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Attempts to Count Linux Users Remain Pointless
An anonymous reader writes "A great deal of attention is paid to numbers, but rarely does one actually ask what these numbers mean. One problem that many people have been trying to tackle is gauging the extent of use of Free software, including Linux. Questionnaires are not a solution here and neither are statistics, which are usually derived from the wrong data. The following article looks at the various challenges at hand and concludes that the growth rate of Linux is likely to remain an enigma."
"Do not attempt to count the number of Linux users, thats impossible, instead, try to realize the truth... there is no Linux" :-P
-Yourmomisfasterthanabeowulfcluster
Maybe it's pointless because we are all already linux users.
If people continue to abuse this feature, I will have to remove it. - Slashdot Comment Box, 1998
World domination is at hand!
Deleted
well I skimmed TFA and conclude we can now expect in these comments:-
.. and nobody being better informed at then end of it.
(1) a lot of foaming at the mouth rants and statistics from Linux evangelists
(2) some distie bashing thrown in for good measure
(3) the inevitable vista comments and hints about massive marketing campaigns
(4) maybe some mention of PCs shipped with Linux pre-installed
(5) if we are really lucky maybe the odd referenced fact
A "Linux user" could be anything from a hardcore Gentoo-compiling mad man of a Linux user to somebody who uses a phone or other device which has embedded Linux. I for one dual boot so for purposes of this attempt at a survey am I half of a linux user? I use several devices with embedded Linux distros so am I 80% Linux user? Does the device need to be capable of browsing to a webpage or (as is cliche on /.) does it just have to run Linux?
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
estimates are reasonably accuarate from most studies I've seen. Linux is a very big niche right now in the OS desktop market and a lot bigger in the server market. You'll never get accurate statistics because one of the reason linux spreads so fast is it's available everywhere and can just be downloaded without hassle and a lot of different distros from a lot of different people, a very good guess is all you'll ever get.
I'm going to offer the same solution I did for counting Firefox users:
1) Require a national ID number to download any Linux distro, and validation of ownership of this number through an in-person meeting with the local authorities.
2) Have the software "phone home" that it's actually being used, when it's used.
3) Close the source so that 2) can be facilitated.
4) Made the ID numbers and contact information in 1) publicly available so anyone can audit the official count of users.
There, done, you've got everyone counted. Wasn't that easy?
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Anyone else? Or shall we approximate the linux userbase size as being "1"?
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
Plus are you talking about just Server/desktop? If you count the millions of embedded devices that run gnu/linux I'm sure it would be considered the worlds most popular OS. It's all in how you want to swing the numbers.
A good slashdot poll is all we need.
Those are very accurate and representative.
Tree :)
It might not be entirely pointless to try, but I'm reasonably convinced of two things: I don't care (and don't need to) about the exact numbers, and it's growing.
I don't care largely because the software meets *my* needs. That's the most important thing to me. An assurance that it will continue to do so is also nice, and there are clearly a lot of people developing for it. I'm not worried on that front. People who have a big investment in *other people* using Linux (especially when said other people aren't developers) confuse me. (Well, except when they're trying to sell Linux software / services.)
It's growing. I can't tell you how much, but I can offer the anecdotal evidence that the responses I get to "I run Linux" have changed over the past few years. It's not always "What's that?" anymore. It's not uncommon to get questions about it in response -- people want to know how well it works, whether it runs the same software as Windows, etc. I just answer their questions and am polite and friendly about it.
I, for one, use GNU/Linux and only F/OSS
Where shall we mail your trophy?
I have linux installed on all four home computers. Put me down for 4. All happen to be Ubuntu also, if that helps count.
Perhaps some kind of central server to keep track of who's using Linux? It could be called Linux Legitimate Benefit...
Well that is already more than Windows Vista.
Take a sample of 10000 people / companies.
Ask them if they use Linux of not
Extrapolate the results.
Seems to work when there counting all kinds of other things that don't have a direct method of counting them.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You could count the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 systems sold so far.
n++
That's a good way to start a Monday :-).
