Linux Market Share Passes 1%!!

jdeslip

Hitslink.com just releasted their april market share stats and linux passed 1% for the first time ever.

See historical plot at my article here: http://www.berkeleylug.com/?p=43

Digg the article here: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_Market_Share_Passes_1

inyonimakhaza

Well, that depends on how you measure it - The following Article said in 2006 that Linux on the Desktop would have a market share of 5% (it's in german, unfortunately).

Don't trust any statistics, that you haven't faked yourself!

mfillpot

As many have stated before it is quite hard to calculate the actual Linux market share.

We remain hidden from the traditional statistics grabbing mechanisms thanks to the following:
[ul]
[li]The lack of forced registration for Operating Systems installations[/li]
[li]The ability to mask our OS and Browser on web servers, typically done to allow us to access windows centered websites.[/li]
[li]The effectiveness of our firewalls, blocking OS discovery scans[/li]
[li]The clean network traffic, without the plethora of announcement packets that other OSs send you cannot just sniff to find the Linux boxes.[/li]
[/ul]

I believe that if you count the server and desktop installations that Linux has far more than a 5% market share, however the freedoms we enjoy as Free Software users and highly customizable applications we use are the reasons that we cannot confirm any numbers as accurate.

In particular the OS masking through browsers is what makes the report your are citing inaccurate.

tuxmania

One percent of the Desktops on the internet is not a shabby number at all. I think its higher but lets say its 1%. Even Microsofts own figures are much higher and i suspect they have a very high interest in getting the right figures.

How many computers are there really out there? There are about 200,000,000 Linux webservers out there, how many desktops can there be?

The real numbers are very hard to get if not entierly impossible. Still one percent is no doubt a very high figure if you count it as potential customers/users. The step over the threshold for the snowball effect that usually kicks in is not that far away.

chip

I think the members of this website will give a pretty good idea of how many of us are out there.

Skripka

In all honesty there's little reason at all to care about market share. There are only 2:

1) You're a tech writer and need something to fill column inches about

2) Higher market share *might*, emphasis might, lead to better 3rd party device driver support.

jnvilo

Well said.

wiebelhaus

Fantastic!

ajun

Not 1%! just 2%!

Guzanof

Usiualy statictics are too inaccurate. I don't believe in digits.

But linux indeed gaining popularity )

abrenar

i agree daniel, even some of our public schools here in Philippines are converting their systems to Ubuntu, save money, no viruses is the reasons.

practically genius people choose linux ^__^

vtel57

I wish the US wasn't so damned locked into MS Windows.

abrenar

think much bigger eric. like this.

I wish the whole windows users wasn't so damned locked into MS Windows.

much better.

:laugh:

temmu

i suspect much more than 1%

lots of articles in the past year on this or that government or agency adopting linux.

lots of us loading linux on friends' former-windows machines (as they have no licensed copy of windows...)

and, on what else besides debian does one run network security tools? ok, that's too narrow...

and (i know this is hard to believe) some ppl are actually tired of malware on their pc and would switch if one of us hinted at it...

so, yeah, way more than 1%.

isaac

Another thing that makes it so hard to pin down is that many people purchase PC's licensed for, and pre-installed with some flavor of Windows, then just blow it away and throw Linux on it. It inflates the numbers in favour of M$.

On a happy note, I'm beginning to get requests for Linux based workstations from several of my employer's clients. Some were prompted by Vista, most were because their on-site tech people are fed up with constantly fighting a losing battle with malware. As evil as it is, by exposing how horribly insecure windows is, malware helps Linux adoption. I'm more than happy to oblige, both from a Linux advocacy standpoint, and because it is so much easier to remotely troubleshoot problems if I can just ssh into the box.

One of the big barriers of adoption in the business arena is coming down now that various Linux mail clients are gaining true MAPI (Exchange) support. As much as I hate it, Exchange is pretty firmly entrenched in a lot of corporate networks.

temmu

yes, exchange.
and ms office.
when a user gets a ms word 07 document, you either must have word 07 or a reader.
that leads less-thinking (most) businesses to purchase ms office.
when office 2010 comes out, then the herd of lemmings will follow whoever buys it first and likewise plunge into the sea, thus keeping up with the joneses.

open office, anyone?

Calixte

Skripka wrote:

2) Higher market share *might*, emphasis might, lead to better 3rd party device driver support.

AND more third party applications. Sometimes commercial applications are what is best, and we are never going to get them until vendors ignore Linux.