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Linux Outpacing Macintosh On Desktops
An anonymous reader points out this article in the International Herald Tribune about corporate acceptance of computers running GNU/Linux, which includes this snippet: "Linux is already outpacing Macintosh on desktops: "Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst for International Data Corp., said Linux had a 3.9 percent share of desktops worldwide, outpacing Macintosh's 3.1 percent." The article does not specify from where Kuznetsky draws either figure, but can it be true that Linux systems currently outnumber Macintoshes?
I find it odd that mac hasn't had more acceptance in business as OS X is now well supported and apple seems to have shifted from it's 'colourful' looking green and pink computers to more conservative silver colors more appropriate for a corporate environment. Then again the cost of a good linux based system could easily be 1/3 of that of a good mac system that can run OS X.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
I'm running whatever Ellen Feiss tells me to.
http://www.google.ca/press/zeitgeist.html :
"Operating Systems Used to Access Google - July 2002"
Mac 4%
Linux 1%
Other 4%
the rest being windows.
Of course this data is rounded, google is probably the best place to get this sort of data anyways - as google is the best search engine around right now.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
(* I finally had had it when Windows deleted a TON of my files for no reason. I looked into getting a MAC but it was just too much money *)
Perhaps you should invest in a data backup drive instead.
Bleep happens regardless of the OS, sometimes due to hardware failure, user error, application bugs, cosmic rays, spilled Mtn.Dew, etc.
Table-ized A.I.
uh..not to be the bearer of bad news or anything:
YDL
oh, and that's not the only distro...
Tim Dorr
Owner/Manger
A Small Orange
Umm yeah, so mac users can switch to linux. What I meant (when I posted as anonymous coward because I was too lazy to login) was that the majority of people who are switching operating systems are going to be Windows-to-linux users, because the majority of people right now are running Windows. You can't go Windows-to-Mac using the same hardware like you can with Linux. (As of right now...anyone remember that story on here a few days ago about the x86 port of OSX? Linux is a lot easier to switch to. You can go back to windows if you think it sucks, with no hardware changing involved.
IDC only looks at corporate desktops, and I think that it is safe to say there are more of these running Linux than Mac. But look at the consumers. Most /.'ers will say "more Linux than Mac" but how many of these are atypical samples.
So I think that the IDC is right, and so are you, but they are different markets.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Why do we insist upon parading Linux around as the "spokesmodel" for the open-source movement? Wouldn't the advancement of open-source efforts be better served and made more visible by combining the efforts of Linux, *BSD, Darwin/OS X, and other open-source O/Ses, and comparing their collective advance against the Evil Empire?
you run linux on a macintosh? Or if you dual boot between linux or MacOS, or even if you run Mac-on-linux? Is the author comparing PPC vs Linux on x86 or what?
It really doesn't matter who's winning the desktop market. They're both (hopefully) beginning to carve out a section out of Window's dominance. When the sum approaches 20%, then good stuff is going to start to happen... then again, I'm assuming linux and mac users numbers continue to grow (I guess no necessarially simultaniously).
Linux takin market share from windows is good; Macintosh taking marketshare from windows is good. Both situations leads to more competition, more developers, better software, etc.
I just wonder - how is the market share of Mac users now compared to a year or two ago. Same for linux. How many people have stayed, how many have switched from windows, how many have switched from mac/linux, how many have switched from *nix. That data would be pretty interesting.
Also (and I should have read the article), does the account for what's happening globally? I don't think Apple has much of a chance gaining marketshare in countries where price is of up most importance.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Who said about Microsoft: "It's an amazing machine. I admire these people, who were far sighted enough and bold enough to do what they have done," "Microsoft is not afraid of change. It will cannibalise a weak product to launch a stronger product."
Who said about Windows 2000:"The general trend for client operating environments continues to be consolidation around 32-bit operating systems and applications," "Unfortunately for competitors of Microsoft, this consolidation also means a general movement to Windows platforms."
You mean that Dan Kusnetsky? The "world's most prominent Linux analyst"? Well, that's good enough for me.
Frankly, Linux as a desktop sucks and blows. The guys at Gnome, KDE and the app writers REALLY need to rip-off Apple's GUI Guidelines and get something consistent and usable into user's hands.
