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It appears that during the Coronavirus lock-down, the Linux market share according to website NetMarketShare has seen quite a large bump.

While calculating the market share of a desktop operating system is never going to be exactly correct, sites like NetMarketShare are one of the best ways to look at it. According to their stats the Linux share has bumped between around 1.5% and 2% for some time. That changed when they recently put up April's stats, which shows the Linux market overall according to them at 2.87%.

The biggest winner appears to be Ubuntu when looking over what Linux versions they track. Ubuntu alone seemed to go from 0.27% in March up to 1.89% in April.

What would be the cause of such a bump? Well, entirely possible it's due to more people using Linux personally at home where they would perhaps be using Windows workstations in their job. Really we could speculate forever on this - so over to you, what do you think?

Nothing to go popping open the champagne over though, while it's a big jump it would only truly be worth celebrating if it sustains the higher position. At least when looking over the Steam numbers too (see our Steam Tracker), we're trending upwards there.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial, Misc
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Eike May 9, 2020
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Quoting: Cyba.CowboyMicrosoft makes no secret about just how much of your personal information it tracks intimately within its software, almost all of which cannot be deactivated unless you have a "volume" license.

I wouldn't be here if I were a fan of them. Though I fear there's worse companies nowadays...
jarhead_h May 9, 2020
Bryan Lunduke has weighed in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H3vDe9OTvk
ShabbyX May 9, 2020
What's wrong with microsoft? Two words: vendor lock-in. Look it up, there's even an internal quote from microsoft in the vendor lock-in Wikipedia page saying the only reason they were still in business is vendor lock-in. That's also how they killed oh so many good things for their own survival.
Purple Library Guy May 10, 2020
Quoting: Cyba.CowboyJust like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world...
Really? How so? Because if it's about all the charity, IMO if you look a bit under the surface of that charity it, too, is somewhat disturbing.
Cyba.Cowboy May 10, 2020
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Cyba.CowboyJust like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world...
Really? How so? Because if it's about all the charity, IMO if you look a bit under the surface of that charity it, too, is somewhat disturbing.

In what way? Both John Cena devotes much of his spare time to charity (especially for the Starlight Foundation), and Bill Gates has given away a significant portion of his wealth in the name of charity... I've not heard anything to suggest this is not the case, with either of them.
Purple Library Guy May 10, 2020
Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Cyba.CowboyJust like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world...
Really? How so? Because if it's about all the charity, IMO if you look a bit under the surface of that charity it, too, is somewhat disturbing.

In what way? Both John Cena devotes much of his spare time to charity (especially for the Starlight Foundation), and Bill Gates has given away a significant portion of his wealth in the name of charity... I've not heard anything to suggest this is not the case, with either of them.
Gates does genuinely give away a huge amount of money to charity. But, to be specific, Gates has established a huge charitable fund, which he controls, which doesn't pay taxes because it's a charity. So the process of giving to charity doesn't really reduce the amount of money that he has under his control. I don't know whether he actually gives away more money than he would have paid in taxes.
This charitable fund of course has investments. Some specific areas of heavy investment include pharmaceutical companies and private education. Gates then structures the fund's charitable donations in ways that seek to shape the ways that countries approach relevant issues. So for instance, in terms of public health, Gates donations steer a country's public health emphasis towards buying expensive patented drugs (creating profits for pharmaceutical companies) and away from, say, buying mosquito netting, which might be more cost effective in saving lives. Similarly, in the United States, the Gates foundation lobbies consistently for the privatization of education, which in my opinion is a Bad Thing, so as to increase the profits of the private education companies it has investments in (perhaps Gates himself also has an ideological belief in private education, with which I would disagree). Stuff like that. So I feel Gates' charitable donations are more problematic than one might think at first glance. He wields his charity somewhat the way the IMF wields its loans.
ShabbyX May 13, 2020
Quoting: Purple Library GuyGates does genuinely give away a huge amount of money to charity. But, to be specific, Gates has established a huge charitable fund, which he controls, which doesn't pay taxes because it's a charity. So the process of giving to charity doesn't really reduce the amount of money that he has under his control. I don't know whether he actually gives away more money than he would have paid in taxes.
This charitable fund of course has investments. Some specific areas of heavy investment include pharmaceutical companies and private education. Gates then structures the fund's charitable donations in ways that seek to shape the ways that countries approach relevant issues. So for instance, in terms of public health, Gates donations steer a country's public health emphasis towards buying expensive patented drugs (creating profits for pharmaceutical companies) and away from, say, buying mosquito netting, which might be more cost effective in saving lives. Similarly, in the United States, the Gates foundation lobbies consistently for the privatization of education, which in my opinion is a Bad Thing, so as to increase the profits of the private education companies it has investments in (perhaps Gates himself also has an ideological belief in private education, with which I would disagree). Stuff like that. So I feel Gates' charitable donations are more problematic than one might think at first glance. He wields his charity somewhat the way the IMF wields its loans.

