Slashdot Mirror
Market Share Reports On Linux
spizkapa writes: "IDC has predicted that Linux will grow steadily along with Microsoft in the near future in the home PC (client) market, as well as including numbers that prove Linux's acceptance rate is fantastic. " The numbers look nice, especially in the server area, but it's too bad that things weren't broken down more. I'm also wondering where *BSD fits in -- I assume under UNIX, but it's unfortunate that they weren't broken out separately.
NT wasn't based on VMS.
It had engineers and engineering decisions in common, but the same was true of the Ford Pinto and the Dodge Caravan. Does anybody seriously think the Caravan is based on the Pinto?
In fact, Windows NT is more closely related to Microsoft OS/2 1.x than to VMS in design, architecture, and capabilities. There's a reason the project was originally named OS/2 NT.
"Apple continues to hold about %30 of the installed base of computers"
You had me believing you till that little stat....
I say the C64 has the largest installed base!
Or is it the Apple ][?
Or are are we talking number of computers sold in the past 5 years? ohhh, well we all know Apple was selling like 50% of all computers last year, Right? Or how else would you make up for the current 5% of sales..... Right?
Let's see, if we assume people buy the same number of computers each year as they did 5 years ago (HA!).
1995 5%
1996 5%
1997 5%
1998 10%
1999 5%
5%+5%+5%+10%+5% is 30%
Wow, you've made a believer out of me!
Trying to actually determine the market share of Linux by counting the number of sales is just a futile as counting Win98 CDs to determine the number of Windows installs.
Even more ironic is the fact that when you buy a complete system from an OEM, you end up having to buy a copy of Windows along with it too. Then if you delete Windows and download a copy of linux, these guys will count your machine as a Windows box.
You just described the market where the BSD variants are going to eat up market share. Nobody wants a Stallmanista picketing outside corporate headquarters because marketing forgot to include the source CD-ROM with every refrigerator that has the IP controller to order more beer.
I'm not certain what point you are trying to make.
Early projections did not show a high upgrade rate from Win95 to Win98, yet within a year Win98 had surpassed Win95 as a client OS according to the sites watching browser hits.
So yes, they were wrong, but they were wrong in underestimating sales.
When I look at the chart I'm in shock that the IDC would report Linux growth as being that high. I guess I think their overestimating Linux server installations.
Yet all the responses here are whining about how they are biased towards Windows.
I do agree that these are numbers that are very difficult to count, even counting the number of NT installs is difficult because Microsoft software is the most heavily pirated software on the face of the earth.
But still, Linux growth is that high? Wow! I would never have believed it.
I've probably done 30 installs as well. But given that they've been basically to the same box, does that really count?
I mean first there was SLS, then a number of Slackware installs, then Yggdrasil, and then a half dozen Redhat versions and a Caldera and a Corel and a Debian, and a...
If we use that form of accounting then Microsoft must have BILLIONS of installations!
They don't filter out IP-based virtual hosting, but they do filter out DNS-based (HTTP/1.1) virtual hosting. Guess which popular web server didn't support the latter until recently? Yes, it's IIS, on Windows. So that will skew those results a bit.
Speaking as someone who as taught Windows (it was a job) to complete newbies to computers, Windows is NOT intuitive. I'm convinced there is no intuitive interface, only ones that are more familiar, or are easier to learn.
you have to think of apps that compel Windows users to switch to linux
---
That can easily be resolved should the embedded community release a stock version of the embedded OS. And it looks like this is exactly what will be happpening. A common embedded OS, with freely available source, distributed by a consortium of developers. And they can get around the custom hardware issues by using binary modules, which are perfectly legal to use with the Linux kernel.
I don't think you need to worry about anyone picketting at the Fridgidaire plant because of GPL violations...
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Let's see what happens to Microsofts business model as Linux takes China, Asia, then Europe, etc.....Wait, didn't Bill G say something like this in a email about cutting Netscapes income out by giving away and paying people to use Microsoft Internet Explorer?
What comes around goes around.
Locutus
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I dunno, Windows seems tougher to troubleshoot to me. You never know what crud in the registry could be hosing things. At least with Linux you can grep through /etc as a last resort, not to mention reading extensive documentation, HOWTOs, newsgroups, chat rooms, and of course the code itself.
Not that Mom could do that, but she can't troubleshoot Windows either. At least for the technical user Linux is easier to deal with.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The point I was trying to make was that these customers *aren't* buying the extra licenses they're using -- they're using them because they can. Where I work, the licensing is handled by someone rather disconnected from the server farms -- if I install a single license once or 10 times, he doesn't know unless I tell him. I suspect the same thing happens in lots of companies, especially large ones where budgeting, purchasing, licensing, and general bureacratic red tape makes user-interpreted licensing the order of the day.
I'm not necessarily endorsing it, but I think it happens far more often than people will admit.
Oh, Phil, your such a moron.
Linux O Muerte!
The numbers for web browsing you quote may
be real, as Linux is not ready for desktop
as most people will acknoledge. Pretty much
until Mozilla gets stable and polished
(way after 1.0 release), and some office suite
becomes the do-all ten-headed monster that
most people would be happy with, Linux will
not be leading on desktop. Of course it's
price will win converts even when such
choice of OS brings some discomfort to new user.
Most people do not care about free speech,
especially about software as a form of free
speech, but free as in free beer is a powerful
argument.
Lastly, out of curiosity: what was that study
you cited? Did the content of sites surveyed
have to do with technical stuff, pornography or
news? If not, the number of Linux users counted
would be further reduced.
OS2 & Netware?
I'm kinda curious as to who's working on Montery these days. With IBM moving steadily to the penguin side of the force, and SCO selling off major portions to Caldera, Sequent is about the only one left to whole-heartedly support it. Is Montery going to fade off, ala CDE?
The only 'superiority' windows has is how fast it crashes.
The last time I booted windows (to actually use it - I made a bootdisk for someone whose computer was hosed) was at LEAST 6 months ago.
All my family runs Linux *by choice*.
My mom hates to go into windows to play The Sims, because it crashes so much.
*BEEP* *BEEP*
That's my Troll-o-meter going off the scale...
(Either that, or it's sarcastic - at any rate, don't take the last part seriously)
Go away, troll.
ControlIT 5.0 will disable itself after 1 month if you don't register it and use the user number from the website + the registration number to generate a license file. Not quite as anoying as checking in once a month, but still pretty terrible.
Think Sheep = Linux Wins Think Server = _UNIX_ Wins Think Interface = X LOSSES! (Mac OS, Win, BeOS etc win) Think Choice = WE ALL WIN! Think Cost = For What?, Server, *BSD, Quick Server, Linux, Hone OS, FreeBeOS THINK CHOICE, NOT LINUX Use linux if you like, just don't use linux coz
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I'd go one step farther, and say that counting the # of shipments isn't even good for that much. After all, think about how much of the "linux" market actually counts on OS sales? Rather, most of the business nowadays seems to be based heavily upon support, other (non-OS) software development, and selling advertising space.
So uhm...what -are- these #'s for?
time sharing sux
> This could almost skew data in the other direction.
Wouldn't that make a lot of analysts peepee in their diapers!
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
One catch to this theory: you cannot assume that 30% of Linux boxen are being used as web servers means that 30% are running Apache - some distributions have it running by default (IIRC), and many other non-webservers are likely to be running Apache just for this-or-that.
It's all in the definition, folks.
That sucks. I'd prefer to see Linux far outstrip Microsoft growth, as it has in the past.
-TBHiX-
Yes, *BSD make a big slice of it, but I think that HPUX/SCO/AIX/(other obscure Unix Variant) fit in there too. I also assume that all kind's of hardware firewalls drop in the count as well, as Netcraft uses TCP/IP stack anomalities to identify the OS.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
From current catalog, rack-optimized servers.
