Vorsprung durch Pinguin (Linux Top In .de-domains)

A reader writes " According to the German Heise Newsticker Linux is the top server for .de-domains both in terms of IP addresses and domain names hosted. The survey carried out by the company iKu Netzwerklösungen surveyed all of almost 2.5 million connected .de-domains distributed over 205.540 IP addresses with the port scanner nmap. 44 percent of IP addresses surveyed were hosted by Linux, 30 percent by Windows. In terms of domain names hosted Linux has an even greater lead, with over 1.1 million domaines. Solaris follows with about 850,000 names, of which 180,000 are hosted on just two Solaris boxes belonging to Germany's biggest webspace provider Strato. Windows follows in 3rd place with just 10%. " Check out the fish if you don't jive deutsch.

Comments

Of what true value is this?

[Proteus]

I think that the main point that can be gleaned from this survey is that many, many ISP's choose Linux as thier hosting OS. This makes sense because of low TCO (especially since ISP sysadmins usually have UNIX experience), and very short bugfix release timeframes.

However, a survey like this cannot answer the question that PHB's and corporate Sysadmins everywhere want answered: What are successful companies using for mission-critical appliacations?

At the moment, I don't think anyone can answer that directly, but I would like to see tech magazines survey businesses to see what they are using, and in what capacity. I would suspect that, at least for now, MS has the lead in medium-to-large corporations for mission-critical applications -- but the fact remains there is no data to back this up.

#disclaimer -- I don't like MS, but I believe in every OS having a place.

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Damned Europeans

[msouth]

They just don't seem to get the "Microsoft, everywhere, all the time" dogma. It's a wonder anything works over there.


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Who cares?

[_xeno_]

This isn't really supposed to be a troll, so I'll try and provide rational arguments, but... who cares about the number of Linux servers being higher than anything else?

The number of Linux servers compared to Solaris servers is largely meaningless because a Sparc can handle more of a load than a simple x86. Yes, Linux is available on a Sparc. But why bother? If you're going to get a UltraSparc 10, why get another OS when you can get Solaris 8 supported as part of the package? If you can afford $8000 for the machine, Solaris is a viable and usually more useful option than Linux. (Mostly because you can also get a support contract.)

A useful comparison might be to compare what the majority of Linux servers are used for compared to Solaris and Windows servers. Are the Linux servers running e-commerce sites? Or are they running the standard Apache home page because httpd was in the default init script?

Linux is used by many hobbyists - how many of those boxes where just boxes set up for personal use? I dunno how cheap broadband is in Germany, but it's a possibility.

Like all statistics, take these with a grain of salt - the fact that the cheapest method of serving a web server is the most widely used really doesn't mean anything. I'd expect a survey of college students who run their own web pages to come up with a large collection of Linux, followed by Windows, and then maybe the free-as-in-beer Solaris offerings.