Quoting: melkemindWait a minute now. We're talking about desktop Linux.

GNU/Linux is what they meant to write, but like so many people got it wrong.

Quoting: melkemindShouldn't this discussion be about ChromeOS rather than Android?

Both are different operating systems that just happen to share the same kernel. So no.

Quoting: melkemindAnd isn't ChromeOS a desktop Linux distribution?

No, but it does use the Linux kernel.

Quoting: melkemindYou can actually chroot a Linux distro very easily within it.

Not surprised. Doing so would just be adding some of the GNU user-land that normally exists on GNU/Linux distributions. Almost like running two operating systems at once, similar to how LXC and Docker works only without the namespacing component and tooling.

Presumably you can also run the ChromeOS user-space under GNU/Linux as well in a chroot-like or container fashion, particularly if all the required components are free software.

Quoting: melkemindLast I checked, Chromebook sales had even surpassed Mac laptops.

That's news to me, and that's pretty neat. But it's not GNU/Linux and I don't see how we can reasonably include those figures with our user-base.

Quoting: melkemindIsn't it kind of snooty for Linux users to only count a Linux victory if it's their standard of what they consider a "pure" Linux distribution?

You are trying to twist the word "Linux" into meaning more than just the kernel, which is why you're getting confused. GNU/Linux distributions and Android/ChromeOS are different operating systems. You can't take an Android application or a ChromeOS application and run it natively on GNU/Linux, and vice-versa. You might be able to do that with a chroot, but that's hardly native and is similar to just running the other OS in a container.

Quoting: melkemindIf you're not counting anything that runs the Linux kernel, then shouldn't you get all Stallman-like and call it GNU/Linux?

Here you hit the nail on the head. You are absolutely correct; it should read "GNU/Linux Market Share" instead of "Linux Market Share on Desktop".

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Quoting: edoOn this game if you join a multiplayer match it overwrite you campaign progress, I already lost mine once

Thanks for the tip! I just started playing this a few days ago and am already well into the campaign. Would hate to have to redo everything.

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Quoting: vlademir12. Insisting on people using "Linux" just for the kernel and "GNU/Linux" for an OS built on the Linux kernel is at best disingenuous when we consider the fact that GNU is not the exclusive free toolchain to be had and there are non-mobile distros in the wild built without GNU which we should absolutely not call "GNU/Linux" but are indeed Linux based.

You think wireless access points and the like running busybox and uClibc (or other non-GNU user-space) combined with the Linux kernel are contributing to the 2% desktop usage figure? Really? We're not talking about those systems, and you can refer to them as embedded Linux systems (so the context "Linux" is being used in is still clear).

Quoting: vlademir13. Stallman can... No I won't be rude here... I'll just say it this way, it is not freedom to let someone dictate to you what shape freedom takes.

Richard Stallman created the term "free software". You can talk about other kinds of freedoms however you wish, but the term "free software" means exactly what he defined it to mean.

Quoting: vlademir1The FSF and R. Stallman have a long history of doing just this and are in some ways nearly as bad as Gates, Jobs and their respective companies.

Citation required (I guess you must use one of the BSDs then).

Quoting: vlademir14. Arguing about this kind of stuff is one of the significant things that drives otherwise interested people away from even trying the output of the FOSS community.

And yet, here you are. Why? Because like most political issues, it's important. Do you think political arguments keep people from voting?

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Quoting: liamdaweAlright fine, let's leave the argument there.

If I had worded that one tiny bit in the article differently we wouldn't be having this repeating argument :p

Everyone is now focusing on that minor point rather than the article itself.

Okay, deal. :)

I actually meant to mention how exciting I think it is to hit 2% desktop usage across 40k measured websites. This is awesome!

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[quote=liamdawe][quote=t3g]

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: devland

This does not include Android, even though it is Linux,

Here is a good read from the father himself: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html [External Link]

Again, splitting hairs, it's a minor point.

Woah! Minor point? It's the whole reason for the confusion throughout this thread. Android is a different operating system to GNU/Linux because of included user-space components, even though they both share the same kernel. If people got the terminology correct, we wouldn't have this problem (and we would also be showing respect to a larger number of developers whom we should be thankful to).

Quoting: liamdaweWe just have different opinions and I think it's a bit of a silly argument to have.

Silly to you maybe, but to other people (who made significant contributions to your OS), you are being disrespectful. What I find silly is the fact that there is even an argument about this. I understand that we're all big on proprietary games here, but that doesn't mean all of us don't care about free software where we can.