The desktop is no place for the ignorant and its no place to try to re-invent the wheel because users don't fuckin' want it, okay?
Apple spent sixty million bucks developping the GUI. If you think you are going to come up with some thing so overwhelmigly better that it will blow the old order away, then you are an arrogant ass-hole.
Be that as it may, I an NOT buying a windows box.
But lately, I'm thinking that I could run my server on an OS X box.But then again why throw away a perfectly good Athlon.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Interestingly, "Linux" (all distros combined) can have more desktop shipments (which is probably what the numbers quoted represent) in a given amount of time than OS X, while OS X remains "the most widely-distributed UNIX-based operating system" (again, by shipments), if Apple sells more copies than any single Linux distro vendor.
Or maybe the Linux figure includes free downloads? Including free downloads of Darwin in the Apple numbers wouldn't bump them up much. :)
Then there are the Macs that run Linux, and the PC's that run Darwin, and it all gets so confusing...
On the one hand, Linux having a greater overall desktop market share than, say, OS X, is impressive, just since it doesn't have the big marketing dollars behind it on the desktop.
On the other hand, Linux has been around for 8 years, and could run on nearly 100% of the desktop systems out there today. OS X has been around for 2-3 years, and can only run on maybe 5% of the desktop systems out there today.
A 3.1% overall share out of a 5% possible overall share is, in some ways, more impressive than a 3.9% overall share out of a 100% possible overall share. :)
Ah, screw it, they're both great.
I love Linux. I ran it for 2 years as my desktop OS for development at work and at home. But I have worked at mega-corporations and tiny companies, and I have NEVER seen a non-geek running Linux. I, like many of you, like to be able to compile my own software from the source.
The fact is that no one's mom runs Linux unless someone set it up for them. My mom can't install a plug-n-play modem on Windows. My dad is an Mechanical Engineer, and he has trouble with his computer all the time. There's NO WAY regular people like this, who are very smart, will ever install Linux of their own volition.
Macs on the other hand are almost universally seen as "easier than Windows" by everyone, including Windows and Linux users. Regular people buy Macs for lots of reasons (creative people, geeks who like the UNIX OS and neat hardware, soccer moms who want to use AOL, computer phobic people who want to see what the fuss is about, college kids who like to edit video and rip MP3s).
It's just absurd to think that Linux could be overtaking MacOS at this stage of market share on the desktop. I like Linux a lot, but I run MacOS X on my laptop now, because as a desktop OS it's just better.
- Vincit qui patitur.
This is way off topic but Im going to mention it none the less becuase so many of the posts are talking about how expensive macs are so I thought I should at least broach the subject. Just about every major study which comes out points out that macs have about half the cost of ownership to a business than equivalant PCs (usualy compared to windows PCs) this is because 1 tech support costs are dramaticly lower, and 2 macs tend to be used longer opposed to most PCs which companies throw out after three years. This isnt my opinion or a personal anecdote, this is what these same profesionals are saying. so im sure there are many reasons why macs arent used in business (key apps like MS access being one) but if an IT department is looking at cost of ownership its not true that macs are more expensive.
--aiee
Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.
My main machine at home runs Linux, with KDE for the desktop.
I've also got a WinXP machine for when I do Windows programming for work at home, and, or course, for Everquest. I'm reasonably good at using all these from a user's point of view, although I've never done much RTFMing for the GUIs, just experimented.
I was an exclusive Mac user at home from 1985 to 1994, and a Unix user at work from 1981, so am reasonably familiar with them.
Here's what I've found. OS X is beautiful. However, it is full of little annoyances because Apple is stubborn, and won't admit that anyone else ever did anything better. E.g., little things like not allowing windows to resize from any side.
There's no doubt that KDE has a steeper learning curve, and is not as beautiful, but it is not that steeper, and once I've learned something, it generally works better on KDE. Basically, at the cost of being a little clunkier at some things, KDE gets in my way a lot less.
So, among technical users, I certainly have no trouble believing Linux is beating Mac on the desktop. However, among home users, I don't see it. It's just too hard for the average home user to acquire a Linux machine, compared to a Mac.
I'd love to hear from someone at a company other than the Burlington Coat Factory, from a department other than IT, who is using Linux.