Actually, it's not so much that they are pointless - just that they are useless. There is a point to knowing how many Linux boxes are out there (demographic studies, confidence in support longevity as a function of install base, etc.) But most known techniques for counting remain useless.
To be honest, this might be just as well. Any technology that COULD count successfully all the Linux boxes out there would be a bit scary - many people probably don't WANT anyone to be able to know what they are running. (OK so nmap can probably figure out anyway...)
Large scale counts like this are a difficult proposition - the only things that approaches being successful in this respect are probably automobile registration systems, census systems, and the tax system - in other words, massive systems with compulsary reporting for every existing component member.
Now, of more interest might be to work with the BSA for a while (or someone else who has the authority to open random IT doors at random) and do an anonymous study of deployment percentages at random under guise of a random license check or soemthing. Probably (hopefully!) not legal but it would be a way to get statistically meaningful results if the sample was chosen well.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
a server side log of unique ip's that Download [ some standard file ] from the major repositories/minor mirrors, with a forward to a central DB (IP's stripped, of course) would be a relatively simple solution.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Tally every PC sold where the customer asks "The wireless card on this notebook doesn't have a broadcom chipset, right?" or "Do you have this model with an NVidia card? ATI is dead to me"
One question is are they strictly talking about desktop linux, or do they also count in servers? Would they count the people who use/access these servers, or just the company/person who maintains it? I would imagine seeing something along the lines of number of machines it's installed on, but it has flaws as well. I have a desktop and laptop for personal use, as well as a desktop and laptop for work, plus an extra desktop for testing software. I could count as 1 user or 5 licenses. Now at a Public Library, you could have a few machines that get used by a host of people each day. That would yield more users than licenses.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but linux users could be confined to a small group, or expanded to anyone who visits a website running on linux.
And then you'll have each side of the debate disputing and spinning numbers to be in their favor...A messy deal that will be. Well, if it ever happens.
The other day I was in an Edeka, and happened to see the Tux/Linux Inside logo on their cash register display. It made my day...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Given the diversity of computer uses and computer users, there's no good way to measure this. For what it's worth, the sample from my web server represents 91.3% Windows, 7.4% Mac, 0.9% Linux, and 0.2% unknown. That sample is of course not representative of all computer users.
Desktop liberation is important because it prevents sabotage in other seemingly unrelated areas like, power management and portable music players. As long as M$ has the lion's share of desktops, they can put pressure on vendors, equipment makers and even on line service providers like Google. Everyone else loses when M$ wins.
This power is severely degraded now, thanks to Vista and Apple. When you combine Apple's 10% share with the GNU/Linux 5%, you get numbers that have bottom line implications. That goes double when all the "decision makers" are in that 15%. The bottom line is performance. M$ suffers as much or more than anyone else from their attempts at sabotage because the kludges add up to workarounds, bloat and instability. These things show painfully in Vista and it's hurt sales.
Despite the attempts at sabotage, GNU/Linux continues to work better than other software. This is key to both adoption and motivation. Desktop adopters get systems that are light years ahead of others for networking and stability, without losing applications and features. Vista is not much better than XP, but the average GNU/Linux distribution is better than both. The average Windoze user has a spectrum of ageing, non free software that has trouble talking to itself, much less sharing files across a home network or the internet. Purchasing Vista and a $400 office suits does not improve the situation for them, it just adds another box that won't talk to the others. Replacing everything with free software fixes every computer in the house. The sooner the end user moves, the better off they are.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
20,000 Linux users per thrown chair (potty mouth == 5,000/word)
Wouldn't the most effective method be to get google and yahoo usage statistics? (oh noes!!! statistics are inaccurate)
The easiest and more accurate tecnique would be to use the catch-recatch tecnique from biology.
(6) in soviet russia, ...
(7) profit
(8) someone will smugly summarize the whole thing in one post
It's hard to pick the exact query that does not include other areas, but hey:
b untu
http://www.google.com/trends?q=windows+vista%2C+u
Most of the traffic on my blog http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-is-real-e nergy.html comes from slashdot. There might be a bias that windows users are more interested in renewable energy but I kind of
doubt it. The feedburner ratios wrt to XP in the last month are
s -selling-solar.html
XP: 1
Linux:0.402
Mac:0.179
Vista:0.089
W2000:0.069
And a few others
Feedburner seems to miss quite a lot, but unless it is really undercounting linux, it would look like slashdot readers prefer XP as a plurality.
