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Linux Software

Market Share Reports On Linux 204

Posted by Hemos from the big-numbers-good dept.
spizkapa writes: "IDC has predicted that Linux will grow steadily along with Microsoft in the near future in the home PC (client) market, as well as including numbers that prove Linux's acceptance rate is fantastic. " The numbers look nice, especially in the server area, but it's too bad that things weren't broken down more. I'm also wondering where *BSD fits in -- I assume under UNIX, but it's unfortunate that they weren't broken out separately.
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Market Share Reports on Linux More

Market Share Reports on Linux

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  • Linux is the first Web server OS (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    According to the netcraft survey [netcraft.com], Linux is the most popular Web server OS for both all and the active sites. I think thats a more reliable server survey than the OS shipments. These numbers are impressive given the fact that the boost of Linux is recent and the numbers are total (not just rates).

  • I'm sure there are lots of people who have installed 30 copies of Windows without ever buying a single copy, too...


    --
    My name is Sue,
    How do you do?
    Now you gonna die!
  • It does feel good seeing MS Office premium locked in a plastic box at best buy with a $799 pricetag on it, knowing you only paid $20
    Actually, you're paying the balance in your tuition -- your university is cutting into its budget in order to give you cheap Windows and to deliver market-share to Microsoft. (At a state university, actually, you and your fellow citizens are paying the balance through higher taxes.)

    In short, Microsoft has conned your university administration (or your state's taxpayers) into paying a "Windows Tax" on all students, regardless of whether they actually use Windows or not.

  • <blockquote><em>Since the GPL is freely transferable, am I the only one who doesn't think that license shipments have anything to do with Linux growth or sales?</em></blockquote>Exactly. If they count as a measure of installed base the number of people who are licensed to install Windows on their computers, then it seems only reasonable that they should count the number of people who are licensed to install Linux or BSD. Last I heard, that number stood at six billion and rising ....
  • ometimes I think that there should be an anonymous counting mechanism included with the distributions.

    Slackware used to do something very similar to this--after you installed it, root would have a letter in her mailbox from the Linux Counter, telling you how to be added to the Linux counter.

    In fact, the most tangible proof that I have been using Linux since 1995 is my counter number and registration.

    - Sam

  • No one will ever get an accurate count or prediction - which drives business types crazy. Everyone has their own ideas, but since most distributions are purchased and installed on many computers per disk (numbers which aren't reported to anyone), downloaded and copied to media for cheap resale ala Cheapbytes, and just plain downloaded there's no way to make a comparison based on recorded sales and revenue. Revenue will always lag way behind Windows because of the outrageous pricing and licensing Windows has. Lets see - $1.99 for a Cheapbytes disk vs $92 OEM for Win98 (much more retail) - a graph like that would make Windows look like it's wildly more successfull than Linux when viewed by the uneducated. Labs will typically get one Linux disk (like the one I'm providing for the local HighSchool labs) and stick it on dozens of computers. There's no effective way to provide exhaustive accounting on that. And there are those few crazies that role their own. And lets not forget those that don't feel compelled to upgrade with every kernel release. Linux is friendly that way - many systems have kernel 2.0 and are still kicking with no reason to upgrade. Windows practically forces you to upgrade. How many 3.11 systems are still hanging around? Or NT 3.5? Anyone trying to get a grasp on the numbers of Linux installations will fail miserably, which is kind-of a shame - since much of the cool software we'd like to have like Quicken or Quickbooks are written by people who haven't a clue when it comes to trends and only read the numbers on the stats. Oh well, better will come around and when these guys pull their heads out they'll be too late and quickly out of business...
  • They also can't seem to quite get rid of Sun or some of their software competitors like Lotus, Borland/Inprise, and Oracle.

    now that's an understatement if I ever saw one. can't "seem to quite get rid of" Sun, Lotus, Borland and Oracle? Sun's business is booming, Lotus is part of IBM, and Oracle is now *bigger* than Microsoft. I don't see MS getting anywhere near "getting rid" of these companies.

  • No, businesses make decisions with money. Assessing the financial strength of different players also uses money. This is measuring percentage of server license sales.
    and basing a buying decision primarily on the financial strength of the different vendors doesn't seem like a good idea to me. sure, you want something that is supported, maintained, and will continue to be so in the future. but that is not the difficult part: Linux, Windows, Solaris and several others all fulfill these requirements. so it's more than worth considering other aspects too.
    Who cares how many servers are deployed? It is irrelevant to EVERYONE. Your decision to use an OS should be completely independent of what other people are doing, right?
    How many servers are deployed translates DIRECTLY into how easy it will be to find staff to run said servers, programmers who know the systems, and already-made (free or proprietary) commercial that runs on them. pretty important if you ask me.
    Money, however, matters. It makes a lot of BIG differences. If I am a interested in the revenue model of a OS, then the money does matter.
    unless you are 1) planning to sell the OS, or 2) concerned that it will disappear or go unmaintained (and no, none of Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Solaris, or AIX will), I don't see much of a reason to care about the revenue model of an OS.
  • does that mean that those of us who download Linux (and the license) are excluded from their cacluation?

