Talk:Linux adoption/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions about Linux adoption. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Desktop adoption section

I moved the "Desktop" section back from "Barriers to adoption" as much of the information presented relates only to adoption on the desktop, and not on servers/devices/supercomputers. i.e. not being able to run Photoshop isn't a reason why people don't choose Linux servers/devices/supercomputers, nor is the lack of blu-ray support a reason not to use Linux servers/devices/supercomputers, nor the fact that Windows people can ask family and friends for help a reason for not choosing Linux servers/devices/supercomputers. The information presented is very much focused on the problem of Linux adoption on desktop computers only.131.181.114.137 (talk) 03:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that that section only deals with desktop Linux, but the problem I have is that it focuses on reasons why people don't adopt Linux for desktop use, instead of why they do, which is why I thought I would try out moving it into a new section instead. Other suggestions are welcome.

Also in reading through this section, the information is now very out of date, with nothing in there newer than 2007 and some of it from as far back as 2004, which on the Linux desktop is a long time ago. Many of the objections or barriers raised there have long ago been addressed, so if these are updated perhaps it will read more as reasons why people adopt instead of why they don't, which is what I believe this section should address.

The stats are also out of date, with some sources now showing Linux desktop use over 2% and growing quickly, while Windows is at 88% and dropping quickly. Let me update the section and then perhaps it will need moving or not, based on how it looks then. - Ahunt (talk) 12:48, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

In looking more closely at this Linux_adoption#Desktop_computers section I believe it is really off-topic for this article, as it doesn't discuss adoption of Linux at all. I think it is really a collection of older criticisms of desktop Linux and belongs in the article Criticism of Linux instead of in this article. If there are no objections over the next few days I will move it to that article. - Ahunt (talk) 16:49, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that the section does very much focus on reasons why people DON'T adopt Linux rather than why people DO adopt Linux. This was because the section was based on a question I wanted answered about Linux adoption -- that is, if Linux is so great, why does it suffer such incredibly low market share (in terms of what we can inaccurately measure from browser statistics)? The section is my attempt to answer that question...

However, as has been raised before, it does appear to criticise Linux. That is not the intention, as I have stated earlier. (See Talk:Linux adoption#POV push) The fact is, without pointing out more of the DON'Ts rather than the DOs, how can you explain the perhaps 2% desktop market share of such a major operating system? Even Mac OS X, with its roots sharing the same foundation as Linux, surpasses this figure by at least double, with numbers from 5% to 9%.

It may be my bias that has led to the reason why the section is negative. But bias is inherent in every human being. Taking the opposite view, a vast number of articles advocate adopting Linux, extolling its greatness, highlighting the good things and hiding the bad things under the rug. For instance, this sentence shows your bias: "Linux desktop market share increased 62% from 1.32% to 2.13% between mid 2007 and the beginning of 2009, while Windows use fell to 88%" - Why did you pick W3Counter statistics over those from other places which show lower market share? Why round down the Windows figure, yet keep the two digits after the decimal for the Linux figures? Why did you write "increased 62%" when no such statement is any cited article? Why do you consider the Linux figures so reliable that you can state such a high-sounding 62% increase when, as you very well know, statistics like these may have a margin of error in the range of at least 0.5% (Compare http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8&qpmr=100&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qptimeframe=M and http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php -- Market Share says Linux is at 0.88%, W3Counter says 2.13% -- a 1.25% difference), which could mean any increase is much lower?

When you do consider all of the browser statistics though, it is very evident that there has been some kind of increase -- perhaps you should be focusing your efforts on simply adding more reasons why people DO adopt Linux, keeping in mind its apparently low market share. As argued before (See Talk:Linux adoption#POV push), the impact of Netbooks on Linux adoption could be significant. So too can be the increased usability/accessibility of Linux since several years ago, as you have started to point out (personally though, looking at the install process for Ubuntu 7.10 compared to Windows Vista I can't say I understand how the author of the Economist article reached the conclusion that "it's now simpler to set up and configure than Windows" when I doubt many people would be able to understand the question "How do you want to partition the disk?").

I am happy to see you updating this information to what's current in 2009. The sources are from 2007 because, surprise surprise, that's when I wrote it and nobody else has so far wanted to ADD any content to it (lots of people moving it about and deleting though). I had intended to update the information based on the 2008 Linux Foundation's Desktop Linux Market Survey but I don't they ever actually released a report, just the raw numbers (at least, I couldn't find a report when I looked for it quickly just now).

I am also very happy to hear you say "Many of the objections or barriers raised there have long ago been addressed, so if these are updated perhaps it will read more as reasons why people adopt instead of why they don't" Please do ADD information on how these issues have been addressed. Too often someone would come along and claim that these barriers have been addressed without providing any source yet still go ahead and delete information about such issues.

