cross-platform virus

[Alexander Jacob Tsykin]

On Wednesday 12 April 2006 11:24, Peter Garrett wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 10:42:10 +1000
>
> Alexander Jacob Tsykin <stsykin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Most of Ubuntu's growth is from windows.
> > >
> > > Really? Do you have any figures on this? I think it's rather doubtful,
> > > although if it were true, that would be A Good Thing (tm).
> > >
> > > Peter
> >
> > Very easy to prove. Once a Linux person learns a distro, its not too
> > common to move,
>
> This is very funny :)
>
> Reading a few forums and articles would soon
> disabuse you of this notion. There are *many* *many* Linux users who
> distro-hop constantly. New users *often* try a number of distros, and lots
> of experienced Linux people try other distros out of curiosity, or to get
> something to "work" that their other distro appears not to support "out of
> the box", and so on ...
>
> Linux people may or may not settle on one distro. It really depends on
> personality and needs.
>
The thing is that most people on the forums are distro-hoppers because they 
change as they hear about a better distro, and as they know about Linux, 
they're not afraid of learning a new way of doing things. Most people who use 
Linux are not like this. They don't use the lists and forums, and probably 
don't know they exist. Instead they just sit on one distro which they like, 
more or less forever. Not even upgrading it to a new version until they 
absolutely have to.
> > because changing distros means learning how a completely new one works.
>
> Historically, Linux users have not been afraid to learn the quirks of
> different distros. This might be changing somewhat as more converts appear
> who are only interested in something that is "easy to use", however.
>
> A few years ago a lot of Linux users would have been just as happy to
> learn Slackware or Debian or indeed LFS as to learn Perl or Python or Ruby
> - but I agree that the "typical" profile has shifted away from that kind of
> user.
>
now the typical profile really is the person that does not want any changes. 
As more people adopt Linux, it will shift more and more that way. And as more 
Windows users change to Linux, the trend will be increased because they more 
than anyone do not want changes. Once they find something that works, they 
will stick to it. It follows then that most of Ubuntu's (and other relatively 
easy to use Linux's) growth must come predominantly from Windows. 
> > Most of Linux's growth would have to come from Windows. Since Ubuntu is
> > the biggest and fastest growing distribution (pretty sure), it is bound
> > to get most of its growth from Windows too.
>
> Possibly. Not proven though. The Distrowatch figures are inevitably
> inconclusive, for example. Most new users would not even know that
> Distrowatch exists. One problem here is that evidence from forums, mailing
> lists, Distrowatch and IRC etc etc is skewed badly - the probability of
> participants being geeks, and having previous experience in Linux, UNIX/
> BSDs is too high.
>
very true
> Peter
>