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The Problem With Estimating Linux Desktop Market Share
jammag writes "It's long been one of those exceptionally hard-to-quantify numbers: exactly what percentage of the desktop PC market is held by Linux? Doubters suggest it hovers around a negligible one percent, while partisans suggest it's in excess of 10 percent. Bruce Byfield explores the various sources of estimates, dismissers' and fan boys' alike, and guesstimates it might realistically be 5-6%. Still, he admits, 'the objectivity of numbers is often just a myth.'"
Can't wait until Wolfram Alpha goes online. This question will finally be answered once and for all.
Estimates are already a form of guessing. The word 'guesstimate' make me want to puke blood.
When I was in school, I was taught that an estimate was the same as rounding (As opposed to an "educated guess").
Now, every time I hear the word estimate, I assume that the number started from some actual data, rather than from someone's rectum.
The main problem with linux desktop usage is that all the games are made for Windows (some of them also work on Macs). I for one cant change to use linux as desktop, even if I want to and use it as server, because I like to play the games aswell (no, the freeware games on linux dont count for obvious reasons).
Problem is that game developers neither want to develop games for linux because it doesnt have enough users, and hence it goes round and round.
So the question is, how could we get the gaming market to linux aswell?
Go out on the street. Talk to about 1000 people. Ask them what operating system they have on their home computer.
My prediction on the results
Huh?: 45%
Windows: 25%
No Computer: 20%
Mac: 8%
Linux: 2%
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
It's just tipped above 1% for consumer systems that are used for internet usage. http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16860
Munging together servers and clients is a pointless benchmark. Linux could have 30% of the server ecosystem, but that would make a 0.001% indent on client share.
Regardless, 1.02% is a far cry from 5 or 6 percent, never mind 10%. Who would even say that a Linux machine makes up 1 in 10 machines on the web, haven't they seen all the Windows machines, all the business machines, etc?
It's the analysts who are (probably) underestimating Linux. You can be absolutely certain that both MSFT and AAPL are very aware of their competition. They'll both have labs full of Linux installs (plus OSX and Windows respectively) where they examine what new things are added, old things removed, what's fixed and what's left broken. These are companies with billion dollar budgets. Spending maybe a million (20 staff plus a big office) to research your competition is obvious.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Exactly. If I see someone I can estimate their height and weight. If all I know is your name, all I can do is guess based on sex, nationality, averages, etc.
There are many Linux games. The Unreal tournament series for one, the quake series, Enemy Territory, etc. There are some solid full featured free games but I would have to say that frozen bubble isn't a game for obvious reasons as it is just an incomplete toy demo of some 3d graphics.
One has to ask why there are no games? Would you as a developer not want to target potentially 30-50 million world-wide users?
There are a couple of reasons for this.
1) Commercial developers don't understand the license--GPL and others.
2) Microsoft created a series of "lock in" technologies. Sort of like what we went through with the OOXML/DOC thing. For nearly a decade the government and large entities public and private required that you submit your electronic files in .doc (or some other office format). This meant that say, when the court system wanted you to submit pleadings you had to submit them in .doc and that meant that you the attorney and everyone in your office had to use a proprietary tool.
See the lock in? Well, Directx is the same way. Developers create based on Directx even though there's a near feature complete comparative technology in OpenGL. If developers developed for OpenGL then they'd have a basis for cross-platform gaming development. Some do, such as the guys that do the Unreal Tournament series. They know the value of it. Some day we may see that users are using Linux for their day in and day out tasks and switching to windows for gaming. You'll dual boot into windows like you would start up your console just so you can play the game, then you'll go back to Linux to do everything else.
This puts us in a position of the chicken or the egg. Wait for a market to grow to justify mutliple APIs for gaming development from the standpoint of the gaming industry leaders or develop and hope you can build a gaming following.
Yes, many of my friends have said that they play games and that's the number one reason. They won't commit to Linux unless they can game on it and it looks as good as it does under Directx.
I personally loose site of the quality of the graphics and tend to focus on game play after the initial WOW when I first begin a game. It doesn't mean I loose track completely but my focus is on playing and not so much on the beauty of the surroundings.
I have played some with wine and gaming and though it can work often times it has 2 failings. The first is that the games just don't look the same as they do under windows and aren't good performers. The second is that they can be problematic to get up and running. This isn't to say that all are this way. A popular game called Guild Wars is totally windows, but runs flawlessly under Wine.
I've taken and connected one of my Linux computers to a 47" TV going from DVI to HDMI. The resolution is 1920x1080 and looks utterly awesome as a desktop. I installed wine and then Guild Wars. After a few settings adjustments it looks just as good under Linux as under Windows and it is an incredibly beautiful on that 47" TV.
This is a tough battle to win. Only through gaining market share with Linux can we get gaming going. That's tough when dealing with a criminally convicted predatory monopolist such as Microsoft.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I run a couple of sites that probably cover both extremes in terms of Linux desktop market share. The stats are as follows:
Site 1: A local community site based in the UK; so the profile here is 'UK home user' (I find similar figures for other UK home focused sites I manage).
Windows 92%
Mac 6%
Linux 1.5%
Site 2: A site for an open source business application; the profile is therefore 'global IT worker / developer'. The picture is very different.
Windows 60%
Mac 30%
Linux 9%
The actual figure is between 1.5% and 9% then, depending on the ratio between home/office workers. As I imagine there are more home desktops than work desktops, my leaning would be towards the lower end of the scale.
3% to 5% seems like a reasonable estimate.
Dan
The number is somewhere between 0 and 100%
This being the internet, I look forward to somebody disagreeing with me.
I prefer the term "swag". Scientific Wild Ass Guess.
Unfortunately this will be buried in the mass of posts, but I'll go anyway.
:). And we *are* desperate for good native games.
If a game developer releases his game for Mac and Linux as well, maybe that's 10% market share but it's not the same market share! It's really disappointing to see this fact so often overlooked. Because not all users are the same. Mac and Linux users are DYING to play games. Meaning that a lower market share could still have higher game adoption.
For instance, take MMOs. There are no decent MMOs running Linux natively. As a former Ultima Online player now reconverted into a Free Software enthusiast, I would love a good MMO to play. But I will not use Windows.
The market for MMOs is *saturated*. If you publish yet-another-MMO, whether it's for a niche market of players (hardcore MMOs such as DarkFall of Mortal Online which I would love to play) or another WoW theme-park-MMO clone, you still have to convince Windows players to buy your game and pay the monthly fees. The Linux desktop usage may be lower, there is NO competition for MMOs. Meaning all suckers for MMOs like me would play if the game is any good.
In fact this applies to most games because the market is saturated. It is better summed up by the Lugaru game developers.
IMO, game developers are only missing opportunities. Once they release for Linux and Mac, desktop usage will raise and more people will favor their games over their Windows-only competitors.
Last argument is that "Linux users only want free". This is wrong. Windows users are a lot more about cracking and pirating. If Linux users see something of value, they will no doubt buy it to encourage companies to continue. Most Free Software enthusiasts have no problem with proprietary games because it can be considered a piece of art rather than a piece of software. At least art resources (graphics, music) need not be free, even RMS says so
So (to game developers), stop depending on DirectX! Use abstraction layers between DirectX and OpenGL. UnrealEngine 3 works with both, and considering how advanced it is, I don't want to hear shit about how OpenGL is not as good. It will only get worse if game developers let it die. And release NATIVE support for Ubuntu and Fedora. The community will make sure it works on other distributions.
Wikipedia is only an estimate of the real definition of the word.
"But this one goes to 11!"