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Debunking Linux-Windows Market Share Myths
bc90021 writes "Nicholas Petreley has a great article over at LinuxWorld explaining why it seems that Windows has such a high market share when 40% of developers are focusing on Linux. From the summary: "There are dozens of reasons why people have underestimated how quickly Linux has been grabbing Windows' market share. Windows starts out with a false boost and maintains its illusory market share even as it gets replaced by Linux. In 2004, don't be surprised when Linux overtakes Windows to become the main focus for developers.""
But I prefer to use the Google Zeitgeist, and it still says that only 1% of the people accessing Google are using Linux.
Trying to be totally unbiased here, but all these stats are making me confused about the "truth".
Dave
the key word is "developers". I'm a win2k/Mandrake dual boot guy. You know when I reboot? When I have to CODE something. Developing in a windows environment, even with something like cygwin or Visual Studio.NET just plain sucks compared to actually being in linux. Linux is a developers OS and a server OS. It is still not a desktop OS. It could be made to be, but it just isn't happening anytime soon. Look at MS desktop market share, the only one chewing on that is Mac.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
For a website that I manage, the numbers with this methodology are: 89% visitors running MSIE, and 93.91% visitors running Windows (and 3% running Macs, and 0.5% using Linux).
YMMV.
Its articles like these that just annoy me. Numbers get played with to come out the way they want it to, so they can stand on their pedestal and ramble off things that in the end most people will ignore. Of those who don't ignore it, most will not believe a word of it and hold it up as an example that the linux community is out for world-domination or something silly like that (not that everyone in the linux community isn't out for that...), and a few people will actually believe the words, hold them as true and walk around spouting off these numbers until someone slams it in their face.
I'm all for linux in the enterprise and (for me) the home use, but I don't think the way to get linux into those places in the mainstream is to go around saying "Windows is better than Linux" and then stopping. The only way I see linux making strides further into to the server market is to just show people how it compares to other platforms on levels of cost, performance, and maintenance. It won't happen overnight, and it won't happen just because someone spouts off numbers that don't really mean anything - it will take time. But with the people doing the development on linux and linux apps, it will happen.
Just my $0.02....
--Joe
Actually, I don't know anyone of my friends besides me who uses Linux at home. No one.
I used to work in the telcom-business at a company with 120 employed (50 developers: C++/Unix/SUN), where four(!) used Linux at home. The reason for the others to have windows? Games - games - games- games - games...
Id Software and a few others have tried, but... And, Microsoft is working very hard to redirect any proto-Linux-users to MS; and when it comes to games, they still have a magnificent lead thanks to their DirectX efforts. That lead may even be reinforced by the XBox.
As much as I'd like for Nicholas Peterely to be right, I find that linuxworld in general to be a slightly less than reliable source of information.
These are the same guys that hired Joe Barr to write for them. This guy is about as un-professional as they come.
Take a look at this article on UT2003 for linux. The article itself was pretty bad, but look at the name calling tirade he goes on when people give negative feedback in the comments section.
Proxies. Again, more linux users could be behind a proxy (a few hundred linux users at my univ go through a single proxy) than windows users
Third, some factors similar to those described in the article could be at work (linux more efficient ==> less linux servers for same job). Maybe linux users are more efficient googlers? I think this is unlikely, but still a possibiility.
Fourth, it doesn't agree with my webserver stats (i.e, counting the hits I get from google searches). Of course, my data set is quite small, but it can not cause a threefold difference (I get 3% linux, 5-6% Mac). Maybe its because the content I have is biased towards linux users, but on the whole it makes me think that some combination of the factors above may be at work in decreasing the perceived share of linux.
My local discount book shop already has large numbers of heavily discounted .NET related books for sale. When I look at the shelves of my local tech book store .NET books are now almost totally absent. Microsoft TV ads that used to promote .NET have been re-edited and no longer mention .NET.
.NET is a dud yet I'm sure that MS could show statistics indicating that .NET is taking over the world.