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or Microsoft Window NT server 4.0 - Add $799
Red Hat Linux Factory-Installed - $149
includes 90 days telephone and Web-based support.
One advanced configuration support incident
180 day access to www.priority.redhat.com
The combination of Linux and *BSD is a much tougher problem for Microsoft than either alone. .net is a farce?
It seems like there is a steadily increasing amount of support for Linux from the big guns, mostly quiet but persistent and relentless.
Does anyone else think that Microsoft's
Ever watch a bubble start to burst?
First there was Melissa. Melissa was nice.
Then there was the Love Bug. Not so nice.
What's next?
There's lots of people who have bought 30 copies of Windows without ever installing a single copy :)
You mean they have machines that will breathe for you? - Homer S.
--
+&x
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Actually he is right. When IBM was struggling to keep in pace with the Windows sweap of the client side of the enterprise, IBM was developing their OS/2 platform as a windows killer (obviously they were on drugs... have you used OS/2...).
Anyway, back when the first affordable LAN's were around, Netware was the god of it all. IBM and M$ joined up to take that away. They made a Server Architecture called "LAN Manager", which is basically like Server Message Blocks...
I don't recall if IBM had a seperate server platform, or if it was part of OS/2, but M$ came out with Windows NT (New Technology), which was to be compatible with the LANManager system of IBM.
Well, we all know what happened after that...
Bye!
The analysts are paid to write reports showing the growth and projected growth of various industry segments. These reports are commisioned by companies in the industries in question. They are then sold to other companies in the same industry.
Yes, and IDC has a really bad track record here. You can look at their early Windows/OS2 reports or the first reports on how many people would upgrade from Win95 to Win98 and Win2K (hint, the numbers are so small, it's affecting MSFT stock prices).
Also note the stat they use, sales ($). Think about it, it's not support dollars, or training dollars, or CPU cycles, or SPEC, or anything relevant. It's cash dollars paid by the sheep who are fleeced.
Naturally, MSFT wins on that one. Even with a shrinking market share, because they're jacking up the price and using their monopoly power to enforce it.
And, in case you wondered, I own MSFT shares.
Will in Seattle
They have office suites which are 100% file format compatible with MS Office 97, and that is the killer app.
.xls files arriving by email, seamlessly.
.doc, are the lingua franca of business today. Compatibility with them is the primary driver which forced Win 3.x / Office 6.0 users to upgrade.
Note my wording - it's not that Excel is any better than StarCalc for the average user, because it isn't - StarCalc actually does quite a few things better, and overall functionally it's probably a tie. It's the fact that Excel reads and writes
The proprietary Office 97 file formats, especially Word's
What if popular websites like yahoo were to poll clients as they connect as to which operating system they were using? Then you would not only be counting multiple installations of linux from a single CD, but you would be counting the percentage of the time that people with dual boot systems use linux to surf. And you would see the numbers grow by the day.
;-).
I am not talking about an annoying pop-up box requiring user action, but an "operating system query" service that lives at some tcpip port. Such a feature would have to be written and integrated into the major distributions, of course, but would be very easy to do and the major vendors would probably be highly motivated to take such a step. Think about how an accurate count of linux installations could generate a lot of positive press. You could even have the response indicate which distribution you are using, which would motivate the distro vendors even more (the more popular ones anyway
Another way to do it is to use the nmap (see www.insecure.org for details) port scanning tool's OS fingerprinting ability from the server side to tell what OS a client is running. It is hard to imagine yahoo going to the risk/trouble to do that, I admit, although the IDC or some other organization could try to scan portions of the internet using nmap to get sampling counts of the numbers of computers running linux vs windows.
Ever heard of using the right tool for the job? There's a whole load of operating systems out there and, shock horror, for some situations it makes sense to use a MS operating system. I know, I'd better be wearing my asbestos flame suit, but Linux isn't the cure for everything.
.Net is the answer to your question. If they can suck enough companies into building content for their proprietary platform, then it doesn't matter if 5% of the market is Linux. Tried to do anything other than read vanilla HTML on a Mac lately? Most interesting web stuff doesn't run on a Mac and even less will run on Linux in the future if .Net is sucessful.
They are comparing apples and oranges in more ways than one.
Linux is being installed with increasing frequency, but out of those who have installed Linux, whether downloaded or purchased, how many are STILL running Linux, or are running it as their main OS?
My own experience and intuition tell me that a significantly larger portion of Windows users (whether the product was pirated or purchased) are STILL using Windows many years after their first exposure.
Does anybody have any statistics to contradict this?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
I see a lot of frustrated slashdot readers.Why do you (always) bite such irelevant measurements? :)) Linux and don't bother yourself with this kind of crap
You know Linux is better and WE are the future.
So stay calm, use (work with
I can't believe this kind of articles worth mentioning on Slashdot...
Just another coder...
Good, that will be the end of Office for the home user. Who in their right mind is going to pay hundreds of $$$ for just a wordprocessor/spreadsheet. I've been hoping for long that MSFT would get more strict on license enforcement.
Your statements about IDC are simply not true. While many IDC subscribers are hardware and software suppliers, IDC's bulletins and reports are based upon research conducted by IDC analysts. IDC, by the way, has end user and government subscribers as well.
Public company revenues are reported quarterly. IDC's software research group takes that public information and segments it into over 90 different software categories. IDC then seeks verification of this segmentation from the company in question.
Software shipments are modeled based upon the revenues in each of the 90+ software markets using average shipment values determined through demand-side research. As before, IDC seeks verification from the vendors in question.
You'll note that who subscribes to what service is not included in the research.
yes, totally. but they're missing it. that's all I'm saying.
Sorry, I know those are fighting words :-)
I still think that they'll try to do it the same way as always; FUD, FUD, and more FUD. As long as they can keep the unwashed masses thinking that the only way is the MicroSoft way they don't really have to worry about Unix. Thankfully those masses are starting to see the light and I don't think Microsoft will know what the hell to do.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
One way I could think of would be to include something like what pine was with new versions of Linux (Both boxed and ISO's). Either on first boot or as a app/script that would ask you if it could send out a e-mail to count how many people are using it. Now, who to send it to....
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
Let's face it, you have to get used to all OS's. Sure most anybody can sit down in front of a Mac or Windows Box or even a Unix/Linux running KDE or Gnome and do simple things (surf the web, play a game, etc). It's installing drivers (and figuring out why they don't work sometimes) and such that takes getting used to.
I find Mac's the easiest, followed by Unixes, followed by Windows. Mac's let you see WTF is going on. Unix makes you see what's going on. Windows's registy hides those things from the unwashed masses.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
The same way they've tried with Apple (and kinda failed) and Novel (sort of worked); lies and underhanded deals.
You can like Microsoft all you want (I did back in the Word 5 days) but you can not say they got where they are today by playing fair.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
Most of the work is done using the primary OS on the machine, Unix, but it also runs Windows to do certain things at certain times. Doesn't affect the shipping counts but certainly should affect how vendors look at target platforms. Windows here is a legacy system (horrid marketing term, sorry).
Wasn't there something before on 64-bit Linux? Oh, yeah. Here's the slashdot post on it. It was about the RedHat distro for the itanium. I wish they had looked into it a bit more, they simply mentioned it without going any further in-depth. Oh, well.
Ciao
nahtanoj
compiling the kernel takes no time at all.
