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 best hope for linux is in getting new users from the pool of non-users instead of from the pool of windiws users. Once people use windows, they believe for some reason that they will be unable to switch.
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.
Gammage also stated that until Linux is shown to support the NX (No eXecute) security technology supported in Microsoft Corp's forthcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2, it will be seen as potentially deficient to Windows. However, Red Hat released a patch for the Linux kernel to support NX in June that has the full blessing of Linux creator Linus Torvalds.
Yeah, right. Read 'em and weep.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
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".
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?"
Now of course, there are some machines where a linux install is a REAL pain, but most on "desktop" hardware sail right along.
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.
Bah! Gartner's fabricated estimate is totally unnecessary for this. Actual usage measurements, like the Google Zeitgeist are more telling. Linux has never broken 1% and as a desktop system I really wouldn't count on it passing the Mac any year soon.
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".
That's simple, solitaire isn't included in many linux distros.
...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
If I'm not mistaken, Dell offered business users a choice of some random flavor of Linux or FreeDOS preinstalled on their computers.
The logic was thusly: Licensing agreements force them to ship the computer with SOME OS on it, but a lot of businesses already have a Windows site license. Because the price of the non-windows Dells was slightly lower than effectively purchasing the license a second time, the companies order these computers with one of those two OSes preinstalled, then wipe the drive and install WinXP/2000.
So while there are a small number of users purchasing their computers with Windows pre-installed and migrating to Linux, that number is effectively buried by businesses doing just the opposite.
Funny. Last time I installed Windows, it was 3 hours of putzing with driver, and the onboard ethernet STILL didn't work. Mandrake worked ou of the box.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
In past 10 years, I bought a total of just a dozen PCs. Every one of them is now running Linux, completely eliminating all brands of Windowses bought with them.
That's 100% of current userbase over past 10 years now. And 6 of the 12 are actually desktops. That's 100% of my desktops running Linux.
Well, within above I do not count Linux replaced a toy WinCE in iPaq PDA, gaining a desktop capability in my pocket too.
There you are, staring at me again.
Wish I could edit my own posts - just as after I sent this I found an interesting article by Tim O'Reilly. He suggests using book sales to measure market trends.
I don't know if this will turn out to be accurate, but it's at least somewhat objective. A neat idea.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
FYI windows does have a command line. Start-> Run -> cmd.exe on windows xp boxes. To my knowledge it does support pipes to some degree. It also has tab completion. To be honest I think it is a great improvement over command.com. Bash still ownz tho.
Have you ever installed cygwin on an XP box? It has a nice little shell.
I don't believe that terminal is always faster either. I generally find a GUI file manager a much easier way to select, group and move specific mp3s around my hdd. Each to his own I guess.
Gartner is in the business of selling "reports" and "studies".
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.
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.
That may be true for the average Joe Desktop linux user, but it is certainly not true for business. Much of the inroads linux has made in the business world (both desktop and server) has been based on pure cost. Businesses want a solution that 1) Gets the job done 2) Costs the least amount of money. The CIOs and CFOs of the world don't care about which operating system is the "best", they care about the bottom line. In most cases when Linux beats Windows in the business world it is because it is "free" not because it is "Free".
Naturally, with all those spare cycles available, what is a Linux box to do, but look up stuff on the internet. Must be all that server pr0n. Remind me to uninstall Mozilla from all the company servers over the weekend.
-Hope
why on earth do you people want to take over windows??
simply build the best os you can
anyway, the command line doesn't have to be way beyond the ordinary desktop user... i'm sure they'd have little trouble (if any) learning it
I've sorted their numbers a bit:
Win95 1%
Win98 16%
WinME 3%
WinNT 2%
Win2000 18%
WinXP 51% (that's a lot of XP)
Mac 3%
Linux 1%
Other 5% (What are these OS's?)
Really, aside from all the Windows versions listed and the "Mac" category, what other OS's are out there? There must be at least 6 of them with marketshare just below Linux's. But I don't know what they are. Any ideas?
Not that I don't trust Google's numbers (I'm cynical) but that 51% looks awful high too. At work we have about 3% XP machines (95% Win2000 and 2% Linux). That's an awful lot of XP that's been deployed, particularly when you see the 16% of Win98.
22% of the Windows machines are pre-Win2K
Win2K accounts for 18% (so far I see no problem)
WinXP is 51%?
Are all WinXP boxes shipped with google as the default?
