Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linux On the Desktop: 0.24 Percent?

Posted by timothy on from the somethig-smells-a-little-funny dept.

Canyon Rat writes: "According to this story, less than a quarter of a percent of desktop users have adopted Linux. The survey was based on web surfers so it may be accurate." Anne Onymus adds a link to an interesting reaction over at lowendmac.com.

22 of 684 comments (clear)

  1. The problem is.. by Rosonowski · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem with a web survey is that websites are targeted, much like television, to a specific audeince. That audience is more or less likely to be a windows/linux user, and as such, the results are likely flawed. Kind of like if you tried to do an OS survey on slashdot. Linux would have a much higher rating, would it not?

    --
    01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
    1. Re:The problem is.. by noser · · Score: 5, Interesting

      From time to time I take a look at the pie chart on Google's Zeitgeist page, where they display the relative proportions of operating systems used to access Google. I figure it is a pretty good rough benchmark, as I know they get a lot of traffic from Linux users, so I would expect the representation of Linux on that chart to be high, but we are reading one percent!

      It is sobering to see how much the Microsoft browsers have really taken over on the internet. One thing that does make me rest a litte easier about it though is the Mozilla project, and how AOL basicly forces people to use their gecko-based browser instead of IE, so the web is not in too much immediate danger of falling into a MSIE-only club.

      I understand that it isn't really reasonable to expect that there would be a large proportion of Linux users though. I agree with some of the other posters that measurements like this are probably more likely to move our way once more people begin to access the internet through Linux embedded devices like cellphones and PDA's, set-top boxes, etc. "Linux on the desktop" probably won't seem like such a big deal as the desktop paradigm begins to fade. I imagine a future where the only people who even use a PC like we do now would be developers or scientists. Regular types will probably surf the web with all manner of specialized devices, and maybe not even think of it as 'surfing', but 'checking the weather', or 'looking something up'.

    2. Re:The problem is.. by MSG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem is that users don't really know what they want, they only know what they're told they should want. The parent post may be a troll, and it may not, but it's full of frequently posted bullshit that people need to stop believing.

      don't try and convince me that an almost 20 year-old architecture is going to bode well these days

      OK, why are you even considering Linux then? It's a 10 year old OS replicating a 30 year old architecture. It can't *possibly* be any good, right?

      Modular, extensible software isn't new. X11 was designed that way years ago. The only problem has been the proliferation of slow, monolithic implimentations. XFree86's implimentation is much much better than many in the past. X11 itself is a fine drawing layer, even if libx11 is a bitch to interface with.

      There is no compelling reason for people to use Linux on the desktop

      Maybe not. I don't know. My mom's been using it for 3 or 4 years, since before Windows had ICS. That was the killer feature. Even after that, Windows didn't have a good personal firewall. Even still, it's vulnerable to about a million virii that will never affect her computer. Everyone has something that they desire from their computer...

      Xfree86 my ass, move off that clunker and have a nice thin layer at the bottom

      There's that frequently quoth bullshit. X11 IS THIN. Thin == little memory: X11 works on Compaq iPAQ's in something like 2MB of RAM, and provides better services than the Linux frame buffer. Thin == low level, which is what most *real* X11 programmers bitch about. X11 is so thin that it provides a mechanism without any policy! That's its design goal. It's just the mechanism, so policy can be decided by anyone who needs a graphical environment without rewriting their drawing layer from scratch. As GUI's evolve, and their internal designs change, X11 will always be there for them to be built upon, without rewriting the low level hardware interface bits.

      Why does everyone bitch about X11, but no one ever thinks that Linux should be replaced with something that isn't 100MB of source, and 20 MB of binary? What? No one thinks that an OS would be much faster if it were "thin"?

      Remember, THIN == few features. X11 provides all of the features that you need to draw in an extensible architecture, without anything that belongs somewhere else.

      Linux needs a completely IE compatible browser.

      Compatible in what way? If browsers on Linux aren't compatible with IE, then the fault lies not in the Linux browser developers; it's with MS. There *IS* a standard for this crap, you know? It's all written out, and anyone should be able to understand it. Mozilla and Opera are far better at being standards compliant than IE, so why don't you bitch at MS. Why should we have to degrade from written standards to implimentation standards that are likely to change as IE does?

      Fonts suck

      *GOOD* fonts are really hard to create, and therefore very expensive. Perhaps you would like to develop some? Or maybe fund their development? Not that you're wrong here... The fonts we've got would be a lot better if they were scalable and hinted, but that's where we loose out.

