If you gauged the market share of various operating systems by counting the number of Macs vs PCs you see in the typical urban coffee shop, you'd probably believe that Apple and Microsoft were duking it out like Republicans and Democrats in a close US presidential election.

But the truth of the matter is that Microsoft is the dominant company when it comes to consumer oriented computers. In fact, according to Net Applications, a company that tracks these things, Microsoft had more than 90% of the market share. Until last month, anyway.

In November, 2008, Microsoft's market share dipped to 89.62%. Which is to say, Microsoft's Windows operating systems still dwarf the nearest competitors, Mac OS X and Linux. But a slightly smaller percentage of people who visited web sites tracked by Net Applications in November were using the operating system.

Net Applications reports that OS X has also seen a slight jump in usage, and that Windows Vista use is up while Windows XP use is down. More than 20% of computer users were running Windows Vista for the first time in November.

[via Computer World and Slashdot]

What exactly is Adobe trying to prove? First, they release a 64-bit version of CS4. Now they're showing 64-bit Linux users some love by releasing an alpha version of the Flash player for their OSes.

It's been a long time coming. For ages, users have been forced to use nspluginwrapper to enable the 32-bit Flash player in their browser. With the official alpha release from Adobe, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Adobe's increased attention to Linux may have something to do with the fact that nearly a quarter of all Firefox crashes on Linux systems are related to the Flash plugin.

Availability of the 64-bit version is yet another boost for Flash on Linux. Version 10 made significant strides in terms of performance and compatability.

Linux users can get their hands on the plugin from this page at Adobe Labs.

Since I've recently installed Vista Ultimate x64 on my workstation, I'm hopeful that Adobe will do the right thing and roll out a Windows version as well. The company has stated that next major release the plugin will feature 64-bit versions for all three major platforms.

[ via Ars Technica ]

There are plenty of things to love about a modern desktop Linux distribution like Ubuntu 8.04. It's got nifty desktop effects, comes with an office suite, web browser, media player, and pretty much anything else you need for day to day computer user. And there's a huge list of applications you can install with the click of a mouse.

But there's one thing I absolutely hate. And that's the fact that while package managers like Synaptic and apt-get make it incredibly easy to install all sorts of applications, uninstalling is another matter.

I wanted to see if I could get some audio editing tools up and running on my Eee PC 1000H today. I could have just tried installing Jack and Ardour, but I decided to go all out and install Ubuntu Studio's audio packages. I opened a terminal, typed in "sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-audio," and after downloading 300MB of files and unpacking them to take up 600MB on my desktop I was all set. Dozens of utilities has been installed, most of which I didn't have any intention of using. After playing around a bit, I couldn't figure out how to playback audio in Ardour, the one app I really wanted to use. And Ardour crashed about 70% of the time I tried to launch it.

So I decided to uninstall using the same method. I opened a terminal, typed "sudo apt-get remove ubuntustudio-audio" and received a message saying I could free up 49.2KB. Only two packages would be uninstalled, and almost all of the audio applications I didn't need would stick around, eating up hard disk space.

Apt-get makes it incredibly easy to install software. It's not so easy to remove it. It looks like my best bet is to go through and remove the applications I don't need one by one. I'm amazed how often I run into this program.

If you don't tend to install a lot of programs that you later wind up uninstalling, Ubuntu's a great operating system. If you enjoy testing out new software, and value both your hard drive space and your free time, Ubuntu may not be for you.

I haven't played with Fedora, SUSE, or PCLinuxOS lately. Anyone know if any of them have a package manager that makes it easier to remove applications?

Update: Thanks to mcdope, I managed to find a solution. But it was so non-intuitive that I'm going to stand by my headline. Uninstalling applications needs to be much simpler in Linux.

Basically, apt-get autoclean, apt-get autoremove, and apt-get --purge remove did nothing for me. What helped was installing the debfoster package and then running it. This shows a list of all packages that were installed along with ubuntustudio-audio (or any other package). If you select "y," you can keep a package. Selecting "n" removes it -- but not the other packages that rely on it, as I figured out the hard way.

So I had to reinstall ubuntustudio-audio, run through the whole process again, and this time select "p" for purge." That finally removed most of the apps that had been installed as part of the package and cleaned up 519MB of disc space. Finally, I ran apt-get autoremove which seemed to cleanup a few more loose ends.

Thanks for all your suggestions!

