Fnac selling (almost) only Windows netbooks?

It seems that the [[Fnac]] (at least the Spanish section) has been remodelling its web recently, which caused some downtime last week, and a really slow experience right now (their webmaster must lack the experience to realize that great changes should be made first in test computers, then moved to production ones. Or maybe they lack the resources to buy a spare server…).

Anyway, I’m visiting the place to check the prices of [[netbook|netbooks]], more precisely an [[ASUS_Eee_PC#Eee_901|ASUS Eee 901]], and, to my surprise, the [[Linux]] models are gone! I have previously seen both [[cruft|Windows XP]] and Linux-based netbooks in Fnac, but now only the former seem to survive. I suspect that the XP netbooks are always over-represented in stores, that is, they have many more XP units than Linux ones, even though they are sold on par. Or even more Linux units are sold.

However, this plain and simple oblivion of any Linux offer is outrageous, and can only point to nasty activity by Microsoft, who moves the necessary strings (money when possible, threats when necessary) to secure a niche (that of netbooks), that is one of the biggest market entry points for Linux, and thus the greatest menace to MS’s monopoly.

Right nowk, the Fnac Spain “Ultra Mobile” page (can not make a direct link because URLs inside the Fnac site are a thing to fear and hate), shows only one Acer Aspire One with Linux. All other netbooks, including all other Acer Aspire One models, and all Eee PCs, are exclusively Windows machines.

Update: The Linux Eee PCs seem to be back. Maybe it was just an error? Probably I’m just too paranoid :^)

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LWD – December

I will start making this section bimonthly, otherwise the only content of my blog will consist on it. Besides, the new information generation rate is not enough to require more often updates.

You can read an intro for my Linux World Domination project in this May 2008 post.

As usual D2D means “days to domination” (the expected time for Windows/Linux shares to cross, counting from the present date), and DD2D means difference (increase/decrease) in D2D, with respect to last report. CLP means “current Linux Percent”, as given by last logged data, and DD means domination day (in YYYY-MM-DD format).

Project D2D DD2D DD CLP Confidence %
Einstein 250.8 -631.3 2009-08-09 37.48 (+2.31) 9.5
MalariaControl 7172.8 +282.8 2028-07-22 12.45 (+0.19) 0.8
POEM 5020.4 +1406.5 2022-08-31 10.05 (+0.26) 1.1
QMC >10k 7.91 (+0.03)
Rosetta >10k 7.99 (+0.08)
SETI >10k 7.88 (+0.02)
Spinhenge >10k 3.35 (+0.14)

As promised, today I’m showing the plots for MalariaControl. In next issue: POEM@home.

Number of hosts percent evolution for MalariaControl (click to enlarge)

Accumulated credit percent evolution for MalariaControl (click to enlarge)

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LWD – October

Hey, October almost passed and I didn’t write the montly report on LWD. I might make it bimontly, to produce less spam in the blog. You can read an intro for my Linux World Domination project in this May 2008 post.

As usual D2D means “days to domination” (the expected time for Windows/Linux shares to cross, counting from Feb 3, 2008), and DD2D means difference (increase/decrease) in D2D, with respect to last report. CLP means “current Linux Percent”, as given by last logged data. The new datum DD means domination day (in YYYY-MM-DD format).

As a new feature, I am now fitting the curves (to predict Windows/Linux crossing) to first degree polynomials, but taking only the last N points so that the [[Coefficient_of_determination#Definitions|coefficient of regression]] is close to 1 (yes, I am being purposely unclear and arbitrary on this subject).

Project D2D DD2D DD CLP Confidence %
Einstein 882.1 +571.9 2011-03-31 35.17 (+0.27) 37.3
MalariaControl 6890.0 +6268.8 2027-09-10 12.26 (+0.06%) 0.3
POEM 3613.9 2018-09-21 9.81 (+0.05%) 0.4
QMC >10k 7.88 (+0.0%)
Rosetta >10k 7.91 (+0.11%)
SETI >10k 7.86 (+0.03)
Spinhenge >10k 3.21 (+0.2%)

OK, the data seems discouraging. The crossing day (DD) seems to be further away every month, instead of closer. Recall however that the only (half) reliable data are the current (and past) percents. All the rest is speculation, and the fits change wildly depending on the function used to make them, and the number of points fit.

Starting with this month’s issue, I might post pictures of the evolution plots. Today I’m showing the plots for Einstein@home. Next month: Malaria@home.

Number of hosts percent evolution for Einstein@home (click to enlarge)

Accumulated credit percent evolution for Einstein@home (click to enlarge)

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Soy un PC y quiero ser libre

Leído vía Menéame, un vídeo hecho por alumnos de una escuela de Ordizia, mi pueblo natal:

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LWD – September

Ups! August passed, my holidays finished, second work week… and I haven’t written much lately. I will partially fix that by updating my Linux World Domination project (you can read this May 2008 post for an intro).

As usual D2D means “days to domination” (the expected time for Windows/Linux shares to cross, counting from Feb 3, 2008), and DD2D means difference (increase/decrease) in D2D, with respect to last report. CLP means “current Linux Percent”, as given by last logged data.

Project D2D DD2D CLP Confidence %
Einstein 310.2 +62.3 34.94 43.0
MalariaControl 621.2 -374.9 12.20 35.0
POEM never 9.76
QMC 2873.2 +356.5 7.88 7.2
Rosetta 24647.0 +20189.5 7.80 0.5
SETI 4668.7 +1666.2 7.83 4.3
Spinhenge 12226.0 3.01 0.8

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LWD – July

After another boring month, I have little to write about, besides my LWD project data update. You can read this May 2008 post for an intro.

