2-Year Study Shows Mac Users Downloading More Open Source Software 203
AmyVernon writes "We combed through about two years' worth of data on SourceForge, looking at the platforms of the users who downloaded projects, and millions more Mac users are downloading open source projects now than were in February 2010. In the same time, Windows downloads have increased by a much smaller percentage and Linux downloads have actually declined." I wonder how much of this last part can be chalked up to the ever-better download infrastructure that the various Linux distros have. (Note: SourceForge and Slashdot are both part of Geeknet.)
Yeah, I wonder that too! (Score:3, Funny)
I also wonder how much of the Mac users downloading more open source software can be chalked up to the better download infrastructures that Linux distros have!
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Different User Groups, Different Needs (Score:5, Informative)
While Linux offers a lot more [out of the box], the average Apple user doesn't need a repository. They can however easily add one! The App Store helped a lot in my opinion. Using Fink and Macports is not mainstream, but it sure works me!
Re:Different User Groups, Different Needs (Score:5, Informative)
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I have.
</counter-anecdote>
Repository vs Store (Score:2)
At first glance I agree it does look rather strange [for a repository], the difference lies in the fact that it's called the "App Store". The OS upgrade is a product.
Where you see a repository, Apple sees a store.
Re:Yeah, I wonder that too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that, but maybe some mac users (I'm one of them) used to use linux but decided to get a mac simply because it doesn't require you to read 3 manuals just to change some configuration while still allowing you to have a really powerful console.
Because of my Linux past, I tend to use macports or homebrew to get almost anything, so I suppose I don't count to the sourceforge statistics
Re:Yeah, I wonder that too! (Score:5, Insightful)
I second this, and add the reason that stuff (sound, video) actually works with zero user effort on Mac.
Plus another reason: can't live without software like Photoshop, Pro Tools and Final Cut Pro.
All that AND I get the unix environment I know and love.
Re:Yeah, I wonder that too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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No not really.
Depending on the Mac you have, you could end up with any one of the 3 major GPU vendors. Although the fact that you are buying a machine with an OEM OS install is probably the key thing here. If you don't bother to install your own OS, you kind of avoid that problem.
As far as after market things go, the Mac is in the same boat as Linux. It may work or it may not be supported at all and you have to be careful what you buy.
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I've change mouse buttons, configured gestures, ntfs drivers and remote ssh mounting with popups and clicks. They don't even come close in user friendliness, sorry.
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Did you actually try the mac os' help? It is actually usable.
MacPorts (Score:5, Informative)
I take it you've never heard of MacPorts? It's a package manager for OS X.
It's the easiest way to install MySQL and other necessities for web programming.
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The bigger and better maintained the repo the less users have to venture to outside sources.
Usually. However, it can just as easily go the other way. Try installing afio on Debian squeeze/stable. You can't from the Debian repo's. They've decided it's so non-free, it can't even fit in the non-free section. So, what's the non-free section for again? Great, they've just made a decade of my backups inaccessible! !@#$
That drove me to Freshmeat ... er, Freecode?!? When did that happen?!?
tar xzf ... && make && make install
Works. Thanks Debian. Not. [I'm kidding about that last
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Re:Yeah, I wonder that too! (Score:5, Informative)
Notice that the Mac comes with a compiler on the distribution DVD along with a traditional set of tools that most open source projects will need. Thus you can get source code and build yourself much more easily than on Windows. Of course you can get binary only software but a lot of people shy away from that sort of thing because of malware concerns.
Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
After buying our Macs we don't have any money left to buy software.
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the funny thing:for some reason Macs have been a stronghold for shareware for /ages/. If you can find a program to do something for free on a Windows machine, odds are you have to pay $19 for a rough equivalent on the Mac.
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As I've transitioned to windows I find is hard to locate software with the glut of abandoned products that won't work on newer versions of windows.
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Well, you *can* pay for LAME on the mac...
Package managers (Score:5, Informative)
I'll tell you why downloads for Linux have declined - better and more complete package manager systems give users less incentive to go to places like SourceForge for programs, because they can use built-in tools like Ubuntu's Software Center.
Re:Package managers (Score:5, Insightful)
The original "app stores" for Linux are its package repos.
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How would that make any sense to what the Apple App store is meant to be doing for users: draining their pocket books?
That's Apple's right, and the right of users to let them. But let's make sure the idea is complete before posting it.