Quoting: liamdaweI don't agree with the rule that it's not Linux unless it specifically works on the desktop with .debs and so on.

Again with the terminology. If you said "the Linux kernel works with more than just desktops with .debs and so on", you would be absolutely correct. If you said "I don't agree with the rule that it's not GNU/Linux unless it specifically works on the desktop", you would still be correct since there are still various GNU devices outside of desktops, but I suspect you were mainly referring to Android which wouldn't count in that case.

See how the correct terminology - "Linux kernel", "Android", "GNU/Linux", etc and not "Linux" (without something to define the context) massively helps avoid such arguments and misunderstandings? It's a trivial matter to get right, and doing so is better for everyone.

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Quoting: GuestI don’t know how Fedora handles the nvidia drivers but on Gentoo it’s just updated like any other package. Ok, yes, it’s from the command line :p. But any decent distro would do the same with whatever package manager they use.

That's true (for distros that aren't strict about proprietary drivers at least). Generally you want the latest from the nvidia.com website - which won't install if Xorg is running without feeding it some special flags at least - but you'd probably get the binaries pretty quickly with rolling release distributions such as Arch and Gentoo GNU/Linux.

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Quoting: blukpunThank you!
Even though, i still can and will play with opensource drivers on my 280x, so it's not that bad.

Not so bad? That's the recommended way to play! The majority of benchmarks right now show Mesa beating the proprietary drivers. But the nice thing about AMD is you have a real choice. Good proprietary drivers, and good free software drivers.

Good luck trying to do GPU pass-through with Xen using Nvidia drivers! Have fun manually installing the latest drivers from the command line. AMD cards just need the microcode installed once on your system, and everything else you need is free software supplied by the distribution. Even when Nvidia does release firmware compatible with free software drivers (which knowing them will take another year to get around to), the card functionality will always be crippled compared to the proprietary drivers. Meanwhile, AMD's drivers just keep getting better and better over time.

Heck, I just purchased a Fury X this morning because they are so cheap now (a nice upgrade from my R9 285) - and it was a really hard decision because the 285 is still a really good card. The Fury X performance generally sits somewhere between a 1070 and 1080 under Windows, and we've been seeing massive performance improvements in AMD's modern GCN architectures using free software drivers. We've seen some benchmarks where Mesa is beating the proprietary drivers in Windows 10! All we need now is support for OpenGL 4.4 and 4.5 (which looks like is coming very soon) and you'll pretty much get great performance on AMD cards with just a plain distro install.

I've had such bad experiences with Nvidia drivers on GNU/Linux and business practices, that I never want to support that company again so long as they keep behaving this way. Granted AMD is no angel either (eg. the way it handled the pump noise issue when the Fury X was first launched, and both companies have previously cheated in benchmarks) but it's the one not trying to actively frustrate customers with signed microcode, paper launches, restrictions on virtualization they refuse to admit, etc.

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Quoting: Mountain ManWhat would prevent you from simply using another distro? Canonical is only making a decision for Ubuntu, not for all of Linux.

Sorry, I guess I forgot to use the [sarcasm] tags. :)

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Quoting: Seegras

Quoting: boltronicsRemind me again why we still have i386? Oh yeah, because of the original EeePC ...

... which I use about once every week ;). But I'm running Debian on it. In fact, I run Debian everywhere except on my cellphone.

I've upgraded through three other laptops since then. And yes I do still use the EeePC - as a Shairport server (running Debian). But that's not the sort of thing I'd use Ubuntu for. I doubt the 800x480 screen is even compatible with a lot of modern software. Any kind of production server that's i386-only is surely out of warranty by now.

Incidentally, I ran a Debian derivative on my phone for years - the N900. Sadly it broke a few times, and it got too slow to load any kind of complex web-page so it had to go. But installing Python apps via apt-get on a phone with a hardware keyboard was so good.

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Remind me again why we still have i386? Oh yeah, because of the original EeePC which I haven't used as an actual laptop in 6+ years.

But who knows... maybe in a few more years I'll be like "What's this old thing? Oh yeah I vaguely remember using that back in the day. Maybe it'll be fun to do a fresh Ubuntu GNU/Linux install on it just for kicks"... and then I'll be oh so sad because I'll discover Ubuntu dropped support for the i386 architecture. That would suck.

Well there's your answer Canonical; better keep it around!

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