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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
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.
I, for one, use GNU/Linux and only F/OSS
Where shall we mail your trophy?
You're way off base. All of the people in my department at work run Linux, so clearly Linux is already dominating the desktop. The fact that my department is made up of entirely Linux sysadmins should not take anything away from this single statistically relevant sample. Of course, we all run Red Hat because Gentoo is for masochists and Ubuntu has a stupid name. Sure, Microsoft's brainwashing^Wmarketing may lead you to believe that Vista is all the rage, but everyone knows it's a memory hog that barely runs on most supercomputers. Especially now with Linux being pre-installed on so many desktops, Microsoft is bound to go bankrupt any day now.
Also, did you know that the longest recorded frog jump was 33 feet 5.5 inches? Amazing!
and we'll conclude 18% of the world uses the CowboyNeal Microthreaded Kernel fork of Planet Nine
Speaking as a person who has to go out on site as a consultant and recommend the best product for the job (regardless of personal bias) - and yes, that includes the places that are MS-only where i find myself saying "yeah, sql server 2005 is briliant", or "yeah, you should really get ms systems server op's center". I do believe things are changing somewhat. It started about 6-9months ago, i'd go out to a traditional windows company and they'd be running a samba server with apache where there used to be IIS and win 2k3.
Then a friends company (not a small one mind you) went off to do a linux-on-the-desktop study as alot of their windows agreements were about to become eol so to speak. At first I thought this was a bargaining tool to get cheaper software, but I was surprised to find that not only was it about replacing the desktop but also the server side functionality. It turned out they'd started looking at linux desktops because they'd managed to gain some linux servers to replace most costly machines (some windows, but alot were aix or solaris) - interestingly, alot of the now-linux server hardware are sun x86'ers running centos. As a result they took on some linux types to administer them, and it grew - they replaced a few non-essential file servers. changed a few mail gateways to linux. Moved proxies to squid. As their CTO put it "i was suddenly surrounded by linux and didn't realise it until i looked at the balance sheets, all we are paying for is hardware and alot of the things we are using linux for are internally grown and maintained. I started to think we weren't paying for licenses were we should be". One of the things that did take him by supprise is that half his IT department by this time had switched to a linux desktop and used mail thru imap or some such (some were using windows still thru vmware player or from a terminal server running outlook). Apparently if you pxe boot off alot of the networks, you'll get a pxelinux menu that allows you to boot various things like dsl or install a customized ubuntu (though i didn't see that myself). I know they're also running some systems with RHEL too because they "feel good" to know they have support.
To sum it up, i was quite shocked. 12 months ago I was feeling "unix was coming to an end" and feeling quite disappointed by that, but I feel quite elated by what i've seen lately - Especially so in Australia where linux has had a really tough time of it.
Having said all that, i think the author wasn't just referring to linux users but also the users of FOSS replacements for commercial applications (like open office, gimp, etc). I can't say i've seen a tonne of that myself, but its not uncommon to see things like gaim, firefox, jedit, eclipse - smaller things really.
It will be very interesting to see what the next 12months brings us.