Red Hat's Linux Market Share Eroding?

chamont writes: "Even though Red Hat is still number 1, this article states that Caldera, SuSE, and Turbo are gaining ground fast. The article also mentions that Corel is pretty much history." Interesting to see -- what's cool is that the Linux market, at least what they measured, grew 89% overall. Turbolinux had monstrous growth overall -- you can see a lot more is happening on Pacific Rim.

Comments

Horribly inaccurate

[jailbrekr2]

And *where* is LinuxOne listed? Oops. Time for my medication now.....

Re:not a good measurement?

[molog]

There was no sales decline. Sales of Redhat were up by 69% but total Linux growth was 89% or something like that. Redhat didn't grow as much as the other distros.
Molog

So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

Re:Redhat 2 was better than slackware and yggdrasi

[Inoshiro]

I have a Linux Developer's Resource CD-ROM in my hand. It has Slackware 2.3 with ELF beta. It also has Red Hat Mother's Day release +0.1. It's dated August 1995, and also has things like tsx-11.mit.edu, sunsite.unc.edu, Kernels 1.2.13 and 1.3.15, XFree86 3.1.2, Japanese Linux stuff, and Doom :-)

From this, one could assume that Slackware was further ahead of RH on the great "ELF changeover," as RH seems to have been pre-1.0 back then. Any other Linux History majors care to clear this up?
--

the *nix question

[hawk]

>Unix (and Unix-like)

these would be "*nix"

So far, so good. But how is *nix pronounced?

a) Unix
b) splat-nix
c) Unix-like operating system
d) FreeBSD-like operating system

I choose d), though no doubt it would be more popular to go to e), Linux like operating system . . .

hawk, who really should be making slides . . .

Re:Corel = Cut out bins

[MatriXOracle]

Hmm I dunno, maybe because it's the old verion? They did release the Second Edition of Corel OS only about a month ago...

Market Share

[jjr]

Redhat grow slowly but stil has a good Market Share in the US. This also leaves room for competion. Which is a good thing if one company controls the market then that company that can lean to abuse (Microsoft) I am glad to see this study out. It show linux is heading the right direction.

I miss my yggdrasil!

[linzeal]

yggdrasil was the first linux distro I ever tried whatever happened to them ?

Re:How'd they get on top?

[dboyles]

Obviously it's because they have a cool logo. Any Linux newbie has to be attracted the that cool guy in the hat. After one has used Red Hat for awhile, [s]he realizes that it's considered the "newbie distro." That's when they move on to a truly one-three-three-seven (as the kids say) distro like Debian.

The Debian logo is only slightly trailing the Red Hat logo in one-three-three-seven-ness. Two weeks ago I "installed" a 1"x1" Debian "swirl" sticker, and my hard drive is 14% faster, CPU is 23% faster, and RAM increased by a factor of 1.5.

Illustrative Example

[Spud Zeppelin]

This is a beautifully illustrative example of why it pays to observe important caveats, like: Don't trust a statistic that's published without its methodology. Good science is grounded on being reproducible -- the core of which is telling you how they did it. Simply saying "Based on the latest figures from IDC" doesn't tell you what the collection methodology was, or allow you to judge whether that methodology was or was not accurate.

Of course, those of us in the community can look around us and see that their numbers were wrong -- which makes this problem even worse: the site it came from is targeted to the "manage by magazine" crowd, which makes their complete omission of Slackware and Debian, and their gross underestimation of Mandrake's US installations, substantially more dangerous, since they are misinforming already grossly-underinformed decision makers.

MOO;IANAL.

How'd they get on top?

[Levine]

It's kind of hard for me to figure out how RedHat got on top so quickly (and stayed there, it seems). Is it simply because they were the 'first' to offer Linux in a box with a tech support number? It just seems like there are so many better options, and RedHat doesn't stand out as a clear winner in any category.

-levine

Re:How'd they get on top?

[aanantha]

Redhat's been around for a long time, though. That might have a lot to do with it. Caldera and Turbolinux are fairly new. And Mandrake is an offshoot from Redhat 5.2. I believe Slackware was the first. I don't remember there being any noticeable competitors for several years. Slackware didn't have the concept of a package management system, and there wasn't really any polish to it. For an experienced UNIX user, it was good enough. And Linux users back then pretty much had all prior experience with UNIX.

The fact that Slackware even provided precompiled software was itself a pretty sweet thing. SunOS gave us squat. Redhat came in later with basically 2 contributions. Redhat introduced the first popular package management system, RPM. And they created all these GUI configuration tools. Perhaps it was RPM that made Redhat successful. Now you could install 3rd party software for Linux without having to compile it. That must have been very attractive to Linux newbies or to people like me who are generally too lazy to compile stuff.

That and a lot of marketing probably made Redhat what it is today. And since then Redhat has built up hardware alliances with VA Linux and Dell. And companies tend to feel more comfortable with an operating system from a known established provider. Redhat's an American company and so they've put more work into marketing here. Suse has been around for a long time in Europe, and they directed their marketing efforts there. The same with TurboLinux in the Pacific Rim. So 3 of the top Linux distributers have distinct geographic strongholds.

And as you said, Redhat isn't really a clear winner in any category. They're slow to provide security fixes and slow to update kernels and other software. But when they gained that marketshare, it was pretty much the opposite. But now after having grown so much, they've gotten sluggish.

Re:How'd they get on top?

[Stephan Schulz]

Very likely they were the first ones to offer Linux in a box via normal retail channels at all. SLS and Slackware were there before Red Hat, but not available in any store at that time.

