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Linux Foundation's Desktop Linux Survey Results
DeviceGuru writes "While the Linux Foundation's third annual desktop Linux survey doesn't officially end until November 30th, the number of daily respondents have shrunk to a trickle and the Foundation is working on analyzing the results. They now have up an early look at the raw data. For starters, almost 20,000 self-selected users filled out this year's survey compared to fewer than 10,000 in 2006's survey. Not surprisingly, the Ubuntu family of Linuxes is the most popular among organizations, at 54.1 percent. This was followed by the Red Hat family — RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Fedora/CentOS) — with 50.2 percent. The Novell SUSE group — SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) and openSUSE — came in third, with 35.2 percent."
Both my current and previous employer has supplied me with a Debian desktop. No Ubuntu so far...
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
www.linuxfoundation.org appears to be some kind of domain search squatter.
Update the link in the original front page post.
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/ is NOT http://www.linux-foundation.org/
The first is just a traffic collector page.
The Linux Foundation mentioned in the story is at
http://www.linux-foundation.org/
Thats where you will find the article/survey.
I myself have started using Debian sid,
can't do without apt-get but Ubuntu is going the wrong way (for me)
If you are one of those "real men use the command line" , why don't you take a larger step and made your self a punch card computer and program it using binary cards? Now THAT is hardcore...
While you do that, let us, the rest of that inferiour race, use whatever system we wanr, be it Ubuntu Linuzz , Abble OS or MS Windows, or whatever... Yes, we are inferior and not "real men", but hey, I do my work that way, and I'm very happy, believe me, with being a "second class citizen".
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Family? I guess that make sense. Ubuntu of the Debian Order, Linux Class, UNIX Phylum. I guess that would make the Genus the particular type (server/home), and the species it's version number.
Well, I could have believed %100 Since this survey was filled out by linux users, but %139.5 ?!!!
Am I the only one who sees a problem with the math here?
Wrong link. http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Main_Page is the correct one
SimonTek
Another interesting result from the LF survey is that in most company and organizations, the Linux desktop is more commonly used than Linux servers. From almost the beginning of Linux's business acceptance it has always been assumed that Linux was, is, and would continue to be more of a force on servers than on desktops. That appears to be changing.
Is it just me, or is this possibly a misleading statement? Does "more commonly used" just mean more numbers? Or does it mean that organizations with Linux desktops aren't running Linux servers? Or just that they have more desktops than servers? Even if it is the first, I still don't think it means too much, because one organization running a gigantic Oracle database on big iron and Linux is going to probably be using Linux more than another organization running Linux and OpenOffice for word processing on 10 or even 50 desktops.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
tsk tsk, just because 'emerge world' isn't finished...
It's official, 2008 will be the year of the Linux desktop.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Current results
The results say the current number of respondents is 10941 (and counting). Where did the figure of 20,000 come from?
While there are several coding systems for card input, none that I know of are binary ( the card is there or not there? :-) ). The one that I used most was Hollerith. A group of us in university came up with CBVS - Card Based Virtual Storage. The only virtual storage system that gets lighter the more data you put in it.
if linux is going to get anywhere, idiots must be able to use it, as they are the dominant portion of the populus.
For those who would like to take the survey, here's a link. https://www.linux-foundation.org/en/2007ClientSurvey ---Alex
If I were to fill out a form on what Distro I use, I would check off Suse, Ubuntu and DamnSmallLinux. I have boxen that run all three.
If every Linux user had one of each then the total would be 300%.
This point is totally valid because Ubuntu is the only Linux distro available and.. oh wait..
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
That performance or control over the OS isn't what drives adoption, but instead, it is bloat. Ubuntu could be claimed to be less bloated than RHEL and SUSE (both of which drip with bloat), but overall, I was surprised that among corporate offices and IT places that do Linux, not many are really using Gentoo or LFS or some such OS with a higher degree of control over what goes into the final installs, etc.