    Yes, it does.
    I've been wanting to see, somewhere, a good estimate of how many actual users of Linux, *BSD, *nix, Windows, MacOS, etc. there are.
    I figure Linux users must have passed the number of MacOS users by now, for example, considering that probably at least "more than half" of Linux installations weren't "shipped" as Linux machines, but as either Windows machines or assembled from parts (as every one of the Linux boxes I've built are) and therefore CAN'T be included as "shipments" or in "revenue".

    Hey, now there's a new poll topic for Slashdot:

    How many installations of Linux, on average, do you get out of one Linux CD?

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3-5
    • 5-10
    • 11-25
    • 26-50
    • Too many to count
    • Hey, what about BSD?
    • I have cable/DSL, so I just download a new one every time
    • Duh....
    Hey, just a thought....
    Joe Sixpack is dead!
  • Black Parrot wrote:
    See Netcraft's analysis of OS market shares in their July 2000 survey [netcraft.com].

    In short, and using the     conservative numbers:
    Linux : 29.99%
    Windows (all types) : 28.32%
    Solaris : 16.33%
    Other : 23.59%
    Unknown : 1.76%


    When you say "conservative", you mean counting active sites as opposed to all sites?
  • but very few people who have used both actually think Linux is better or even close to being equal to Win2K.

    Who are the people who have actually used both that think Linux isn't better than W2K? Nobody I know. Half the people I know who have tried W2K have 'downgraded' their Windows partitions to 98 or NT 4. At work we are greatly increasing the number and importance of Linux machines, while W2K isn't being used for any development use or any production servers. Price is the least important reason to choose Linux. On careful consideration (that's right, Linux use isn't a whim), it is winning in our environment because it works better and gives us more control over our future.

  • but the same was true of the Ford Pinto and the Dodge Caravan

    Are you sure about that? Other than Iacocca, what major Ford people went to Dodge?

    And everyone knows that the Dodge Caravan was in fact directly based on the K-cars (like the Plymouth Reliant). The K-cars in turn were loosely based on a stretched Omni/Horizon.

    While you are right about NT not being based on VMS, that is probably a bad thing, not a good thing. VMS, as much as I never liked it, was a fairly reliable and stable performer. Its also not really fair to say that NT is directly an OS/2 derivative. It is more a reimplementation of the ideas in MicroVMS for the x86 with some influence from OS/2 and MS-DOS and the Windows GUI pasted on top. In fact, I think NT would have been a much better product had it been allowed to have grown its own UIs, as the Windows GUI is severely plagued with limitations based on its single-user limited tasking background, and the MS-DOS-like command line of NT is horribly archaic.

  • That suggests that Linux is now shipping more units for use as desktops than for servers.

    That very well could be. Where I work we have recently installed Linux machines on the desktop of everyone in the development department and most of the people in the systems group. Linux on the desktop does outnumber the number of Linux servers we have now, by probably nearly two to one.

  • O.K., if a significant number of Linux web servers are not running Apache, it means the total number of Linux web servers is even larger, and thus the total number of Linux boxes is higher...

    That isn't a catch to the theory, it only reinforces it.

  • I don't see MS getting anywhere near "getting rid" of these companies.

    I can't see that either, but that is exactly what the Microsoft partisans would like to have you believe they are going to do.

    I think that Linux and the *BSDs are if anything a tougher problem for Microsoft than commercial companies.

  • but you can not say they got where they are today by playing fair.

    I'd be one of the last people on earth to ever suggest that... I just don't think the same tactics that are effective against a strictly commercial competitor like Apple or Novel will fit with Linux or the *BSDs. There are too many 'Linuxes' and *BSDs. They can't buy them all. If they focus on one, another will spring up. They can't afford to go all out against Linux and *BSD because if they do, their commercial competitors will jump in there and start giving them troubles on that front. They can't compete with Linux or *BSD on price, because even they can't afford to give away product forever. In fact they've been raising prices lately, because they are commercial and have to show $ in revenue. They can rely on massive advertising as they have been, but they run the risk of validating Linux in many people's minds if they mention it too much as a competitor.

