interesting event is the fact that One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) recently announced that they would support Windows XP on the XO laptop. What a shame. To me, that alienates the whole concept of the XO — learning. How can they learn in a closed, controlled and censored system that greatly limits their freedom. Some of those children who are growing up in a dictatorship are denied yet another freedom. That is a massive loss for them.

Those poor children are denied freedom in the world of computing to further entrench the monopoly of an American company. I cannot help but wonder what goes on in the mind of folks who are more concerned with buying yet another, bigger yacht on the back of those children.

I remember in the early days that OLPC decided that the XO should only use free software (as in free speech). Thus, both Windows and Mac OS X were refused early on. Steve Jobs, president of Apple, went as far as offering Mac OS X for free (as in beer) for the XO, but was denied, since he would not free (as in speech) the software.

In their 'philanthropic' move, Microsoft is charging about $3 for Windows XP. Of course, that does not include Office or anything like that. Just Windows (Yay! Minesweeper!). Furthermore, to allow the XO to dual boot between Windows and Linux, the machine will cost an additional $7 to make.

Since Microsoft is all about their image, I was surprised that they did not offer Windows for free as Steve Jobs did with Mac OS X. I mean, $3 per copy isn't going to register a blip on Microsoft's revenue radar. So, why?

The only thing I can see is anti-thrust. Microsoft is having enough problems with the EU and the Department of Justice, that they may be reticent to offer Windows for free out of fear that it will be perceived as an anti-competitive move.

Though I may be painting Microsoft as a nasty, greedy ogre, we have to remember that they cannot force people to buy their products. They are doing a fantastic job of both painting their software as the 'only' option and — more importantly — hiding the true monetary cost of buying (and using) Microsoft software.

As long as the average consumer remains ignorant of both of those aspects, they may never realize that there are alternatives — much less of the need for those alternatives.

Ubuntu Vs. Windows Vista

Wow. What can I say? I actually had a chance to work on Vista. Really! Since the hard disk in my work laptop died, I was given another portable pre-installed with Windows Vista.

What an experience. It's an HP dual core 1.9GHz 2G laptop with an nVidia graphics card. It should fly, right? Well, it flew about as gracefully as a turtle on it's back in the middle of the highway.

For comparison, I'm currently writing this blog from an older Gateway machine running on an AMD Turion 64 (single core), 1G of RAM with a Radeon XPress 200M. running (for now) Ubuntu 7.10. The machine was out of commission since I dropped an entire cup of coffee into the DVD drive. Thankfully, the folks at Farstar Networking in Alexandria did a fantastic job resurrecting it for a fraction of the cost I would have assumed it would have been.

However, back to Vista. For starters, after I had booted, the machine was already sucking up >700MB of ram. That leaves less than 1.3G to run my applications. That's not overly bad, since I've go to 2G on the HP, but my Gateway has only 1G. So, forget about running Vista on it. In Ubuntu, running the Gnome desktop with Compiz, Apache, MySQL, Firefox 2, Thunderbird and a system update, I'm not quite at the 475MB watermark.

I've heard a lot of folks complain about the performance of Vista. I finally had a chance to experience this first hand. Yuk! Is it ever SLOW. I could not even drag a window without the system studdering. Furthermore, I got kind notification from Norton Anti-Virus that my subscription was expired, and I should renew. What's that about my credit card number? I forgot what it's like to run an OS where you need an anti-virus. Let's not get into the endless array of continual popups.

Here's my first major gripe: No package manager. HP installed tons of crap on the laptop, including a (I would assume) redundant wireless connection manager, a trial version of Norton, tons of little application that are — supposedly — there to improve the user experience, and god knows what else. Time to clean the system!

I crack open the Add/Remove program, click on the first application, hold down control, and click on the next. Guess what? You can't! In Windows, you can only uninstall a single application at a time. Furthermore, it takes forever to remove the tiniest of application. Oh, and let's not get into the reboots. Remember, I'm cleaning this up because I need to get some work done. How much fun is it when all of a sudden, all your windows starts to close one after an other, and the machine reboots. Oh, I just love it when my operating system controls me. Sure! I love being a slave to the machine. Kiss your freedom goodbye.