Oh well, guess its best to be among the few, than among the many.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
*whoosh*
[...] Of course, I have NOT RTFA... This is
Being third while having more than 1/3 of the votes...
Is that like becoming president with less than halve of the votes?
I guess not, one of these things is against the laws.
Read the comments, then.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
This time twice as many people filled the survey, so instead of 100% like last time, this one goes up to 200%!!!
please excuse my apathy
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I keep reading how this MS/Novell agreement is gaining customers but here I can see that:
in 2005 Novell/SUSE got 28%
in 2006 Novell/SUSE got 16%
in 2007 Novell/SUSE got 11.7%
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
I recently installed Ubuntu on another computer hoping to use it for IM and internet stuff, the HD was wiped but I wasn't going to sell it as fast I thought so I figured, "why not have another one around the house and mess around with this super-hyped OS?"
..at least I can play Sudoku, though.
Yeah, so it doesn't like my wireless network adapter and all the instructions are based on downloading things from the Internet, among a lot of other things (weird UI, outdated manuals, dozens of command line commands to get the simplest of hardware to work etc) despite there supposedly being support natively. There's a ton of problems with Ubuntu, and I would consider myself seriously in the know about software and hardware.
I figure I'm going to wipe the hard drive AGAIN (not going to bother messing with partitions and the MBR) and stick XP on it, and have ruled out dual-booting on my main rig. It may be slower but I'm not willing to have to go through the crap I have to now any time I want to add hardware. I was more comfortable back in the day with MS-DOS.
Wow, you had wireless working on MS-DOS??
Seriously, it sounds like you may have a broadcom wireless card - that's a problem that really needs to be fixed somehow. Hopefully you give it (Linux) another chance some time when you have more time. Many of the "command line fixes" are actually easier than tracking down drivers and installing them in XP - once you're familiar with the platform.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
If you fill out the survey, it asks you about anti-virus, and specifically porting bigname AVs to linux.
A few questions I pose:
1) Why do we want the bloaty, slow, pieces of crap that are windows AVs ported to linux?
2) Why do we want to port these, encouraging turning a blind eye to security and letting the AV do the work(such as it is on windows)?
3) Why not just improve support on say, ClamAV?
> Not surprisingly, the Ubuntu family of Linuxes is the most popular among organizations, at 54.1 percent.
> This was followed by the Red Hat family -- RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Fedora/CentOS) -- with 50.2 percent.
> The Novell SUSE group -- SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) and openSUSE -- came in third, with 35.2 percent."
Q: What did desktop linux users miss most?
A: A reliable calculator!
I'm not sure you get to call yourself a nerd. I'm thinking that you are just so isolated that in comparison to the few other people you've met, you seem like the one that understands computers. The reason I say this, is that at least half of the people I run into know what Linux is, and most of the other half don't know the difference between Word and Windows, so they wouldn't know what it is, even if it was down right common in the home. That, and the "apart from, occasionally, Mac OS X" line. Really, you have to be pretty far removed from society to not know about Mac.
My experiences have been exactly the opposite of yours. I considered 2007 the year of Linux when my wife was hosting a play date for stay at home Moms and their children, I came out of my office for some coffee, and there are 4 stay at home housewives discussing who is running Linux, who is running Windows, and if it was a good idea for the ones running Windows to switch to Linux. That was the defining moment for me to say that Linux is officially mainstream.
As for headaches trying to get simple hardware working, I can only relate the story that I have told many times before... My son did his first, unassisted install of Ubuntu just prior to his second birthday. The only thing I gave him was the CD, a computer, and made sure the hard drive was formatted before he started. As, always, I will accept that he is a genetic mutant that makes his intellect vastly superior to normal humans, if you insist on it, but even if he was as smart as a 6 year old when he was only 1, that still means that Linux is extremely easy to install and use. Of course if it turns out that I am an overly optimistic dad with a child that is only average, then we need to consider whether we can safely have those that are unable to install Ubuntu, out in public without a handler.
why yes, as a matter of fact it does. For linux, at least, since a major part of the users also contribute in some way, by writing code, by helping others get started who write code, by documenting, by testing, etc. etc. So the more ppl use what you use, the better your stuff gets, albeit slower than you might like ;-) Since cross-over between distro's is also less than perfect and has a snail's pace sometimes, there's definitively a difference between distro's.