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It doesn't really explain why it's declining since 2010 though. Linux distros have had package managers for over 10 years. I'm not aware of any huge changes in package managers recently, but it could just be that there are more packages and people are getting better at using their package managers.
Re:Package managers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Package managers (Score:4, Interesting)
There has been a shift toward Debian-based derivatives such as Ubuntu. Historically at least, Debian repos were bigger and didn't require going outside the manager to download an RPM/tgz as much. RPM distros also seemed to be more fragmented into incompatible subgroups, while Ubuntu and several others stay close enough to their parent that simple packages (the bulk of long-tail software) can be exchanged. Things are much closer than they used to be, but if you gather a lot of data you might still see a statistical difference.
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Yet installing packages (in my brief encounter with ubuntu) required lots of time on the CLI digging out errors from some non-compatable hardware.
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Exactly.
Since I moved to Kubuntu, in Feb of 2009, I have downloaded only 3 apps from SourceForge. Everything else came from the repositories or the PPA's.
I wonder.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's because more *iux developers have moved to Mac, especially on laptops. 10 years ago I knew more "switchers" who switched from Linux to MacOSX for development including myself. Mainly because all the hardware worked and I had the same software stack for the projects I was working on even if the final deployment would be to linux servers.
Every year since I've watched the number of developers using macs increase at conferences so much so that in the past couple years non-mac laptop users really stood out at the three conferences I attend every year.
Re:I wonder.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the Intel switch in particular was the biggest accelerator of this. Once this happened, one machine could easily run OSX, Linux, Windows and whatever else you might need it to. The Mac lets me be lazy when I want to be (ie use "mainstream" applications like Word, Photoshop, etc) and still gives me easy easy to tools when I need them (ie MacPorts).
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I'm sure Intel chips helped, but Ubuntu PPC was pretty awesome on G4 era iBooks. I remember dual booting while I was in college for awhile. Even wifi worked. The only downside was no flash.
Re:I wonder.... (Score:5, Funny)
So, no downsides then?
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Didn't Macs already have sufficient virtualization options available even before the switch to x86? Mac users have been emulating Win/DOS for a long time as have pretty much all of the alternative operating systems.
The fact that hardware has gotten a lot faster while OS requirements have remained relatively stagnant is why virtualization is much more viable these days. With 6 cores and 8G of RAM, you can virtualize quite a lot and that kind of PC hardware is pretty cheap.
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A little off topic, but following the parent thread. I am a freelance IT consulting and I see more of my colleagues using Macs with VM software. This combination gives one all that they need. You have complete *nix and all the command line stuff with useful Mac UI and then VM software for all the Windows legacy crap you have to deal with from time to time.
I downloaded MySQL 5 as my DB of choice and PHP (plus python, perl, apache, and others) came pre loaded on the mac.
Re:I wonder.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to see Apple use that line in a TV ad.
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Yes, that's where I'm at too. Mac OS on my laptop, Linux on my servers. It seems weird but its way better than Windows. On your PC, Linux on your servers.
And the games ... (Score:2)
I wonder if it's because more *iux developers have moved to Mac, especially on laptops. 10 years ago I knew more "switchers" who switched from Linux to MacOSX for development including myself. Mainly because all the hardware worked and I had the same software stack for the projects I was working on even if the final deployment would be to linux servers. Every year since I've watched the number of developers using macs increase at conferences so much so that in the past couple years non-mac laptop users really stood out at the three conferences I attend every year.
Don't forget the games. While not as good for gaming as Windows, Mac OS X was certainly far better than Linux.
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Macs have laptop-class GPUs at best...
That is not accurate, many PCs have low to midrange GPUs as well, the majority of PCs sold today to individuals are laptops, and what good does a better performing GPU do if developers do not target your platform? It is a frequent comment of Linux users that they configure their system to dual boot to Windows because of the lack of games under Linux.
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Don't be fooled by simple visual impressions though. Macs all look the same, while other machines all look different. The logo stands out and makes it look more prevalent than it is.
I was at a summer research school last year, and my impression the first few days was that more than half - and perhaps more - were using Macs. When I actually counted, though (not all lectures are absorbing and relevant to your own work), the reality was that about 25% were macs.
The most used OS, by the way, was Linux - typical
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Right, because the Mac App Store; fink, ports and homebrew don't exist... Wait, no.
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I sure wish we could just pick one of them, though!
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What do you expect the average Apple Store shopper to do with fink and homebrew exactly? You might as well ask them to BUILD their own software. Crowing over tools like that in the n00b OS is really stupid.