Please keep this section where it is. Take it up upon yourself to go seek reliable, verifiable sources that show these barriers are overcome and that Linux adoption is rising as a result. In a community of such strong Linux advocates I am surprised this has not happened earlier. 220.233.44.172 (talk) 01:43, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

You make some good points there, I will see what I can do to address them. As it is now that section is all "reasons for non-adoption" which is why I had moved it internally within the article to reflect that a few days ago, a move reverted by User:131.181.114.137.

I think to leave it where it is in this section of this article, it really needs a lot more info added to it to make it a balanced look at reasons why people adopt/reasons why they don't and how that has changed over the past few years, probably breaking down into those subsections. I suspect the reason why this hasn't been done or updated is that it requires locating a bunch of refs from the last two years, something easier done at the time, rather than in retrospect. Many of the refs I have found on this sort of subject are blogs, but I will keep an eye out for non-SPS sources. Altogether a difficult task, which is why I suspect it hasn't been done by anyone yet.

While looking for those refs in the meantime I will do some tweaking to the the info there (in place) and see if it can be reorganized a bit or at least balanced out somewhat. - Ahunt (talk) 11:21, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Well it has taken a while to address the points that you brought up above, mostly to find useful references, but I think this is coming along at this point. I will continue to look for refs and incorporate what they say in here over time, but at least for now this article is a bit more balanced and does reflect the great improvements made in Linux desktops since 2007. Incidentally I have done Windows XP and Ubuntu installations recently and I have to agree with the Economist on that. I have installed Ubuntu, including re-installing documents and everything in 1/10 the time that it took to install Windows. Most of the problems involved looking for Windows drivers for video and audio cards, which was very time consuming. Ubuntu on the other hand suggested installing the video card driver automatically and then went and got it in seconds. The audio card driver was already in the kernel. - Ahunt (talk) 20:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

YES, I am very much impressed at the effort you have put into the article. Pretty much every argument against adoption has a nice referenced counter-argument from places that seem to have some authority to them. I don't know if I can 100% agree with some of the statements (particularly with Jack Wallen, who can't spell "ensure" ;) but the strength of this section now is that at least the reader can make their own judgments.

I'm not sure whether the statement "The greatest barrier to Linux desktop adoption is probably that few desktop PCs come with it from the factory" should lead the Barriers to adoption section as that's only the assertion of one person, whereas app+periperhal+end user support seems to me to be a more widely accepted reason.

On a side note, I too have had problems with getting audio and video drivers for my Windows PC, but I suppose it's their way of reminding me I should upgrade my 5+ year old hardware... :P --220.233.44.172 (talk) 13:38, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Glad you think the article has been improved - obviously there is room for more improvement yet, but I think at present it gives a balanced look at the subject and good refs which readers can go though to do further reading. - Ahunt (talk) 14:18, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I've removed some overtly dubious claims made in an article cited as a source (Caitlyn Martin's "Debunking the 1% Myth") and provided a counter-reference to another of her claims. I'd be happier seeing all reference to that article removed. It's a biased opinion piece filled more with wishful thinking than actual verifiable facts worthy of an encyclopedia. 2p0rk (talk) 05:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I am not impressed by the counter-reference. They brag about that they do not weight the data in any way, and their reasoning about whether the data is representative leads me to think they have no statistician involved. They claim that the stats are based on "a random sample of people worldwide". I have heard of no method of getting such a sample. --LPfi (talk) 15:34, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree. If you are showing that one ref is not accurate then you need to cite a ref that says that the former ref is not accurate, not by citing refs that describe their own methodology and say nothing about Martin's claims. That is WP:SYNTHESIS at best and probably more like WP:OR. Right now that new para is not supported adequately by its refs, as it is quite possible that both Martins claims and the new refs are both correct. Also keep in mind by quoting Martin we are just indicating what her opinion is, not saying that it is right. The main reason that is there in the article is to show the level of doubt about high widespread Linux desktop use is. - Ahunt (talk) 16:45, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The perhaps we should be more succinct. Lead with the fact that figures are disputed, and back that up by (briefly) providing evidence of differing sources of data, and comment that they are all fraught with difficulty. My main concern is that we've devoted a big chunk of text and space to Caitlyn Martin's opinion-based blogpost (20% of the section!), which is not really of good enough quality for an encyclopedic reference IMO. This whole page is waaaaaaaay too long, and could do with a really brutal prune and cleanup. We're waffling quite badly. I'm keen to start doing a rewrite of the "measuring desktop adoption" section if there's some support for this. 2p0rk (talk) 18:52, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I can agree with what you have said! That sounds good! It might be time to split the list of who has adopted Linux off into a new List of Linux adopters, which would allow making the rest of the text a bit more to the point. How does that sound for a plan?- Ahunt (talk) 20:41, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Lacking any objections over the past week I will go ahead and split this off then. That should be a good first step to help cut this article down and reorganize it a bit. - Ahunt (talk) 22:05, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Bravo! Thanks for putting the effort into the split. List of Linux adopters works well as an article by itself, and makes this article (Linux adoption) far less unwieldy. —Pengo 13:38, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I am glad that you like that - I think it improves both articles! - Ahunt (talk) 17:21, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I added some data from Net Applications that was collected in my blog: http://mrpogson.com/2012/02/28/mountain-view-california-penguin-heaven/ http://mrpogson.com/2012/03/01/penguins-seen-over-california/

