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.
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.
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".
...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.
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
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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!
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