--
Windows is less efficient. You need solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
No real way to count them, either.
For instance, I have two Windows 98 boxes in my basement I got from an auction. Am I a Windows user? Do I count twice? Or not at all since they'll never be powered up (got them for cheap long ago, never used them, will probably donate them to Goodwill).
And how about all those pirate boxes in Asia? Do they count or not?
If I had to guess, I'd say that WGA was (at least partially) an attempt to count windows users. And we all know how that worked out.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
That's the whole problem. If I count home and work, I have more than 20 linux "servers" of which one is a cluster containing twice that many machines. But I'm the only person who uses them (well, the only person who directly uses them, e.g. logs into them), so really, in terms of users that's just 1...You can't count everyone who goes to a webpage, or uses a bind, ntp, samba, squid, etc service to be a linux user.
That's why it's hard to count. Windows users are easy: it's almost all 1 to 1. I have 1 windows machine, so mark me down for 1 in the windows category as well. You can be even more specific and count windows licenses; this is misleading...My workplace has a great number of unused windows licenses...But it's a good number with documentation behind it, whereas linux can only count support contracts with big linux vendors.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Why not just count yum/apt repository/mirror hits by unique IP?
Okay so that underestimates those in big organisations who run their own mirror, and those running old distros that don't check for updates, but it would be a damn sight more accurate than most of the other methods.
The big distros (Red Hat, Ubuntu etc) could even sponsor an independent body to oversee the fair collection of the data from the repos and mirrors.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I'd be curious to see how many Java developers use desktop Linux. After all, they're not tied to any particular platform. I've got this growing suspicion that people who don't have to use the latest Windows (XP or Vista) are either using Win2K or Linux.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
2) Have the software "phone home" that it's actually being used, when it's used.
Yes! Every day Linux Genuine Advantage helps customers all over the world who are victims of software piracy get genuine. If you got your Linux for free, you should upgrade today to get the following exciting new features:
- Closed source, for extra Security Through Obscurity(tm),
- Compatibility with the latest viruses and malware,
- Innovative new Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to help you manage your digital rights,
- DirectX 10.
Anyway, you don't want an OS that was written by hackers, do you?>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Be sure to count all those people who make use of television and web weather reports. If they use data from NOAA, USGS, or services like the streamflow/stormwater data from NWIS, or if they use data modeling service from SDSC or NCSA, they are linux users...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
For those boggling over WHY this matters, try and keep in mind that Microsoft, Apple, et al provide these figures regularly. Whether or not they're valid is a source of debate, but some kind of numbers are out there. This is how we get to say things like 'Windows is 90% of the market', etc.
Perhaps we need a 'BeCounted' daemon that merely tracks the stats of those that would like to be counted? It would still be a fraction, but if that number were out there we'd at least have some kind of data point to discuss. Perhaps FSF or GNU or some other party would host the servers that collect the data? You could even make the thing multi-platform, reporting on specific apps, and providing other useful data and pitch it to Google and company. Not that they're not already tracking this in their own apps, but this would be OSS. You could have all sorts of opt-in/opt-out toggles for it and it would be transparent as to what it tracked. You could also have it gather from different places and homogenize the data after it was submitted. The possibilities abound.
Maybe there already is such a creature? If we supporters of Free-with-a-capital-F want to be relevant moving forward, a detailed head-count could certainly be a step in the right direction.
n=$(($n=1))
Forty-Two
...Netcraft confirms it!
Yes, go on and sign up, lets rise those stats!
http://counter.li.org/
Registered Linux User #185812
What kind of engineer are you? We say the linux userbase it at least one.
Crazy? Maybe. But here are the reasons.