The App Store is relatively new and is not nearly as flexible as it's Linux counterparts.
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Obvious troll is obvious (especially when Linux still has better than 60% of the server market and an even larger share of small servers), but realistically this isn't the end of the world for open source. This is people replacing Windows with MacOS. Which can only be a good thing for Linux, because it helps break Windows lock-in.
Applications developed only for Windows rarely run properly on Linux. Applications developed with portability to MacOS in mind get a Linux port nearly for free, because MacOS and L
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....I don't know anyone who uses Linux for dsktops....
Now you know one. Linux on my tower, which I'm using right now, and Linux on my laptop which I loaned to a friend for her business.
While I sometimes use XP in a vm, I ditched Vista on the tower and Win7 on the laptop due largely to maintenance annoyances. I didn't need any Windows-based software that doesn't run in a vm or its open-source analogue on Linux. I made the switch mostly for convenience; any inclination to zealotry was left behind long ago
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Same. Debian+KDE on my desktop(now two of them), Debian+LXDE on my laptop(I have a W7 partition, but it's slow and annoying compared to LXDE), and my file/backup server, Maemo on my phone/tablet... What more do I need? Everything Just Works(TM) after initial install/setup. And I can control any machine from any other with SSH, and/or mount any drive to any machine with sshfs or nfs, including my phone!
It's /lovely/.
Wonder no more Timothy ... (Score:2)
The answer is: (drum roll please) ... more than 99% of it.
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Linux user here. (Score:5, Informative)
Macs (or Windows, for that matter) don't have any sort of repository, do they?
Re:Linux user here. (Score:5, Informative)
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There's also mirports from the MirOS project as well. Not nearly as popular, but good enough to grab a few essentials like git for my Mac Pro.
Re:Linux user here. (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW at work I use Windows for desktop stuff, Linux and Windows for server stuff. And OS X for testing some OS X client stuff.
Many prefer OS X. That's fine with me. OS X doesn't suit the way I work. I typically have 30+ task buttons on my Windows taskbar. OS X's Expose would just be slower for me - would take more steps to switch from one window to a specific window. Yes it does it more stylishly, but no thanks
I'm not surprised if many OSS developers/users are using Macs. The "Desktop Linux" developers often seem like they're sabotaging "Desktop Linux" with PulseAudio and other crap. To those who will reply "It Works For Me", hey the rest of the world says Windows and OS X works for them, and OS X's market share has grown way more than Desktop Linux has in a shorter space of time.
I get the impression that Desktop Linux users are having to switch distros every few years just to have something that works not too crappily.
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I typically have 30+ task buttons on my Windows taskbar. OS X's Expose would just be slower for me - would take more steps to switch from one window to a specific window. Yes it does it more stylishly, but no thanks ;).
I'm not surprised if many OSS developers/users are using Macs. The "Desktop Linux" developers often seem like they're sabotaging "Desktop Linux" with PulseAudio and other crap. To those who will reply "It Works For Me", hey the rest of the world says Windows and OS X works for them, and OS X's market share has grown way more than Desktop Linux has in a shorter space of time.
I'm very much a keyboard kinda guy. Two of the most useful features of any Linux desktop I use (currently Gnome 2.x and Compiz) are [Super]A and [Super]W to get an overview of everything I have running and switch to, if need be much like you would with a Mac. I suppose I could also just cycle through [Alt]TAB as you would on Windows, but that seems cumbersome to me.
You're right about Desktop Linux getting sabotaged: Gnome3 and Unity purposefully seem to restrict the way I work. Sadly with the current cour
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I suppose I could also just cycle through [Alt]TAB as you would on Windows, but that seems cumbersome to me.
On Windows I still do this a lot. I used to do it on OS X before Expose and it was nicer (one chording key to switch apps and one to switch windows within an app is way, way faster when you have lots of apps and lots of windows). Now though, I think we've found a better way.
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I wrote a program that runs on MS Windows that allows you to quickly assign alt/winkey+ to windows.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/ [sourceforge.net]
Basically if you suddenly have 5 windows you need to quickly switch amongst, just click/raise them in reverse order of precedence (window #5 to window #1), then press "winkey+0".
After that:
winkey+1 = window #1
winkey+2 = window #2
and so on, till winkey+9 in most recently raised order.
Probably only a few people in the world would find it useful, but my turn to say "Works F
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Oops it should be:
quickly assign alt/winkey+[number] to windows.