I did
#make -j bzImage; make -j modules
and it took my computer roughly 2 and a half minutes to compile the kernel and modules. My machine was almost completely unresponsive during that period, but one of my w commands did run and my load avg was at 92
This was on my Athlon 700 (supported by the AMD Irongate chipset)
Through some lucrative "Get windows used by everone" campaign, Microsoft offers a good deal of its products to University of Texas students for $5 a cd
Win2k Pro/win 98 - $5
Visual Studio Pro - $25
Office 2k premium - $20
those arent the only ones for sale, just the ones i have purchased. It does feel good seeing MS Office premium locked in a plastic box at best buy with a $799 pricetag on it, knowing you only paid $20
Yea, i know i'm really paying more than that (tuition is only about half of the money i pay to go to school, fee's are horrendous). We also get "free" fare on the entire austin bus system (but pay for that in fee's).
"Have your new machine counted! May I send a one-time message to the Linux user counter for you?"
..
Didn't old Slackware have something like this? It's been so long
Anyway, this wouldn't work well either. How many times have you installed Linux on a machine only to blow it away/reinstall/whatever? I know the machine I run most of my domain services on has had RedHat installed on it at least 3 times over the years, and one of my home machines (486sx/25) at least 5 times.
This could almost skew data in the other direction.
I would find that really interesting
Dual boot. :)
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
On a serious note, they wouldn't actually have to ship a CD with the source code with every refrigerator. They only have to include a copy of the GPL (probably after the fine legal notice that suffocation may result from climbing inside the fridge to use it as an airconditioner) and an offer to ship the source code to anyone who asks. Of course they'll probably need to include a CD-ROM with instructions on how to use the beer auto-ordering function anyway, and they can slip the source code in there.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Who cares how many servers are deployed? It is irrelevant to EVERYONE. Your decision to use an OS should be completely independent of what other people are doing, right?
Oh, please show some clue. The number of deployed servers matters to everyone in the business as well; how good is the OS support? how many people know how to use it? how many people are writing apps for it? etc. etc. and so on and so forth. True, money matters to everyone, but it's not only the direct-sales-of-the-os money that matters. Were it so, none of the big players like SGI, IBM, Compaq or Dell would have entered into the Linux arena...
-- Computers are not intelligent. They just think they are.
One of the great things about Linux is that you can get the latest release as soon as it comes out, for free. Instead of waiting four years for one comany to release an upgrade that you have to pay hundreds to upgrade to. It seems to me that Linux is set to improve at a much faster rate then Windows ever could, to the direct benefit of the user.
How strange it is to be anything at all
Let's see..desktop use for a computer would be to:
OK..start screaming how you use StarOffice/Whatever all the time and how it serves all you needs - for most normal users, it doesn't. As much as I (a non-normal user, I guess) like Linux, I hate typing long letters in X because the font thing is so screwed up it gets painful on the eyes after a while. Add to that the fact that for most average users, setting up X is a nasty adventure at best and the fact that, like it or not, MS Word is the dominant file format, Linux isn't very well suited for this area. The same holds true for accounting: most medium to small offices use Excel because "everyone else does." So guess what an office worker uses to do their household budget? Hell, it's something they know from work already.
Then there's the games...even though there's a lot of progress being made in Linux gaming, it still has a long way to go.
That leaves browsing/the e-mail thing. Now *that* is something that actually works quite nicely under Linux. But is that enough for millions of home/desktop users to switch to a new OS in an age where even your *fridge* is connected to the Internet? Hardly.
Like I said, considering this, it is very surprising Linux has even 4.1 percent marketshare. So I guess this is good news.
This is not a
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
No joke. It certainly isn't going to say anything about how many people are actually USING it. There's no guilt involved in copying that Linux CD a dozen times. Even the most scrupulous computer user isn't going to show up in those statistics all the time.
Day 1 with new (used) laptop with preinstalled Windows: kill second of two 2G partitions, install Suse.
/home.
Day 8 or so: Hmm, this Windows partition that I never use at all would be much more useful as
Given a choice between running Windows and needing more disk space for Linux apps, Windows has been deleted.
I like what I see in Linux now and I think it's going the right direction, but it's certainly not a mom and pop OS yet. the installs are to dificult and the troubleshooting a nightmare unless you have some UNIX background. The front end and configuration needs to be a little slicker and more game development started before I see this realy taking off. Otherwise most people will pay the $150 or whatever for windows just to avoid the hassles. NOT saying Windows has no problems, just easier to figure out.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
sigh.... another Winblows troll
"Easy, just recompile the kernel, reinstall it and reboot. DUH!"
Actually most of the time this isn't necessary. Usually all you have to do is load a kernel module. It is very simple and doesn't ever require a reboot. There are several graphical admin utilities available to do this for you.
"This Linux stuff is hard" "IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!"
You haven't been around very long have you. Check out http://www.helixcode.com and http://www.mandrakesoft.com I find Windows and MacOS to be much less intuitive and harder to use than Linux. You just have to get used to it. It is a different OS after all. I am not a developer or system administrator, BTW, I am just a regular user that types documents, plays games, and likes to get work done without doing a lot of fooling around.
That graph is actually much more informative -- it shows how *both* Linux and Windows NT will have pretty good growth rates in an expanding market.
Meanwhile, Unix and NetWare will have a fixed size userbase. When the number of servers is so dramatically increasing though, that's very bad news.
Anyway, Good News for Linux does not necessarily equal Bad News for Microsoft.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Flatlining isn't really a problem for UNIX vendors, because their machines just keep getting bigger and more profitable. Basically they are losing low margin workstations and servers and picking up high margin servers.
Now, for Novell, it's a huge problem. When the market doubles in size, and you only manage to sell upgrades to your existing base (and even that they've failed at in the past), you've missed the opportuinity of a life time. Their marketshare has gone from 80% to 17% in 10 years -- the product is failing. Don't forget Wall Street wants to see your revenue and profits go up, not stay the same.
Basically the Novell shakedown already happened a couple years ago. Either shops made the big investment in NDS and Novell infrastructure, or they didn't and NetWare is roadkill to them. Novell is going to have to stay in business selling products (like NDS) that run on other people's OSes. Tough sell when ActiveDirectory is free with the obligatory NT seat licence.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
In retail space they are being more aggressive, yes. However, what killed copy protection in the 1980s was corporate customers complaining, and MS seems to be aware of what happened.
The corporate releases (MSDN, Select) still don't have any registration, and Microsoft's policy seems to be "Here's all the software - install what you want and pay us later".
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
If you are buying licences from Microsoft rather than regail, Microsoft actually doesn't care. They'll just make you count all those temporary-er-permenant boxes every year and pay up for them. I think they also want you to pay for 'estimated growth each year.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
'Will grow along with Microsoft steadily'. With Apple's market share growing too, I'm wondering where those extra percents come from.
Accurately counting anything that large is impossible. If you count the number of new PC shipments it misses the installed base. If you count the number of boxed sets, it's impossible to distinguish between a new install or an upgrade.
Who would have predicted 6 years ago that Linux and free software would become the phenomenon that they have? Certainly not IDC.
Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.
Amusing concept
Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.
Used indows/dos for years dscovered linux and go into windows f they absolutely have to (usually at work)
Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.
Go back and look at your BSOD
Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.
Hmmm... how about NAT for the for the LAN, PPP server for when I'm out and about, and apache+sybase running cos that's what I have to use for work... the gnome and kde games which I can't keep the kids away from..
:)..
Linux isn't great, but it's free, and extremely flexible, and since I have years of experience under my belt, it runs at least as smoothly as anything else I've ever seen. This is partly due to me being able to fix things instantly that would floor a newbie... but that's no different to any other system.
Not a typical home user? Bite me.
Here's an interesting tidbit that will eventually lead linux and it's cousins to dominate the desktop: ever since microsoft scrapped solitaire and minesweeper from their dist, my largish family stopped fighting over rights to the windows machine and started fighting over access to same-gnome and kmahjongg. Had to make the windows machine dual-boot
That's two deployments of linux on the desktop that IDC will never know about. Come to think of it, an overwhelming majority of desktop installations of linux are done off shared cds or net installs...
Bill will rue the day he took solitaire away.
