Headline FeedsLinuxInsider Talkback
|
|
Re: Lies, Damn Lies and Linux Market Share Statistics
Posted by: Katherine Noyes 2009-05-11 07:13:06
See Full Story
Market share, market share, what's Linux's true market share? That, in essence, has been the question du jour on the Linux blogs in recent days. It all started when NetApplications' hitslink.com released some statistics for April indicating that Linux just passed 1 percent for the first time. Around the same time, however, W3Counter published figures for the same month indicating that it had just passed 2 percent. Many FOSS aficionados, meanwhile, argue that it could be 6 percent or higher. The result? You guesstimated it: Nothing short of chaos and confusion.
This article reiterates what has already been said in years past. Microsoft has willingly and openly published reports of its findings, which are always skewed in its favor. Do your own research, look on Google and see what REAL users that are actually out there using the software say. My guess is that you will find the opposite of what Microsoft says. From our findings, a majority of the posts and information on the Internet is in support of Linux, over Windows. People that actually use Linux in most cases prefer it over Windows.
We published our own article on this subject, and with no surprise we support Linux as well.
http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux
We published our own article on this subject, and with no surprise we support Linux as well.
http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux
***
"Most consumer hardware in stores "simply will not work at all out of the box with Linux, and if you do manage to get it working after hours or even days of majorly complex CLI commands, it simply won't work half as good or have even half the functions that it would in Windows," hairyfeet added"
***
I doubt this has been true for many years. I have installed GNU/Linux on hundreds of machines and found very few devices with no driver in the Linux kernel, mostly non-essential things like wireless on boxes running on Ethernet. In fact, I have only seen one machine I could not convert to GNU/Linux fairly directly. I just handed 3 CDs of Debian Lenny to a student with utter confidence.
Unless retailers are going out of their way to find stuff that does not work with GNU/Linux, hardware is not an issue. There could be new-on-the-market devices out there but they are not motherboards/ethernet chips/video chips. The most common difficulty I have encountered with PCs is video which is solved 99% of the time by choosing VESA driver with which almost all monitors/video chipsets are compatible. Can you do that from the GUI? Perhaps not, but retail pushes mass-market stuff which includes widely used chips, nothing in the corners.
OTH:
Applications/Accessories/Terminal gets one to
sh-3.1$ su
Password:
nb:/home/pogson# gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
before:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "i810"
after:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "vesa"
# Driver "i810"
Rebooting will restart the display if the user does not know /etc/init.d/gdm restart.
That can be done from the GUI after all and it is no more difficult than writing a letter to Mom.
"Most consumer hardware in stores "simply will not work at all out of the box with Linux, and if you do manage to get it working after hours or even days of majorly complex CLI commands, it simply won't work half as good or have even half the functions that it would in Windows," hairyfeet added"
***
I doubt this has been true for many years. I have installed GNU/Linux on hundreds of machines and found very few devices with no driver in the Linux kernel, mostly non-essential things like wireless on boxes running on Ethernet. In fact, I have only seen one machine I could not convert to GNU/Linux fairly directly. I just handed 3 CDs of Debian Lenny to a student with utter confidence.
Unless retailers are going out of their way to find stuff that does not work with GNU/Linux, hardware is not an issue. There could be new-on-the-market devices out there but they are not motherboards/ethernet chips/video chips. The most common difficulty I have encountered with PCs is video which is solved 99% of the time by choosing VESA driver with which almost all monitors/video chipsets are compatible. Can you do that from the GUI? Perhaps not, but retail pushes mass-market stuff which includes widely used chips, nothing in the corners.
OTH:
Applications/Accessories/Terminal gets one to
sh-3.1$ su
Password:
nb:/home/pogson# gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
before:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "i810"
after:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Generic Video Card"
Driver "vesa"
# Driver "i810"
Rebooting will restart the display if the user does not know /etc/init.d/gdm restart.
That can be done from the GUI after all and it is no more difficult than writing a letter to Mom.
Many web sites record the OS of each visitor. Measuring the percentage of visitors to a large OS-neutral website who use Linux gives an estimate of the market share of Linux. I run a website and see about 2% of users using Linux, but my number of visitors is too small for this to be an accurate estimate of market share.
Only Google had the right stats on Linux
Posted by: krsaborio 2009-05-11 22:55:59 In reply to: Katherine Noyes
Google published from 2001 through 2004 statistics on operating systems used by Internet surfers to access the search engine.
The stats were published on Google Zeitgeist but for unknown reasons the data on operating systems was ceased to be published after late 2004.
Here are the stats I gathered from 2001 through 2004:
http://www.krsaborio.net/research/linux/usage_stats.htm
The stats were published on Google Zeitgeist but for unknown reasons the data on operating systems was ceased to be published after late 2004.
Here are the stats I gathered from 2001 through 2004:
http://www.krsaborio.net/research/linux/usage_stats.htm