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To those who will reply "It Works For Me", hey the rest of the world says Windows and OS X works for them, and OS X's market share has grown way more than Desktop Linux has in a shorter space of time.
Its true. The Linux community can ignore the requests of users, but then users will continue to migrate. Same deal with Windows and even Macs at different points in their history (and still today). Ignore your market, your market leaves. For Linux, I think the most common requests are "a desktop that isn't a resource hog, looks nice, and let's me work how *I* want to work" alongside the eternal ask for "better hardware support", with "better office apps" and "better support for windows apps" along for t
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"Desktop Linux" with PulseAudio
It works for me!
Re:Linux user here. (Score:5, Interesting)
Same here. It's been a long time since I had to "go searching" for an app that wasn't already in the distro's collection. And it's been a good deal longer since I last downloaded something from Sourceforge. The only thing that even comes to mind is iscan which I need for my Epson scanner, and it's not hosted on sourceforge.
In any case, I'm glad to see the uptick in Apple downloads, though I suspect that's more a reflection of Linux geeks choosing Apple hardware, rather than the other way around. I don't have a laptop at the moment, But my last laptop was an iBook, and the the next one will probably be an iMac-Pro... because I know that Apple has good, solid hardware, and because the hardware is so tightly controlled, I know that it's easy to write for. If I get an Asus notebook, it's a crap-shoot for which chipset, which graphics chip, etc..
I'll gladly bet a beer that any decent Linux distro will boot "out of the box" on Apple hardware. But I'd be cautious about that bet on some random confabulation of "commodity-PC" hardware.
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I'd add a me to here. In fact, I used to download things from Sourceforge, mainly because the version available at my distro was old or had a version dependent bug. I don't do that anymore, in part because sourceforge stopped working as well as it used to (I can't even login again, try using a forum or bugtracking) and because Debian started to correct bugs faster than the packages available at Sourceforge.
Not that the data of the article is much relevant. It is composed of only two years (came-on, Sourcefo
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Yup. If I have to grab something from source, I'll usually look for an alternative as it means I'll have to keep it updated and managed, versus having apt do it all for me.
We have X! (Score:5, Interesting)
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You should go for either Textmate [macromates.com] or BBedit [barebones.com], just so you can join the Mac equivalent of the vi vs. emacs holy war.
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> It seems to me that Linux is a poor mans Mac.
Linux is Unix.
You never "left Linux". If you had ever ran it, you would have half a clue.
Although a decent machine should not start at $2400.
Now if you are going to run anything in a bottle, Windows is the one to do it with. It's a menace on bare metal and is best treated as a quarantined contagion regardless of what hardware you run.
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It seems to me that Linux is a poor mans Mac. I can't justify the price and the way Jobs leaves old versions of MacOS in the cold fast. It is great if you do not have $$$$ in student loans or get paid pre-2009 salaries but count your blessings if you do and can afford one.
In the Windows world people still use XP which is over 10 years old for crying out and software companies still support it.
I left Linux but switched to Windows because it is much cheaper and I can run Linux in a VM
Apple makes pretty good stuff, but this price thing really deserves some criticism. It's not does not make sense for some laptop or a phone to cost that much. Even if I had the money I would feel desperate for paying that much. They really have a nice UNIX there with some money behind it so it actually works, better than the chronically crippled Linux desktop.
Easy to use nice computer (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of geeks just hated Microsoft and were not necessarily huge fans of Linux on the desktop. Once Apple went to Unix, and to Intel, and started making nice laptops, it was an appealing option. Other geeks like open source but also still find Linux frustrating with dependency hell or config file editing or lack of some piece of software functionality, and just want an out-of-the-box OS that they feel they can spend less time messing around with so they can spend more time messing around with their code. [Obviously a contentious topic around here, but in my limited experience I have spent relatively less time troubleshooting configuration on OSX than Linux. Yes, yes, OSX supports a limited set of hardware and Linux tries to support everything, but that doesn't change the time commitment to making your stuff work.]
There are also developer geeks who, until Lion (which allows virtualization), practically had to buy a Mac because they wanted to test their software under Windows, Linux, and OSX, on one machine. So it had to be a Mac virtualizing the other two.
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Just realize that the fact you can run Windows, Linux and OSX on the same machine has much more to do with Windows and Linux and really nothing to do with OSX.
The only reason you can't do this on every PC hardware platform is because Apple goes out of their way t
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I find it very ironic that the only reason that a lot of people give for switching to Mac is that OSX is the very reason that Apple is much maligned: locking the OS into their hardware. Nobody else would even consider doing such an insidious thing.