    I just don't see how Microsoft is going to have success on their terms (in order for them to win, they have to control everything) given the current and future direction of the world.

  • Actually the past couple of years, the NT market share has been basically flat, while Linux has been growing rapidly. While not great news if you are Novell or a proprietary UNIX vendor, the fact that UNIX and Netware userbases aren't shrinking in a market where they are severely challenged by both NT/2000 and Linux is not really bad news for them either. Many people have been and are continuing to predict the imminant collapse of Netware and proprietary UNIX and a mass exodus of those customers to NT/2000, and so far it looks like they are wrong.

    Its also worth noting that in terms of mindshare and cooperativeness (common application software, for example), success of Linux is much more damaging to NT/2000 and Netware than it is to proprietary UNIX.

  • Unless you make a whole lot more than most of us around here (and many of us aren't that poorly paid mind you), then $250 (what you would have to pay for your OEM Windows 2000 plus either a motherboard/processor or a hard drive) is a lot more expensive than three hours worth of work. That figures out to about $83 an hour, which would be the equivalent of over $150,000 a year). Not to mention that it doesn't take zero time to install Windows 2000 either.

    Windows 2000 just doesn't have much value proposition that I can see.

  • Hah. People are choosing Linux because they are fleeing away from Microsoft. Not very many will be going back. Not to say that Linux may not lose some of those people, but if it does, chances are that *BSD, MacOS X or BeOS may be as likely a choices.

  • You have a very narrow viewpoint.

    I am not swayed by bells and whistles, so perhaps my viewpoint is narrow. I'd prefer to consider it focused.

    O.K., let's take these one at a time.

    MS Office. Not compelling. I prefer WordPerfect or StarOffice in many ways, and either is good enough that MS Office is not really compelling at all. If it weren't for proprietary file format lock-in, MS Office wouldn't have nearly such a lockhold on the market.

    AutoCAD. Its of a very limited market, and its gone downhill since R12 (which I worked with extensively). If it weren't for Microsoft's hard-core pressure on Intergraph not to market MicroStation for Linux, I'd say that it would certainly be a better choice for CAD these days. All in all, AutoCAD is hardly what I'd consider a relavent reason for most desktop users to consider Windows more compelling than Linux.

    Internet Explorer? Eh? No thanks. Even when I am subjected to using Windows I prefer Navigator. I can't see anything about IE that is compelling, its just a browser.

  • That is a different argument. Its not that the applications you mention are really better, which compells people to use Windows. It is that people are being forced to use Windows whether they like it or not due to proprietary file format lock-in.

    Frankly, I haven't been sent a .doc or .xls file in recent memory that Word Perfect or Star Office wouldn't open just fine.

  • .Net is a risky strategy for Microsoft in some ways. Too many parts of it will be easy for other people to clone. If Microsoft wants .Net to be widely adopted as a standard they will have to be loose enough in their control that it may not be possible for them to prevent .Net from getting away from them. This will be especially hard for them since they've been so hard on Sun for trying to use too heavy a hand in controlling the future of Java.

    I'm sure that they will try sneaky ways to proprietarize things, but they haven't had much luck so far in hijacking the core protocols and standards of the Internet, despite their efforts since 1995 towards that goal.

    As for your complaints about 'web stuff' and Macs, I don't know quite what you are talking about as far as 'most interesting' stuff not running on a Mac. I don't know if you are talking browser or server side. I also don't know what you consider interesting...

  • IDC reporting Linux numbers that look positive doesn't mean they aren't biased towards Windows. It might mean that they are either trying to look impartial. It might mean that the numbers are strong enough that they couldn't figure out a way to fudge things enough to make things look favorable for Microsoft. IDC definitely has more of a monetary interest in being biased towards Microsoft. Look at the advertising dollars they receive from Microsoft or from companies advertising products for Microsoft's platform versus anything else. Given that, it would be hard for IDC not to be biased towards Microsoft.

    And as for Microsoft being the most heavily pirated, that means little, since Microsoft and companies like IDC only care about paid copies.

    And their Linux numbers are only what the commercial distros are selling (Red Hat, SuSE, McMillan/Mandrake, Turbo, Caldera, Corel, etc). It doesn't count downloads, it doesn't count the number of legal CDR copies people make amongst themselves, and it doesn't count the bizillions of free Linux CDs bundled on the back of books and magazines.

  • The combination of Linux and *BSD is a much tougher problem for Microsoft than either alone.

    Yes, because even if they can manage to figure out a way to kill one (like to hire up or otherwise eliminate all of the core developers), the other will be there to pick up the peices and be ready to soldier on. Once again this proves that diversity and choice is a good thing.