Red Hat also is a very good distribution. They have a fairly good packaging system (and brought it to the market first) and they offer distributions not only for Intel, but also for SPARC and Alpha.

Finally, Linus used to use Red hat early on (probably because of the Alpha support), which very likely gave them a boost in popularity.

Over here in Germany, SuSE was the first distribution widely available in shops, and while I have no hard data, it certainly is the dominant player here.

Re:How'd they get on top?

[tshak]

It seems to me that whenever a company goes public, starts making money, or makes things easier for the user, /. reacts against it. I personally like Redhat - and I don't care if they are the biggest - I just like the distribution! Now, I've heard good things about Mandrake, so I plan on setting up a box to try it out soon. The point is, use the distribution that works for you, and remember, there's nothing wrong with:

- Making money
- Making product more usable
- A Company that goes "public"

Bad Link

[sulli]

The link said: "The parameter is incorrect." Try this.

No Surprise

[Bouncings]

It's really no surprise. As standards merge more of their styles of doing things (LSB slowly developing), it's easier to switch from one to another. Also, Red Hat has for a long time held the title of being the best for newbies, and with all the other distributions catching up and passing it up in that category, you gotta figure.

Finally, I might note that Corel had really bad timing. It is good in theory and is nice to see Debian-based Linux distros. If only they were to wait for Potato and base it off that. (Actually, I'm typing from a Corel Linux box right now -- it's pretty slick on a work network with Windows'ish stuff flying around allover. Comes shipped with Acrobat, Netsc(r)ape and a slick little Samba browser)

Market share by type

[Uruk]

There really aren't *too* many different distributions, there are just a holy sh**tload of distributions marketed under different names with very subtle (and sometimes meaningless) differences between them.

What I'd like to see is marketshare information by type of distro. Since a large number of users are using redhat, debian, or a knockoff of one of the two, I'd be interested to see how it stacks up by type. (i.e. debian-type as in debian, storm, corel, etc, and redhat type, redhat, mandrake, etc)

Even if corel is dead, it doesn't mean debian is. Makes me wonder, what is it really behind the success of a distro? Technical facts, or marketing?

Re:Market share by type

[Chalst]

How do you decide what `family' a distribution belongs to? Package
management system isn't enough, since SuSE is a very different beast
to Redhat (due to configuration management), but uses RPMs.

One thing that struck me as odd in the article was the comment
about `betting your company' on a distribution: well, it isn't
completely trivial to switch from one distribution to another, but I
can't see how anyone could regard making the change as a disaster.

Re:Market share by type

[Bruce Perens]

In Linux you either join the crowd or hit a brick wall

No, thanks, leave that kind of thinking back in the Microsoft world.

Corel is failing because of other reasons: their policy to be bad citizens of the free software community rather than good partners is the biggest reason. Nobody knowledgable wanted to recommend them. I still remember suggesting to a Corel P.R. person that they assign someone to listen to the free software community's complaints online and address what they said. She actually sneered. These are the folks who made major changes to KDE and then held them back 6 months, until they could no longer be merged back into KDE. They took software that had to a large extent been written by legal minors and applied a license that didn't allow those same legal minors to use the software! They changed the licenses of other people's software for a beta test in ways that violated those licenses.

After that, we get to their applications. Word Perfect is a Windows executable running emulated under WINE. This is so absurd that people don't believe it unless they actually test the software. It doesn't work very well. IMO the pending GPL release of StarOffice strikes the death knell for Corel. Most of their advantages go down the drain with that.

Anyway, the study is farcial because it counts sales, not installed systems. Thus, Debian doesn't get reported.

Bruce

Its funny to see all these companies

[Rombuu]

Fighting to be the top dog of a market that you can't make any money in.

Who-hoo! I'm #1! I'm losing money the fastest!

Re:So where's Debian?

[Bruce Perens]

It can be sold, but it is sold by 50 different companies, not all (or even not any) of which were surveyed. Nor are the free downloads surveyed.

In any case, the survey is bogus. Counting installed systems would be about 10 times as accurate as counting sales. How many organizations buy 1 CD and use it to install 10 systems?

Thanks

Bruce

Re:Not for gamers

[be-fan]

Perl is useless if you don't use it. I don't use it, but most distros force you to install it anyway.

1) Would you care to argue that office software point? StarOffice has fewer features and isn't really more stable than MS Office. Who cares if the OS is stable if the office suite is unstable. WordPerfect2K isn't that stable either. Also, in terms of features, MS Office has many things the other two don't expecially for spread sheets and presentations.

2) How do GIMP, Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, iMovie, and 3D Studio MAX relate to games? Please, let me know. These aren't apps that nobody uses you know. I know a lot of (regular) people that fiddle with Truespace SE, or edit images in Photoshop LE. My friends use Fireworks a lot, and all those iMac users use iMovie. Linux has nothing comparable. Linux is weak in games, very weak. And games are a big market for consumer PCs. Linux is still weak in apps too. If you're a desktop user, chances are that Linux apps either don't have all the features you need, or aren't simple enough to use. Most Linux apps are middle-ground type stuff. While GIMP isn't as easy to use as MSPhoto Editor, it doesn't have all the features of Photoshop. If you need the power of either, then you're ass-out. Variety is important. One app doesn't fit everybody's needs. (Yet another reason why all those people making X toolkits should go work on something usefull.) Not to mention the fact that Linux is severely lacking in several software catagories. Notably
A) WYSIWYG editors. Yes they suck, but not everone wants (or needs) to learn HTML.
B) Photo editors. Sure there are image editors, but I don't see anything on Linux that is a good match for that simple stuff that comes with your scanner.
C) Super-high-end apps like 3D Studio, Photoshop, Premiere, SoundForge, Cakewalk, etc, are totally non-existant. Not only that, but no Linux apps have features even comparable to the features of those programs.
D) AOL. Believe it or not, there are 12 million people out there that will never use Linux until it gets AOL.
E) Games. If you took a look at the figures for PC games sales, you wouldn't say that "I'd be happier with a Playstation."
F) Code-generator-type apps. Sure there is a port of Delphi on the way, but I don't see it yet.
G) Need I go on? I'm running out of letters here.

