Linux Counts

[voidmain]

These guys must have been reading my arguments when some unixsux or xpluser bozo brings out "market share" numbers:

Full Newsforge article with good reader comments: Counting desktop Linux users is impossible

Snippet:
 

quote:
Thursday September 19, 2002 - [ 10:14 AM GMT ]    
Topic - Advocacy

- By Robin "Roblimo" Miller -
 IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky is one of the world's most quoted individuals when it comes to counting computer operating system use, especially Linux. But when you come right down to it, he's no more certain than anyone else just how many people use Linux as a desktop operating system.

Not long ago, Dan was quoted in an International Herald Tribune article as saying, "Linux had a 3.9 percent share of desktops worldwide, outpacing Macintosh's 3.1 percent." It turns out that this was a preliminary figure that didn't make it into the final IDC report on Linux use, and that after making some adjustments based on more research into Asian markets, Dan now believes the desktop Linux market share is more like 1.7%, which is still up significantly from last year's IDC count.

But

The big "but" is that, according to Dan, the 1.7% figure accounts for "paid shipments only," which Dan readily admits may only include a small fraction of all desktop Linux installations. To begin with, he says IDC's research shows that for every 10 copies of Linux sold, approximately eight copies are downloaded from the Internet for free, and that there may be something like 15 copies made, on average, from each downloaded or purchased copy. Not only that, Dan says he personally knows a corporate IT manager who made not just 10 or 20, but 6,000 (yes, that's six thousand) copies from a single set of downloaded Linux CDs. Dan doesn't know how many of those copies went on servers and how many went on desktop machines, but either way, it doesn't take many corporate IT people installing a few thousand homemade copies of their favorite Linux distro to throw all the numbers out of whack.

[pkd_lives]

Absolutly, you cannot trust statistics, they can only ever be a rough guide.

I myself have one purchased copy of Linux, two downloaded distros, and I am about to give out two copies of Red Hat and Two copies of Mandrake, that means that for one purchased copy of Linux there are 6 more that is downloaded and/or copied.

Now if this ratio followed through all over then you would end up with you're 1.7% being a stomping great 11.9% (theoretically beating Macs).

So in one simple piece of fudging the figures I have made Linux outuse Macs as a desktop O/S.  

[Calum]

aw, 86.2% of statistics are bullshit, 36% of people know that! (but only 4.3% of them are americans!    )

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
aw, 86.2% of statistics are bullshit, 36% of people know that! (but only 4.3% of them are americans!     )

Hey! I resemble that remark!  

[Master of Reality]

you can use statistics to prove anything, 44% of the American population knows that.