Slashdot Mirror
The Linux Counter Relaunches
psychonaut writes "Long-term readers of Slashdot may be familiar with The Linux Counter, which attempts to measure (through surveys and statistics) the number of people using GNU/Linux operating systems. The project started in 1993 and shot to fame six years later, largely as a result of three Slashdot articles (two of which brought the Counter to its knees). After four years of stagnation, project founder Harald Tveit Alvestrand has handed over the reins to a new maintainer, Alexander Mieland. Over the past few months, Mieland has completely redeveloped the project, with a modernized design and support facilities (including a bug tracker, mailing list, RSS feed, and Twitter account). The New Linux Counter is now up and running, with all the data for active users from the old counter. The old site will continue to operate for a time but will soon be shut down and requests redirected to the new site."
Maybe not such a great marketing move. I wonder how Microsoft would react to much higher than expected numbers of Linux boxes. In the distant past, Linux was waved off on the desktop side as a hobbyist or novelty platform...
It doesn't matter whether you look at the webstats from Net Applications. StatCounter, W3Schools, or any other reasonably credible, recognizable, source.
It doesn't matter if you look at the global numbers or a breakdown by region.
The numbers for the traditional community-oriented Linux desktop distribution are all eminently lousy.
If these were the trend lines for your grandmother in hospital, the doctors would be telling you it is time to let go.
The fundamentals never change.
Apple and Microsoft hit the ground running in the late seventies and early eighties.
Collectively, they have sixty years of experience serving the needs of the non-technical end user and a 99% share of the desktop by most measures.
Amazon.com alone returns 79,000 hits in a search for "Windows software." Gog.com is republishing for Win 7 every MS-DOS and PC game it can its hands on. 300 or so to date.
It is damn hard to compete with numbers like these ---
and it is time the geek learned that "Free as in Beer" is over-rated.
FOSS programs even remotely of interest to the masses are routinely ported to Windows or begin as native Windows apps.
To be perfectly blunt about this, the Linux repository has nothing in stock the typical Windows user doesn't already have or can find more easily elsewhere --- and he won't be moved by talk of ideological purity or political correctness.
It is not too much of a stretch to say that has become all but impossible to fund or staff development of a complex and truly compettive desktop application without the port to Windows.
97% of the funding for the Moz Foundation comes from the add-click. From its placement on the Windows desktop, for all practical purposes.