Software patents delenda est.
Actually, most Universities don't pay anything to MS, but the other way around. MS views student sales as a way of planting the seeds in a lot of students. Kind of like drug dealers giving away samples to get kids hooked. We have quite a few new programmers straight out of college who are so lost when confronted with a CLI because of this indoctrination.
Linux has to be as easy to use as Windows, or even easier. If people have to learn the CLI (Command line interface) then it will never catch on. If you have to be a programmer to manipulate the system then Linux will never catch on. Linux needs sound card support, 3D graphics support, easier network setup. (Easier everything setup.)
Linux is just to cryptic for normal users. Most people using Windows don't have a clue about the DOS CLI. And they don't need to. But Linux users must know how to use the shell.
Better support for devices needs to be there. If I want to code a game on Windows I have standard sound, video, 3D, networking, IP, everything is built in and standard on all boxes. So development is a snap. Under Linux none of those things can be expected to be present. So game developers have to start from scratch and write the 3d support, the sound support, and everything themselves. So development tools have to be better and hardware support needs to be better.
Until idiots can use it, Linux will never catch on.
Hey really, how long this crap will be going on? I ;-)
suppose now that linux is for everyone, people start to discuss marketshare? Leave it to redhat and caldera drone formations and contribute code to the linux project. Do I really give a damn if my retarted neighbour using Linux or Windows to surf AOL? Market share is irrelevant. As far as I know linux won over most if not all people with inclination into inquiry and making intelligent decisions, and for the rest of the herd, I do not care. I get angry all the time when people ask the same question twice on mailing list of local LUG without trying to access to mail list search engine or simply grepping deja.com/usenet. I do not intend to feed the feeble for the rest of their lives, as I was not!
For how small the linux base started, it has grown very quickly compared to most operating systems.
This article is interesting, but seems to have some one glaring problem. It talks about shipments of licenses, does that mean that those of us who download Linux (and the license) are excluded from their cacluation? Perhaps they should have used installed licenses instead. Other then that and their incorrect prediction that Linux will only grow a few slightly instead of continuing at its current rapid pace it is a useful article. Espically when your trying to convince Old Pointy Hair to switch to a real operating system.
But then again there are some of us. Who have bought about 6 different distros on $2 dollar cds. Do those count?
Errr, I came out of University two years ago and all of my fellow students knew to use good 'ol faithful command line: in Windoze and in *Nix.
Perhaps you should start hiring programmers from other colleges
Sidenote: if a kid asks me how to learn to program, I give him four things:
- A book about programming
- The command line
- A command line compiler
- A text editor
I learned it that way, anyone should be able to learn it that way....Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The page contains the following information, which contradicts previous announcements on /. about som bigshot apple geek who had osX compiled on a i386 system.. Could anyone share a thought or two to clear this up?
OS X is built around the NeXT Mach kernel and BSD, and doesn't rely on any ROM-resident code. Nevertheless, Apple maintains that the system won't work on anything but a PPC G3 or G4 -- not even on third-party G3/G4 upgrade cards. Still, nothing inherent to OS X prevents it from being ported to other platforms. Should it be a big hit, Apple could always opt to bring OS X to Intel platforms in an aggressive effort to increase market presence.
Din't we have a story the other day about Micro$oft forcing companies to buy a second copy????
The OEM copy had ceratin restrictions. I wonder how many times these installs are counted?
Are they like downloads?
NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You can bet your Grandma's teeth that they are counted twice!!!!!
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Even when you pay for the same thing over and over again.
Win98=Win95=Win3.1=DOS(Disk Operating System not Denial Of Service)
But now that you mention it DOS = DoS
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Every time I use a Windoze system I feel I need more space. It seems that there is no more room available. I have to spend endless time opening windows to find what I'm looking for. On most peoples systems the desktop is crowded with soooo many icons that I wonder how they even find anything??
I help and support windows, and I am constantly impressed by how users find it simple but simply can NOT find anything.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Counting the # of shipments is the only way to tell how profitable Linux is......we all know it is popular, but it will never catch on with the mainstream unless they buy tech support, books, ect....which are all usually included with Linux distros....
This is especially true of the non computer-literate (we are talking about people not past the "MOUSE!?? KILL IT!! oh..." stage yet...
They want to be able to get help when they have problems and fuss if it still doesn't work, something you just don't get when you download something for free
'nuf said.
"..don't you eat that yellow snow."
They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.
IDC has always had the habit of telling their paying customers what they want to hear. It just makes good business sense. (How do you sell an ad concept every time? Put the boss's picture in it.</cynicism>)
Right now, the last thing Microsoft wants to hear from IDC is that Linux is making major inroads on the desktop.
--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads. I've set up a good 30 linux boxes in my time, and I've never purchased a single copy.
It's called statistical error. As usual with declining returns it requires a staggering effort (which I shall perfect at the bar tonight!) to gather in all the systems.
They're probably overlooking all the pirated copies of Window$ as well. They can't winnem all.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Founder's Camp
Founder's Camp
News for non-Nerds. Stuff that matters.
I find something wrong with the comment "I find Windows and MacOS to be much less intuitive and harder to use than Linux. You just have to get used to it". So, basically, what you're saying is that Linux is intuitive once you get used to it. Dictionary.com states that intuitive is "Known or perceived through intuition." So, wouldn't an intuitive operating system be one that could be used with only the skills that mother nature gave you, not skills you arrived at yourself? Chris
Let's face it - most users recognise the superiority of Windows. You get what you pay for, and there's no a way a hacked-up free OS can ever compete.
Given a choice between running Linux, and needing more diskspace for Windows apps, Linux will be deleted.
"How do I add support for this device?" "Easy, just recompile the kernel, reinstall it and reboot. DUH!" (er... remember that next time you bitch about Windows needing a reboot after installing new drivers)
"This Linux stuff is hard" "IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!"
Until this elitist bunch of zealots, who try and push this so-called OS on the one hand, while intentionally trying to make it as hard as humanly possibly with the other, continue to operate, Linux will never be a success.
Linus should stop giving it away for free (who ever heard of free software being successful?), charge for it, and fund some HCI research with the money. Then you might start to see a real growth in Linux usage compared to Windows
According to the netcraft survey, Linux is the most popular Web server OS for both all and the active sites. I think thats a more reliable server survey than the OS shipments. These numbers are impressive given the fact that the boost of Linux is recent and the numbers are total (not just rates).
I'm sure there are lots of people who have installed 30 copies of Windows without ever buying a single copy, too...
--
My name is Sue,
How do you do?
Now you gonna die!
In short, Microsoft has conned your university administration (or your state's taxpayers) into paying a "Windows Tax" on all students, regardless of whether they actually use Windows or not.
Slackware used to do something very similar to this--after you installed it, root would have a letter in her mailbox from the Linux Counter, telling you how to be added to the Linux counter.
In fact, the most tangible proof that I have been using Linux since 1995 is my counter number and registration.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
No one will ever get an accurate count or prediction - which drives business types crazy. Everyone has their own ideas, but since most distributions are purchased and installed on many computers per disk (numbers which aren't reported to anyone), downloaded and copied to media for cheap resale ala Cheapbytes, and just plain downloaded there's no way to make a comparison based on recorded sales and revenue. Revenue will always lag way behind Windows because of the outrageous pricing and licensing Windows has. Lets see - $1.99 for a Cheapbytes disk vs $92 OEM for Win98 (much more retail) - a graph like that would make Windows look like it's wildly more successfull than Linux when viewed by the uneducated. Labs will typically get one Linux disk (like the one I'm providing for the local HighSchool labs) and stick it on dozens of computers. There's no effective way to provide exhaustive accounting on that. And there are those few crazies that role their own. And lets not forget those that don't feel compelled to upgrade with every kernel release. Linux is friendly that way - many systems have kernel 2.0 and are still kicking with no reason to upgrade. Windows practically forces you to upgrade. How many 3.11 systems are still hanging around? Or NT 3.5? Anyone trying to get a grasp on the numbers of Linux installations will fail miserably, which is kind-of a shame - since much of the cool software we'd like to have like Quicken or Quickbooks are written by people who haven't a clue when it comes to trends and only read the numbers on the stats. Oh well, better will come around and when these guys pull their heads out they'll be too late and quickly out of business...
now that's an understatement if I ever saw one. can't "seem to quite get rid of" Sun, Lotus, Borland and Oracle? Sun's business is booming, Lotus is part of IBM, and Oracle is now *bigger* than Microsoft. I don't see MS getting anywhere near "getting rid" of these companies.