    3. Re:The problem is.. by jackbox · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Does anyone recall how NT 3.1 was supposed to be the desktop follow-up to Windows 3.x back in... like, 1994? When did NT finally achieve notable penetration on the desktop? Maybe around 1998? Maybe only last year with Windows 2000?

      I don't have exact stats. My point is: it's taken at least 4-5 years for Microsoft to push their own "industrial strength" OS onto the desktop. (Win 9x was a stopgap measure because people were sticking with Win 3.x and not moving to NT.)

      Whoever is doing doomsaying on Linux by claiming "it's been years and it's not on the desktop yet - therefore it's a loser" has been brainwashed by the MS PR spinners.

      These changes take time. And Linux has made incredible progress considering the many hurdles it has to overcome in the marketplace. Now is no time to stop.

  2. How to craft a response. by glowingspleen · · Score: 4, Funny

    [Insert Pro-Linux Outcry]

    [Insert Rambling Out-Of-My-Ass Reasons why Survey Can't Be Correct]

    [Insert Attack on Microsoft]

    [Insert Short Insult To Silly Un-learned Users Who Don't Know Better]

    [Insert Reminder That Survey Can't Be True]

    [Close with Name, Followed By Witty Anti-M$ Slogan, Being Sure To Substitute A Dollar Sign For The "S" Because Doing That Is Inventive And Hilarious]

    --


    ------
    Let me give you the lowdown
    1. Re:How to craft a response. by release7 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I've had my Linux box running for over 9 1/2 years. Try that with you Windows 3.1 machine. I'll tell you it can't be done.

      Anyway, I've seen surveys by this company before and they've actually had to retract some of the statistics they've published in the past because of some oversights. Notice how they don't provide a breakdown of the 125,000 sites in the survey---just a little suspicious, don't you think? I've talked to almost everyone in my lab and at least 20% are using Linux.

      In the long run, about 15 years, I predict Microsoft will be toppled. Let's face it, their software just plain sucks! Once the gov't wakes up and realizes they are nothing but pure monopoly, their market share will get washed away like a brillo pad on soap scum.

      However, I am sick of lusers who are too lazy to want to learn anything new. It's like, hello! God help us if they actually put in just 2 hours a day for a couple of months into learning a new user interface so they could duplicate what they can do with Windows, they'd have a kickass OS that never crashed and can simulate many of the same things you do in Microsoft Office. Stupid lusers. Keep buying Microsoft products but don't come whining to me when Bill Gates owns the mortgage on your house.

      Anyway, I just wish /. would be a bit more responsible about the articles it posts. The stats are obviously skewed.

      preZZure--->Friends don't let friends buy M$.

      --

      <a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>

    2. Re:How to craft a response. by onion2k · · Score: 4, Funny

      Of course MS is bloatware. Now, what did I do with my 7 cds of Debian..

      --
      http://twitter.com/onion2k
  3. Here we go... by forgoil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I bet that there will be at least 100 posts saying that you can't trust this kind of data, that it's complete bollocks and yada yada yada Linux is so good it will for Bill to eat Linus used shorts.

    Please don't care about that article, it's not interesting really. It's not really news. We all know what we use ourselves (XP and linux in my case) and I suggest that our time should be spent on something better than surveys and such things.

    Writing serious and useful documentation for linux for instance, and putting it into XML and making it readable and searchable in different applications (such as the exellent Konqi, the only other browser besides IE I would ever dream of using). Go do that instead of reading all the pointlessness that this news consists of.

  4. Lynx will never show up on these stats by andyr · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Since the stats are gathered in one place, a hitcounter, my lynx-browsing will never be tallied, as I do not download those little GIFs. Even under Galeon I flag it to not download pictures from other sites - so I will not show up there either.

    Cheers, Andy!

    --
    Andy Rabagliati
  5. Representative data by Cpyder · · Score: 5, Informative
    well, as the mac article points out, the Hitbox users aren't really representative... But what about Google??? About everybody uses google... So let's see what they have to tell:
    Windows (all versions): 93 %
    Macintosh: 4%
    Linux: 1%
    Other: 4%

    Detailed figures on browsers and operating systems on their site. I think Google can be considered quite representative, not?
    (posted with Konqueror / Linux)

    1. Re:Representative data by nEoN+nOoDlE · · Score: 5, Funny

      That only proves that Linux users don't search for stuff online cause they're so knowledgable while Windows users have to resort to search engines to get where they're going! Your statistics are LIES! Or maybe Windows users just search for more porn.