Sure the Linux software lineup meets the needs of a lot of people, but in the specific case we're talking about (read messages in context to their replys, we're talking about whether or not Linux will own 15% of the home market within a year) but for home users, it doesn't.

Linux is not good in the things that are important to home users. Networking and multi-users are decidedly non-important. If Linux were equal to Windows in the other areas, (which I shall enumerate shortly), then multi-user and good networking would be a nice perk. However, it's a small advantage compared to all the disadvantages Linux has.
A) It's still too hard. Unless your computer is blessed by God and happens to jibe with the driver in your distro (how likely is that?) then you still have to do some config work. Also, there are dozens of little annoyances still present. For example, you have to give the IRQs and DMAs of your ISA sound card. You have to recompile the kernel if you want certain features. (It annoys me how many people tell me Linux is easy to use, but say if I want to do some particular thing I should use this or that patch for the kernel.) You don't get gamma controls in X. You can't arbritarily control refresh rate. You often have to live with stuff you don't need (I don't use Sendmail, why the hell does RedHat 6.1 load it by deafault? Before you answer, remember that the solution cannot involve the command line.)
B) It still lacks important software.
C) It really isn't any faster than Windows if you use a reasonable system. Sure WindowMaker may do it for you, but most home users need GNOME and KDE (both for proper app support) and in that configuration, Linux isn't any faster or smoother than NT. It's smoother than Win98, but isn't faster than it. Worse, KDE2 apps take insanely long to startup, even longer than windows explorer with Active Desktop enabled. And I'm talking about a Slackware 7.1 XFree86 4.01 machine here, I'm sure 3.6.x (which comes with most distros) is worse.
D) It's more stable. It's definately more stable. However, many of the important apps are flaky (StarOffice, Netscape) so the stability aspect is somewhat negated.
E) It has much worse hardware support. There is decent 3D acceleration for only a handfull of cards, and even on those cards that are well accelereated (NVIDIA) the Windows version is still faster. Not to mention the fact that there is no support for 3D sound cards or force-feedback joysticks.

Given these things, what's the point of running Linux on a home machine? All you really gain is stability and maybe $90 for not having to upgrade Windows.

I didn't compare BeOS on those criteria. However, notice that I didn't say that 15% of home users would be using BeOS within a year...

However, to be fair, BeOS does still have some advantages over Linux on the desktop. It's faster, and there is some genuinely innovative software for it. However the hardware support is worse, and there is a dearth of apps. Still, it fills my needs, and the needs of many others. I can do most stuff from BeOS, reboting (to NT) only to do rendering, image editing, or DirectX coding. If your needs are simlar to mine, or your needs are very simple and you just need a fast, stable OS that has all the software you need, then give it a try. For a lot of people, who just do simple word processing and play around on the Internet, BeOS makes a great OS. However, if it doesn't fit your needs, then don't use it. I don't proclaim it suitable for the general computing public like many Linux users proclaim Linux is.

Re:200,000 Slashdot fans can't be wrong

[be-fan]

Would you like to quote where you got the idea Linux will own 15% of the desktop market in a year? I quote from ZDnet

"International Data Corp. predicts a 25% annual
growth rate for Linux into the new millennium"

HOWEVER, same article,

" Linux is making steady
progress on the server side, especially for must-stay-up
installations. But it's making no dent in Windows NT's
growth as the standard OS for departmental servers. And
it is light years away from being a threat to anybody on the desktop."

What you must remember is that it is fairly hard to track the number of desktop users of Linux. Most desktop users tend to download it, compared to corperate users who buy it (for technical support.) Thus, there are not statistics on desktop usage of Linux. However, remember that while Linux is having phenominal growth, that's mainly in the server sector. In the desktop market, distros like Corel Linux and McMillan, and Mandrake are selling poorly (compared to the Windowses.) Also, even BeOS had a home computer with it preinstalled (AST machines.) Even if you see the same for Linux, one preinstall is quite far away from 15% of the market.

Re:Farewell, OldHat, and good riddance

[spankenstein]

Debian is slow to mark a release as "stable" however the "unstable" branch is very up to date.

Re:HAHA!!! I told you this would happen!

[pid777]

you must be one dumb muther f. did u READ the article. (now as a small aside to most of the flames i read on /., READING the articles is KEY to understanding the topic) If you READ the article you would see that linux aggregate sales are UP 89%, now if u take into account the 10% RELETIVE sales loss you see that infact, Redhat still GAINED customers.

Re:Farewell, OldHat, and good riddance

[Boiler99]

Um, no.

1) ATI video cards do *plenty* of things wrong, even in Windows. They have traditionally had transparency problems as well as not being fully compatable with the DirectX API...OK, so the drivers included in RedHat don't work completely, but neither do the drivers for Win98. I have several games that specifically say they do not support ATI chipsets...