1. Big companies will crush most of the smaller distros. If anyone is old enough to remember before the ipod was launched, they would tell you there were many more mp3-audio devices. Some of them were interesting. The entry of Apple crushed most of them for a product that wasn't substantially better and more expensive.
2. Big companies use research to justify market entry. They will create a Linux distro mono-culture. Not only will they create a mono-culture, they will do so with an inferior product that consumers pay more for. (That's how they pay for advertising and stuff sales channels with products)
I like seeing as wide a variety of distros as possible. To keep it that way, never, ever give corporate conglomerates the tools they need to screw it up. In this case, reliable data on the number of Linux users.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Sure, whatever, 700781. Get back in the line.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I have 2 windows machines and no Linux machine. But I *use* Linux; my web sites are hosted on linux because the virtualization is better and it's cheaper. My svn server is linux and so is the server that runs wikis, PM systems and the other things I need to have. Why, I couldn't get by without linux! Yet I don't actually have a linux machine and I thus don't add to the ranks of linux users, whereas I *do* add to the ranks of Windows users.
I guess what I'm saying is, it's very hard to evaluate the importance of an OS by a headcount.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
It's a total waste of time to try to collect, mine and extrapolate demographic stats like this period. While the numbers may be objective, the way that they are interpreted and announced to the public may be subjectively skewed. Who would really want to know how far linux has proliferated? One guy that I know of... and his name rhymes with Bill Gates.
How do I count running Linux Binaries on the BSD's? Is this 1, or do i get a 1/2 for each. I also run several version of Linux in VMware. Do I get partial credit for them too, since I usually keep 8 or 9 different Linux partitions laying around?
Also, programming is useless, because nobody can write a bug free program.
And weather predication is useless, because we can never be 100% sure of the results.
And Economics is useless, because there are so many parameters to measure constantly, and they are always changing that we can't actually be sure of anything at anytime.
etc....
Take a leaf from the MPAA and RIAA and extrapolate the losses from Microsoft's profits.
As a game developer creating a cross-platform game client that can run on Windows, Mac and Linux, I am definitely interested in the number of "Linux Users" as I evaluate cost of development targeting and supporting Linux and the expected number of players I will get from that effort. What I am personally not as interested in are the number of "Uses of Linux"; however, if I were a tools, library or utility developer I would probably definitely be interested in the total amount of "Uses of Linux" when considering whether to spend my development time targeting that platform.
For me personally, the number of web servers or embedded devices using Linux doesn't mean anything. My car's navigation system must run some sort of operating system, however, I wouldn't consider myself a User of that OS though it certainly is a Use of that OS (whatever it might be). I didn't purposely choose my Nav system because it ran a particular OS, it simply came with whatever it came with and I use it just like I would use a phone or a washer or refrigerator with some embedded OS.
I would feel the data would be useful if broken down into at least two broad categories:
1. All uses of Linux.
2. Users who knowingly and purposely choose Linux as their OS of choice. Presumably this would be a subset of data from #1 and would useful for consumer application developers.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Keep it, I have lots of them
Vegetarians eat Vegetables, Humanitarians frighten me...
Make that one. I stopped (mostly) using Linux about 2 years ago and started using OS X.
:(
2 + -1 = 1
World domination failed.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
You know what people, almost all user-active-machines are often also used for some surfing, so what's the most visited web-resource ? I think it's really the google homesearch page... Maybe they can help to have a more-reliable estimate...
I found this strangely enlightening. Linux has half as many searches as Windows and OSX is tiny (though granted not all OSX users know it by that name). I'd just imagine that people must just have been interested as to what the Linux stuff was all about and now many of them have found out. Linux is great but it does get a lot of hype, that's probably a far bigger factor in searches. That said, strangely Linux searches don't spike in the same way windows ones do which is what I'd expect for hype driven interest so I could be wrong about all that,
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I'll go ahead and ruin your joke, but Smolt is already used to keep track on hardware and distros.
Perhaps if we get more distros to adopt the use of Smolt, with a central server, we could *attempt* to keep track of stats, as seen on Fedora Project
Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
It seems to me that Linux is growing at a pretty good clip, and any numbers you can come up with (downloads, random surveys, browser usage, etc) would show that. This whole article just reads like they're whining because they can't get the numbers they want. What exactly are they looking for?