I simply find it hard to believe that there are more Linux desktop users than Mac desktop users. For one thing, what are all those supposed Linux desktop users *doing* with their machines. I'm not saying this as flame bait, but while I love Linux for server and development work, most people simply equate Linux with "geek stuff".
It's hard enough to get most users to even entertain the notion of converting to the Mac, and that is an OS that runs plenty of Microsoft software, is oriented squarely at consumers, and has a reputation for being easy to use.
In any event, I don't buy the argument that Linux and Mac OS X are enemies. To me, they're part of an array of options to Microsoft, and in my book, options are good.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I'm not surprised either. KDE and Gnome are easily set up to behave almost indistinguishably from Windows--non-techies often can't tell the difference. And Linux comes with a complete suite of applications--OpenOffice and Mozilla really do satisfy the needs of most users.
The biggest problem with Linux, in my opinion, is the excruciatingly painful way in which drivers and other kernel extensions are installed--often involving recompiling the kernel. Even the most painless driver distributions (e.g., nVidia) require much more computer know-how to install than the average user can muster. In corporate settings, this doesn't matter that much--the IT department probably likes it that people can't just plug things in. But in the small business and home market, it matters big time.
But saying that X percent of desktop systems run Gnu/Linux is not a very valid statement. There are at least three major distributions of Gnu/Linux that are fairly incompatible with each other, given different directory layouts, package managment systems and the like.
Saying "Linux system" has become some sort of misnomer and masks the fact that there is no single "Linux System". There are probably more than 20 different operating systems using the Linux kernel, many of which are incompatible with each other on some level, or at least present the user/admin with significantly different interfaces and tools. And yes you get the source, and can "fix" it, but that's a lot of cost in time and skills that never seems to get added in to the TCO of the system.
Until THAT get solved (even within the same CPU family) no distro will ever challenge the major two desktop OSes. Both of which offer standard package management, user interface and administration to every user that installs them.
To look at the larger picture for a second:
The overall percentage of open-source (at least partially) based OSes seems to be growing, what with *BSD, Linux, GNU, and OS X (darwin). If more companies are seeing the light of non-Microsoft and open Unixy systems, then who benifits the most? Apple it seems.
With MacOS you can write an app for OSX in the text console with all the Unix features you like, or compile most exising stuff. You can also take your base code and evolve it in to a Carbon app that will run on OSX and OS9 with all the "bells and whistles" of a standardised GUI that you know will be the same across all installations. None of this "do I have the KDE library installed, oops, I've got to install the BZip developer libraries".
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
And how old would the debian package in question be? For some things, a newer version of software will be better.
<RANT>
I'm getting sick of seeing Mandrake written off as a desktop distribution. When I think desktop distro, I think Lycoris, Lindows, or even SuSE (SuSE doesn't seem to really emphasize server use). Mandrake aims to be a sort of Win2k for Linux: graphical (though all the GUI config tools can be run in ncurses) and adept at both server and desktop roles. For evidence of this, consider that Mandrake's build of Apache (AdvancedExtranetServer) is the fastest growing webserver brand on the Internet.
This is the market where linux will gain it's market share and it could quite easily surpass Macs in the near future. The home market will be niche for linux for quite a while but it'll still be there for geeks and family/friends of said.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
The penetration rates given by IDG and Gartner are, essentially, made up numbers.
I've been in a position to deal with these analysts, give them information, and observe how they work. They are no different from Wall Street Soothsayers who predict whether a stock is going to go up or down-- except that the Wall Street types are MORE scientific.
For instance, when counting mac hardware sales, they do not count mail orders sales, sales at the apple online store, sales at local apple retailers or sales at independent apple dealers. When they say "Apple has 3.1% of the market" they are really saying "Apple has %3.1 percent of the Retail x86 Market" which is pretty absurd since apple doesn't seel x86 machines. They only look at the distribution channels that x86 manufacturers use, they ignore the majority of Mac sales.
And that was the case in the one instance where they actually gave the source for their data... usually they never provide a backing research, or any explanation where they get their numbers.
As a reasonably scientific person, this data is bunk. It is unsupported, unreviewed (peer review? Ha!) And, of course, it comes from companies who are paid by Microsoft to create a marketing perception that supports Microsoft's' agendas.