I've decided once and for all that I'm going to make a serious effort to make Linux my primary operating system. Am I dissatisfied with Windows? No. In fact, I'm quite happy with it. It's just time for a change, that's all.

This isn't my first attempt to switch. I've made several others before with various distros: Ubuntu, Mint, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, Fedora, Slax...There's always been something early on that made me bail out and head back to my trusty old Windows XP install.

Now, I'm not blaming Linux. It's more to do with my comfort level with the programs I have installed. Certain apps that I've been using for ages in Windows aren't available in Linux, and that's held me back. For me, it's always been Photoshop (CS2 in Wine has never worked very well for me).

Recently, however, I've been testing out so many other similar apps that I don't think I'll notice it missing this time. I'm getting comfortable with GIMP's UI, and I can always use Drpic.com for really quick edits.

Which brings me to the larger point: how much does your OS really matter any more? I use Firefox and a handful of addons and a number of web apps now, so switching ought to be relatively painless. So far, the only thing I've missed is being able to install a Windows app to review it for DownloadSquad, and VirtualBox will take care of that soon enough.

What about you? Could you switch to Linux and not miss a beat, or are there still some apps you just can't live without on your desktop?

Development toward the 2.6 release of GIMP continues, and devoted users can now head over to the FTP server and grab a copy of the new (and unstable) 2.5.4 release.

Several UI annoyances have been fixed. Docks and toolboxes can now be easily recovered from an accidental close via the window menu. You can also lock your tabs to a dock to keep yourself from dragging them out by mistake, and presets can be saved in all GIMP's color tools.

A blank, placeholder window has been added (pictured), which allows files to be dragged-and-dropped for editing.

The help system has been improved, and now supports online browsing. If you don't have the entire set of docs installed, GIMP will simply open the requested page in your web browser.

Full release notes are available here.

Business Week reports that sources inside HP claim the company is readying a custom operating system based on Linux for home computer users. There are practically no details about the rumored OS at this point, aside from the fact that it's supposed to be "easier" to use than most Linux distributions.

Why would HP, a company that has made billions of dollars by selling machines designed to run Windows want to build its own operating system? Two words. Vista and Apple.

First of all, Microsoft is in the process of killing off its most popular operating system ever, Windows XP. But many home and business computer users are reluctant to install Windows Vista. So if HP wants to continue selling computers over the next few years while waiting for Windows 7 to arrive, it might not be a bad idea to offer customers an alternative to Windows Vista.

The Business Week article also quotes someone who claims that Apple could be preparing to enter the sub-$1000 laptop game soon. That's an area where companies like HP, Dell, and Acer haven't really had to worry about Apple so far. But one of the reasons Apple laptops have been gaining steam in the last few years is because the same company is behind the software and the hardware. That means you don't run into the kind of hardware compatibility issues you find with Windows Vista. A custom HP operating system could ensure that as long as you buy HP peripherals, everything you plug into your computer will work.

HP has already begun dabbling in Linux. Earlier this year the company released the HP 2133 Mini-Note, a low end ultraportable laptop designed to compete with the popular Asus Eee PC. The cheapest versions of the Mini-Note run SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

[via Electronista]

I have been a Linux user for quite some time -- about eight years. My husband and I have known each other since we were twelve, when our school's only computer was an Apple IIe attached to a dot matrix printer. We grew up together, bought our first computer together, and built our first home-grown computers together.

He has never used Linux. Sure, he's played Frozen Bubble a few times. He's shut down my computer during thunderstorms. That's it.

His desktop Windows machine is older, and truth be told, he uses it for games and web surfing. He just bought an MSI Wind for work and school, and plans on keeping most of the "work stuff" on there.

He is a Windows user, but Windows irritates him on regular basis. He has said (for years) he'd be happy to use Linux for internet and document creation, but he can't part with a couple of games.

Now, the time has come. He is ready. He has asked that his computer be set up as a dual boot machine. How did he reach this conclusion, and what needs to be done to get his computer ready for the Linux invasion? And if you find yourself in this same position, what do you need to do?

I'm a Windows user, and it has served me well. That being said, I play with a lot of Linux distributions and there are some applications that are just so much better than anything Windows can offer that I find myself wondering how long it'll be until I make the switch.

For starters, there's the APT and the Synaptic Package Manager. Microsoft has been promising updates and installs without reboots for years, yet Windows Vista still can't seem to deliver the goods. The Linux Mint beta I installed on my laptop recently, however, located well over a hundred updates to various packages upon completion and quietly downloaded and installed them while I finished tweaking Firefox and tooled around on some websites.

