Slashdot Mirror
New Numbers on Linux Market Share Soon
prostoalex writes "New numbers on Linux market share are due this week. As far as global PC market is concerned, Gartner claims 5% of all PCs shipped this year ran Linux OS, although by the time the PCs were actually on the user's desk, only 2% of them run Linux. In the server world IDC estimates that Linux-powered servers comprise 28.3% of all server sales in 2004."
I'd think that the percentage of computers that actually run Linux would be higher, not lower, than the % that ship with it... my family has three, one (soon to be two) exclusively Linux.
And how many people buy PCs with Windows on them, and immediately format the disk(s) and install Linux?
The whole idea behind linux is that it is not free as in beer, but in that is free as in speech. I would rather pay a nominal fee for a easy to use, secure linux distro that get windows XP for free.
I mean, really, what evidence do they have that hordes of people are buying machines with Linux pre-installed just to go through the pain of installing XP in order to save, what, $40?
Granted, a lot of machines shipped with Linux aren't running the version of Linux they shipped with, but I find their statement hard to believe.
And here goes the danger of thinking that your family if somewhat representative. Or the slashdot community for that matter.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
What the hell? As long as Linux doesn't support NX, which *will be* supported in the *upcoming* SP2, it will be seen as deficient in comparision? Okay, ignore the fact that they themselves state there are already patches for Redhat, while SP2 hasn't actually shipped. I'm just wondering what the fascination with NX is. I mean, it's a nifty idea, but I can't imagine anyone getting down the wire of choosing between XP or Linux as the right tool for a job, and deciding on XP because of NX. I mean, come-on. This is just idiocy. Not that I had any respect for Gartner to lose, but if I did, there it went... There are plenty of differences, strengths and weaknessess on both sides, to differentiate between XP and Linux. Supporting the NX bit is not one of them at this time.
Well, yeah. I know that. But I'd think the number of people adding linux would be greater than the number who buy linux boxes and format them, just because there are so few linux boxes sold.
I hate to break bad news to you, but what you're doing is called "stealing".
Given that less than 5% of the current CPUs sold support that feature, what difference will this make?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Yea, because no one is going to buy a low cost Linux computer at Walmart and slap a pirate version of Windows on it. Nope. Never gona happen.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Legal issues aside, most of us do not use Linux because it is cheaper, we use it because it is a superior operating system. Hell I already have the Windows OS that came with my PC (so it might as well be free for me as well). The fallacy that people only use Linux because they are cheap unemployed hackers is just that, a fallacy.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Linux users need to decide what their operating system is all about. Is it about freedom and doing it your way, or is it all about sales and making money?
I'm sorry, but the two are not compatible. Once your focus becomes "market share" (shouldn't that be "market selfish"?) then you start in with the competition and copyrighting and everything that goes with it.
It would be a shame to see the creativity and individualism that spurred the Linux revolution denatured and dilluted, like so many other initally promising social trends, by the invisible hand of the "almighty greenback".
...and no one is ever going to buy a windows computer and slap linux on it...nope, never going to happen.
Time makes more converts than reason
They're a pet peeve of mine. It seems like what they do is interview CIO types about their opinions on various technologies and then turn that information into speculation about where the industry is going.
The result is a bunch of very credible sounding propoganda that reflects all the biases prevalent among their target audience: CIOs who need backing for their opinions. The CIOs naturally buy the reports and use them to pursuade other people in the company that the CIO's favourite pet project or technology is "industry best practices".
Gartner reports tell a lot about what people who worked in technology ten years ago (and have since moved to management) think. They consistently overlook trends that are bubbling under the surface, obvious practitioners, but not yet noticed by management.
If you want to know what your boss thinks about the industry, read Gartner. If you want to know about what's really happening, read the Usenet group that deals with the specific technology you're interested in.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
And no one is ever going to buy a linux computer and slap their old version of Windows on it. No, never going to happen.
I'd think that the percentage of computers that actually run Linux would be higher...
not only that, but how the heck can they possibly know how many people are running linux or not running it?
I understand they can count the number of linux pc's going out the door, but how do they know people are installing winxp or not?
also, how do they know how many linux desktops are out there? are they just counting how many copies of mandrake were bought at CompUSA?