Black Parrot wrote:
See Netcraft's analysis of OS market shares in their July 2000 survey.
In short, and using the conservative numbers:
Linux : 29.99%
Windows (all types) : 28.32%
Solaris : 16.33%
Other : 23.59%
Unknown : 1.76%
When you say "conservative", you mean counting active sites as opposed to all sites?
That suggests that Linux is now shipping more units for use as desktops than for servers.
That very well could be. Where I work we have recently installed Linux machines on the desktop of everyone in the development department and most of the people in the systems group. Linux on the desktop does outnumber the number of Linux servers we have now, by probably nearly two to one.
O.K., if a significant number of Linux web servers are not running Apache, it means the total number of Linux web servers is even larger, and thus the total number of Linux boxes is higher...
That isn't a catch to the theory, it only reinforces it.
I don't see MS getting anywhere near "getting rid" of these companies.
I can't see that either, but that is exactly what the Microsoft partisans would like to have you believe they are going to do.
I think that Linux and the *BSDs are if anything a tougher problem for Microsoft than commercial companies.
but you can not say they got where they are today by playing fair.
I'd be one of the last people on earth to ever suggest that... I just don't think the same tactics that are effective against a strictly commercial competitor like Apple or Novel will fit with Linux or the *BSDs. There are too many 'Linuxes' and *BSDs. They can't buy them all. If they focus on one, another will spring up. They can't afford to go all out against Linux and *BSD because if they do, their commercial competitors will jump in there and start giving them troubles on that front. They can't compete with Linux or *BSD on price, because even they can't afford to give away product forever. In fact they've been raising prices lately, because they are commercial and have to show $ in revenue. They can rely on massive advertising as they have been, but they run the risk of validating Linux in many people's minds if they mention it too much as a competitor.
I just don't see how Microsoft is going to have success on their terms (in order for them to win, they have to control everything) given the current and future direction of the world.
Actually the past couple of years, the NT market share has been basically flat, while Linux has been growing rapidly. While not great news if you are Novell or a proprietary UNIX vendor, the fact that UNIX and Netware userbases aren't shrinking in a market where they are severely challenged by both NT/2000 and Linux is not really bad news for them either. Many people have been and are continuing to predict the imminant collapse of Netware and proprietary UNIX and a mass exodus of those customers to NT/2000, and so far it looks like they are wrong.
Its also worth noting that in terms of mindshare and cooperativeness (common application software, for example), success of Linux is much more damaging to NT/2000 and Netware than it is to proprietary UNIX.
Unless you make a whole lot more than most of us around here (and many of us aren't that poorly paid mind you), then $250 (what you would have to pay for your OEM Windows 2000 plus either a motherboard/processor or a hard drive) is a lot more expensive than three hours worth of work. That figures out to about $83 an hour, which would be the equivalent of over $150,000 a year). Not to mention that it doesn't take zero time to install Windows 2000 either.
Windows 2000 just doesn't have much value proposition that I can see.
Hah. People are choosing Linux because they are fleeing away from Microsoft. Not very many will be going back. Not to say that Linux may not lose some of those people, but if it does, chances are that *BSD, MacOS X or BeOS may be as likely a choices.
The combination of Linux and *BSD is a much tougher problem for Microsoft than either alone.
.net is a farce?
Yes, because even if they can manage to figure out a way to kill one (like to hire up or otherwise eliminate all of the core developers), the other will be there to pick up the peices and be ready to soldier on. Once again this proves that diversity and choice is a good thing.
It seems like there is a steadily increasing amount of support for Linux from the big guns, mostly quiet but persistent and relentless.
I would agree. Rather that slowly subsiding as the initial press explosion has started to wear off, the buzz over Linux in the industry appears to still be growing. When Linux first started to get attention from the media, many Microsoft fans opined that it would be just a temporary flash-in-the pan. That appears to be proving to not be the case. It looks like Linux and the *BSDs are going to be an increasing factor over the next few years.
Does anyone else think that Microsoft's
I don't think its a farce. It is of course mostly smoke and mirrors at this point. It is also not the be-all-end-all that they would have people believe. It is also a very risky strategy for them because it will be difficult for them to control with an iron grasp and yet make it be able to deliver on its promises and become popular.
Your signature brings up an interesting point... I have seen a lot of Microsoft fans saying that once Microsoft gets clear of their troubles with the DOJ and the EU that they will start attacking Linux and the *BSDs with full force. However, Microsoft, despite their best efforts, has been unable to completely kill off the Mac or Netware, both of which many people have considered to be very vulnerable for years. They also can't seem to quite get rid of Sun or some of their software competitors like Lotus, Borland/Inprise, and Oracle. It seems likely that Microsoft knows better how to compete with commercial companies than with something like Linux or the *BSDs which are largely grassroots movements. How are they going to squash Linux or the *BSDs?? Now tell me how they are going to do that and not get themselves back into anti-trust trouble? How are they going to use such strong arm tactics without further lining up more people and companies against them?
Remember, the core of Mac OS X is BSD running on top of Mach. Within a year or two, it'll probably have more installed seats than all of the other *BSD distributions combined.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Do those [$2 cds] count?
Probably not. It'd be in the noise level anyway. My guess is that they're looking at numbers reported by the major shrink-wrapped distros, and big hardware manufacturer pre-loads. (How else to separate out client vs server for Linux?)
There's probably also some double-counting -- hardware that came with Windows preloaded that is promptly scrubbed and reinstalled with Linux. (I find the reverse very hard to imagine.) On the other hand a shop that does that with multiple machines may only have paid for one Linux shrink-wrap box. It'll show up in these stats as a multiple Windows order. (Fortunately the "mandatory Windows preload" is becoming a thing of the past as more manufacturers are making Linux preloads or no-OS systems available.)
-- Alastair
The reality is: Linux geeks bash Windoz...But can't live without Windoz, so, most must dual boot.
I haven't booted into windows since 1998. I finally deleted it last summer since it was taking up space. My computer is 100% Microsoft free. Not that I'm a Linux fanatic by any means. I've played with Solaris, BeOS and FreeBSD. My primary OS is now Slackware and I keep FreeBSD around.
I have never purchased a MS operating system (preinstalled or otherwise). I *have* purchased DR DOS and OS/2, and of course Slackware and FreeBSD. In fact, now that I think about it, the only thing I have ever purchased from MS was Flight Simulator 1.0.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Well, there's your problem. You don't need to recompile a kernel to use a printer! Next thing you know you'll be saying that freeways aren't ready for cars because you got a flat tire on your bicycle...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
You did not need an OS to run FS1.0. You stuck the floppy in the drive and booted off of it. But who cares. I was running PC-DOS, which even though created by MS, was purchased from IBM with no royalties to MS.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Parallel ports are compiled in to every default kernel I have ever seen. Of course, I don't use Redhat. Perhaps they don't consider that their users will have printers by default.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
> When you say "conservative", you mean counting active sites as opposed to all sites?