So if novell loses users, you can expect the linux-netware interoperability to stagnate or deteriorate, regardless of whether you care or not. So I'd say that also matters in the bigger picture. For some of Novell's other projects, there may be a less direct relation, since there are other involvements.
Same for RH and Oracle. If the unbreakable thingy takes off, you can expect Oracle support for RH to deteriorate too.
With the different OSs around here, we'd score about 1100%.
Tell Broadcom that they need to provide specs for their hardware or even binary linux drivers. Or, spend $40 and buy an Intel 3945.
Well, this just tells you how individual these things are. My wife wanted a basic computer for editing text, printing, browsing, e-mail. I recommended macbook, which everyone loves and I though it would be ideal.
Nothing worked, she absolutely hated it and I was responsible. I had real big trouble getting even printer to work, having to manually compile drivers, which I haven't done on ubuntu for ages, etc. etc. Fast forward one year - we sold macbook, bought a cheap dell and now she is a very happy ubuntu user.
I think I was just unlucky and so were you. (However, I still don't understand my problem as I always though macbooks are all the same so they should work equally bad for everyone... But maybe people are just massively hypnotised...)
Thank you for providing a link to the survey. The survey was not on the main page; the link there merely led a page that blabbed all about how wonderful it was to have a survey, etc. but didn't point to THE ACTUAL SURVEY. Grrr! (Okay, now that I've said this, someone's going to point out some obvious link to the survey, but I had trouble getting to the survey.)
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
It seems after the microsoft deal that it turned into the plague that infects everything.
http://saveie6.com/
linuxfoundation.org appears to be a domain squatter site.
./? Hits on these types of sites just encourage domain squatting.
Whois shows:
Last Updated On:26-Oct-2007 19:57:38 UTC
Which is not the same day and month as the creation date, so I'm suspecting either someone has taken this domain over or it wasn't legit in the first place (I don't know as I don't think I've ever been there). Maybe check our links before we post them to the front page on
"And then I visited Wikipedia
I had a similar experience to this when I was at a birthday party for friend which was heavily attended by theatre people. I was surprised when one of the actors started talking about how happy they are now that they have moved over to linux, only to find out that at least one other person (in a group of 7) chimed in with "me too". So that was 2 running linux (ubuntu), 2 running XP, 2 running Vista and one person running a Mac. Both Vista users were complaining about how it came with their computer and that they were considering paying someone to put XP back on.
I just can't be bothered.
" I have boxen that run all three."
You maybe have three Linux boxen but by the very use of the word "boxen" you already showed you own no common sense so your opinion is moot and ignored.
but gets only 5.4% in this survey. I don't understand what's going on.
I just took this survey earlier today, and after looking at the results it is obvious that it is totally biased.
I'm writing from my phone so I won't go in-depth, but two things that bug me the most:
1: It looks like many home users took the survey, but are being categorized as SOHO's
2: At first it looks like the survey adress both desktop and server usage, but then the questions begin assuming repondent are using Linux on the desktop workstations. This isn't the case in my company, but he results to these questions are being used to show Linux desktop penetration.
I also responded to some questions thinking "servers only" but it end up being both servers and workstation. In an organisation with more employees than servers, all running Windows, this obviously change the result!
I'm not a Linux detractor, quite the opposite, but I'm being honest here. When you do surveys, please ask the right questions and make sure anyone responding to the survey won't bias it if the're not the targetted audience. To me this survey says almost nothing...
Feeding yourself doesn't count?