2) Nagging bugs...OK, try updating your GNOME packages from the ones installed on the disc, the ones I have run perfectly fine even on my Athlon with an NVIDIA vid card. I recommend Helix GNOME since it is easy for newbies to install.

3) OldHat...RedHat may be slow to update packages, but not *nearly* as slow as Debian has. Try to learn about the distros before bashing one.

I'm not trying to say that RedHat is the best, most stable, smallest, or anything else, I'm just saying that you are far too opinionated about this distro for the amount you know about linux in general. Enjoy your Windows 2000, there are only 63,000 documented bugs left...

SuSE - the choice of a dialup generation

[uebernewby]

Or at least, it's favored in Europe precisely because cable isn't as widespread here and you have to pay for your local calls. So a distro that contains six cd's worth of apps is very worthwile over here, especially since it's just as expensive as the lesser hung Red Hat.

Furthermore, SuSE has succeeded in getting a number of universities in Germany on their side, which doesn't really hurt them either.

--rant on-- BTW, why does RH insist on installing Gnome even when you explicitly demand a KDE workstation? Sure, I know how to fix it (now), but it seems a bit obtrusive to me. To be fair, though, SuSE (KDE sponsors) insist on warning you that GNOME is still in early beta stage as well. --rant off--

Re:SuSE - the choice of a dialup generation

[jfunk]

To be even more fair, note the message that comes up when you enter the kpa diskset.

It warns you that the applications are alpha and unstable, even though many of them are quite stable, they simply have <1 version numbers. I can't live without many of those apps, Kuickshow, Gehieimnis, Korganiser, Kdevelop, Kcmdate, Kmysqladmin, Ksysv, and, of course Kfortune.

makes sense

[josepha48]

In the pacific RIm they are growing in there adoption of Linux. It is inexpensive, which is one thing that they like, TurboLinux has a presense there which RH does not. Suse is big in Euroland, so that leaves Cladera an RH for the US. Caldera is actually producing pretty good distro these days from what I have seen, and were one of the first to do the full X GUI install. So it makes sense.

Corel added crap into KDE that added problems to people who tried to compile other programs against it, atleast that is what out on slashdot a while ago, which probably pissed some people off. Corel seems to have gone down the tubes in all its business though that is another story.

I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!

Re:Can the open source model support such growth?

[Bun]

As greater amounts of less technically able users begin to adopt the OS, then this could cause problems in that too few Linux users will actually be contributing to the maintenence and upgrading of the OS itself. Quite simply, Linux has for a long time been a small market OS that has relied on its users contributing there spare time and energy to the actual specifics of the OS. If Linux becomes a popular OS can it really attract sufficent people to ensure the OS and its applications remain cutting edge?

I really don't understand your logic here. It's flawed in all sorts of ways:

Your concerned that as the user/developer ratio ->0, Linux won't be able to compete with 'cutting edge' technologies. Now how does that ratio differ from any commercial software product you care to mention?

Even if the number of core developers doesn't grow at the same rate as the OS use, it doesn't matter. The number will grow, since the OS is open and anyone can look under the hood. Contrast this with a closed-source OS that is limited by the developer resources (money) an organization can throw at it. It's almost no contest. The open source project can expand to the practical limits bounded by the organization governing its code. No private project can match that.

I'm not even sure your base premise is even valid since:

How will more developers contribute to the improvement of the OS? Development is proceeding at a furious pace as it is. Throwing more bodies at a problem doesn't always lead to faster development.

Re:I'm still not so sure

[be-fan]

So you seriously think Linux will own 15% of the desktop market with a YEAR! Do you realize what kind of growth rate that would take? To clue you in, there are somewhere around 300 million copies of Windows out there. Millions of PCs ship every year. Right now, not ONE consumer vendor ships with Linux preinstalled. Not even Dell, which is pretty supportive of Linux, ships Linux on home machines. Eventually Linux might succeed in this market, but not that soon, and not in it's present state.

Second...
Stability: Yes, it's more stable.
Speed: A nominal desktop config with GNOME 1.2, KDE2.0, and XFreee86 4.0 is slower than a comparable WindowsNT machine. Sure you can say, "oh, but with WindowMaker Linux is faster" but then you can't say that Linux has an object model and a good desktop environment. Also, nominally, both GNOME and KDE have to be installed (Gnapster is good, KDevelop is good) which bloats up the system and uses more memory. 3D on WindowsNT is still significantly faster, it seems to handle multimedia better (though I don't have any benchmarks of that) and the system feels much more responsive.
Compactness: How? My super-tweeked Slackware 7.1 config takes up 650MB. 200MB base system, 100-something for X, and with GNOME and KDE installed, 650MB. My comparable Windows NT install with all the little utilities and IE takes up 294MB, plus 150MB for Visual Studio (since I've got KDevelop)=450MB. What were you saying about compact?
Ease of installation: It's only easy if you don't tweek it. I had to recompile XFree86 4.01 (since there aren't Slack packages) I had to manually edit the network config files (to set up NAT and my second ethernet card) I had to edit modules.conf for ALSA, I had to edit XFree86config for the NVIDIA drivers, I had to use xf86config to configure XFree4.0, and I had to recompile the kernel. Aside from recompiling the kernel, my NT configuration is functionally similar, and took much less time and effort.
X: This is an advantage HOW?
IP apps: True, networking is great on Linux.
Empowerment: Empowerment for me is being able to run at the highest frame-rates, render quickest, and have my desktop redraw without flicker. What about you?