All this tends to indicate to me that
Define commercial apps. Oh, you mean boxed apps sitting on computer store shelves from companies like, macromedia, borland, microsoft, corel, etc. Well guess what maybe in your narrow world those are the only "commercial" apps, but they really are just a very small nitch. There are LOTS of commercial apps for Linux, you just need to know what you are looking for.
hopefully game developers will focus on OpenGL instead of DX. Then it's only a matter of time before the games make their way onto linux. After that, windows (which is just an overpriced game OS) will have very little left to offer the user. Then they will collapse under their own weight MUHAHA!!!
what, I can dream can't I.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
So 40 % of developers "focus" on Linux. Even if we accept that statistic at face value (which is itself ironic in an article which seems to be at least partly about dubious statistics), it doesn't mean what I think the author intends it to mean.
There are a disproportionate number of developers who work on Sun boxes relative to the number of Sun boxes in the whole computing market, for instance. That just means Sun machines are being used in situations where there is more custom development work going on, and in situations where companies need and can afford to pay for more people to maintain code. The proportion of Sun developers doesn't speak at all to the broader market share of Sun machines vis a vis Windows machines.
I always get a laugh when I see an article about the misuse and misinterpration of statistics, which trots out its own to-be-misused-and-interpreted statistics. What's that old saw about lies and damn lies ?
I doubt that companies will want to develop a product for each OS, it's too costly.
If done properly multiplatform shouldn't cost that much extra, compared to the increased number of possible customers. So for the time beeing I think we could expect quite a few multiplatform developments. Then the time will come when enough people realize that they can get all their favorite apps on both windows and linux. Then the two OS-es will finally compete on an equal footing and the customer will choose based on price and quality instead of whether ProgramX will run. I expect MS will have to change it's pricing drastically in order to stay a major player
This is ofcource assuming MS doesn't manage to get linux outlawed as "terrorist tools" or use some other kind of legal extortion too keep it's lead.
on a more humorous note: My girlfriend cares about at least one. developer...
That's nice, good luck to the both of you. Could you please give me a few pointers on how to achieve this. My wife care's for me, except for the developer part, she appear to believe it interferes with our social life and keeps me from giving her the attention she deserves. I'm afraid I'll have to start keeping my computer in a locked room lest it'll be the victim of a jealousey murder :)
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Also it depends what you're defining as "developer." If you include people using multimedia presentation stuff like Director or an e-learning system like Authorware, there's really very little difference between targeting Linux -vs- Microsoft because the media these products produce runs fine under Wine when built with a windows runtime.
These closed source tools don't have much nerd crediblity as they were built to hide the "programming" so they are often ignored by the open source community, but they're interesting because of their deep integration in education. We're talking huge taxpayer bucks have been spent on this stuff.
I think it's really important that we get people to vote on the upcoming legislation directing government money towards open souce and education is a huge part of that. One of the arguments that you're going to hear is that the schools will have to toss all their old software because it only runs on Windows. Well, that's total bullshit. I've never seen one of these Macromedia education apps that won't run under Wine.
If we introduce open source in the K-12 schools, it's just a matter of time till Windows becomes little more than a history lesson.
k-12 I used Macs in school, and I still use a XP box at home. The computers you use in school seem to have little affect as to what you use outside of school. Otherwise I would suspect that Mac would have a much larger market share.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
I know this may sound astounding to M$ trolls but our compnay of 200 users has coverted to linux desktop. We also have converted our home desktops too. Guess what no more blue screen.
What is it with KDE trolls - can you just not help it
Although normally my reflex is to disagree with Nicholas Petreley, what he has to say is valid.
What he is exoressing is a move from windows to Linux among developers, which may or may not be "Desktop developers"
I believe that Gnome and KDE would both like to clone the Windows(tm) UI as closely as possible
I sure hope not. I might have to go back to fvwm2 in order to have a usable window manager that actually knows that keyboard focus and topmost window are actually two seperate independant things that have nothing to do with each other.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.