But does anyone else here see the irony of a Linux survey being hosted on an IIS server?
No single year will have credit because the change is happening slowly but surely.
Is Linux ready as a desktop? Hell yes.
Are all the 3rd party apps necessary for every customer available on Linux? Hell no!
Is that changing day by day, app by app? Yes.
It's only a matter of time. Standard consumer needs are already being met by desktop distrobutions. Before long the application base will increase and fringe cases will be covered. At that point, an OS will actually have to give you a reason (not "all the apps you want only run on our OS!") to spend money on it. Wouldn't that be nice - them having to earn their money.
4. Why not just refrain from installing antivirus, fire up wine and go shopping on some xxx/warez-pages with IE. Then afterwards admire your little virtual zoo in /home/username/.wine . Oh, and don't forget to rename your computer "Typhoid_Mary" and make the wine-folder available to teh internetz.
Medieval people thought of it first, lobbing a diseased cow over the wall. Only difference being our cow can be fired live and survive, though still killing the village, kinda like if it had BSE (or was it BSD?).....mmmmm.....ok scratch the cow, use a GNU or a penguin....can a gnu get BSE?......is BSD GNU?.....AHHHHH!
I wanna make a new distro now based on the above. It shouldn't be "Ubuntu : I am what I am because of what we all are", rather "Schadefreudex : I am what I am because of what everyone else is".
I used to care about stuff like this about 10 years ago when I was concerned whether or not this "linux thing" was going to last. I don't, anymore. Linux ain't goin' away. As a daily Linux user and abuser, this is the first time I heard about the poll, after 3 years of its existence and I still don't care.
That's a good thing.
--
BMO
I would be stuck on Windows if Ubuntu hadn't tempted me away (and I've worked for a Linux based company before). Would you prefer everyone stayed with Windows?
The commandline isn't about "hardcore" or "my dick is bigger" it is about efficiency. Likewise vim vs. notepad (or vi keybindings vs. mouse). Freshman and sophomores all want visual studio or eclipse. Juniors/Seniors/Grad.s start being more concerned with how fast they can work than how easy it is to work slowly.
I don't know, this box runs ubuntu and damn small linux and WinXP at the same time. Thank you VMWare!
Funny the web site carrying the survey forms seemed to be running MS Active $erver Page Framework
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Organization 1's IT staff must possess competency to run both Ubuntu and RHEL; Org 2 only needs to know Ubuntu; Org 3 only RHEL. The number of machines with each distro isn't awfully important unless it's a really huge entity, and they're able to confine the expertise to smaller teams (e.g. the server admins know RHEL but the Helldesk techs only know Ubuntu). The survey reflects this institutional investment.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
"The year of Linux on the desktop is never."
The parent poster is trolling, but he has a point...there are several factors that insure Linux will not be a dominant desktop anytime soon.
Ironically, some of those factors are the very reasons that Linux is so popular among computer rebels....the nearly unlimited choices they have. The problem is that one of those choices is the choice of GUI. Linux users will never agree on anything, much less unite on a single GUI to use. Until there is one kernel, one filesystem, one GUI on the majority of distros, most OEM's wont install Linux, and most commercial software companies won't write software for it either.
Companies (and people) like simplicity. Windows has a standard interface. OS X has a standard interface. Linux does not. We won't even get into the issues with GPL topics (and just as importantly, the demands by Linux users that all software be free as in beer; the successes here have been few on a large scale, and mostly with games by ID software).
Will more people be adopting Linux on the desktop? Yes. Will the general public in the US and Europe ever make Linux adoption as wide as say, the Mac? No. Linux on the desktop will largely stay in the realm of "power users" and academics.
I bet if you took a survey on Slashdot, you'd find far fewer Linux desktop users than you might think. Just about everyone runs Linux in the data center...but on the desktop?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Shouldn't that be Debian family? Knoppix is also a somewhat popular desktop (at least it was at some point), and it's not exactly ubuntu, so it's not just a purist's argument (at least that's my excuse).