How cares if Linux has a few percent more market share?
...
Most people won't switch, because they have been using Win, Office and IE at home and in the office for five or more years. People are simply USED to this set of applications and are not keen to learn something new - no matter how geeky, secure and cool it is.
99% of people hate change that inferes with their daily work. The human animal hardly changes its habits - unless forced to.
Joe and Jane average expect their PC thingy to behave and look like what they have used the last few years. If it ain't the same they consider it weird or broken and won't use it
Since Im an offtopic master, a misspeller and a karmawhored person, ill asume this: You wanna sell(by this I mean get people to use Linux). This is gong to be hard because regular pc users are drones and we all know that. You got to dazzle them. Most really interesting things either they take for granted or dont understand. So its gotta be simple and flashy, believeable and elegant. Just pop a copy of your favourite Knopix in their own machine, before they realize their machine just CHANGED asure them its OK and just show off for a while by stating this is actually not the best version but a cool one. Tell him he can even pick flavours. And that he doesnt have to turn his computer off and that that is good. Bla bla bla. me bored and sick of -1ing
I was interviewed for a job as "European Research Director" at Gartner a number of years back.
... so they either used the interview as "research" or eventually enough people beat them over a head with a clue-stick.
...
They came into the lobby of the building, looked around then asked at reception for "John Doe". When they discovered that was me, they were a bit odd.
Turns out they were worried because I was 30 at the time and therefore couldn't have enough IT experience to be taken seriously (I was VP at one of the world's top investment banks at the time and was part of the team that determined the bank's technology architecture).
I had a blazing argument with ten of their so called "experts" about lack of take up of windows 2000 (basically I said the move to AD was slowing people down and a lot of enterprises saw little or no reason to move, and pay microsoft more money for little if any improvements). We also covered XML (I said it was overhyped, they said it would rule the world. One of us is a published author on the subject and it wasn't them) plus Linux, OpenBSD (not that they knew what that was) etc.. I don't think there was a single aspect of technology the people in the room had a single "expert opinion" on that I agreed with. Having said that, I had a telephone interview with one of their mainframe people two weeks earlier and he was solid. Stuff he said back then is still coming true - so maybe it's just the old "the higher up you get, the less you actually know" rule.
Six months after failing to get the job I saw my statements coming out of a gartner report
Bottom line, I have absolutely no time or respect for the Gartner group and nobody with any grasp of technology that I know does either. The average "manager" on the other hand
And the only reason I (or any of my friends) use Gartner is when their publication backs up whatever we actually want to do - and which point they are useful for beating your boss over the head with. "But Gartner says that and they're experts!"
And that makes you spend more maintenance costs and troubleshooting time than using Linux.
I'm so delighted to be able to say this:
Windows XP is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I know that I have bought quite a few PCs over the years, and they all have Windows pre-installed, and the first time I power them up, I put in a Linux CD/DVD and install. Windows never even gets a chance to say hello to me. There's no way to estimate how much of that is happening, other than to guess by looking at how much Suse is selling. Also, a lot of computers with Linux installed have both Linux and Windows and maybe even some others. The sum total of market share of installed OSes is MORE than 100%. Computers might have 95% Windows, 6% Linux, and 2% something else.
Something like ten million OEM Windows systems ship each month. Most people simply don't want to be drawn into a hobbyist project when they can order a customized system from Dell that is guaranteed to work out of the box.
It would really help if people don't do this. No matter how often it is said to customers that people do this just based on the statistics we get told by customers to make the sites primarily IE compatible. If more browsers would report their true user agent it would make life a lot simpler.
It is pretty easy to make a site completely standards compliant and send it identical html. However to make it work well IE needs to get a different stylesheet from the standards compliant browsers which is basically everything else used. So if you have your browser lie as IE which it is not then the pages tend to render wrong since you where given CSS for a broken box model instead of a correct one.
Also if more browsers started showing higher percentages of usage it would be a lot easier to convince clients of the importance of paying to have more work done for other browsers.