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
Same here, have 32 i look after and i know they werent counted. Any admin worth his salt will turn off any identifying tokens on his network fringe servers, and as for the inner network - they have no idea. I know Our linux boxes/windows ratio is 3/1 (thats linux to windows) and we are rolling the windows stuff out as quickly as we can.
Well, not to disparage the idea, but I started using Linux exactly because it was free. That, for me, meant nothing to lose if I didn't like it. That was almost 8 years ago, and I've found that I like it enough to financially support as many OSS communities, projects, and good distros as I can.
With Linux, it's not the amount, it's how you feel about the amount. When I donate to a project, community or distro, I know what I'm getting, because I'm already using it. When I used to plunk down for Windows and other peices of software, half of what I spent was a disappointment, at best.
My TCO is technically higher with Linux (supporting MSs marketing in a strangely perverted way), but only because I wouldn't have explored many of the things that Linux/OSS community has allowed me to become a part of.
Microsoft has just released their much anticipated hands-free cordless mouse. Warning, it may hurt a little at first.
I have a Windows 3.1 machine that still runs. I have a DOS 2.0 computer that still works.
-]Phreak Out[-
Still, I know nobody who bought a computer with Linux. Altough I know quite a few Linux users.
"So while there are a small number of users purchasing their computers with Windows pre-installed and migrating to Linux, that number is effectively buried by businesses doing just the opposite."
MOST users running linux don't purchase a computer with it preinstalled. Since linux requires far less in terms of hardware to get the same or better performance usually they put a little memory in the computer they have and install linux on it. That includes businesses.
But what dwarfs the linux factors one way or another is the windows site licenses. For every desktop that an alternative OS was purchased on there are hundreds in which it was not, where they simply paid the MS tax despite their site license (like they've always done before).
Of course the difference in the numbers should be obvious, this could well constitute a pretty big chunk of the market, significantly reducing what is believed to the size of the market. This means x number of sales is really a larger percentage of the market than it is portrayed to be.
When it comes down to it, compared to legitimate copies, there really aren't that many pirated copies of windows... there just aren't. While they are common among techs, giving us the impression they are rampant, in reality I'd be surprised if techs and their families amount to even 1% of the market.
The kid/teenager of the house isn't an OS installer anymore than his parents or grandparents. He is wise in that he can successfully work the mouse and install most programs... a far cry from a pirated OS installation.
With linux on the other hand, there is a strong prevalance of technically literate users (the reasons for this are debatable and not the issue here). Almost every linux user can install the OS. Couple this with the fact that companies normally act as if linux is a "cheap and inferior" solution. Normally the pc's that come with linux preinstalled are in the $200-300 range and worth more like $150, they are usually crap a literate user wouldn't touch.
Aside from the price on the pc's, I fully admit I'm educated guessing the numbers. But from what I've seen... well I've never actually seen a system with linux preinstalled on it. I've seen lots of linux systems mind, many I've setup and have lots of friends using linux. Most of their computers are homebuilt (but not all). All in all, among desktop users I'd guesstimate about 200 linux pc's. Not a single one of them would be counted in these numbers.
In the businessworld it's much the same. Support contracts are an issue for obscure software only in small businessland. Corporations want accountability, small business wants it to work and wants someone to call to fix it when it's broke, they don't care about fingerpointing.
On the business side I've setup countless workstations and several hundred linux servers. Out of all of them only one was even a purchased license, all the rest were download editions of the software. A support contract would be pointless, if they have a support contract it's still us they call if they have a problem, we are local and can fix the problem before they finish holding.
You also don't need to buy a boxed version for updates. Really using the vendor update mechnism is probably the last thing I'd recommend to a customer. With redhat distros in particular, redhat drops support too fast and is slow on the updates in comparison with well known and trusted 3rd parties (*cough*freshrpms*cough*) who still provide updates for redhat version 6.2 last I checked.
5% of the desktop market, I doubt it's that low. 5% of oem preinstalls, perhaps. As for whether it had that OS on it when it hit the desktop, if you consider that, you have to consider all the rest I've mentioned above and more and the result is the desktop market, not the OEM preinstall numbers gartner is claiming.
I still sometimes get a little pissy about articles/reports/surveys like this. Then after I spout my peace, I can't help but laugh. Linux has an advantage that most commercial desktops can't even approach. See, if I sell Windows, Solaris, Mac, or any of the other commercial operating systems, I know exactly how I'm doing.