I'm not going to say I know for sure what the market share is for Apple or Linux machines, but its worth pointing out that Apple machines have a service life of 2-4 times that of the average x86 PC-- the quality is better, and its shocking what the 2 year failure rate is for the average PC.
Furthermore, I suspect Linux boxes are kept around a lot longer as well -- though we have no way of knowing which ones are used on the desktop and which ones in the server room.
So, these fabricated "annual sales" numbers are irrelevant on the face of them-- the TAM (total addressable market) is going to be much different because people don't replace their computers every year.. but they do buy software every year. IF you're a mac software maker, you know that there are far more customers out there, as people tend to keep their macs for years. Annual sales figures aren't that relevant.
Anyway, I think all of us should make sure we don't take these numbers seriously. And we should not repeat them, and should write to every (idiot) journalist who quotes them pointing out that they are false. Just as %95 of the computers out there are NOT x86, these figures for linux adoption are wrong as well.
These numbers are not scientific, they aren't even "facts". They are, essentially, fabrications.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
My window on this? In my job I have been approached many many times by these "number inventors" trying to sell their product to companies I have been working for. You know the names. Everytime they release a "report" you get that awkward phone call where the guy tries to convince you that your company will go bankrupt if it doesn't know what percentage of users use Visa as compared to Mastercard online, or something equally stupid.
Occasionally I have tried to ask how they collect their data, even told one guy I would buy his report if he would make available to me the survey method, but that stuff is hidden carefully because, as you point out, it is utter utter non-scientific shite.
I remain firmly convinved that these numbers would be more accurate if someone literally pulled them out of their arse. Don't feed these people - don't buy their reports.
I am always sceptical of numbers from market research companies - whether they be from Minitel, Gartner Dataquest, IDC, Datamonitor, or whoever.
Why? Because I used to work for a market research company.
We were a bunch of 22 year old kids, a year out of university working to such tight deadlines that we just made up the numbers. And guess what? Management had no problems with us doing that.
My favourite story was when I was reseaching a certain market in South America. Because I don't speak Spanish, I decided the way to work out the size of the market was to use some (probably wrong) number for the US, divide by the number people in the US, multiply by the number of people in Venezuela, and apply - say - a 80% discount.
Unfortunately, some where in my Excel formula I had managed to multiply the market size by 10. So, Venezuela appeared to have the largest market in South America.
When I realised weeks later, did I bring this to my boss's attention and risk a telling off? No, I just forgot about it.
Anyway, four months later I had left this job and got myself a proper one, and was reading a magazine. *Another* market research company was touting that "Venezuela [x] market biggest in South America!..."
I was astonished. We hadn't done any real work, and another market research company had just copied our 'work' verbatim.
And here ends my tale as to why Slashdot readers should avoid paying to much attention to market research.
--- My dad's political betting
ohh come on. :) This is Slashdot, we're all geeks... of course we know lots of people with linux boxes.
...most of the people I know use MacOS. It's a different demographic. I tend to hang out with publishing folks, not SysOps or applications programers ;). The only linux boxes I ever deal with run our web server and mail server.
I myself am involved in web publishing and multimedia
I have no doubt that their are a LOT of linux box in the world today. Yet, you really have to look at what they are doing. Are folks coming home to a linux box to manage their digital photos, surf the web, check their email, do their homework, etc? I image quite a few people are, however I imagine that a LOT more people are coming home to Macs to accomplish these tasks.
Comparing Linux boxes to MacsOS boxes is like comparing a cheep, hard-working, utility trucks to plush SUVs. Sure, there may be a few more utility trucks on the road, but remember, they serve a different purpose in life.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
On the other hand, GNU/Linux systems are 100%(usually) open source/free. Everything from the kernel to GUI's runs on super computers to PDA's.
There's a HUGE difference between OS X and Linux.
Personally, I like Apple more than MS, but mostly because Apple doesn't control 95% of the market and is less dangerous to the future of general computing for the masses. Plus OS X runs on top of a Unix... and is prettier... ;-)
So, what I'm saying is that everyone has different goals. Some just want to topple Microsoft, some want to push open/free computing. Of course, there's plenty of room in there for these two groups to work together, and I personally believe that Apple can co-exist with Linux a lot better than Microsoft can.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden