Alexander’s Blog

TechRepublic’s Editor in Chief, Jason Hiner, has done a very detailed analysis on why Linux has miserably failed to take over the desktop market from Windows. He writes:

In the decade since it was first proclaimed as the “Windows killer,” Linux on the desktop has made virtually no progress in real adoption numbers. According to market share trackers (based on real PC activity and not just sales) such Net Applications, StatCounter, W3Counter, and others, the market share of Linux has been hovering around just 1-2% of total PC operating system installations for a decade.

In his article, Jason also gives reasons why he believes Linux has not been the “Windows killer” that a lot of people have been predicting.

Despite this consistent evidence that Linux desktops were going nowhere, pundits, analysts and Linux enthusiasts have been repeatedly predicting that Linux was on the verge of a breakthrough on the desktop. At the end of nearly every year, some writer or publication has prognosticated that the following year would be “The year of the Linux desktop.”

While Linux has made progress in the servers and mobile devices arena, it has failed to conquer the desktop world. You can read Jason’s complete analysis on TechRepublic’s Web site here.

If you accidentally drag the Show Desktop icon from your Quick Launch bar in Windows XP and then try to drag it back , it only creates a shortcut to the Show Desktop icon. Which means that you can’t delete the icon that you dragged on your desktop otherwise the Show Desktop icon won’t work because it’s only a shortcut. Here’s what you can do to quickly restore the Show Desktop icon.

1. Copy the following code in Notepad.

[Shell]

Command=2

IconFile=explorer.exe,3

[Taskbar]

Command=ToggleDesktop

2. Save the file as Show Desktop.scf in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch, where Username is the account name that you are logged in as. For example, if you are logged in as Matt, the path to the folder will be “C:\Documents and Settings\Matt\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch.” You should now see the Show Desktop icon in the Quick Launch bar.

Make sure that when you save the file in Notepad you change the Save as Type to “All files”, otherwise it will add the .txt extension to the file.

Now that Microsoft is offering a free anti-virus software to the public called Microsoft Security Essentials, the anti-virus vendors are not too happy, which is understandable. But the way some of them are fighting back is rather strange. For example, Sophos, which offers security products such as anti-virus, anti-spam, and firewall client decided to get even with Microsoft by making claims that Windows 7 failed to prevent 80% of malware attacks in their lab test. According to Sophos,  “Windows 7 disappointed just like earlier versions of Windows.”

What Sophos didn’t tell everyone was that the Windows 7 computer that they tested didn’t have any anti-virus software. Hello? Anybody home? Sophos completely rigged the results as if no one would notice that they were cheating. Microsoft didn’t think this was funny and fired back.

I understand that Sophos didn’t like the fact that Microsoft is offering a free anti-virus software tool but I am sure they could have used a better way to express their frustration. Risking your credibility may not be an ideal way to fight back but that’s exactly what Sophos did. Hopefully other vendors will use better judgment.