    It seems like there is a steadily increasing amount of support for Linux from the big guns, mostly quiet but persistent and relentless.

    I would agree. Rather that slowly subsiding as the initial press explosion has started to wear off, the buzz over Linux in the industry appears to still be growing. When Linux first started to get attention from the media, many Microsoft fans opined that it would be just a temporary flash-in-the pan. That appears to be proving to not be the case. It looks like Linux and the *BSDs are going to be an increasing factor over the next few years.

    Does anyone else think that Microsoft's .net is a farce?

    I don't think its a farce. It is of course mostly smoke and mirrors at this point. It is also not the be-all-end-all that they would have people believe. It is also a very risky strategy for them because it will be difficult for them to control with an iron grasp and yet make it be able to deliver on its promises and become popular.

  • Your signature brings up an interesting point... I have seen a lot of Microsoft fans saying that once Microsoft gets clear of their troubles with the DOJ and the EU that they will start attacking Linux and the *BSDs with full force. However, Microsoft, despite their best efforts, has been unable to completely kill off the Mac or Netware, both of which many people have considered to be very vulnerable for years. They also can't seem to quite get rid of Sun or some of their software competitors like Lotus, Borland/Inprise, and Oracle. It seems likely that Microsoft knows better how to compete with commercial companies than with something like Linux or the *BSDs which are largely grassroots movements. How are they going to squash Linux or the *BSDs?? Now tell me how they are going to do that and not get themselves back into anti-trust trouble? How are they going to use such strong arm tactics without further lining up more people and companies against them?

  • Frankly, I can't think of any desktop applications that Windows or MacOS have that make them any more compelling than Linux. While they may have more applications, and maybe even fancier applications, that isn't enough to make them compelling to me.

  • I'm also wondering where *BSD fits in -- I assume under UNIX, but it's unfortunate that they weren't broken out separately.

    Remember, the core of Mac OS X is BSD running on top of Mach. Within a year or two, it'll probably have more installed seats than all of the other *BSD distributions combined.

    -jon

  • Do those [$2 cds] count?

    Probably not. It'd be in the noise level anyway. My guess is that they're looking at numbers reported by the major shrink-wrapped distros, and big hardware manufacturer pre-loads. (How else to separate out client vs server for Linux?)

    There's probably also some double-counting -- hardware that came with Windows preloaded that is promptly scrubbed and reinstalled with Linux. (I find the reverse very hard to imagine.) On the other hand a shop that does that with multiple machines may only have paid for one Linux shrink-wrap box. It'll show up in these stats as a multiple Windows order. (Fortunately the "mandatory Windows preload" is becoming a thing of the past as more manufacturers are making Linux preloads or no-OS systems available.)
  • You display your ignorance.

    Linux won't run an IBM S/390.

    Yes it will. The IBM port will run both under VM and natively, as well as in a partition.(*)

    can be plugged in as a process.

    If you think this is how VM works, you clearly don't have a clue about VM, either.

    (*) quoted from IBM's web site (http://www.s390.ibm.com/linux/facts.html [ibm.com] ):


    Three ways to run Linux for S/390

    Native -- Linux can run on the entire machine, with no other operating system.[Emphasis added]

    In a logical partition (LPAR) -- The S/390 hardware can be logically partitioned into a maximum of 15 separate LPARs. A single S/390, for example, can host OS/390 applications in one partition, VM and VSE applications in others, and Linux applications in additional partitions.

    VM/ESA Guest Support -- A customer can also run Linux as a virtual machine using VM/ESA. VM provides virtualization of CPU processors, I/O subsystems and memory. A customer running VM can have hundreds of Linux systems running on a single S/390. With VM, for instance, a customer can offer a complete Linux server environment to each of their application developers and host production systems all on the same S/390.

  • The reality is: Linux geeks bash Windoz...But can't live without Windoz, so, most must dual boot.

    I haven't booted into windows since 1998. I finally deleted it last summer since it was taking up space. My computer is 100% Microsoft free. Not that I'm a Linux fanatic by any means. I've played with Solaris, BeOS and FreeBSD. My primary OS is now Slackware and I keep FreeBSD around.

    I have never purchased a MS operating system (preinstalled or otherwise). I *have* purchased DR DOS and OS/2, and of course Slackware and FreeBSD. In fact, now that I think about it, the only thing I have ever purchased from MS was Flight Simulator 1.0.
  • Well, there's your problem. You don't need to recompile a kernel to use a printer! Next thing you know you'll be saying that freeways aren't ready for cars because you got a flat tire on your bicycle...
  • You did not need an OS to run FS1.0. You stuck the floppy in the drive and booted off of it. But who cares. I was running PC-DOS, which even though created by MS, was purchased from IBM with no royalties to MS.
  • Parallel ports are compiled in to every default kernel I have ever seen. Of course, I don't use Redhat. Perhaps they don't consider that their users will have printers by default.
  • > When you say "conservative", you mean counting active sites as opposed to all sites?