There's "locking the OS to their hardware", and there's "only developing the OS for their hardware". Apple does both, but it's the latter, not the former, that people are giving, if by "the only reason that a lot of people give for switching to Mac" you're referring to "you don't have to fiddle with the OS to make it work with your hardware". There may be something "insidious" about the former, but not the latter.
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The only reason you can't do this on every PC hardware platform is because Apple goes out of their way to prevent everyone else from running OSX on non-Apple hardware. They are the only player in the game that has ever done this and it's the most underhanded anti-geek thing there is. What if every OS was keyed to a specific hardware platform?
As a Hackintosh user I can tell you they don't "go way out of their way to prevent other hardware from being run" there's a very small amount of copy protection on OS X compared to what it could be. I can remember having to tinker more to get my first windows install working then my first Hackintosh. They mainly just don't support 3rd party hardware. They still support their software on that hardware through the software update.
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Rational decisions will ruin us, and condemnation is all we have to oppose them. See Garrett Hardin's seminal essay The Tragedy Of The Commons [sciencemag.org] or, if you're in more of a rush, the Prisoner's Dilemma.
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Alternatively, I have a Mac that sits and collects dust because it doesn't live up to the hype. I don't "need" it for many of the reasons that fanboys like to crow about. Plus the thing is underpowered and difficult to deal with.
The only real valid part of you comment is "software functionality".
For that, Windows has a far greater advantage in both apps and games as well as having a less "walled garden" mindset.
Apple products want you to adapt to them as much as the worst Unix interfaces out there. They jus
Simple reason: More Macs (Score:5, Insightful)
Debian / Ubuntu user (Score:5, Insightful)
I hit up Sourceforge if i'm looking for what is out there,
to download, i use apt-get.
I only download from Sourceforge if there isn't a native package already
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The reason: Life is too short for a Linux Desktop (Score:2, Insightful)
I want to be clear that the comments below refer to Desktop Linux, not Linux on the server or elsewhere.
After 12 years of being a Linux hacker, and running Linux on all my boxen, I switched to a macbook pro (running OSX) a little over a year ago. Oh, how I wish I had switched sooner. I wish I could reclaim all of the hours spent trying to get things to work on Linux. What a waste of time. My productivity as a software developer took a nice Jump now that the platform works, and is actually a pleasure to
linux users decline (Score:2)
Bogus (Score:3)
The article is basically worthless. "A few short years ago ... you would not have shown your face at, say, ApacheCon, with a MacBook"? Please. Powerbooks are older than MacBooks, and back in the day I recall when those started to show up - a lot - at Linux-heavy events.
It's worth noting the author is a writer, not a developer - so she probably hasn't actually hung out with the rank-and-file attendees at these conferences much this past decade.
Actually my lead-in was a bit harsh. It is worth noting the large number of Mac-centric projects that exist on SourceForge nowadays as opposed to 2003 (when my desktop switched from Linux to Mac). Back then, it seemed most all projects I was interested in had to be grabbed as a .tar.gz file, built using config/make/make install, and used X11. Now there are a goodly number of Mac-only projects (although I suspect more of those live on code.google than on sourceforge), and a non-insigificant number of "Linux" projects offer a .dmg download as well. But beyond just noting the numbers, the article offers absolutely no justification for any of the speculation it proffers as to "why".
Mac: It runs everything. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been saying this for a while... Mac gets access to open source products shortly after Linux gets them and much before the project is ported to Windows.With the ability to run Windows by Boot Camp, VMWare Fusion or Paralells Desktop a Mac user gets access to all the Windows-only stuff and you can't forget the number of applications dedicated to Mac use. In total, it all just works.
idea (Score:2)
A lot of mac-fanboys (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of mac-fanboys (maybe girls, too?) here. I'm using Linux because a) I can put it on every computer/laptop and b) it is a lot easy to use as alternatives (is there KDE for Mac?)
Just now I updated my Fedora 15 to 16, and I don't have to pay a dime. In a year I update to 17 and get the new awesomeness of KDE and other Linux apps, all for free.
But I know in our society if you can't pay for it, it is worthless. So you can't impress your friends with the newest useless expensive gadget. "I have Fedora 16 with KDE4.7" --- "Bahh I have it, too, it's free so you can't impress me"
I was only on sourceforge to download some java or c libraries, because I'm a developer. I wouldn't know what else to download from that site. Everything I need I can download and install with a few mouse clicks. To go to some obscure site (like sourceforge or download.com or some other crap website), it's like back when I still had Windows XP (with all the crap what the setup.exe are installing).