We all "know" MS has 90-95% of the market. The numbers shipped, the dollar amounts, all point to this "fact". Same with the others.
Linux doesn't come close. From a dollar perspective, most distros pale compared to the others. From a "shipped" point of view, well, who counts little Linux shops in their numbers? This is about Dell and the big folks. And there is the dualboot/wipe issue.
So, why do I laugh? Because, using these statistics, nobody will realize how many people actually use Linux until it's right in their faces. In other words, theoretically, MS could still ship 90-95% of the market, only to turn around one day, and find out that only 10-20% of users actually use Windows (with a few more using it occasionally).
So, realisically, the better way of measuring this would be to measure the "other" sales related to Windows. Antivirus software wouldn't count, neither would Office software, or games. (These are necessities for dual booters, or things that might only be available for one OS.)
My pick would be the "cheapy" software that people tend to buy for their computers. The productivity stuff, or "make your computer easier to use" kind of stuff. Better yet, if you want a long term guage, try the "educational" aisle.
In other words, to guage an OS's success, compare it's market. Find something unusual about that OS, something that no other can share, and use that as a guage. Exact numbers don't matter, but trends can point out a lot.
If money/users seem to be disappearing from these markets, yet the hardware folks are actually doing pretty well, you might want to bump up your Linux/OSS numbers a little.
Microsoft has just released their much anticipated hands-free cordless mouse. Warning, it may hurt a little at first.
In India about 5-10% (probably closer to the latter figure by now) PCs are sold with linux pre-installed. Obviously, not all stick with linux. My guess is 2-3%.
Its the same situation in most of Asia. Linux PCs are reportedly selling like hotcakes in Malaysia. In China, it is even more extreme than in India because the number of people actually using linux is negligibly small.
The reason for this is that most home PC users in these countries use pirated software whereas OEMs still have to pay for Windows if they want to install it. The amount of wipe-out-linux-and-install-windows going on in Asia totally dwarfs the number of geeks in the world installing linux on their machines after paying the windows tax.
Slashdotters are living in the 1990s. The new reality is vastly different from what it used to be. The vast majority of linux users are non-geeks. There is no problem at all in getting linux PCs. The number of Linux PCs sold significantly overestimates atual usage.
The reason that 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.
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.
Granted, that's a lot better than Win 98 where I lost count after 8 or 9 reboots to get all the drivers installed and updated on a machine I built.
Only 8 or 9? I think when I used to run Win98 it was something like:
1. Install Win98
2. reboot
3. install driver
4. repeat steps 2 and 3 about 10 times
5. windows spectacularly crashes after installing a particular driver, totally refuses to boot even after removing that driver again
6. Wipe and reinstall Win98
7. reboot
8. install drivers in a different order
9. repeat steps 7 and 8 about 10 times
10. A different driver spectacularly breaks windows
11. Open computer and rip out all the PCI and ISA cards
12. Wipe and reinstall windows again
13. reboot
14. install drivers for all the onboard stuff, rebooting between each
15. shutdown
16. plug in 1 PCI or ISA card
17. boot up again
18. install driver for hardware you just plugged in
19. repeat steps 15 - 18 until all your hardware is back in the box
After this you've just about got a working machine until you have to reinstall it 6 months later. Admittedly I did have all the PCI and ISA slots absolutely full, but its been my experience that if you've got a moderate number of cards in your machine win98's installer really stuggles to install a working machine.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
As a Mac user who gets games months or years after they are released for Windows, yes, market share for your OS is something you can directly profit from. More market share means a bigger market for developers, so you will have more applications available for your OS.
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.
Consider this case: the parents of a friend of mine run Windows XP on all their computers (about 4). My friend runs Slackware (like me) on his laptop. Say 3% of all new PC sales run Linux. We disregard changing the OS aftermarket, as it roughly cancels out.
My friend's parents do not reinstall Windows when it breaks. They buy a new computer. For some reason my friend hasn't enlightened them, but....
My point is that if new Windows PCs break 10 times more often, they are probably replaced twice as often as Linux PCs. This of course doubles their sales figures.
-Ashton
(-(friend^2))^(1/2)
Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
Funny, the reason I stay on Windows is exactly that, time. Yes, I have to use Windows update, or let it run in the background. Sometimes I have to wrestle with a graphics driver. As long as you keep WU and AV stuff up tp date, and avoid horrors liek IE and outlook, I find Windows XP very low maintence.
