Report: Linux desktop market is only around 0.24 percent

[CommonSense]

According to some organization called WebSideStory, Linux has only 0.24 percent (i.e., less than 1 percent) of the desktop market.

And in a related story, XMLdatabases.org suggests that Mac OS X is the death of Linux on the desktop.

Your thoughts?

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by The Webmaster:
According to some organization called WebSideStory, Linux has only 0.24 percent (i.e., less than 1 percent) of the desktop market.

And in a related story, XMLdatabases.org suggests that Mac OS X is the death of Linux on the desktop.

Your thoughts?

Webmaster, are you trolling?          I suppose both things are possible but I doubt either article. I am curious where each article get's it's data.  When they say "Market Share" are they talking about product sold? Even though I would agree that the percentage of home systems is very low it's really hard to tell.

For instance, with Linux I download the install CDs one time, and I have 8 systems at home, and 40 at work loaded up with it (this is true) and I give copies of the CD to all my friends.  Are they counting how many times it was sold in a store, or downloaded? Neither is useful for stats. And if they are they have no way of knowing I burned a copy for all my friends to load from, and my 48 machines. With MS and MacOS you have a captive audience and they are required to purchase a license. And how many PCs preinstalled with Windows are walking out of Best Buy with WinXP and converted to Linux?  It's probably a low percentage but how would anyone know?

And as far as the websidestory.  I don't know how accurate this could be either.  They say they use "hitbox".  It's funny because Linux people are smart and know how to block these "hitbox" items. I block them in several ways.. I use squid proxy server with a filter both at home and at work. I block these sites at the firewall and create my own DNS zones for as many hitbox domains as I can, pointing to nowhere, so there's not much of a chance in being included in the marketing data. And if they were going to say they got their data from the Web Browser User Agent string, we all know how worthless that survey would have been.

Although I am interested in trying out and/or buying a Mac, I seriously doubt I will get rid of any of my Linux systems.  From what I've seen in the little bit I've used it, the *NIX side of the house is farther from the norm than I would like.  I hope the article is wrong and that it draws people mostly from Microsoft, those who were interested in trying UNIX but didn't want to take the Linux leap of faith, then once there they combine forces with all the existing *NIX people to help get some desktop competition out there for MS.

Of course, it is possible that I am an extreme example. There might also be more extreme examples than I, how is one to know?  It's hard to buy a machine without XP on it, I don't believe you can buy a Mac without an OS on it.  Pretty easy to count those as part of the market share but I wonder if they are taking them off the list whem people reformat and change OS?

[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[runkpock]

Only the few get to use the best. But really now,
does that mean I have to stop using linux for my
desktops? dammit. I'll tell my friends too, I think
they are using that OS too. I thought that linux
was just starting to make its way onto the desktop?
Give it time man. Now I wonder what the percentage
is for OpenBSD desktops? Now thats got to be worse,
no?

[gump420]

If anything, I would imagine that eventually Mac OS X will help to . . . wait for it . . . increase the number of desktop machines running Linux.

My reasoning is thus: unless Apple makes OS X cross-platform (something they used to hint at doing and have since been curiously silent about) their market is limited to people with Apple hardware. So, if you assume they're strategy doesn't radically change in the near future they will continue to bump along with a very small market share as the vast majority of computer users go for cheaper Intel-based systems.

Now, how this will help Linux is showing the UNIX world that it is possible to make a commercially viable UNIX-based operating system that can be administrated by a complete idiot. So, sooner or later, one of the Linux-based companies out there is going to catch on and create a viable competitor to Windows that is based on Linux.

With that goal in mind, it's also important to realize the other ways that Apple is showing the way, so to speak. Aqua (their GUI) has no basis whatsoever on XFree86, but there is an X-Windows server that runs on Aqua seamlessly, allowing the user to run Mac OS X and X-Windows apps side by side. The lesson here is that X-Windows is horribly complicated for the average idiot, so why not make that part transparent. It's important to keep it there for compatibility, but there's no reason to let it dominate the GUI experience and make it impossible for an idiot to use the OS. Now, combine this with Wine or WineX for Winblows compatibility . . . well, let's just wait and see how long it takes somebody to pull their head out of their ass and stop making overly-complicated Linux distros that aren't user-friendly in any sense whatsoever.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by gump420:
well, let's just wait and see how long it takes somebody to pull their head out of their ass and stop making overly-complicated Linux distros that aren't user-friendly in any sense whatsoever.

Gump, I'm convinced it's coming soon. I have seen exponential advances in recent times. I don't know if KDE or Gnome or something else is going to be the item that becomes the user friendly part of it but I just upgraded some of my machines to RedHat 7.2 and just last night I downloaded and upgraded KDE to v2.2.2 and it has come a long way in a short time. I'll admit there is a long way to go.  

KDE 3.0 is out in beta I believe and there are some nice screen shots of it on KDEs web site.  Doesn't look a lot different but I see some additional features that weren't there before. Maybe Apple should open up their source and let the Open Source guys make a killer Linux system, Apple might consider that too threatening...  Of course they used to like to use semi-oddball languages and constraints to write the OS and apps, I think now with the *NIX underbelly they've started down a better path..

[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Zombie9920:
Linux was never intended to be a desktop OS suited for the average consumer. IT was originally created for hacking, but soon after it was made people realized that it was also excellent for servers because of it's stability, speed and ability to run on a vlarge variety of system architectures(x86, RISC server CPUs, 64 bit CPUs, etc.).

Linux was not created for hacking, the kernel was Linus Torvalds college project which was the critical piece needed to create an entire *NIX like OS for PCs.  A lot of programmers with some time on their hands wanted a real *NIX OS that could run on cheap hardware and keep the source open for everyone's benefit. And because it is *NIX and open source, easily ported to any hardware architecture.

 

quote:
Linux will never overtake Microsoft's desktop monopoly. However it will probably always be strong in the server market.

I will never say never. (:  If any *NIX vendor goes out of business, or any Linux distro fades away, who cares?  I can still work.  If MS goes out of business, there will be a lot of MCSEs working at Micky D's.  And Linux will *never* (I said I would never use that word) go out of business because it isn't a business.  I really wasn't all that happy the day RedHat IPOed. It made me feel cheap and dirty using their distro after that, sort of like MS.  I almost switched distros at that point but I have to admit they've done a pretty good job and didn't screw up the open source part of it, yet (always leary of "corporate" strategies).

But don't worry gump, I won't take any of those stars away from you. (:

[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Zombie9920:
Thats awful funny. Why was Linux originally called the OS for hackers made by a hacker if it wasn't created for hacking? Linus wrote Linux so he could easily hack banks and shit.

I am a freakin' moron! You were refering to "hacker" as a programmer (usually self taught) rather than a "hacker" that breaks into systems and networks, I read it wrong and take it back.  You are both right (egg on face).  I guess I deal so much with the latter type of hackers that it slipped right by.  I too was one of the former type (before being paid to do it, then I suppose the term hacker stopped for me).

And this link is a pretty good read.  Short, fairly accurate, and amusing:
http://ragib.hypermart.net/linux/

[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[saquarrier]

I think that if the adverage joe having never previosly looked at a computer running themed KDE/GNOME and a computer running WIN he would choose the one running KDE/GNOME for pure eye candy.  Microsoft has always marked their software on skin deep things like eye candy and now they no longer have that feature.  XP is ugly too regardless of what they would like you to think.