As Linux gets more attraction (like with Ubuntu), there is no wonder that less Linux users will go to Sourceforge to download apps. To get real popularity for a project there is nothing better as get into the main repositories of Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Suse (and the other distributions).
How did you get here? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am currently 99.999% linux, only using Windows or Mac when testing sites or software. But that's not how things began...
I am currently 32. I like many my age, but not all, had grown up with the Apple II's in my elementary school. My earliest memory of such events was being the 'printer expert' in 2nd grade. When anything went wrong with it, I was asked to fix it. I was an Apple fan, amazed at what I could do with this yellowing grey box on the desk. At one point my father came home with an Apple IIgs which just expanded on my experiences, buying my first modem and connecting to the world via the BBS's around at the time. My first email address was through one of these boards. We later got a Macintosh, I forget the model, but it had all sorts of multimedia capabilities. In high school, I bought my first PC from a friend. He gave me MS DOS 6.22 to use, and later Windows 3.11. I found it all very interesting, and learned quite a bit about the OS after formatting and reinstalling it so many times. Maybe a year later, I found out about Linux from another friend at school. He was very passionate about it which made me so curious about this relatively unknown OS. My first time installing Linux was very painful, but I was determined. Through Windows, downloading a handful of disk images, and then rebooting and loading what I downloaded onto a second partition. After a few times going back and forth, I had enough of the system installed, that I could get myself online through Linux and continue installing the packages there. Compiling the kernel I don't know how many times to get this or that working. Finally the full installation setup with X a week after I had began. From that point on, I had strived to use Linux as my main system. Only problem was I liked using laptops. It took a very long time for Linux to become viable in this arena. I switched from various versions of windows to linux and back again for many, many years. I could never switch fully over for one reason or another. Quite often it was due to lack of software for some task. I keep trying, though I often had a second system setup as a Linux server for various network related tasks. Fast forward to about 4 years ago, I got my first Macintosh since way back. A Macbook Pro with the intel processor. I got Parallels and was able to still do my Windows stuff and play with Linux when I wanted to. 2 years later, I had my motherboard replaced because of the NVIDIA issue. It was at that point that I felt incredibly vulnerable if my system had actually gone down. Was I going to drop another $2,000 on a new Mac replacement if something went wrong? All my software was Mac-only! I had backed myself up against a wall. I began looking for multi-platform open-source free software to replace all of the OSX-only programs I was using. 6 months later I did a full backup of my system in-case anything went wrong during the transition, and leapt back into the Linux community wiping my Mac and installing a recent edition of a Linux distribution. Only a few stumbling blocks since the Macs were just starting to get support, but I had made the switch. One year later, the screen on my MacBook went bad, an internal crack that would cost about $300 for me to replace it myself, more if I had someone else do it. Typing blind, since the screen was completely unreadable, I got myself to another tty console and installed ssh using apt-get. I can't believe it wasn't on there, but now it's one of the first things I do. I was able to access everything on my computer now from my fiancée's laptop, which I had recently switched to Linux (she loves it!
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I am currently 99.999% linux
Which, unfortunately, does not yet seem to support the carriage return.
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rsync! And I just backup my home directory or /home /etc and /var on servers. If you are using a Debian based distro it's easy to recreate the system fresh with just the installed package list.
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I'm surprised you stuck it out on OSX coming from Debian. Just installing software is enough of a pain in the ass on OSX compared to Debian, not to mention how the system is laid out and how it's relatively impossible to customize. Granted I could see how coming from Windows it would be nice, but from Debian!?
Videolan (Score:2)
I would have guessed it was it only VLC that mac users download from sourceforge... I have many friends with mac's, and they all use VLC.
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I've stayed in hotels where the in-room AV is provided by an iMac, running VLC. They stream everything from a central server, including the TV (much easier in a country where all the broadcasts are now DVB-T).
I appreciated the technical coolness of this solution, as well as the very welcome extra features of having a fully functional computer in the room. I wish more hotels would do it.
I am using linux. (Score:2)
However, since i dont have to compile the software included in the distros myself, i usually dont do it. Unless the version is outdated or i want to patch something.
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And your source for that rant is what? Apple ignoring the open downloads available from open sources will drive many people to Linux. They're not stupid enough to attempt the lockin nightmare you're imagining.
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THIS! Someone mod parent up.