As usual D2D means “days to domination” (the expected time for Windows/Linux shares to cross, counting from Feb 3, 2008), and DD2D means difference (increase/decrease) in D2D, with respect to last report (around a month ago).

Project D2D DD2D Confidence %
Einstein 247.9 +62.8 30.4
MalariaControl 996.1 +166.2 15.7
POEM 478.5 8.6
QMC 2516.7 +555.0 5.9
Rosetta 4457.5 +3155.8 1.8
SETI 3002.5 -1194.0 4.9
Spinhenge never

Except for SETI@home, all the D2Ds have gone up, showing that maybe the predictions so far were too optimistic. On the bright side (for [[FLOSS]]), SETI is, by far, the project with most users, so its results are the most reliable.

Recall that confidence percents are below 10%, except in two cases, which means logged data extent is small, compared to prediction time. This periodic report, thus, will get more and more accurate as months pass by.

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LWD update

This is a (in principle, monthly) update to my “Linux World Domination” project. You can read the intro in this May 2008 post.

The data presented is different from the one in the aforementioned post:

  • Mac is dropped from it
  • Predictor@home is also dropped
  • Two projects have been added: POEM and Spinhenge
  • D2D means “days to domination”. The expected time for Windows/Linux shares to cross, counting from Feb 3, 2008.
  • DD2D means difference (increase/decrease) in D2D, with respect to last report (a month ago)
Project D2D DD2D Confidence %
Einstein 185.1 21.8
MalariaControl 829.9 -1.1 15.5
POEM never
QMC 1961.7 +122.7 6.1
Rosetta 1301.7 3.8
SETI 4196.5 -370.5 2.9
Spinhenge

Except for QMC@home, all the projects have reduced the D2D. Rosetta and Einstein were expected to never lead to LWD, and now they are.

See you next month!

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Microsoft se pasa al humor

Pedazo de noticia que he leído vía EmpresaDigitala.net. Según esta, Microsoft apuesta por la seguridad para diferenciarse del software libre.

¡Oh, sorpresa! MS, la empresa que produce el ubícuo sistema operativo Windows, tan conocido por su invulnerabilidad ante ataques de software malicioso y su práctica ausencia de bugs y errores, ha decidido seguir por el camino de la perfección que la caracteriza, para diferenciarse del software libre, que tantos agujeros de seguridad sabemos que tiene, y cuyos bugs sabemos que se tardan tanto en solucionar. ¡Menos mal! Estoy ya harto de los virus y troyanos en mi Debian. Es que cada vez que me mandan un e-mail tengo miedo de abrirlo, no sea que se me infecte el ordenador. Además el antivirus que tengo todo el tiempo corriendo en segundo plano me come muchos recursos, y no puedo trabajar a gusto. ¡Ojalá pueda pasarme a Windows, y olvidarme de todo este rollo del [[malware]]!

¡Venga ya!

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How much left for GNU/Linux World domination?

Remember Project BHS? It is an effort I am making to log the evolution of Windows/Linux/Mac/Other market share, via the respective contributions to [[BOINC]] projects.

I have taken a further (and very crude) step towards the estimation of when will the Beast from Redmond fall, by extrapolating the “Number of hosts vs. time” curves to the points of crossing. For that I have fitted the data so far to (very crude, I know) second order polynomials (with [[Xmgrace]]), and calculated the crossing points (with [[GNU Octave]]).

The results can be:

  1. Windows seems to go upwards and Linux/Mac downwards (will never cross)
  2. The crossing point is above 100% or below 0% market share: the extrapolation is unfit (will never cross)
  3. There is a crossing point and lies within 0-100% market share: that’s the World Domintion date!!

I will be posting data for different projects, along with a “confidence” percent. This value corresponds to the fraction of the total time required for Linux/Mac to overcome Windows (according to the present tendency) that is represented in the collected data. If 10-day data suggests that Linux will overcome Windows in 1000 days, then the result is not really very trustable. OTOH, 999-day data suggesting the same is compelling.

An important notice: expected times are not measured from “now”, but from the moment I started collecting data, on Feb 3, 2008 (3 months ago).

The following table illustrates the aforementioned data for some selected projects, with time in days and confidence percent in parenthesis.

Project Linux (%) Mac (%)
Rosetta never never
MalariaControl 831 (11.4) 1142 (8.3)
SETI 4579 (1.9) 3094 (2.8)
Einstein never never
QMC 1839 (4.64)
Predictor 1095 (1.03) never

As an example, the curve fits and corresponding crossing points are given in the following figure, for the case of SETI@Home. You can infer the limited trustability of the predictions from the tiny time extent of the data points used to extrapolate the curves. As time goes by, curves will be more and more trustable, so expect updates to this “project”.

seti_small

SETI@Home data (click to enlarge)

The software used to process the data is BHS, and can be found at my home page.

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Firefox 2 beats IE6 at my site

I regularly check the visit stats at this blog, and today is the first time that the browser with most accumulated visits is [[Mozilla Firefox|Firefox]] and not [[Internet Explorer]]. IE began ahead because some Chinese hacker(s) used the Windows XP/IE6 duo to try some nasty things at the site, and generated a lot of visits. After I banned these IPs, the visits from Firefox users have gone up steadily, and now the total visit stats are:

  1. Firefox 2 (33.5%)
  2. Internet Explorer 6 (32.6%)
  3. Firefox 1.0 (10.4%)
  4. IE 7 (4%)

Regarding OSes, [[Windows XP]] is still the most prominent one, with 53% of the visits, followed by generic Linux at 12.9%, then other versions of Windows and specific Linux distros.

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