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
When I got to the proprietary apps question I realized I don't really want to see any of those on Linux.
It was a realization that either Open Office and other Linux apps are already doing a good enough job for what I or my office would need, or I would rather those who do use those particular apps to convert their documents to support more open formats.
I did write in one though, Print Shop. Maybe KreetingKard Card will improve.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Although I'm sure everyone here doesn't need a link to remember the URL. . .
The link to the Linux Foundation in TFS is broken, it links to http://www.linuxfoundation.org/. A true slashdotter would know that it's http://www.linux-foundation.org/.
Some guy said that if you built a system idiots could use, only idiots would use it... I think it was Linus Torvalds...
Why on earth didn't you install Ubuntu on the MacBook if you were so fed up with OS/X
From my experience, OS/X is about the easiest OS to configure especially with 10.5 but hey, everyone is different ok.
As regards printers, I was a a customer the other day and had to print some stuff for him. I just pointed the MAc at the IP Address and OS/X discovered the priner, its type and setup the drivers. no reboots, manual configurations etc. It even told me that the tone was getting low. The customer (a windows shop) was most impressed.
Then I booted a Fedora 8 VM on the MAC and it found the printer and sorted out the driver. No reboots. Customer was even more impressed.
More and more people I know are switching from Windows to OS/X. Vista is more like a foggy day on the Dogger Bank compared to OS/X. Linux is getting there but it just needs a little more time.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
The right address for the foundation is http://www.linux-foundation.org/ Please correct. The other domain is the usual parked domain full of ads...
From https://www.linux-foundation.org/en/2007ClientSurveyResults (English results):
...
...
13. Which Windows applications would you like to see ported to a Linux environment to enable Linux desktop/client deployments? (Select all that apply)
Adobe Photoshop - 47.1%
Skype - 17.3%
Solitaire - 2.0%
Windows Media Player - 10.1%
Windows Movie Maker - 3.7%
Norton AntiVirus - 3.5%
McAfee VirusScan - 3.8%
14. Which best represents your plans for running or replacing Windows applications on a Linux desktop/client?
Use virtualization and run native Windows applications - 31.5% 2511
Use a compatibility layer (e.g. WINE) to run Windows applications on Linux - 31.5%
That's right! Emulate Windows and run Skype and Media Player! And don't forget Solitaire!
That is ok. We have thousands of distros, one of them can be exclusive for idiots.
But that doesn't really apply to Ubuntu. It is (yet) so customizable that non-idiots can use it too.
Rethinking email
and linux isnt "bloated". linux is the kernel. individual distros maybe considered "bloated" by people who want a stripped down single purpose box but there is absolutely NOTHING stopping these people from simply using a distro that exhibits that property.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
No. It was year 2007 when you first tried LSD. Then you had a fantasy about having a wife and women talking about women. Women talking linux is about as believable as a Slashdot reader being married.
Nice try.
maybe if Teh Lunis had bothered to take the time and code it right the first time around, he wouldn't have to keep updating it all the time.
Why rush to get Teh Lunix, since there is just going to be another version out in another three months? I'll hold off until it's ready for prime-time. And... seeing as how they are STILL chasing Windows 95's tail lights... it's going to be a loooooooong time.
There's no compelling reason to use Teh Lunix on Teh Desktop.
And one hundred minions testing for subtle and not so subtle bugs that arise on each of those compilations.
.rpm or .deb.
What are you talking about? It's not like compiling from source is some black art only known to gurus and initiates.
Using an ebuild that's been marked stable in portage is no more risky or unreliable than using an
*sigh* back to work...
Maybe it all depends on who is making up the survey.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Imagine my surprise when I visited the survey and could not see the selection boxes or radio buttons for answering the questions.
Oh, silly me, I have my browser set to "ignore colours specified on web pages"...
...because it is easier for me to read and I get fewer headaches, that's why.
