[sf-lug] Using Linux with AT&T internet service.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Robert Johnson (emailbox6357 at gmail.com):

> Also, the last time I checked, Linux (unfortunately and
> fortunately) is only 1.28% of the desktop market or use. 

Nobody knows, and whichever magazine or whatever cited a figure was
talking smack.  More about that later.

> Maybe the tech support people will get more familiar when and if Linux
> breaks 5 or 10%.

This strikes me as solving the wrong problem.  There is little to no
value proposition in ISP technical support people knowing any details
whatsover of your (the customer's) operating system, provided you have
some idea what (e.g.) the ISP's "gateway" box is and how to do basic
things like enter a router IP address into a Web browser location bar.

I mean, suppose you are running MS-Windows and, despite "gateway" box
setup, are having a difficult time using the Internet.  Is your ISP
going to help you debug Windows networking setup?  No, it isn't.
Fortunately, on any ISP connection, the job of your average in-the-home
box is just to have TCP/IP networking available and able to pick up a
DHCP lease, and it's 2023 so all the OSes have that, most certainly
including any Linux.

Michael P. said:

  And, unsurprisingly, at least at the time, as far as Linux goes/went,
  "unsupported" ... of course that doesn't mean it doesn't work or
  wouldn't work.

To elaborate, in the ISP biz, the word "supported" is a word with
baggage.  When you ask an ISP tech. support rep whether [X] is
"supported", the tech is trained by management and past trauma to assume,
unless [X] is on a very short list of humdrum things, the the worst
case, that you're asking whether they are willing to do handholding with
[X].  And, because support is a cost centre and staffed most often by
minimum wage people, most often permitted only to read from canned
scripts, the tech. will panic and say "no".

But you probably didn't mean to ask whether you could get [X]
handholding.  You wanted to know if [X] can _work_, here.  And, with
Linux, not counting outlandish exceptions, the answer is already "yes",
so it's best to just skip the pointless question.


As to why "Linux desktop market share" figures are a crock and always
have been:  Almost all Linux distributions are open source and freely
distributable / legally duplicable without any central authority having
any plausibly accurate way of _knowing_ how many resulting installations
ensued, or how many of those installations at any given time are still
operational.  So, the IT pundits who confidently say "Linux has X% of
the desktop OS market" are talking smack.  They have no clear idea,
because everyone can at best guesstimate based on this-or-that
heuristics.

Also, it really doesn't matter very much in the first place.  Linux
isn't hostage to proprietary software zero-sum market-domination games,
so all the wearying rhetoric about how X operating system must have Y%
of "the market" to survive and prosper is quaint and inapplicable.
Linux-based distros as open source ecosystem thrive to the degree that
their developers and userbase continue to be able to scratch their own
itches and satisfy their needs.  Leave the popularity contests to
middle-schoolers.