Smolt is a basic hardware profiler. Its intended to be a profiler to get automated information from users. This should make it easier for our developers to do what they need to do. How can you help? Well look at the code and make it better. It's still in the very early stages but has good potential. https://hosted.fedoraproject.org/projects/smolt
...Linux had something Windows XP's constant "call home" nonsense, we'd know!
So long as Lunix remains a third-tier OS which an average user has no chance of installing, the numbers are irrelevant.
Some people are using Lunix for servers. That's it. It has no acceptance as a desktop OS, due to it's inability to autodetect and autoconfig hardware, and it's failure to provide easy (read: non-CLI) software installs which don't require manually fixing the "always first time failed" install.
It's also pretty disgusting how Apache, Lunix's so-called "killer app", can't even install correctly without requiring a manually fix.
It's going to be hard to gain any market share when they haven't even caught up to Windows 95.
Try that again for Windows,Linux,Mac. Kind of interesting to see how Linux and Mac searches correlate.
I'm quite happy for no one to know exactly how many linux users are out there, because having the opposition (MS) not know exactly where you are or how many keeps them guessing. Meanwhile, the cold, hard facts continue to drive linux adoption in the background (it's free, secure, fast, light, stable, extensible, open, etc). Most geeks understand those advantages, and influence the tech policies where they work. Which in turn influences the pointy hairs who don't really understand tech but take what the geeks say on faith, lest they appear foolish. Which in turn trickles down to the receptionist being given a new computer that runs the same old app she's ever used running on top of linux.
The way it is now, MS can only say to itself, "Charlie's in the bushes. We don't know exactly where or how many of them there are, but it feels like they're growing stronger and more numerous." In other words, for linux it's a one-front war, whereas for MS it's a thousand-front war.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Our Toshiba Printer in the office runs Linux. Do I count everyone who prints to it as a Linux User or do we all make up one user?
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
No no, there are too many to count. All those botnets.
I suppose you meant
n=$(( $n + 1 ))
recently I discovered that bash supports this too:
let n=n+1
or even
let n++
factor 966971: 966971
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
Attn: Steve Ballmer
With all the VMware instances and the old clunkers in the basement, I can't even figure out how many Linux systems I have.
"Are you aaaaangry, Butt-Head?"
"Yeah. I'm angry at numbers!"
Wouldn't the web log of a high traffic web site (ie. google) gives us these numbers? Or at least enable the development of thumb rules that would allow us to infer approximations?
Could we just count Windows sales slipping? I mean isn't that the REAL issue here :)
Dual Century Programming: Yeah I know
At first glance, I thought the headline stated "Attempts to Court Linux Users Remain Pointless" and was confused... I wasn't sure where the news was in that statement.
duh! nmap -sO 0.0.0.0-255.255.255.255
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
While I agree with most of your post, I don't know about the 1:1 thing for Windows users. I have 4 Windows machines (5 if you count my PDA), one OSX and 2 Linux boxes. I know my father and at least two of my good friends have similar setups. It's rather anecdotal, but it does indeed buck your generalization...
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I love Linux, I think it's great. I run Slackware and Ubuntu; and I'm going to purchase that cool new Linux-phone real soon. What I *hate* is the way that some Linux users flat-out lie to promote Linux as something it's not. Attempts to count Linux desktop users is pointless and the primary reason for that is....nobody uses Linux on the desktop. You don't need a fancy survey to tell you that. Walk into Best-Buy and find a wireless card that lists 'Linux' on the side of the box where it says 'Supported OSes'. Better yet, ask a sales rep where the Linux section is, or if this ________ device has native Linux drivers included. I'm sure I'll get plenty of flames for this - and they'll be from the very same people that tell newbies how easy it is to install Linux, and that hardware support is *practically* just as good as Windows, and that you can do *everything* you can do on Windows, and it's just as good.
I am registered Linux user # 440629. I also use FreeBSD.