Yes. They give a "raw" count that shows Linux at 36% or so, and then the adjusted count that I quoted. I called it "conservative" because it is a lower estimate of Linux's deployment.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> The analysts are paid to write reports showing the growth and projected growth of various industry segments.
There's a joke going round that says IDC always "predicts" what actually happened last year. (Kind of like the astrologers in sci.sceptic who are always "predicting" last week's stock market.)
That often seems to be the case with their Linux analyses.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Good News for Linux does not necessarily equal Bad News for Microsoft.
In terms of market growth, it really is bad news for MS.
Microsoft isn't about software, and may not even be about selling software. I think MS is primarily about MSFT shares.
That means they need lots of good news about growth, in quarterly installments. If someone else is growing as fast as you are, that's a lot of turf you're not able to grow into.
It wouldn't be so bad if Linux were a static player that MS(FT) could slowly erode for its own growth, but unless MS can find a way to actually cut in on Linux' turf rather than competing with it for "unclaimed" territory, then good news for Linux is bad news for MS(FT) indeed.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Who cares how many servers are deployed? It is irrelevant to EVERYONE. Your decision to use an OS should be completely independent of what other people are doing, right?
Idealisticly, yes. Realisticly, NO.
If I use an OS (or any product) which is commonly used then I will have a better chance of knowing that it will be supported by more vendors, more developers will make programs for it, and there will be a support community for it in the future.
Knowing the usage statistics for a platoform are important in that they allow you to know "if I go with product X, will I be stranded and forced to migrate in 3 years? or will there be a growing community developing and advancing the product?"
Who am I? Subscribe and find out
hehe, today I got to look at a certain companies web statistics for overall usage of the Internet.
/. aren't exactly the kind who wish all their surfing habits tracked and profiled.
Slashdot was ranked around 2,000th. They also had an average "stickiness", which many of us know is actually much closer to "tar pitness".
So I'm thinkin, o.k., their methodology is a bit whacked and maybe the type of people who frequent
Then I read more and come to understand that thier statistics are based on home usage of Windows 95/98/NT. Most likely having to do with compatibility issues...
Anyway, polls and statistics are just that, and are much better at showing trends than actual reality. Linux is on the uptake, on nearly every level of computing. Which is good news for some people, including those under the eye of the DOJ and EU-DOJ equivalent.
--
+&x
They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.
The full, $$$$$$ versions of these reports generally notes the difficulty in measuring the usage of any OS, especially Linux. While IDC and other analysts get paid for making intelligent guesses, any "estimate" of Linux usage would be a SAG, so they use the numbers which are solid - shipments - to base their projections from. As others have mentioned, the fact that shipments of an OS which can be freely (and legally) shared are outpacing shipments of every server OS not originating in Redmond is impressive, and leads to the implication that it may be legally installed on more servers.
"Apple continues to hold about %30 of the installed base of computers" You had me believing you till that little stat....
Okay, it's probably not 30% (I'm guessing), but the installed base percentage is certainly much higher than the market share would indicate. Historically, Mac users have kept machines much longer than wintel users. The painful irony of this is that while Apple engineered all this long-term value into the Mac, it didn't make a dime on its customers during that time, and analysts really came down on the compant for that. However, this long-term value is part of the reason people are so loyal to Apple and the Mac.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
However, Apple's entire design philosophy rides on the end users not needing to ever know what kind of engine is up there in front. I think the BSD/MacOS-10 hype is way overblown.
Somebody probably said something similar about Visual Basic once.
How the technology gets out there is not important. Look at the big picture. If there are a million new units shipped in one quarter with a BSD-based OS preinstalled, that's a huge win for everyone except Microsoft.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
OS X is Rhapsody, albeit a lot later and a lot different than originally promised.
Actually, almost exactly what was promised for Rhapsody has existed for some time in Mac OS X server -- and from what I understand, Mr. Amelio was going to bet the company on it.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
> which totally misses out on all of the downloads.
Sure, but don't forget that these are business-type-guys here. To them, the interesting copies of Linux aren't the ones Joe Schmedly installed, but the ones that SchmedlyCo bought support contracts for.
Trying to actually determine the market share of Linux by counting the number of sales is just a futile as counting Win98 CDs to determine the number of Windows installs.
Drinking will help us plan!
At work, we have around 30 Linux machines, and around 10 boxed sets of Red Hat, most of which came with Penguin Computing or IBM servers, and half a dozen shrink wrap packs of Red Hat media, which came from Dell. So our machines to media ratio is around 2:1, whereas my personal copy of RH6.1 media was used to install at least a dozen systems, about half of which were dual boot.
By contrast, our ratio of machines to media for Windows 98 is about 0.8:1, as some of the above Linux machines were bought from Dell Factory Outlet (we're in Austin TX) who are subject to the Winopoly contract and ship all their systems with Win98 (and no, you can't even get NT instead).
Even that data hides some more complex truth, as we blew away Linux off a few of the Penguins, and '98 off a couple of the Dell's, to reload with FreeBSD.
Although you have good points for number of machines running Brand Y OS, it is fairly hard to count multiple installs off of one license, or downloads from sites that don't publish the information.
Also by discussing the number of licenses sold they can address the issue of how each platform has, is essence, cashed in on the growth of the market, along with keeping track of how the market grows. The figures that they are stating are extremely intertwined with measurable growth of the market. These numbers are very important for the market and its trends.
Once again, Linux doesn't fit into the normal boxes used to judge these things
Linux isn't the only one, if you go to Sun Microsystems web site you can see the statistics for the number of Solaris 8 downloads, which is over 700,000 right now, and you can install it on multiple clients. Also, other than really big companies, not many places follow the actual licenses given them by MS and will install the product on several machines.
These numbers ARE a very good guestimate of where the market is right now. Frankly, I am very glad to see MS drop below the 90% control range.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Ahh, but the number does give us some information about the problem. It gives us a rough minimum number of machines with Linux on them.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Actually I would much rather it stay like this until Linux has a much bigger share of the market. By standing as one platform it give the impression that we stand as one instead as several major groups each with multiple splinter groups.
These numbers are used by marketing groups to decide whether it would be worth while to support an OS. By having the numbers for Linux be Linux and not RedHat, Debian, Caldera, SuSE, etc... there is a better chance that after seeing 4.1% of market and growing at extemely high rates, combined with OSS being a buzz word these days, companies may consider porting their products.
There have been surveys that have been conducted to see which is the most used Linux distribution. I cannot remember where I saw it but if my memory serves me correctly Debian was the most widely used.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Slices in 3-D pie charts, like their figure 2, distort the underlying numbers. The area of the linux slice is smaller than 4.1% of the pie. They should use a table or a 2d chart. Guess that bad toilet training is showing again...
These numbers don't show what's used more, it's just showing what's been bought and installed.
Installation numbers aren't there, all that is listed is what has been shipped, which as ?I sadi earlier, is no reflection of the numbers of downloads a free operating system gets.
There are things that IDC, DataQuest et al do by special request. These can be bought - that's well known. There are things they do regularily, such as the operating systems report, the database market report, etc. I would be surprised if these were bought.
That's not to say this report is completely accurate - by no means - but I think these are a lot less corrupt than the things they do by special request.
And besides, IDC has the image of being the most "vendor-neutral" analyst out there. Once a new platform springs up, they try to capitalize on it. They were there with Amiga World, Mac World, Network Computer World and yes, even Linux World.
On a Mac OS X server (the shipping version) uname returns rhapsody.
Now, the developers release 2 (DR2) of X86 Rhapsody did exist, and you could take the method detailed on the FreeBSD e-mail list for 'getting Solaris X86 binaries to run on FreeBSD' would work with the Rhapsody binaries I tried it on.
I would not be at all shocked that Apple is paying people in the company to keep a version of Mac OS X running on X86 hardware.