NetApplications does not publish the charts, only values month by month and location by location. My blog collects their data. I am not the source. Do I need to cite the URI for each of dozens of datapoints? The paragraph I added is about the change and how and why it happened clearly showing bias in Net Applications numbers. I have a M.Sc. in Nuclear Physics and know how to analyze data. The wide publication of "1%" is clearly wrong information coming form Net Applications and my collection shows that quantitatively. Assume a world using 90% GNU/Linux and Windows adoption at Google. 10K people showing huge adoption that is not valid. Pogson (talk) 13:29, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Your own blog is not an acceptable reference as per WP:SPS, regardless of what qualifications in stats you have. You can't cite data points with your own graphs and interpretations about them either as this would be WP:OR and WP:SYNTHESIS and is specifically not allowed on Wikipedia. You need to find proper reliable independent third party refs to retain this text in the article. - Ahunt (talk) 13:45, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

The refs you added do not support the claims you have made in the text, so I restored the "citation needed" tags. Since you removed those again the only choice remaining is to remove the challenged text as per WP:V, which I have done. Please don't add it back in without proper, reliable refs that actually support the text this time. - Ahunt (talk) 16:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good, maybe we should archive these older threads as well to stop people adding to discussions from some time ago (hard to follow). IRWolfie- (talk) 09:48, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Good idea! This should have been a fresh discussion. - Ahunt (talk) 11:20, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I would like to suggest a newer approximate numbers as those in the article are quite old and do not reflect current state at all. [1] 178.4.13.147 (talk) 21:38, 27 October 2013 (UTC)Vladimir

Desktop adoption

The "Desktop adoption" contains the sentence:

At the beginning of 2014, Phoronix, which is a web site focused mostly on Linux news and Linux hardware reviews, announced that 46.6% of their traffic is coming from Linux systems.[23]

Surely this sentence is massively irrelevant? All it tells us is that a "web site focused mostly on Linux news and Linux hardware reviews" has a large amount of traffic from Linux systems, which can surely be of surprise to no-one?

QuipQuotch (talk) 10:58, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree, removed. - Ahunt (talk) 12:00, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, not exactly a good example. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 20:40, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Market share

Since the article is named "Linux adoption" it would be nice to add some more of such diagrams for markets where they are available for, e.g. for the market share on supercomputers.

Android market share on smartphones

Titan

Titan

User:ScotXW^t@lk 21:06, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Concerning the "ubiquity" image

This image has absolutely nothing to do with this article. It's already present at articles where it is marginally relevant, such as Linux, Linux distribution, Linux kernel, and others. It does not, however, belong here. It does not serve to enhance a reader's understanding of Linux adoption which is what images in this article are intended to do. This image has been placed on many articles and discussed on those article talk pages (Talk:GNOME Shell, for example) and the same situation applies here: just because this article's title has the word "Linux" in it doesn't mean that any Linux-related image belongs here. Images related to Linux adoption belong here, and this image is simply overly-technical and out-of-scope for this article. - Aoidh (talk) 08:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

I agree, it doesn't belong here. It adds nothing to the reader's understanding of the subject, in fact they will look at the image and see no connection at all there. - Ahunt (talk) 17:34, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

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some criticism of arguments in Wikipedia

Does it make sense to add some criticism as well? This challenges arguments in this very Wikipedia article. http://www.louigiverona.com/?page=projects&s=writings&t=linux&a=linux_badarg 46.189.45.234 (talk) 15:53, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

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Psychocat as a reliable source?

I put the unreliable source templates to the parts in which an pseudonymous online personality known as Psychocat was used as a source. My edit was reverted by user Ahunt, with summary: "As an acknowledged expert meets WP:SPS requirements". WP:SPS requires the self-published sources to be written by an expert "whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications".

I feel that labeling a pseudonymous nickname as an expert can be problematic. But what exactly are those relevant third-party publications that have published Psychocat's work?

Re-reverting for now. –ilmaisin (talk) 20:16, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

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