Generally though, software and hardware work pretty well. When I look at the time people using Linux sometimes spend getting thier hardware to work, getting the Windows programs (and games) to work, if at all, that keeps me away.
I use NIX at work, and I'm no big Windows fan, but valuing my time is exactly what keeps me off Linux.
True, plus the people who build their own computers witho no OS preinstalled, and don't tell me there are few, anyone who knows how to screw things and plug in IDE cables knows how to build one.
I know nobody who has had linux preinstalled, OTOH, I've had quite a few friends install it beside windows (of course they still want to keep their games, but they use Linux for everyday tasks)
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.
I thought Dells running Linux costed more than Windows, at least that was the case when I last checked several months ago.
So if your plan is to install pirated Windows, it definitely makes way more sense buy a machine with no OS installed.
I have never encountered anyone who buys a linux pc intending to install linux on it.
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!
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
That's fine if you want (like someone else said) to type your letters to Grandma. If, on the other hand, you want a middle-high end machine, you'll generally get the best value from DIY.
Those who do this generally realise that there's often no point in having the latest and greatest graphics, processor etc, because you're paying premium, so instead of getting a machine that advertises "cheap" but is actually "crippled" or one that advertises "high-end" but is actually "exorbitant" you put your own pretty decent but reasonably priced computer.
These days you can generally expect that a machine you put together will work, mostly first time. Sure, for the type-the-letter-to-grandma, you don't want to faff around with the bits AND risk it not working, but for many, it's half the fun.
im in ur
I don't have any arms, you insensitive clod!
im in ur
I saw a Linux PC at Fry's Electronics the other day. Lindows, actually. It had crashed :-/
Further demonstration that attempting to be too much like windows is a bad idea.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
Try: http://www.linuxcounter.org/
Which has been around for about 10 years. Not sure why it isn't more popular. Would be nice if Linux distros gave a choice at install to "auto-register" or something. There is also good info there on why estimates on number of Linux systems is difficult to guage.
Also:
"Market Share" means number of units sold vs the total number of units sold in a particular category during some period of time (year quarter whatever). MS and even more so, Apple, have a very good idea of what their market share is. They know almost exactly how many of their units have been sold. Linux has a pretty small market share because everyone can just download it once and install many times. On the other hand comapnies like Red Hat probably have a very accurate count of what their market share is for RHEL.
"Installed Base": Means the number of particular units installed vs the total number of units of all systems installed of all types for a particular instant in time. The installed base is certainly higher for Linux than the market share is. Installed base is probably quite different from market share for all types systems. There are all those PCs, Macs, and Sun boxes that now have Linux installed. There are all those homebuilt systems that now have a pirate copy of Windows or Linux or both installed. There are all those PCs that shipped with Windows (or Linux) that now have Linux (or Windows) installed or both. There are all those systems that can't run the latest version of Windows but are now running Linux in "edge-of-network" roles or just as plain old desktops.
Apple probably has a very good idea what their installed base is for Mac OS X (compared to their market share) because of Softwareupdate.app grabbing the latest updates which, pretty much exclusively, come from Apples servers.
MS may have a good idea of, at least, how many people update their systems via windowsupdate.com (or whatever it is called).
Linux distros may not have a very good idea unless they can somehow get stats from ALL their update mirrors. But this would never include all the locally mirrored updates. I download updates from one to three mirrors once and then push those out to dozens of systems locally.
"Mind Share": Though a popular buzzword has nothing to do with market share or installed base.
While Linux market share, however it is measured, should give a company a solid number to work with when determining the size of their market... it says nothing about their real and potential market. The Linux market share is the lowest possible number to use for estimating the size of the potential Linux market for a company that plans to release a product for Linux systems. This is a very important thing for a company to know when planning a product release.
So if you want to see more products for Linux... go get counted.
-DU-...etc...
"Don't sweat the technique."
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."
Your statement that most "geeks hit the same sites as non-geeks" is non-provable and, without a valid premise, your metric is also invalid.
Being non-provable is sufficient, but to not just leave it to the trivial counterproof: you're metric does not take into account that most browsing is done during the day which for many is at work which means that your are getting more of a corporate browser and OS measure than anything else.
Which in my case would count the WinXP system I use at work for my primary desktop, but miss the two OS X desktops and the RedHat desktop, not to mention the two SuSE desktops and OS X laptop at home (and, no, that's not trying to count in the two additional SuSE servers as desktops).
I stand by my original claim: there are no metrics.
Thoromyr