And unlike Windows' Automatic Updates, APT actually handles all the software on your machine, not just updates to the OS. What I wouldn't give for a Windows app that did this - and I know there are various apps that try, like Sumo, but none of them really work all that well. Rebooting to complete updates is crap. Get that trash off my PC.

The plain truth is I don't like working with media files. Watching them, or listening to them, sure, I'm just as into that as the next girl. When it comes to actually converting them from something captured off an external device or my screen, though, my stomach turns. It's not an aversion that's peculiar to Linux. I hate using the Windows for those same tasks. Since I don't have access to a Mac, I can't vouch for the ease of media conversion on them, but I can safely say that as ubiquitous as Quicktime is, I have very little luck working with (or viewing) Quicktime files on any machine with any operating system in my possession.

Linux presents special challenges with media file conversions. The good news is that though some of the tools might be a little tricky to decipher, they do a great job with conversions and tend to encompass a wide range of file types. Some tools can be used with GUI front-ends, and some I've found are just a lot faster and easier to bang out a command in a terminal window. Many of these tools are either installed by default in a number of Linux distributions, or can be added with a few clicks through the distro's repositories.

So I admit it was with a whole lot of fear and loathing that I decided to include screencasts in a recent post on KDE. My video grab software was working wonderfully, but it saved my files as .ogv. That wouldn't be a problem if I weren't hosting it elsewhere, and if the conversion software on that site didn't require it be in a format other than .ogv. And Ogg files, being funny beasts, aren't always the easiest things to convert.

And certainly, they aren't the only things you'd want to convert in Linux. So let's shake down how it's done.

When KDE 4.0 was released that fateful day in January, it unleashed an unholy boatload of controversy. Was it a final release? Was it really a final release? And just because the developers say it is a final release, but that it isn't, it's just numbered as such, and we shouldn't worry if things don't seem finished -- does that mean we shouldn't be concerned if things don't work?

We stand by the statements we made originally. KDE 4.0 is pretty and showed a lot of potential. We knew it would get better, but what would the cost be to the desktop environment? Would they be able to get the desktop environment to a stable, workable condition in time to keep alive the interest of those who opted to stay with KDE 3.5 at the time, or even moved to GNOME or Xfce?

The KDE 4.1 final release has become what many hoped the January release would. It is as stable on our OpenSUSE 11.0 system as our GNOME desktop. It is much faster and less weighty than a KDE 3.5 install. It is, of course, still really pretty. But better than that, it is functional. It can be configured to work the way you work, and even make your work easier. We can finally set our default desktop to KDE4 on login, and use it on a daily basis.

And yes, it is very different. And where we might not understand the reasoning behind every change (and some may even puzzle us a bit) we are really excited about the way things are shaping up.

We play with a lot of Linux distributions, and plenty of them leave us wanting more. NimbleX, on the other hand, leaves us screaming for less.

How much awesome can you cram into a 200MB live CD? A whole lot. NimbleX comes with 550 packages preinstalled, and you'll find the usual Linux apps here: Firefox, K3B, XMMS, MPlayer, Gimp, Kopete, Transmission, Klam AV, and K Office, to name a few. Boot times are wicked fast, even from CD, and installation to a hard drive or USB flash drive is dead simple.

Desktop performance is equally impressive, even on our shabbily-equipped VirtualBox setup (256MB memory, 8MB video, 8GB hard drive). On that note, it's worth mentioning that NimbleX also comes with VirtualBox installed just in case you decide you want to get Windows XP running in it.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has big dreams for Linux. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's been following the progress of Ubuntu, which releases a major update every six months and keeps getting more and more user friendly. But user friendly is just the beginning. Shuttleworth wants Linux to be prettier too. In fact, he's calling on open source developers to make desktop Linux more attractive than OS X within 2 years.

Shuttleworth's remarks came yesterday at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, or OSCON. Open source developers have been making great strides in this area recently. Many Linux distributions include support for Compiz desktop effects which add a bit of visual bling to the desktop experience while also making things like switching virtual desktops a bit easier. And the developers behidn the KDE desktop environment have scrapped the Windows-like interface of KDE 3 and replaced it with a whole new paradigm in KDE 4 -- we're note entirely convinced that KDE 4 is easier to use than KDE 3, but it's certainly prettier.