Distributing pure funk

[Graymalkin]

I've been using SuSE for a couple years now, I'm happy to see that its market share is gaining on RH. Not because I want to see RH die but because I think SuSE is a great distro. The problem I have seen in my years using Linux is no distro really going out of their way to make a Linux system that was original and went out on a limb. The difference between distros is very small, the base Linux system is virtually identical as are the third party apps packaged with the distro, the real difference comes in the config tools as the arrangement of certain things (most of these differences exist in /sbin and /usr). I would like to see a completely original Linux system. How about bash+ with better realtime language support (i.e. move all the files in this directory to that one then delete this one) and some standardization of included packages. Sure it might limit the "choice" of users but if you're so hardcore on what you want on your system build your own fucking distro. What new users want is the consistancy that Windows and MacOS offer by default. You don't have 20 apps that all do pretty much the exact same thing only with different commands and names (for the most part). Distros: stop renaming the same cloned system, venture forth and do good!

People don't know what "enterprise" means

[Anonymous Coward]

(Big, frustrated rant ahead)

It really burns me when I see technical pundits talking about "enterprise-class" systems when they clearly have no idea what an "enterprise" is.

Here's a big, fat, spelled-out clue for them: "Enterprise" means more than just "really big". "Enterprise" means more than "lots of bundled pretty lights".

1. Enterprise systems have to be able to handle a tremendous load without sweating. This means lots of processes and lots of threads running smoothly at the same time. When overloaded, enterprise systems degrade gracefully.

Let me spell that out in caps -- ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS DEGRADE GRACEFULLY. They may refuse additional client connections, they may log error messages, but they may not EVER collapse under pressure. Anything less is not an enterprise system. It is a toy. Period.

2. Enterprise systems integrate with existing systems. A REAL enterprise often has legacy systems -- some of which have been running since before the new web developer was out of diapers. Companies offering enterprise solutions like to talk about how well their products work with your existing systems. Companies selling toys also want to help you with "updating", "migrating", or "replacing" your existing systems (which were working just fine before you strolled into my office, twerp). Consider that a red flag.

3. Enterprise systems stay up. In a real enterprise, rebooting costs money. Usually it costs BIG money. A company who doesn't understand that doesn't understand what an enterprise is. Beware -- toy-makers will try to sell you aftermarket add-ons for clustering, failover, or maintaing your "quality of service". Don't be fooled. You will pay more to maintain "quality of service" than you would pay to get a solid system in the first place.

I am so tired of magazines pandering to managers who think that they're running an "enterprise". Real enterprises already HAVE professionals to do these comparisons. They have no choice. In the long run, having a professional who is accountable is whole lot cheaper than trusting some twit at IDG, CNN, or ZDNet.

Now, with that perspective, I ask: do any of these NOS qualify as "enterprise-class"? If not, which ones come closest?

According to what?

[roystgnr]

"According to recent figures from IDC"

Oh, yeah, there's an ultra-clued in group if I've ever heard one.

For comparison, check out this spring's Tucows downloads for some alternative statistics. Can anyone find any more recent stats?

Anyway, this spring, Red Hat's share of new downloaded ISOs ranged from 14-31%. Great. But were it's biggest competitors SuSE, Caldera, and TurboLinux? Hardly. Ahead of Red Hat was Mandrake, which "TechnologyEvaluation.com" does not "believe will make significant inroads in the US". Funny, our local LUG has chosen Mandrake for two or three installfests running now. Oh, yeah, and thanks to Macmillan, Mandrake's leading in retail sales, too...

And maybe Corel is teetering on the edge of death financially, but it's distribution was doing pretty good with 15-29% new market share. Maybe "Corel Linux" will go down with the company, but even then all the good changes would likely be folded into Debian eventually.

Re:Mandrake at 4%?

[m3000]

Mandrakeforum.com already had a story explaining it. As someone noted above, this data is pretty old, and Mandrake has some data from July that gives Mandrake the lead with 31.5%.

Redhat 2 was better than slackware and yggdrasil

[maynard]

My primary desktop is a Redhat install I've kept upgrading since Redhat 2.0; that was after I dumped Yddrasil from mid '94 or so. Frankly, they had (at the time) a good package manager, they included a great list of common applications precompiled in package format, and RH-2 and 3.0.3 were excellent distributions. For one thing, I seem to remember that Redhat made the transition from a.out to ELF binary formats faster than anyone else, which made their distribution popular simply because recompiling libc and, ld.so, and binutils, and then recompiling your entire operating system, was a major PITA. Redhat made the transition as simple as plopping in a floppy and a CD. Also, I seem to remember that 3.0.3 attempted an X based install (which was dumped in 4.0) which wowed a bunch of people.

Also, Redhat gave away rpm under the gpl... this gained them significant user and developer mindshare (even though Debian had dpkg out before -- go figure). Redhat promised a simple, easy install from the start -- and they mostly delivered. The complexity of the install process is what killed Debian to begin with (in my recolection), even though the Debian install process allows for much better tailoring of each individual package. Redhat offered a simple way to install Linux without all the hassles of decisions about how to configure hundreds of programs -- which is largely why they took off. And, they've always had a cutting edge distribution with the latest software and tools. This is what wows the newbies, even though after 3.0.3 all of their major new revisions have been a major mess. 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 were simply unfit for sale... and I think this is why they're losing momentum. Other distributions have done better with quality control while maintaining modern packages... and Redhat is suffering from the competition. Oh well! This is what the free market is all about!

I like Redhat and think they've done a tremendous service to the Linux community. And I own some of their stock... so take what I say knowing I'm (in a small way) an investor. Though, I admit I wish I'd been upgrading a Debian box all these years simply because a five year old RH install has become a real PITA to maintain.