I have several boxes running Linux, but I wouldn't describe myself as a Linux user. I'm still a Windows he-bitch on the desktop, but I'm 110% Linux on the server (or at worst, BSD). I still hate Xorg and everything that links to it, so I don't expect to set my default boot to Linux anytime soon. Seriously, begone with the legacy client-server model, it's filth!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
1) Put up a web poll, making sure to have one of those capchas that only spiderbots can figure out and a validation routine to prevent the same IP from flooding the poll.
2) Since, no one will know about the poll unless you tell them, capture some dead windows machines and email every mail address on the web. Include some reference to "V1agr4".
3) Take the number of respondents who say they use Linux and divide that by 0.03, since we know we will only get a 3% response from any poll. Add to that the number of mail addresses that refuse to accept our mail, and VOILA! We've got the Counted Users Worldwide of Linux (CUWL)!
4) Profit! (/. obligatory step)
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Albert Einstein
This is just more MS FUD masquerading. The number of F/OSS users is very important. Incredibly important and no where near impossible to count. You can get a good estimation simply by looking at the popular distros. Which ones have a tally of how many users they support. You can bet the numbers are incredibly high. Ubuntu estimations are nearly 20 million. You can simply extrapolate from the other distros that are in use world wide and come up with at least 5 times that. That's nearly 100 million users world wide. That's a conservative estimate.
To encourage developers, commercial and otherwise, you need to provide them with numbers. The more you can verify the better off we'll be as users. You want quality games ported to OpenGL? You want applications from developers such as Photoshop? You need to provide numbers. Who out there is willing to kill the hopes of others because you think you should have all FOSS. I want these other products under Linux. Stop messing about and get it together so we all can do that with our computers that we want to do. It sucks that you will take your ideas and limit mine because you think your ideas are pure.
Get them legitimate numbers. Get more numbers. Count all you can. Publish those numbers. Make those numbers known to every segment of society (from mom and pop to big corporate). This is a must. Tell the world the numbers. They are incredibly important to know. The larger the number the better off everyone will be.
You know Microsoft is counting, but the hell with them. We should know our own position so we know where to push, when to push, and how hard. Pushing into markets, into segments, into the home, into schools, everywhere is important. Everyone needs to tell everyone else, their friends, family, acquaintances, the poor, the rich, everyone. Get the numbers out, get the ideas out. Make it happen. Make it happen now. Keep pushing it fast.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
there are a LOT of pure windows users here on /.. Just look at the modding and meta modding that occurs. Those are not just 1-2 ppl from MS doing all those.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sure, it's not meant to be a universal statement. But most home users have only one computer, and most home users user windows, so the majority of windows users are 1 computer, 1 user.
As opposed to linux, which is most popular in business and among geeks, where the 1 user, 1 computer rule is least likely to hold true.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Anyone else see the irony of this screen shot?
Who wrote your BIOS?
Hmmm... I've got Linux on four machines at home (Ubuntu and RedHat 7.x), but one dual-boots WinXP. Then there's my wife's two Macs that run OSX. And then there's her Win2K work laptop that she uses to connect to Solaris machines at work. And then there's my WinXP work laptop that I use to connect to Linux boxes (RHEL) at work.
So I guess count us as users of pretty much everything?
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
You forgot to mention the inevitible reference to Bill Gates being Hitler reincarnated and George Bush being either the anti-christ or responsible for the restoration of the Nazi party by some liberal facist who wishes both were true.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
...except BSD. But isn't BSD dying? ;-)
Program Intellivision!
You know, Linux far transcends the personal computer to the point where asking "how many Linux users are there" is silly and pointless. If your TiVo, the web server you visit on your Mac, your Roomba, and your Linksys router all run Linux, you still aren't really a Linux user. Maybe that's why attempts to count Linux users remain pointless?
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Steve,
Thanks for pointing that out! How about:
(20,000 * chairs_thrown_count) + (5000 * pottymouth_word_count) + (50 * num_times_MSBob_disabled) + (1 * num_AC_posts_by_Ballmer)
Unsure about how it'll skew the numbers, but good thinking!
http://www.google.com/trends?q=microsoft%2Clinux%2 Capple&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
Everyone knows linux users are irrational, a class of number of which there exists so many that their number is uncountably infinite.