One thing I would note is that when I look at statistics for usage I usually see around 90% for IE without cleaning however when I have checked carefully in the logs IE seems to have some strange flaw where it will sometimes request a page 3-5 times within a few ms I have even tested that locally and watched it with ethereal. I have no idea why and it is not from clicking the link more then once but it does screw the statistics up badly. When that is cleaned out I often see IE in the 60-80% range. Other browsers are being used out there by a large number of people but the log analyzers are broken pretty much and the other browsers have correct behavior.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
I would be happy to bet that I could count on my fingers the number of people here that have BOUGHT a piece of software that runs on linux. I can proudly say that I have (Matlab), but then again I don't use the fact that a distro is free as an advantage over windows. I think the programmers should be compensated...I don't like being dependent on them without anything in return.
I have bought several programs that run on Linux only. Also, you can spend tens of thousands of dollars or more to run Oracle and any middleware program, SAP, or thousands of other apps. Most of the apps for pay are enterprise apps at this point, but there are many out there. This is increasing all the time.
My attraction to Linux is NOT cost of the distro, I have PAID for RH, Mandrake, and other distros for years, happily. I like the freedom, the ease of maintaining many different systems from one desktop (via ssh and scripts) and the robustness of the OS.
As a side note, what will happen if Linux becomes ultra popular? More programmers will be needed, all working for free? Its not going to happen!
There is no reason you can't sell apps for Linux, the same as for Windows. This is a big misconception. If you take GPL code of someone else and build on that, then you have to release your code as GPL, but any project from scratch that doesn't use GPL libs (LGPL is ok) isn't subject to the GPL at all.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
>>Gartner is in the business of selling "reports" and "studies".
Yes, true.
>>Most of the "reports" and "studies" you'll see from Gartner are linked from vendor's websites. Vendors who paid for the report. So the vendors use those "reports" and "studies" as marketing materials.
Not even close to true. You obviously have never actually used Gartner's services. Gartner does a tiny amount of company-sponsored research like that and I agree that stuff is a sham.
Still, this has nothing at all to do with their core business which is selling research services. If your organization subscribes to Gartner you pay a crapload of money so that you have access to not just their research but their researchers. For instance, they have people who specialize in every niche of the industry and know a ton about it. If you need some info about a particular niche, you can set up a conference call with that person and even have them do original research for you. I've used the service and it can be incredibly helpful. You might think "I can Google for that info too" as I did but they provide what you can't get from Google -years of experience. There are times when talking to someone who has been following an industry very closely for 20 years is really helpful.
>>I've only seen Gartner stuff used to justify a decision that has already been made. And, IMO, that's all they're good for.
Given that you don't even understand the business Gartner is in, the usefulness of your opinion is questionable at best.
As a side note, what will happen if Linux becomes ultra popular? More programmers will be needed, all working for free? Its not going to happen!
Linux has been getting increasingly more popular for the last decade, and it has been happening all the time. What leads you to believe it will suddenly stop?
I'm sure back in the linux 1.x days people were saying the same thing, and again in the 2.0 days, 2.2, 2.4, etc.
Finkployd
I don't think that's true at all. Your average Joe user can use XP, if the computer manufacturer or a local geek installed it for them.
Present average Joe user with a computer with an unformatted hard disk, and the Windows and Linux install media, and he'll get exactly nowhere with either one.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Bullshit. It's because the pirates precieve that either
or
If you have the best Desktop in the business, it won't matter becuase of what that person preceives as important. For Everyday Joe that means either being a good sheep[1] or getting his pr0n, w4r3z, etc to work out of the box.
If you'd every ran a Linux install-fest for a local Linux User's Group you would have learned this first hand. Those two things are number 1 and number 2 on the LUG FAQ for every Install-fest I've ran or attended.
------------
1. As racist as it sounds, every Oriental-culture teacher (foreign language, historian, etc.) I have met at University mentioned that this was a very large part of Chinese and Japanese culture. Being a good cog is more important that being a good person. Frankly I think it's also B.S., but then I'm from the USA and not allowed to hold balanced or informed opinions of other cultures.
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
"Slashdotters are living in the 1990s." ... "linux usage continues to hover around 2% is no longer due to Microsofy bullying, but because Linux is still quite hard for non-geeks to use."
Now who lives in the 90s? Linux quite hard for non-geeks to use. Yeah, right. So all people working for the Munich government are geeks?
Fighting spyware and installing the service packs on windows is a lot harder than using a modern Linux distribution these days.