Jobs wants to have a big stick to beat up his vendors. Jobs seems to like beating up on vendors. He's on record having told Motorola "It will be great in 2 years when we arn't using your hardware". And look at how Jobs is kicking around ATI. Then Apple was 1st formed, he kicked one PCB maker around for $25,000.
(Given ATI's treatment, would YOU want to rely on Apple for your business?)
A funny look at Jobs in 1997.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
...but it sure seems like IDC could afford to make better graphs than they did. Those pie charts looked like they were from five-year old versions of Excel...
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Windows: 87.7 %
MacOS: 5.0%
Linux: 4.1%
Other: 3.8 %
My addition is rusty, but isn't this 100.6%? Even if each of the four entries were rounded up by the least sig fig, wouldn't that be 100.4% at most?
First of all, let me say i'm impressed that your post wasnt as an AC.
My machine dual boots Windows and Linux (SuSE), and i do admit that i can get more work that i need to get done for school under windows, it is a better desktop environment in my opinion (although that is a little biased since starting a KDE or Gnome session on under X-Win 32 gives me the advantage of having a windows and a Linux desktop under windows, which is a better solution than VMWare (running the windows desktop from Linux) for me.
While i say windows is a better desktop for me, i also recognize the superiority of Linux for servers. You wont catch me loading Win NT / 2K on my servers.
> Given a choice between running Linux, and needing more diskspace for Windows apps, Linux will be deleted.
Actually, i went out and bought a 7200 RPM 40 Gig HD to supplement my 13 Gig HD.
This brings up another question. How does one really count the number of Linux users? I mean, you can't just say its the number of people who have purchased box versions because we all know that many people (maybe even most people) actually just download their copies.
Perhaps add up the number of downloads and the number of purchases? Well, the problem we have there is figuring out the number of people who actually downloaded their copy, installed it, and actually kept it. I know I've downloaded a distro a few times and never used it... or sometimes I just peaced it together. Thus we can't really count the number of downloads. (I'm begining to feel like Vezzini in Princess Bride here)
I suppose you could poll web page hits, but then you have all sorts of other problems with demographics and the like. What the correct answer to this is, I don't know, but its a very interesting question to pose.
In fairness, they do list both in terms of revenue and in terms of copies (actually licenses) shipped. It's especially informative to compare the revenue streams v.s. the copies sold. Linux (which is the only free software OS separated out) has a lot of licenses shipped but very little revenue, while mainframes have huge revenue but a tiny number of licenses shipped.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
This just fyi:
.sig
Linux is apparently becoming the OS of choice in many third world countries. The Chinese government publicly stating they'll only use Linux from now on is only one, very obvious example. I know for a fact that a lot of Indonesians use Linux, but I'm sure it's popular in other, similar, countries as well. It's cheap (even though Indonesians, at least, don't really care about copyright that much...God, I miss the days a new game was the price of the floppy and 25 cents USD), because copies are easily made without running the risk of an occasional gov't crackdown on piracy. But you can bet those installs aren't counted.
This is not a
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
Actually a very good point. I haven't seen the same amount of attention devoted to stripping BSD variants down to simple setups for anything other than network appliances, though. Is there some architectural issue that makes it more difficult to minimize a BSD system, or is it just the hype that Linux has right now that's making people want to hack it?
...where I think we'll see Linux start cleaning up in the next few years is the portable and embedded markets. Windows CE makes no sense for most small, low-power devices; it's just not worth the overhead for all that Windows-alike functionality when a device has very few resources to spare.
If Linux is going to take off in the *consumer* mobile/appliance market, though, there are a few things missing -- like a lightweight GUI toolkit with sufficient support and applications available for it, hardwriting recognition, and a slim, usable browser (preferably something open source, so it can be modified for different target uses).
I know there are efforts underway in most of these areas -- anyone more up-to-date on it than I want to weigh in with some names and URL's?
It gives us a rough minimum number of machines with Linux on them.
It does no such thing. If anything, retail sales of Linux are going to be to newbies and the MCSE gearhead faction that are just looking to play around with some new toy. The systems they are going on are probably duel boot workstations, and the odds are that they are going to be booted into Windows a large percentage of the time.
On the other hand, the Linux saavy crowd who run the OS full time or nearly full time are more likely to download it or buy it at cheapbytes. Real servers at work usually have good Internet connectivity and admins that don't need installation handholding.
Furthermore, because (unlike MS) Linux vendors don't have special "Upgrade" versions, it's impossible to know if a given sale/download of Linux is going onto a new machine or a machine that already has Linux on it. Since most Linux vendors have a pretty aggro upgrade schedule this throws the numbers off -- all those sales/downloads can't be new Linux installs.
What would really be interesting would be to get Dell or IBM's numbers on Linux preinstalls. Given IBM's recent behavior, I suspect those numbers look very good for Linux.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
The fact that Linux is growing is excellent. Due to the fact that most of Linux's primary users are hardcore/professionals computer users, and that is not the primary growth area of the PC industry right now, it is a testament to the work going on in the Linux community to make it more accessible to the non-techno geeks. Hopefully with successive releases of KDE and GNOME, Linux can take an even larger bite of the pie.
I have the answer! Convince all distro makers to send a message to install-counter@example.com everytime the distro is installed. Suppose the installed machine has no 'net connection? Simple: require one! Disable the sw unless the email is sent (and an encypted and signed receipt using the ethernet card mac addr or some other guid of the machine to prevent spoofing) within 30 days of install. What's that? Its being done already? Well then, time to innovate!
Have a cron job send an email to current-counter@example.com with the current time in the subject once a week. Then we'll know how many running linux boxes there are at any given week.
I'll be damned if I'm going to run linux until I _know_ that there are at least 4.5 million boxes running it. My enterprise MIS CIO CTO MBA training has made me very smart, truly. Sure, I read Information Week. I see the one page ads with linux in 72pt type. But hell, I'm no fool. I need an official report from a $5000/yr newsletter, complete with facts and figures, before I switch my multi-trillion dollar dot-com from Windows 2000 ME Data Center SP4.1 to linux.
This conversation can serve no pupose anymore. Thank you, please drive through.
See the latest netcraft addendum to the stats though... They found that most of those boxes are Linux+Apache boxes running massive virtual hosting. In fact register.com is responsible for (I can't recall the exact figure, but something line...) 20% of those numers, and they are just hosting default templates saying this site hasn't been uploaded yet. While in a way that's good for Linux+Apache ("Linux can easily host thousands of virtual domains"), it doesn't give any indication of the number of unique machines running linux. And neither does the number of unique IP addresses for similar reasons.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
--
Sometimes I think that there should be an anonymous counting mechanism included with the distributions.
Similar to pine's anonymous user counter (for those who don't know about it: The first a new user starts pine on a fresh system, it asks you wether it may send an anonymous mail to the pine developers, just so that they have a rough idea about their user base).
Or similar to Debian's popularity contest (it reports the list of installed packages to the developers, so that they can see what is used most-often and thus deserves additional work over a rarely used software package).
Just imagine if every Linux distribution would do something like this after its first run of the installation:
"Have your new machine counted! May I send a one-time message to the Linux user counter for you?"
It might even be an incentive for the distributions to do so if the user share of the different flavours of Linux were counted that way.
------------------
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
But why worry about it? Companies that make business decisions based on flawed data are likely to fare poorly in the marketplace in the long run. Just think of the relative costs and reliability of a Windows-based web site and a UNIX based equivalent.
NT's previous competitor in the LAN server market was Novell Netware, and Netware was super strict about licensing -- if you installed it on your network, you installed it once and it had rigid user limits. NT had the honor system, which lets people install it more than once. I think that NT's growth in the LAN server market can be partially attributed to the "honor system" licensing approach. And I'm curious how many shops take this to conclusions they probably aren't supposed to.
Exactly!