      --
      Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
  6. Survey says... by adubey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've had some training in statistics, and I see a number of problems. First, the slashdot editors are making the perennial journalists' mistake of misinterpretting statistics. Statmarket only claims to be measuring web client usage, and doesn't make any claims about the desktop market in general (at least from what I saw).

    In terms of the study itself, statmarket admits that the sample is "self-selected" rather than randomly selected. This results in a biased sample. In particular, since they are offering a service to business users, the sample is likely biased in favour of business sites. The bias is then against more "arty" or technologically-oriented sites, resulting in lower-than-expected numbers from Macintosh and Linux users. It might also be biased against home users.

    That said, while the survey may be off by an order of magnitude, I wouldn't expect it to be off by more than an order of magnitude. Most other surveys don't put Linux usage at more than 2 or 3%

  7. Our Stats ... by SirSlud · · Score: 5, Funny

    .. as taken from our counter for the site www.pseudodictionary.com, a site that has NOTHING to do with computers.

    Win 98 80178 (45%)
    Win 2000 33183 (18%)
    Unknown 17948 (10%)
    Win NT 15051 (8%)
    Mac 13085 (7%)
    Win 95 11717 (6%)
    Linux 2459 (1%)
    Win 3.x 1055 (0%)
    Unix 761 (0%)
    WebTV 226 (0%)
    OS/2 24 (0%)
    Amiga 4 (0%)

    The scariest thing is that win98 is still 45%. If not being part of that 45% is wrong, I don't wanna be right, baby!

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  8. Browser Identification Strings by Rushuru · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The other problem that may drive *nix browsing market share is that there is a gazillion browsers who all have different identification strings. Very often, poorly designed stats system will not even notice that a given browser is actually a linux one, and will classify it as unknown.

    Also, many poorly designed sites ony lets people with Ms IE 4 or Netscape 4 visit the site. Opera, mozilla, konqueror users have to fake the identification strings to be able to see the site. And, as a matter of fact, I know several people who have set their browsers' id string to be IE like, to avoid troubles.

    There's no arguing that Linux's desktop market share is far lesser than that or windows and mac, but I do think and hope it's above 0.24%

    --
    !
    ^_^
  9. Where they get their stats. by Carnage4Life · · Score: 5, Informative
    According to their Research methodology page
    StatMarket publishes statistics based on the combined data from tens of millions of daily Internet users visiting the tens of thousands of sites that use WebSideStory's HitBox Enterprise and other HitBox Web audience analysis services. HitBox is an outsourced Web site measurement and analysis service that provides real-time statistics about online visitor behavior.

    ...

    While the 125,000+ Web sites worldwide that HitBox monitors are self-selected, StatMarket's figures are culled from more than 50 million unique visitors who visit those sites every day
    1. Re:Where they get their stats. by zmooc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Still, that doesn't have to be a guarantee at all. It is very well possible that the sites that use hitbox are for some reason visited more by windows users (newbies?) than other sites. Sites with content that's more interesting to us geeks usually don't use hitbox (slashdot, google, blah). Porno sites for example work much better in windows (movies!). I'm not saying that Porno sites use HitBox more, but it's just one of the many examples. The only way to do such a survey right is by picking a few people randomly and then contact them by telephone. And then it's still possible that users of OS A are more willing to cooperate than users of OS B:)

      --
      0x or or snor perron?!
  10. Circular circle? :) by ishark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like the answer on lowendmac. Not the article, but the statistics. Beside that, could it be that we're witnessing the same "netscape effect" of the web? The article says that lots of web developers use those statistics to build sites. Translation: they only target IE. I can believe this, since I use galeon and I often have quirks in commercial sites. Now, if your site works well only with IE I'm not surprised that 98% of the visitors use IE.... Just like netscape-enhanced sites used to justify their attitude by saying that "90%+ of the visitors use netscape"....

    (Note: I use Windows == IE. I don't know the statistics of Ns/Mozilla/Opera vs IE on windows, am I guessing right that they are a tiny %?).

  11. Their stats are wrong ... here's why: by Skapare · · Score: 4, Informative

    websidestory.com and statmarket.com are basing their statistics on their web tracking technology through the use of advertising. The problem is, they use web bugs (see here, here, and here) to accomplish this. Windows users typically do not take actions to inhibit these web bugs, but Linux, BSD, and even many other Unix users do. There's software out there to help, too. Those who do block these web bugs, or all the hitbox.com sites, as I do, won't ever be counted.

    Statistics based on web bugs should never be counted to determine platform penetration. Instead, actual HTML loads from a wide variety of real sites should be used, and the distribution variations show, too. I'm sure Slashdot gets more Linux and BSD just because of what it is.