Pointless? You mean, difficult to obtain, but all statistics are not completely pointless. Finding out how many users use Unix, Linux, OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP, etc etc, is not pointless. If software companies, for example, have this information they can potentially better decide what "platform" to create software for.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
But he's not using Linux. He's using tivo. (or comparable) Tivo is the Linux user. Counting appliances using linux is about as fruitless as counting me as a reader of the Minneapolis star-gazette because their headline appeared on Google News one day.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
And what are we counting? Desktops? Servers? Back where I used to work, we had a mixed e-mail infrastructure. There were literally hundreds of Exchange servers in the data center, but it was pointed out that a couple of Sun servers were handling similar e-mail volumes for the engineering department.
Have gnu, will travel.
With the BSD license's ability for projects to be relicensed by third parties, I think it's safe to say that BSD will always be dying and never be dead. Like some zombie OS, it has been reportedly killed many times but still hungers for code.
COOOOOODE.
I estimate the Linux userbase somewhere between one and two billion.
While it might be infeasable to count the number of people using linux, it would be nice to be able to point some game development companies at a nice, large digit and say could we get some openGL games, please?
While I'd love to see more native linux clients out there, right now I'd be thrilled to just see more games using openGL because they seem to work so much better with WINE.
The count downloads all the time. But I didn't say strickly downloads. What I was saying is get estimates from the likes of the Distros. For instance, they can tell how many IPs with the Linux OS, or how many have provided info for support, etc. It isn't going to be exact. Neither is a count of windows. For instance, there has been more than a few people that have gone from windows to linux. Are you counting them in the count of Microsoft's products?
With browsers we look at how many page hits by any given browser but it really is just an estimation because some people with those same browsers never hit those pages and thus go uncounted.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I'm sorry pal, but Linux is a success on the desktop. Through open and legitimate customer distribution of information Linux has gained a huge forward momentum. There are things that Linux does on the desktop that Microsoft can't hope to even come close to, even with the best hardware.
The problems with the guys that wrote the article are simply spreading FUD. Nothing more. Of course you can count and those counts are being done. As I stated there are approximately 100 million installs world-wide. That number will probably double to triple by the end of 2008. That's no failure.
You are just as miserable as they are. You see your future being put asunder by a superior product. Time will tell. I've been in this business for over 20 years and I know a success when I see it. Windows is on the slide. Linux is progressive. Windows will do nothing but loose share. Linux will do nothing but gain.
The more people know Linux is out there winning on desktops all over the world the more will understand that Linux is an winner overall. With a superior kernel, with hundreds of thousands of minds participating (world-wide), with superior minds coming up with superior products at a significantly faster rate of development, Linux can do nothing but win and win in a big way.
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. They are being held to task on that every day. People all over the world are letting others know how and what Microsoft did and what they continue to do today by spying on you, by extorting legitimate users, by creating lock-in mechanisms in order to further their monopoly--you name it, they are doing it and it is bad.
You pal, are just strange. Don't post responses to my posts because you sound cowardly.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Who cares? Why is there a concern from anyone as to what OS someone else uses? In the greater scheme of things, does it really matter? No.
CowboyNeal's planet nine is Urtaint, right next to Uranus.
" there is no Linux" :-P"
-Yourmom
Yeah, Bill , Just keep on believing that "there is no Linux". We (Linux Users) are stronger than you think, we are not afraid of our computers. We rule them. They don't rule us. Our code is free and open. We are not afraid of it being seen. Because it wasn't stolen from you. . . . But, more than likely by you. Let your track record speak for itself. Read the news. Microsoft tried to weasel out of the Novel deal. What does that tell you???
For a remarkably large value of "1". According to One Laptop Per Child http://laptop.org/, it should increase to more than a billion in the next 10 years, for the accepted value of a billion, and an unknown base for the "10".
"A knot!" said Alice, ever ready to be useful. "Oh, do let me help to undo it!"