On the other hand, I want to upgrade my Eee PC to Ubuntu 8.04. Unfortunately, I lacked disk space. No problem. I cracked open Synaptic package manager, selected a number of application for uninstallation, clicked Apply, and waited while the applications were removed. By the time the applications were removed, Windows Vista had finished booting, and was almost at the desktop. Of course, that was just one of the many reboots I had to do with Vista. None so far on the Eee PC!

Vista is slow. I asked one of my Windows Guru how I could turn off Areo. After digging around a bit, my guru showed me the option where I could chose the Windows Basic theme instead of Areo. What a difference this makes!!! I can move my Windows without feeling like the system is about to go into terminal shock. Here, on my Gateway, I've got Compiz working with the wobbly windows and all the fun graphic effects. It works great &mdash smooth as silk. Oh, and the Gateway is Windows Vista Capable. Not Ready, which means that Areo would not even work on the machine. My Eee PC is running eeeXubuntu with Compiz as well. It's pretty!

As a last point, one of my coworker asked about an 'upgrade path' from Vista Home to Vista Premium. He needed to upgrade Vista so he could run SQL Server Reporting Services (if I'm not mistaken). The software does not run on Windows Home. Not because Windows Home is incapable of running it, but because Microsoft thinks you should not. That is why I love free software. I come from a country that enjoys freedom of expression, movement, religion, etc. I cannot imagine myself relinquishing any of those fundamental freedoms for any price. It's the same thing with software.

I'm a free person. I refuse to pay for proprietary software that limits your freedom when there are perfectly good (better!) free solution out there.

In closing, my Eee PC quietly upgraded to Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04). One reboot was all it took. I then reinstalled whatever applications I had removed. No reboots. Everything works. Don't you wish it was the same in Windows? (To be fair, the wireless card did not come back up. But it took two minutes of googling, and found a simple solution)

While I'm writing this on my Windows-Vista-Incapable Gateway laptop running Ubuntu 7.10, I'm upgrading to Hardy Heron. Can you work on your machine while you are upgrading your Windows version?

If the answer is no, I would then ask you: why not?

Oh, and you paid how much for Windows Vista? And that does not even include an office suite???

<SHOCK>!!!!</SHOCK>

Glossy or Matte Screens

About two years ago, matte screens on laptops began to be replaced by glossy screens. The difference is that matte screens were non-reflective, while glossy screen were reflective. This meant that an unfortunately-positioned light-source would reflect on a glossy screen, and make the text difficult to read. That has since been addressed, and glossy screens are (mostly) non reflective.

Glossy screens are pretty much standard now. You'd be hard pressed to find a matte screen on a laptop. However, I still hear from users that they prefer the matte screen.

But which one is better?

The last two laptops I've worked with (Gateway & HP) were both glossy. I actually liked the glossy screen. My newest laptop is an Eee PC. I love the little thing, and it serves me marvelously well. However, I'm starting to realize that its matte screen makes the screen harder to read. I think I would have been happier with a glossy screen.

After having used matte and glossy screens, I think that I'm decided: Glossy it is for me. The screen is so much easier to read.

Control Panel for the Eee PC

This week, I wrote a small Eee PC control panel that takes advantage of the wonderful eee kernel module. The control panel runs in the background and is available through the system tray. Pointing on the icon gives the general status of your Eee PC. A click on the icon will bring up the actual panel. From there, you can control the fan, the front-side bus (overclocking) and the voltage (from what I can understand).

Obligatory screenshots:
The system tray icon & tooltip

The control panel


The control panel is written in Gtk+, and works great on my eeeXubuntu. I would assume that it works fine on the default Xandros install or even (K)ubuntu. From start to end, the control panel was created on the Eee PC, proving that it can be used to get actual work done.

For the convenience of Debian or Ubuntu users, I've create a deb package. Otherwise, a tarball is available with a pre-compiled version of the control panel as well as the full source code. Of course, it's all GPL ;) Please copyleft.

eeectl.deb
eeectl.tar.bz2

Before you install the control panel, make sure you install the eee kernel module available at http://code.google.com/p/eeepc-linux/. Detailed installation instructions are available at http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:overclockfsb.

This is a first for me in many ways, so please forgive any stupidity or ignorance on my part. I've used Gtk, Glade and GkSu APIs for the first time, and I've created my first .deb package. I'm more than willing to learn from any guru who may find improvements to my little application.

Of course, usage of the Eee PC Control Panel is entirely at your own risk. Though I use it on my own machine, I cannot be held responsible if you fry or brick your little machine.