A Better Red Hat Than Red Hat

[ekrout]

Myself and many others "in the know" realized that Red Hat was heading in a downward spiral every since people starting proclaiming Mandrake's flavor or Linux as "a better Red Hat than Red Hat." Moreover, once we installed and played around with Mandrake, we realized that all the hype that surrounded it truly was deserved.
______________________________
Eric Krout

Corel is actualy #3 and rising

[frank249]

If Corel Linux is dying why is it in the top ten in the Computer Shopper Hot Products listing and ranking 385 in sales at Amazon?

It is because Corel Linux is currently #3 in sales and by next month should be number 2. The stats given in the article was from Dec 99. Corel Linux was only released in Nov 99 so obviously it did not have much of a market share in Dec. Since then Corel has launched WPO2K-L, CD9-L, PP9-L and CLOS SE. Since Corel is after the desktop and RedHat is in the server market it is hard to compare. Here are the IDC stats from Jul 2000

Retail sales in July 2000 - Source: PC Data With a 32,966-unit-sample selected by PC Data

1 - Linux-Mandrake: 31,5%

2 - Red Hat: 24,9%

3 - Corel: 23,0%

4 - TurboLinux: 8,4%

5 - SuSE: 6,1%

6 - Caldera: 4,3%

The only reason Mandrake has these numbers is that it is bundled with MacMillan's books. I can tell you that I have their cds in one of the books I bought but they have never been used. If you could find out what people actualy have installed I am sure that Corel would fair better. Now if I can find these stats why can't the rest of the media? Here is IDC for Feb and Nov

Linux®: US RETAIL MARKET SHARE PCDATA RETAIL

Revenue - Share_____Feb-00 _____ Nov-99

Red Hat________ 40.4% _____ 58.5%

Macmillan _____ 19.6% _____ 21.5%

Corel ________ 19.3% _____ 2.3%

S.U.S.E. _____ 7.1% _____ 0.7%

TurboLinux _____ 4.1% _____ 1.1%

Caldera _______ 3.0% _____ 6.9%

The CNet download stats are interesting also. While downloads don't directly translate into revenue they are a good indication of popularity, brand recognition and potential upgrade_apps sales. Total download stats from CNet show:

Corel Linux (since Nov 99) 307,840

RedHat (since Mar 98) 334,857

Caldera 39,495

Mandrake 86,505

SuSE 5,946

WordPerfect 8 for L PE (since Dec 98) 1,134,190

Star Office PE (?) 160,644

If you look at the monthly trend this year you can see that CLOS is more popular than RedHat by 30% and WP almost 350% more than Star Office.

Summary since 30 Apr 00

___________________WP84L_____CLOS_______RedHat____ ____Star Office

27-Aug________________ 5,610______ 3,188_______ 2,728______1,634 weekly snip

25 Jun - 16 Jul_________21,730_____13,304 _____12,501(monthly total)

28 May - 18 Jun_______27,318_____19,573 _____15,106

30 Apr - 21 May ______25,900 _____24,805 _____15,512

Totals________________107,149______81,478_____61 ,103 BTW the above story is just a rip off of a CNet article of 31 Aug Red Hat holds huge Linux lead, rivals growing By Stephen Shankland It also cited these 'recent figures from IDC.

Corel

[jfunk]

Actually, I received my happy shrinkwrapped CorelDraw box on Monday.

I was really surprised how much the stability has increased since the last beta. It hasn't even crashed on me yet, and loads and operates really quick, especially considering it's a Wine app. It blows away StarOffice 5.2 in efficiency and stability.

It also works great with my Graphire and supports xcf files. It's quite impressive.

The 12" infaltable penguin is cool, too. It even comes with a repair kit...

So where's Debian

[Karora]

I have been using Debian for the last few years and I rarely see them mentioned in this sort of article.

This makes me wonder if the statistics that articles such as this quote are really worth bothering with! It seems to me that unless you take statistics from debian.org and all it's mirrors that you won't be getting a true picture of the marketplace.

Debian is a significant force, and one which increasingly deserves recognition as we see other distributions based around it's excellent package management system.

I've been using Storm recently and find it an excellent way to get Debian installed, with all the power of Debian's management system available to me afterwards.

The Walnut Creek downloads of ISO images is particularly bogus in this regard - why download an ISO image of Debian? Grabbing a couple of floppies and doing a net install is much easier...

Pfft

[Booker]

Red Hat made plenty of money pre-ipo, and now they are taking calculated losses to advertise and grow. They expect to be profitable again in the near future.

There is most certainly money to be made in Linux...

---

Re:200,000 Slashdot fans can't be wrong

[be-fan]

Linux definately won't have 15% of the desktop market by next year. Currently it probably has less than 5% and it's growth rate in the desktop market isn't exactly spectacular. Also, Linux currently doesn't offer a tangible advantage to the desktop user.

