Quote Originally Posted by Delsus View Post
You say that "Less than 20% of linux users use a GUI, but I counted over 50% of users in the chart you provided run distros that come packaged with a GUI, load the GUI and start the Xserver on boot, so that's your theory out of the window. Now you might say that the chart is not a representative example due to the small sample size, which I could agree with but then the chart you provided is not relevant to the discussion.

I do agree that they have to look at the problem from a business point of view, but as both Linux and OSX are based on Unix, right at the bare bones of the system they are very similar, porting a Mac version to Linux would be simple, and wouldn't take much work at all. It's not thinking about how many customers they can get, it's is it profitable. If it costs much less to make than the Windows version then it could make sense to make it as it could still pull the same margin, and that's ultimately what business looks at, percentage profits (ie profit margin) than actual money because it shows an accurate example of how you are doing, and it can be compared much easier.

Just because Linux makes up only 2% of the market doesn't mean it should be discounted. Linux is unfortunately in a bad cycle, people that know of it use Windows because Windows has all the programs they use, and Linux might only have 20% of these programs, and the alternatives might not suit their needs, so they stick with Windows. The developers see Linux as an unprofitable market when they look at the market share, so they don't develop for it and for the most part up to now no one seems to have shifted.

You can run ubuntu without the GUI.