Hope you enjoy!

(Before you ask, there is no Windows version, nor do I intend on creating a Windows version. For starters, I'm not willing to buy a Windows license for my Eee PC. Someone else can take care of that)

Microsoft Windows for Free?

How is Microsoft to compete? I mean, Mac OS X Leopard is $129 CAD, Mandriva Linux is about ~$80 CAD and Ubuntu is free.

Windows Basic, on the other hand is (GASP!) $199 CAD! And it does not even come with an office suite. You definitely get more bang for you buck with Ubuntu.

This brings me to two big questions.

The first one is: What exactly is Windows? I get a fat DVD which will eat a sizable chunk of my diskspace. It lack drivers for some older and even newer devices, and the closest thing you have to a functional word processor is WordPad. Whoopdidoo. I fell like I'm really getting value for my big, fat $200 dollars. Well, I guess that's Microsoft privilege to charge whatever the hell they want for their operating system. That's the beauty of having a near monopoly.

The second question I have is: How is Microsoft going to compete? Computer are getting dirt cheap. The Asus Eee PC is changing the way people think of laptop in terms of size and price. At the rate prices are going down, more than half of the computer's price will be for Windows Vista Basic. Even now, it is possible to buy a laptop at FutureShop for less that $500 CAD. How much of that $500 goes towards Windows?

At the rate things are going, Microsoft is going to have to dramatically reduce the price of Windows. I personally feel that $200 for a 'basic' version that allows me to surf the web and the privilege to install spyware, is highly unjustified. Especially when I can get a complete system that includes my office suite and development tools for practically nothing.

Or maybe the high price tag is to help support emerging markets? Since Microsoft is so altruistic, they will charge the develop world more to help subsidize Windows for the poor. What a nice robin-hoodish, humanitarian approach...except for the fact that the Robin Hood we are talking about here has more gold in his coffer than all the rotten sheriffs in the world. Furthermore, this Robin Hood is gladly charging the poor.

Once again, since they have a monopoly, it's only natural that they choose how much they charge. For years, it was easy to hide this Microsoft Tax, since a computer typically went for thousands of dollars. Now that computers are barely half a grand and that the price of Microsoft Windows keeps increasing, this tax is quite noticeable. People will quickly realize that an Asus Eee PC preloaded with Linux actually offers a lot more out of the box than the same Eee PC loaded with only Windows.

That brings me back to my first question: What the heck is Windows anyways? What am I paying $200 for?

Enjoying the Asus Eee PC

Having just received my Eee PC, I'm still getting familliar with it's capabilities. The keyboard requires getting used to, but I'm getting better. As long as I don't have to use the right shift key too much, I can almost achieve the same typing speed as on a regular keyboard ;) All joking aside, once you get used to the keyboard, it's actually quite pleasant.

I got the 8G model, which means that I have a whooping 8 gigabytes of 'hard disk' space. While this is tiny compared to a regular hard-disk, which is usually over 100 gigabytes for a laptop. However, for my needs, I think that 8G, or even 4G should be enough. Since the Eee PC supports SD cards, I'm using a 4 gigabyte card for my /home partition (for Windows users, think My Documents).

The pre-installed operating system is a custom version of Xandros Linux (which is based in Ottawa). Though the default is fine for most people's need, I wanted something that gave me more -- so I installed eeeXubuntu. I removed the default Gnome games, Abiword and
Gnumeric to save space, and them promptly installed:

• OpenOffice.org
• Java 6 SDK
• Eclipse
• C/C++ compiler
• Free Pascal & Lazarus
• Anjuta IDE
• jEdit
• Frozen Bubble
• Cedega
• Firefox 3
• (and a few more which I'm sure I'm forgetting)

I've got ~640M of space left (which ought to be enough for anybody) on my system partition. Not too bad, considering I've got a practically complete portable development system.

One of my goals is to get Morrowind working with Cedega. So far, no joy, but I'm not about to give up. I know some folks got it working, so I'm sure I can as well.

If you are going to install eeeXubuntu or Ubuntu, be aware of the Eee Wiki. One of the coolest trick I found is how to enable the ALT+F11 key to make a window take the full screen. That really takes advantage of the 800x640 screen resolution. There are many more cool tricks on the page. Check it out!