A) Linux is still lacking some important software catagories. Office software is spotty. Not so much a lack of, but the fact that in general StarOffice and WordPerfect aren't the highest quality applications. The stability of the two are no better than Office, and being just as good as Windows is not good enough. It's also lacking games. As Nintendo will tell you, variety is very important in a game library. Sure Linux has several games, but aside from Quake and UT, the majority of them are older games. Even Descent III is pretty dated. Until Linux get's many "A" titles, it's not going to be a player in the home market. Lastly, there are a severe lack of "best in class" desktop apps in Linux. The whole Office suite is arguably better than WordPerfect (in the database, spreadsheet, and presentation arena, not the word processor) GIMP still doesn't compare to Photoshop, there is still no equivilant for Fireworks or Dreamweaver, 3D Studio MAX still isn't there, etc. Sure all these apps have Linux counterparts, and some of those may be quite good. However, don't think of them as Linux apps, but apps in general. There are a lot of feature and usage issues with Linux apps that Linux diehards usually ignore. Think hard about it. Would Linux apps, if reviewed in a conventional computer magazine, come out with 9's and 10's, or 5's and 6's? Lastly, there is a lack of "simple" software. For example, the iMovie-type software that is so popular. Or basic web-builders like CuteHTML or AOLPress. Stuff that let's ordinary people do basic projects without dealing with a lot of features.

B) The system itself isn't robust enough. Sure it's more stable, but hardware support still sucks. There are only a few 3D graphics cards supported, and poorly at that. (Poorly being defined as not being faster than the Windows versions.) Sound-card support is severly lacking, with half the cool hardware on most modern soundcards being totally unused. That's only if you talk about ALSA. Stuff get's worse with OSS. (A plea, everyone stop programming for OSS. Somethimes a standard just needs to be replaced. Killing OSS and X is like getting rid of ISA. Everyone knows it should be done, but nobody wants to do it.) Then there is the lack of force-feedback support for joysticks. You specifically may not care, but tell that to the guy who spent $200 for his force-feedback wheel. Second, there is no real evidence of what exactly makes Linux better. It's not noticibely faster, it usually takes more harddrive space (a nominal install, you can't get by with Linux without installing GNOME, KDE, and all the useless stuff (for an average desktop user anyway) like Perl, Lisp, Guile, etc.

Sure many of these things will change. However, it will take a lot longer than a year. For Linux to take 15% of the market, it has to be better. Being just as good as Windows is no use. It has to not have any major gaps over Windows and has to totally blow it away in several catagories. Only then will it succeed.

Re:I want a solid Linux OS

[mindstrm]

Right.
And how is the fact that FreeBSD is neat related to a discussion of Linux marketshare?

TechEval Article uses _1999_ Data

[Cy Guy]

If Corel Linux is dying why is it in the top ten in the Computer Shopper Hot Products listing and ranking 385 in sales at Amazon?

Read the following paragraph from the TechEval article:

From 1998 to 1999, the Linux market overall grew by 89% (by units shipped), but Red Hat grew "only" 69%. This is in sharp contrast to the growth of SuSE (175%), Caldera (175%), and TurboLinux (450%).

I think the 1% figure they cite for Corel was their market share for an IDC survey conducted in 1999, after they had just released it. So it would be impossible to conclude the direction Corel was going from just the first survey they appeared on.

If I was Corel, I would be getting my lawyers on these guys right away. Hopefully with a press release indicating what their actually sales figures have been.

Good news? Bad news? Indifferent?

[barzok]

Ignoring the business and Wall Street-centric mindset, we're all playing for the same team here. RedHat market share dropping relative to other distros is a good thing IMO. More variety, more incentive for others to join in, rather than giving up saying "I can't compete with RH, why bother?"

Competition = Good.

[Dr. Dew]

Good. A little competitive pressure on RH might help motivate some improvements that others are including in their derivative distros.

All the same, I wish my company's products were doing as "poorly" in our market as Red Hat's are in theirs.

Although people still peddle the "Linux factions will kill the market" story, I want people to exploit the fact that there's more than one way to do things, and retain the understanding that as users, many of us have competing needs and desires.

It's a shame...Corel blew it by distributing their first release pre-broken (wrong kernel headers, etc.), and by focusing on bluster rather than code, but it has come closest to being my Linux distro Holy Grail: one I can give my dad on CD and not have to come over and help him install/configure.

BTW, did you notice the amusing "please don't flame us" disclaimer:
"(This does not imply that SuSE or TurboLinux are inferior - merely that they were not rated in the mentioned report.)"

No.

[brokeninside]

Does this count magazine distributions?

No.

Or at least I don't think so. Since the article continually spoke of 'numbers shipped,' its my educated guess that only retail sales are being counted. The article did specifically mention that preloads were not counted. In all liklihood, downloads, promotional disks (such as that in magazines), and discount sellers (ala cheap bytes and linux systems lab) were not included in the number.

I've installed Linux around ten to twelve times, only once have I purchased a retail box (Caldera OpenLinux 2.1) and its not the flavor of Linux I run on any of my machines (Storm 2000 2nd edition on my desktop, Debian Slink on my laptop). I sure wish there was some way to do a breakdown of numbers that included actual installs instead of retail box sales.

On the other hand, I think the article did raise a good point that only Linux companies with a decent number of retail sales will stay in business. Of course, balance that because the overall best distribution (in my lame opinion) is Debian which is compiled entirely by volunteers and as such is not dependant on marketshare for its survival.

That's my take,

-l

Distribution statistics

[hta]

This is from http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.html

distribution
============
79826 reported
80104 values
1588 1.99% DIY
13089 16.40% Debian
3440 4.31% Debian ==DEBIAN-VERSION==
4898 6.14% Mandrake
23666 29.65% Red Hat
6006 7.52% S.u.S.E
21657 27.13% Slackware
5760 7.22% Others

Unlike all the others, if you don't like the numbers, you can DO something about it. Go register!

Re:So where's Debian?

[jorbettis]

Since Debian is the free distro, it can't be bought, can it? Actually, according to netcraft (I can't find it on their site, but I know I saw it there), Debian is the Number 2 Distro in terms of total number of boxes running it.