    Find out what other sites that /.ers visit, then get platform stats from those sites, and only for their main page HTML hits (not for images or ads or anything else). Then check the variation of that.

    I had to go remove them from 6 different blocks in my network to just to view the linked page.

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  12. 0.24% isn't bad! by stonewolf · · Score: 4, Offtopic

    Considering everything that stops people from using Linux on the desktop and the huge lead that MS has in established customer base and marketing, 0.24% isn't at all bad. It is a lot higher than I thought it was.

    Truth is that there are huge barriers to using Linux that can only be blamed on Linux. A simple example. I recently installed NVidia graphics cards on both my Win98 and Red Hat 7.2 desktop machines. The hardware installation was the same of both machines. The software was another story...

    Even though NVidia included binary RPMs for linux drivers on the disk those drivers were useless because they were for a different version of the kernel. So, I had to down load the drivers from the NVidia site and install those. Of course, even though they claimed to be compiled for the same RH kernal as the one I was using they didn't work either. So, I downloaded the source tar.gz files and compiled them and the installation went just fine. Then I had to edit the XF86Config-4 file and then figure out that for some reason AGP just wasn't going to work... and most of an afternoon and an evening later I had a working high performance OpenGL monster of a Linux box.

    The install of the Windows drivers took about 5 minutes, but since I was at NVidia's site anyway I down loaded the newest drivers, installed them, and started playing games. Total time, counting the down load, about half an hour.

    Did I mention that I spent 5 years as an X server developer in another life? So, I have an above average knowledge of the server. Did I also mention that I have several computers all networked so that after I lost my desktop and web browser (no graphical interface == no browser for most people) I was still able to access the NVidia web site and down load drivers and help files? And when they lose their desktop they are completely helpless.

    All in all, just the hassle involved in loading an accelerated graphics card made by the most pro-linux graphics card manufacturer in the world (MHO) is enough to keep anyone who is not a hard core geek from even considering using Linux.

    Lets face it folks, right now Linux is still actively hostile to the average human being. The fact that drivers have to be recompiled to match the kernel makes Linux actively hostile to all device manufacturers. And, that makes Linux hostile to all software developers that depend on specialty devices.

    I'm about as pro-linux as anyone I know, but that doesn't change the fact that a company like NVidia needs to provide a 68 page installation manual with the Linux drivers for a card and doesn't need to provide any instructions for the Windows drivers for the same card.

    Like I said, 0.24% isn't bad. On my web site I see closer to 1.3% Linux, 1.9% Mac, and 91% Windows.

    Stonewolf

  13. B.F.D: There's still a monopoly out there fellas by Locutus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Come on now, how is anybody supposed to get Linux out on the desktop if nobody worth a hoot can pre-install it? Not even in a dual boot configuration. I've got two friends who went out and bought $1500 PC's to do email and web surfing. Only some of the fringe players like Ellisons company,etc. do Linux such that consumers could use and how do they compete in a Windows-only press world?

    Hell, OS/2 had/has a much higher usability rating, IMHO, yet only in one country in the world could IBM get pre-installs, Germany. I'd heard that OS/2 had 25% of the desktops in one year. BeOS was available for free to anybody who wanted to pre-install. They couldn't. Can you say monopoly?
    BAD Monopoly?

    Linux will remain out of the desktop space as long as Microsoft can hang anybody who lets Linux get close to a pre-installed Windows box. PERIOD. No operating system in existance today or tomorrow will break this strangle hold cause users take what is pre-installed.

    IMHO

    --
    "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
  14. hitbox ignores client without javascript by gregor_b_dramkin · · Score: 5, Informative
    from the FAQ at http://www.hitboxcentral.com:
    "HitBox will record nothing if:
    • The referring site does not link to the page containing the HitBox Main Code or you have not installed the HitBox Main Page code properly (Free HitBox V5 only).
    • The HitBox code does not fully execute.
    • The reverse DNS lookup is unable to complete.
    • The visitor's JavaScript is disabled. "

    I'd say that a Linux user is much more apt/able to turn off Javascript in their browser than an IE user.

    --
    You can never equivocate too much.
  15. NVidia dosn't get Linux by Royster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All in all, just the hassle involved in loading an accelerated graphics card made by the most pro-linux graphics card manufacturer in the world (MHO) is enough to keep anyone who is not a hard core geek from even considering using Linux.

    If they were really so pro-Linux, they would have Open Source drivers so that you wouldn't have to jump through the hoops that you did. Place the blame where it belongs -- with NVidia.

    --
    I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i