Even suff like the Linux User Registration (or whatever it is called) is not useful for all known installs of Linux.
It is too easy download an ISO image of your favorite Linux dist and install where ever you want.
I had an extensive discussion with one of my old Statatics professors in college. After explaining what Linux was, how you can get it for free, how there is no central Linux download site, how there are so many places to get Linux, how there are no restrictions on installing Linux, and how easy it is share the same CDROM, NFS, or FTP site; she came to the conclusion that there is no way to count the machines that have Linux on it.
There are simply too many variables in the "Linux counting problem."
So my point is, when you read something about how many Linux machines there are out there, the author is smoking crack. It is nearly impossiable to count all the Linux machines in the world.
Linux O Muerte!
Just about everybody that I have spoken to who has Linux installed, has it dual-booted with Windows. Because of this, the number will show them growing the same, because many casual users (not all) have both the Windows and a Linux OS on the same machine.
These numbers don't show what's used more, it's just showing what's been bought and installed.
Since the GPL is freely transferable, am I the only one who doesn't think that license shipments have anything to do with Linux growth or sales?
Well, our CEO is definitely a business-type guy. We're building a portal, and hsoting some applications in-house. You should hear him on the phone talking about Linux as the greatest thing since sliced bread....
Why is it important to the biz-types? Well, it's because of the price tag.
The free downloads and installs are very important to biz guys, just not in this context.
Which of course, you weren't denying, and this isn't an argument with your points, just kind of a further clarification.
No, businesses make decisions with money. Assessing the financial strength of different players also uses money. This is measuring percentage of server license sales.
Who cares how many servers are deployed? It is irrelevant to EVERYONE. Your decision to use an OS should be completely independent of what other people are doing, right?
Numbers matter to zealots and brats who want to scream and yell.
Money, however, matters. It makes a lot of BIG differences. If I am a interested in the revenue model of a OS, then the money does matter.
Business analysis is not aimed for slashdot, it is aimed towards business executives. Ya know, the people who worry about this for a living, not a pissing contest.
Alex
Yeah, this is an important point. They give Linux 4.1% of 98.8 million client shipments and 24% of 5.7 million server shipments. That suggests that Linux is now shipping more units for use as desktops than for servers.
The question, though, is whether that accurately represents the usage patterns. I'd expect that a lot of server farms either use downloads or a single install disk for multiple machines. At the same time, I'd expect a lot of home user/hobbyist types (like me) to try out multiple different versions of Linux to find the best distribution. Heck, you can get CD's for $2 or less from places like Linux Mall, and I have probably 10 different versions that I've bought either there or as the full distribution, while I have only 3 computers with Linux installed. When you look at the revenue from Linux (apparently less than $100 million on about 5 million copies sold) that suggests that a lot of the copies are the very low cost ones.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Biased polling is a time-honored tradition! It's the american way! Do the polling exclusively at slashdot. Announce to the world that Linux has 50 percent (or whatever) market share!
Notice how often these types of analyses measure "market share" in terms of dollar volume. This creates a built-in bias against Linux, FreeBSD, etc. "If you're inexpensive -- let alone free -- you must not count for much..."
one of the graphs from the IBM page mantioned earlier today seems apropos (and prettier...)
It only stands to reason that as the market for PC's continues to explode, the number of operating system licences will expand as well.
I could have told you that the number of people using any major OS would increase so long as new PC's are being sold.
duh!
Kalrand
-the voice of reason
The title is a humor title, however it's interesting seeing the reaction to anything like this. Okay folks, Linux users make up 90% of the population! There, are you happy? Is that more "real" to you?
Shipments do mean nothing. There are countless hoardes of people out there who never paid for their copy of Windows, and by the same token there are tonnes of people who've picked up countless Redhat x.x CDs at the local bargain bin but have never done more than put them on their rack.
All that really matters at the metrics of actual usage, because copies sitting on people's shelves mean nothing. By that token the most recent study put Linux users at approximately 0.29% of the Internet browsing public, down from 0.32% of a month earlier. I'm sure that will be a rather stark number for a lot of the rose coloured dreamers lusting for the day that Linus is the true leader of the masses.
The upcoming Mac OS X (read "10") represents a complete overhaul and a radical strategy for Apple (for one thing, core OS X source code is freely available). Before birthing it, Apple aborted its Copland and Rhapsody OS plans and cut loose its MkLinux team after years of laboring on these projects, losing time and credibility. However, MkLinux (now independent) and LinuxPPC are shipping and can run on older Macs.
Huh?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I used to work in the industry and had numerous discussions with "analysts" from IDC, Forrester, Jupiter, etc. My experience there showed me that all of these "Reports" and "Analysis" are really propaganda under another form.
The analysts are paid to write reports showing the growth and projected growth of various industry segments. These reports are commisioned by companies in the industries in question. They are then sold to other companies in the smae industry.
For instance, say I'm a major software vendor, and want to do a new product in the project management software industry- I'll have IDC write a report justifying why this industry is going to grow at %20 a year for the next decade. They will go and look for supporting evidence, but since statistics can often lie, when you go looking for a specific growth rate, you will find it.
So, for instance, while Apple continues to hold about %30 of the installed base of computers, IDC shows them with only %5 of the market, because its convenient for them to only count new computer sales for Apple. While Linux is probably 5 times as popular as they show in their "survey" windows is shown to be dominant.
Why? Because the people who have the money who pay IDC have a vested interest in windows.
This is no different than the investment bank that brought acompany public issuing a report with a buy recommendation on that companies stock.
There is NO credibility here, whatsoever.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
In short, and using the conservative numbers:
- Linux : 29.99%
- Windows (all types) : 28.32%
- Solaris : 16.33%
- Other : 23.59%
- Unknown : 1.76%
These numbers are for Web servers only; they filter out duplicate names for the same site, and also "placeholder" sites, but do not filter out virtual hosting. So it's "sites" rather than "machines".They also used some statistical sampling, but do not report a margin of error.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'll be damned if I'm going to run linux until I _know_ that there are at least 4.5 million boxes running it.
Netcraft says that there are over 10 million servers running Apache on the publicly accessable internet. Those are machines that are running basically 24/7, not 'dual boot' machines or people's dialup boxes that are getting miscounted. Netcraft also says that over 1/3 of the Apache servers are running Linux as their OS. According to the Linux counter, less than 30% of Linux boxes are used as web servers.
Given those numbers, how could anyone reasonably believe that there aren't well more than 4.5 million Linux boxes running out there?
And yes, I am probably just feeding the trolls...
They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.
I've set up a good 30 linux boxes in my time, and I've never purchased a single copy.
Once again, Linux doesn't fit into the normal boxes used to judge these things. The distribution model for it is entirely unheard of, and so they don't have any mechanisms for couting this massively popular means of obtaining linux.
Also, shipments of an operating system that can be installed a theoretically infinite number of times are obviously skewed when compared to OSs like NT, which are to be installed on a single server.
Interesting article, but there's some comparisons going on here that aren't quite as clear-cut as they seem at first glance.
Figure 1 - Worldwide, 1999 Client and Server Operating Environment Revenues by Platform ($B)
Well, DUH! Ain't much revenue for an "Operating Environment" that can be downloaded for free, so no wonder Linux lags behind 32-bit windows.
Figure 2- Worldwide Client Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004
Now that's better, as they are now comparing the number of Licenses instead of Dollars, but what do they define as a "client"? Does a TiVObox running Linux count? What about an IBM watch? Besides, I can just as well install the server version of Linux (or NT, for that matter) on my home PC.
Figure 3 - Worldwide Server Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004
Again, how do they define and differentiate between servers? I'd be willing to bet that a license for Solaris on a big Sun box is not really on the same par as a 486DX66 running a Linux server, but it seems that a license is a license is a license according to these stats.