Re:Can the open source model support such growth?

[Black Parrot]

Expanding market share causes a cluebie problem all right, but it's not a problem with cluebie users. No number of new users is going to slow down development, and the nice thing about software is that it doesn't take much longer to write an application for a billion users than it does for a thousand.

The cluebie problem I'm talking about is all the cluebie journalists who "need" to write an article about Linux but don't actually have anything to say... so they ask loudly and often whether the sky is falling. Such as the one over at linux.com right now.

--

Re:200,000 Slashdot fans can't be wrong

[PurpleBob]

Linux definately won't have 15% of the desktop market by next year. Currently it probably has less than 5% and it's growth rate in the desktop market isn't exactly spectacular.

Would you care to quote where you got that idea? And maybe give a few examples of OSes with a higher growth rate than Linux?
--
No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.

not a good measurement?

[gbroiles]

I think "market share" deserves more careful thought when applied to free software - the study would seem to describe "market share among people who purchased packaged distributions" which is pretty different from number of installations, which is what many people think "market share" means, or ought to mean.

Is Apache's "market share" of the webserver market 0%, because the Apache Software Foundation doesn't sell any copies? I don't think so.

The methodology used is great if you're trying to figure out who's making how much money from selling Linux distributions, but isn't so great if you're trying to figure out which distributions are good ones, or popular ones.

In particular, distributions which are easy to install via the Net and/or easy to install without documentation are much less likely to require the use of floppies, CD's, or installation manuals - so it may be that distributions which sell a lot are actually inferior, technically, but that inferiority drives sales.

I don't say that to pick on Red Hat - one of my boxes runs Red Hat, and I've been pretty happy with it, and don't know enough about the other contemporary distros to pick on them. I just think it's a shame to read more into these numbers than is reasonable.

Re:not a good measurement?

[Sheik Geek]

The methodology used is great if you're trying to figure out who's making how much money from selling Linux distributions, but isn't so great if you're trying to figure out which distributions are good ones, or popular ones. This article just goes to show that Red Hat is not Linux. There are many distro out there, each with their own pro's and con's. I am a big Caldera fan(1). The main thing I see from this article is which distro do businesses want to use, verses which distro do the geeks/nerds(2) want use. Obviously Japanesse business want Turbo Linux, IBM wants Caldera, Dell wants RedHat. The geeks well I would recommend the Linux from Scratch Distro.

(1)This is my personal opinion. Anybody can disagree if they wish(3).
(2)Geeks/nerds is used as a term of enderment in this case.
(3)They are coure will be wrong if they disagree ;)

Can the open source model support such growth?

[MonkeyHanger]

Although its a good sign that Linux is increasing its market share, the point must be raised about whether the open-source model of system production can cater for a massively increasing market. As greater amounts of less technically able users begin to adopt the OS, then this could cause problems in that too few Linux users will actually be contributing to the maintenence and upgrading of the OS itself. Quite simply, Linux has for a long time been a small market OS that has relied on its users contributing there spare time and energy to the actual specifics of the OS. If Linux becomes a popular OS can it really attract sufficent people to ensure the OS and its applications remain cutting edge?

So where's Debian?

[msnomer]

Was its market share too small to bother mentioning, or was it just not counted at all? Anyone have any idea (other than "IDC") where they got their numbers from?

--meredith

Re:how about just one linux distro in the stores?

[radja]

I was at my local large bookstore, and they carry several distro's (RH, SuSe, PPC, SlackWare and more if you count the books with free CD), and some linux games too (Civ:CtP, MythII). Some apps too... that's Scholtens Wristers in Groningen, NL.
They're renowned for having a very well-stocked computer-related section.

//rdj

To be fair you should post an update

[frank249]

The article also mentions that Corel is pretty much history."

How about adding an update to the story like;

The Technology evaluation article uses IDC data as of Dec 99. IDC data for Jul 2000 indicates that Linux-Mandrake is #1 in retail sales in US 31,5% with Red Hat #2 - 24,9% 3 - Corel: 23,0% and 4 - TurboLinux: 8,4%.

I don't know why you would post a story based on 9 month old data but an update would clarify the situation somewhat.

Re:History Major

[Tet]

Ok, this is a short guide for those people who actually want to get a running system, not just look at the pretty source code :-). You'll certainly need minix for most of the steps.

Hmmm. I guess that must have been out of date even then, because I certainly didn't need Minix when I installed Linux. IIRC, my first install was done with a boot/root disk from Linus (0.12?), but it wasn't really useful enough to do anything other than play around with. The first full Linux install I did was the MCC distribution, which I got on 4 high-density 5.25" floppies. I didn't have enough hard drive space for the "huge" SLS distribution at the time (it was 65MB, I think). No trace of Minix anywhere...

Heh

[Th3 D0t]

Linux "Market" Share
---

Percent Increases are Meaningless Here...

[cowboy junkie]

Ummm, this seems kind of basic, but when Red Hat has a greater market share than the rest of the packages they chart combined, how can it possibly match their growth in a percentage? I can create my own distribution, install it on three machines and claim 300% growth, but that really doesn't mean anything...

I'd much rather see some hard numbers that might actually tell me something about how real this growth is...

How meaningful is this?

[Bun]

No Debian. No Slackware. No download figures/estimates taken into account.

It seems to me that when you're dealing with a freely downloadable product, basing market share estimates on retail sales is a little... narrow. Then again, if you're concerned with how much money the players are going to make, it's not a bad place to start...