Software for Windows seems to take up much more room than software for Linux. If anyone plans to run Windows on the Eee PC, I would like to recommend they consider using Google Docs. It is a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package that runs in a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. Using Google Docs does not require you to install and special software. As long as you are connected to the Internet, you can use it. Futhermore, Google Gears should eventually allow you to run online application offline.

Actually, I'm using Google Docs one my Eee PC right now to author this article. So far, the Eee PC turns out to be a fun, yet useful machine. My wife is starting to strongly hint that I'm spending too much time on it. Oups! I think I should wrap up this article, and spend some quality time with her! See ya!

(Hum... I'm a bit disappointed with the Google Docs' HTML exporter. I wish it did XHTML)

Got my Eee PC!

I got my Eee PC yesterday. Need I say more?

So far: Wow!

I'm currently installing eeeXubuntu on it. As most folks commented, the screen and the keyboard is small, but the rest is just great.

You can bet the next entry will be from my brand spanking new Eee PC running Xubuntu. I'm sure I'll quickly get used to the tiny screen and keyboard. I mean, my first serious graphic applications ran in 320x200 and my first computer had 16K of ram. The Eee PC has plenty of juice for my needs!

This blog is written using Slax because I needed to burn an ISO, and Windows does not come with any tools to burn ISOs. For that matter, the Windows installation has over half a dozen devices it does not recognize, including the sound card. Slax detected everything ;).

Free Software 201

If you haven't read my previous entry, Free Software 101, I would recommend you do so before moving onto this one.

In this article, I would like to continue the discussion on the definition of free software. Previously, we explored the four freedoms attached to free software. For a software to be called free, it needs to meet those criteria.

Some software are given away, like the giftware license of the Allegro game library. Others are said to be public domain, in the sense that they do not have a copyright, and thus, have no limitations in terms of use.

Software that falls under the 'giftware' license or public domain may have the four freedoms. Any individual or organization can use the source code for any purpose, including proprietary and commercial software. Their use and the changes that they bring to the code does not have to be given back to the community. Thus, the new implementation of the software and its users looses the four freedoms.

To protect those four freedoms, the Free Software Foundation, founded and headed by Richard Stallman, created the GNU GPL (General Public License). The goal of the GPL is to ensure that any softwares licensed so would not lose their four freedoms.

This is the license that is used in countless open-source softwares like the Linux kernel, the MySQL Database and the Java programming language. Even Wikipedia uses the GPL to protect the content of their articles. A quick search on SourceForge found over 79,000 projects that uses the GPL.

The GPL is written so that anyone can use it -- both the developer of the original code, and the end user of the code. Agreeing to the GPL pretty much binds you to the four freedoms. That is, you can use the code, view the code, copy the code and share your changes, but you cannot remove those four freedoms from your work.

The GPL allows you to sell a product that includes GPL code as long as you do not remove those four freedoms in any way.

There is more to the GPL than what I've discussed here. For instance, the GPL protects the copyright holder by offering no warranty and the GPL version 3 addresses software patents. However, what I believe is important here is the spirit of the license. If you are considering using GPL code in a commercial project, you may want to consult a lawyer or contact the Free Software Foundation to clarify your right (I'm a coder Jim, not a lawyer). However, keep in mind that there are thousands of successful commercial products out there that uses GPL code. The Asus Eee PC readily comes to mind.

The GPL is one of many licenses that are designed to preserve the four freedoms. Such licenses are known as copyleft licenses. The symbol for copyleft is a reverse copyright (©) but has no legal meaning. Copyleft licenses are also known as viral licenses, since your use and derivative of the work is bound by the same terms as the original license, like a computer virus that infects every executable it touches. The analogy may be less than savory and also misleading. Installing a GPL software like OpenOffice on a machine does not spread the GPL to all your programs. However, using OpenOffice's code in a development project does bind you with the GPL. Whatever use and modification you bring to that code must retain the four freedoms. That is, you could not commercialize a new office suite based on the OpenOffice source code without releasing the source.

Does that mean you could not create a commercial software product based on GPL code? There are many commercial products that include GPL code. As a matter of fact, many commercial applications were later released under the GPL.

Examples include the Linux kernel, which is used in a number of software packages, such as paid-for distributions like Mandriva Linux. Another example is TransGaming Cedega, a program that runs most Windows games on the Linux platform.

There are many advantages to open sourcing software under the GPL, or another open source license. However, I will leave this discussion to another post.