Do you have any references for this?
Purple Library Guy May 14, 2020
Quoting: ShabbyX
Quoting: Purple Library GuyGates does genuinely give away a huge amount of money to charity. But, to be specific, Gates has established a huge charitable fund, which he controls, which doesn't pay taxes because it's a charity. So the process of giving to charity doesn't really reduce the amount of money that he has under his control. I don't know whether he actually gives away more money than he would have paid in taxes.
This charitable fund of course has investments. Some specific areas of heavy investment include pharmaceutical companies and private education. Gates then structures the fund's charitable donations in ways that seek to shape the ways that countries approach relevant issues. So for instance, in terms of public health, Gates donations steer a country's public health emphasis towards buying expensive patented drugs (creating profits for pharmaceutical companies) and away from, say, buying mosquito netting, which might be more cost effective in saving lives. Similarly, in the United States, the Gates foundation lobbies consistently for the privatization of education, which in my opinion is a Bad Thing, so as to increase the profits of the private education companies it has investments in (perhaps Gates himself also has an ideological belief in private education, with which I would disagree). Stuff like that. So I feel Gates' charitable donations are more problematic than one might think at first glance. He wields his charity somewhat the way the IMF wields its loans.

Do you have any references for this?
A bit of searching later . . .
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/07/16/bill-gates-among-billionaires-fuelling-us-charter-schools-movement.html
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/10/8760199/gates-foundation-criticism
(meat on this one starts around halfway down)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/03/02/toxic-agriculture-and-the-gates-foundation/
https://nancyebailey.com/2019/03/08/bill-melinda-gates-dont-discuss-their-takeover-of-americas-public-schools/

I've read a fair number of other articles, particularly about the health stuff, often in Counterpunch, but it was hard to track down good focused ones.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 14 May 2020 at 12:02 am UTC
Cyba.Cowboy May 14, 2020
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see what the problem is with the first link and although I only skimmed the rest of the links, the general argument seems to be a disagreement with the direction and / or priorities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation... That's not really doing anything sinister, disturbing or immoral.

What direction should the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation be moving in, and what should their priorities be?

Well if I asked that here, I'd probably get a dozen or more different answers... Each answer would be based exclusively on what that individual Community Member thinks is the right direction to move in or are priorities in the world.

What I think is important is almost certainly going to be different to what you think is important.

This is hardly proof that the the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is actually doing something wrong or malicious - just evidence that you and / or the author of those articles don't share the same vision as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
tuubi May 14, 2020
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Quoting: Cyba.CowboyThis is hardly proof that the the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is actually doing something wrong or malicious - just evidence that you and / or the author of those articles don't share the same vision as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The charter school stuff is admittedly political, and even if they're rather obviously disguising their own business and political interests as charity, I see your point. The most common criticism I've seen is about their medicine related efforts in the third world. Can't really spend time (at work) looking for good sources, but a google/duckduckgo search with "gates foundation controversy" will get you started. Of course you might argue that this is all political, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't expect some ethical standards as long as they call it a charity.

EDIT: A bit clearer now, hopefully. Shouldn't comment in a hurry.


Last edited by tuubi on 14 May 2020 at 7:12 am UTC
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