"I did some quick checking, and it appears that the OS usage (non-server
uses) is about 88% for Windows, 5% for GUN/Linux and 7% for Mac. Out of the
5%, the truly free (as defined by the FSF) is probably rather small. I would
say that from a financial standpoint they could probably care less."
Love or hate Canonical, they've done more to raise the profile of GNU/Linux
as a viable desktop solution than anybody else. They are singlehandedly
responsible for dispelling the antique notion that GNU/Linux is a Hard and
Scary OS for Geeks. Out of 5% market share, I imagine that the truly free
distro users are 1-2% of the community (no hard data whatsoever to back that
up, just my guess). Everybody in this world that uses a fully-free distro
could probably fit into one auditorium, but it's good company. :)
"Don't get me wrong; I am not saying Trisquel is inconvenient (it does all I
personally need), but for now fully free systems lag behind (not by any fault
of their own) non-free systems in some ways (3D, wifi) and most people are
willing to trade control over their own machine in exchange for features."
You are absolutely right; most people, even if generally convinced of the
ideals that we talk about, would rather use a distribution FULL of non-free
software to get their wifi working out-of-box, than use our high-quality
Ubuntu-derived distro, buy a $30 wifi card that works with free drivers, and
lose nothing else. It's a tragedy of the commons, and if such a cycle
continues it will reach such a point that hardware makers will stop releasing
free drivers at all, because they will understand that these communities
don't give one tinker's damn whether the driver is under GPL or is an
obfuscated DRM monstrosity. And such a cycle has been happening to the Linux
kernel itself since 1996.
_______________________________________________
Trisquel-users mailing list
[email protected]
http://listas.trisquel.info/mailman/listinfo/trisquel-users