On the other hand, it's a bit funny to hear Shuttleworth talk about making Linux more beautiful. After all, Ubuntu is frequently mocked for its default dull brown color scheme. But the operating system and its user interface are already extraordinarily customizable.

What do you think? Is it possible for desktop Linux to become as "beautiful," and user-friendly as OS X within 2 years? What would it take? And keep in mind, it's not like Apple is going to just sit still while Linux developers are working on the challenge. Who knows what the Mac OS will look like two years from now?

Have you ever looked in a real DIYers toolbox? Or maybe even the toolbox of someone who's pretty handy, but who has a messy streak? So all the hammers might be together, or all the screwdrivers will be together, maybe even with some sort of arrangement as to Phillips or Torx heads... but there is almost inevitably, in some corner compartment of the toolbox, or some drawer (and maybe several of them, even) an area set aside for what amounts to a whole lot of miscellaneous "everything" bits. These pieces might logically be found with hammers, or dry wall tools, or about a million other things... But they aren't quite the same, and they aren't always used in the same manner. So they end up in a big pile, that you hope stays manageable enough you can find them again.

This week's Linux switch, the last of the web development stuff for a bit, is like that compartment. These are all nifty little tools, and great when you need them. But they are mostly small, and have a strange distinction of not always being associated with any one particular type of task.

Some, like FTP programs and plugins, are associated with other programs. But what if you love your editor and hate the uploading functions it has? Image maps can be a nuisance to set up, and we think that's probably part of the reason why you don't see a lot of them. But sometimes, they just fit the project at hand.

And you know how we said we'd go easy on the editors? Seriously, we meant it. However, there's one more editing tool we want to mention that's probably beyond most casual users, but will make Linux users who want to develop SWF9 applications pretty happy. We are not covering it in any great depth, because we are not any sort of whizzes with Flash development -- but we have to point it out. It's been a long time coming!

So welcome to our odds and ends compartment of web tools!

Hey, we know some people really did care very much about the Mozilla world record for Firefox 3 downloads on Download Day. And hey, yeah, we'll concede mad props to the Mozilla team for getting out there and getting those downloads.

But OpenSUSE just upped the "let's get lots of new users" ante. Record books are all well and good, but what about stakes that are a little higher, a bit more exotic? For instance, what would happen if OpenSUSE hit a million installs of the OpenSUSE 11.0 release by the SourceForge Community Choice Awards at OSCON next week?

If OpenSUSE 11.0 hits the million registered installs mark by July 24, OpenSUSE Community Manager Joe ("Zonker") Brockmeier is putting his skin on the line. No, really, his skin. If this lofty goal is reached, by the end of OSCON Zonker will be sporting a nifty new tattoo of the deliriously happy OpenSUSE mascot, the "geeko."

Now, a million installs is a lot. You can't really blame Zonker though, as a tattoo is a pretty big deal, depending not only on one's pain tolerance, but the idea that one day you will have to explain to your grandkids why any given image is on your back (or arm... or...). We suppose he had to set the bar pretty high so that even the jaded future generations would be duly impressed. Zonker is still willing to amuse us, though, and has said that a more attainable 300,000 registered installs would get him to leave OSCON with green hair.

But c'mon, a tattoo is so much cooler. If you were thinking you'd like to try OpenSUSE 11.0, but needed just that little kickstart to try it, this is a pretty fine reason to at least give the LiveCD a whirl. If you like it enough to install it, you will have to register (no cost or spam involved) the install in order for it to count towards Zonker's new tattoo.

And no, no word yet on prospective placement of the geeko.

WattOS is a new Linux distribution that's based on Ubuntu, but designed for low-power machines. It has low system requirements, which means you can run it on older hardware. But the developers are also hoping to build advanced power management features into the OS so that you'll have a full Linux desktop experience without consuming much power (by today's computer standards).

The operating system comes in four flavors:

• wattOS: The core operating system which features a Gnome desktop
• mWattOS: Uses the Xfce interface
• µWattOS: Features a command line interface and a light-weight GUI
• Substation: A server edition

WattOS is currently available as a public alpha, which means there's still a lot of work to do, but the operating system is perfectly usable, if a little rough around the edges. It comes with a stripped down set of applications. For examle, instead of OpenOffice.org you get AbiWord and Gnumeric. But WattOS supports apt-get and the Synaptic Package Manager, which makes it easy to add additional applications.

[via Sizlopedia]