Don't get me wrong: I run Linux on every machine I possibly can, and if I could completely dispense with Windows, I would. But the major "they/we still don't get it" feature of the FLOSS world is the (apparent) "our way or the highway" perspective when it comes to information presentation and UI design/layout.
It's like the bad old days of mackytacky just won't go away - remember when the first Macs came out, and soon everyone had these crazy resumes with 10 different fonts and 12 different point sizes, just 'cause they could?
FWIW, while it's getting better, IMHO MS and Apple and good web designers take usability preferences and accessibility concerns far more to heart, generally speaking, than FLOSS GUI and web designers.
I'm here EdgeKeep Inc.
Aggregate the languages to get the total number.
ROFL
Good one
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
Perhaps it is biased towards desktop Linux because well, it is a "Desktop Linux Survey," as it clearly says.
...Linux has to play the MS game.
.NET framework, or any other manner of invented-by-MS initiative, the result is that MS remains in control of the computing environment. If effort is made to entrench technology already embraced by MS, all the easier for MS to extend it. It is MS' goal to be able to say "sure we have no problem with Linux..in fact here is this SuSE one that we endorse so try it out", then once they've got something in place they can come in again and say "looks like Linux doesn't meet all your needs--try our Windows server with these new MS-only extensions!"
As has been noted the fact is Microsoft dominates the market and to not admit that and include interoperability is foolish.
Equally as foolish is to sacrifice standards to the dominant player. The risk with Novell's "deal with the devil" is that is could subjugate them to MS. If they roll over and accept MS' assertion that their patents are valid, or toil on projects to implement proprietary components of the
In short, cooperation has to be balanced with competition.
Without collaboration Linux would remain a niche market, but with Novell getting out there it's getting in the press and people are reading about this thing called Linux.
Novell has to go further than offer collaboration--they have to beat MS at its own game and offer something compelling to the PHB's of the corporate world that MS doesn't have (i.e. they must "out extend" Microsoft) or else their agreement with MS will do more harm than good. They have to be able to use whatever advantage they can within their agreement to compete agressively with Microsoft. I'd like to see them aggressively develop and market a "Reporting Services fro PostgreSQL" that would appeal to MS SQL Server users looking to upgrade, plus add useful "extended reporting features" to lock them out of MSRS. I'd like to see "the next Groupwise on Linux" and offer a migration path from Exchange that is as easy or easier than upgrading to newer Exchange and work better. Ideally I'd like it to all be Free software but I'd love to see this happen even if it wasn't.
Of course, all of this would depend on if they can find that useful hammer in the Toolbox MS has offered--if the agreement precludes them from doing this (or requires Novell to pay royalties so MS can benefit too much) then there is no hammer to nail MS with. Hope there is though, 'cause right now Novell doesn't offer anything markedly compelling to end users that Red Hat can't offer, except for anger and concern in the Linux world over these dealings with MS, which will contribute to further dwindling market share.
Why does it seem like everyone is so blind to this fact? Microsoft is violating anti-trust laws like crazy, their agreements with companies to force Vista down everyone's throat is appalling, just go to any common PC vendor and gaze in wonder at their similarity. If I read one more "We recommend Vista Crap Version" I'm going to puke. If true competition were actually allowed into the marketplace, all these companies would offer consumers the ability to save by either not having ANY OS installed, or by offering a free OS, and it would be RIGHT ALONGSIDE VISTA. I'm sick that Microsoft has pushed this on all these companies in return for these companies being *allowed* to sell their OS and allowed to keep their so-called "discounts" from Microsoft. Competition is broken, consumers are deprived and taken advantage of, and it's flat wrong. When are the courts going to step in and kick their ass for this behavior?
...and don't try to tell me customers wouldn't jump at the opportunity to save $50-150 by having a free OS that can do most everything they need, or that there is ANY reason whatsoever for them not to have a no OS option. If the market was fixed, MS would be in the dumps.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.