    Yes. They give a "raw" count that shows Linux at 36% or so, and then the adjusted count that I quoted. I called it "conservative" because it is a lower estimate of Linux's deployment.

    --
  • > The analysts are paid to write reports showing the growth and projected growth of various industry segments.

    There's a joke going round that says IDC always "predicts" what actually happened last year. (Kind of like the astrologers in sci.sceptic who are always "predicting" last week's stock market.)

    That often seems to be the case with their Linux analyses.

    --
  • > Good News for Linux does not necessarily equal Bad News for Microsoft.

    In terms of market growth, it really is bad news for MS.

    Microsoft isn't about software, and may not even be about selling software. I think MS is primarily about MSFT shares.

    That means they need lots of good news about growth, in quarterly installments. If someone else is growing as fast as you are, that's a lot of turf you're not able to grow into.

    It wouldn't be so bad if Linux were a static player that MS(FT) could slowly erode for its own growth, but unless MS can find a way to actually cut in on Linux' turf rather than competing with it for "unclaimed" territory, then good news for Linux is bad news for MS(FT) indeed.

    --
  • Who cares how many servers are deployed? It is irrelevant to EVERYONE. Your decision to use an OS should be completely independent of what other people are doing, right?

    Idealisticly, yes. Realisticly, NO.

    If I use an OS (or any product) which is commonly used then I will have a better chance of knowing that it will be supported by more vendors, more developers will make programs for it, and there will be a support community for it in the future.

    Knowing the usage statistics for a platoform are important in that they allow you to know "if I go with product X, will I be stranded and forced to migrate in 3 years? or will there be a growing community developing and advancing the product?"
  • hehe, today I got to look at a certain companies web statistics for overall usage of the Internet.

    Slashdot was ranked around 2,000th. They also had an average "stickiness", which many of us know is actually much closer to "tar pitness".

    So I'm thinkin, o.k., their methodology is a bit whacked and maybe the type of people who frequent /. aren't exactly the kind who wish all their surfing habits tracked and profiled.

    Then I read more and come to understand that thier statistics are based on home usage of Windows 95/98/NT. Most likely having to do with compatibility issues...

    Anyway, polls and statistics are just that, and are much better at showing trends than actual reality. Linux is on the uptake, on nearly every level of computing. Which is good news for some people, including those under the eye of the DOJ and EU-DOJ equivalent.

    --
  • yea, I'm feelin' good too, Phil Linngood.

    'twas a good try though. You got food.

    --
  • Redhat 6.2: Plug in the device. Reboot. Windows 98: Put the driver disk in. Click install. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98. Download newer driver from net. Unpack. Click install. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98. Search technet. Yes you've plugged in the powercord. Install driver through different point'n'click place. Reboot. Reinstall hosed '98... etc.
  • They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.

    The full, $$$$$$ versions of these reports generally notes the difficulty in measuring the usage of any OS, especially Linux. While IDC and other analysts get paid for making intelligent guesses, any "estimate" of Linux usage would be a SAG, so they use the numbers which are solid - shipments - to base their projections from. As others have mentioned, the fact that shipments of an OS which can be freely (and legally) shared are outpacing shipments of every server OS not originating in Redmond is impressive, and leads to the implication that it may be legally installed on more servers.
  • "Apple continues to hold about %30 of the installed base of computers" You had me believing you till that little stat....

    Okay, it's probably not 30% (I'm guessing), but the installed base percentage is certainly much higher than the market share would indicate. Historically, Mac users have kept machines much longer than wintel users. The painful irony of this is that while Apple engineered all this long-term value into the Mac, it didn't make a dime on its customers during that time, and analysts really came down on the compant for that. However, this long-term value is part of the reason people are so loyal to Apple and the Mac.

    - Scott

    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • However, Apple's entire design philosophy rides on the end users not needing to ever know what kind of engine is up there in front. I think the BSD/MacOS-10 hype is way overblown.

    Somebody probably said something similar about Visual Basic once.

    How the technology gets out there is not important. Look at the big picture. If there are a million new units shipped in one quarter with a BSD-based OS preinstalled, that's a huge win for everyone except Microsoft.

    - Scott

    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • OS X is Rhapsody, albeit a lot later and a lot different than originally promised.

    Actually, almost exactly what was promised for Rhapsody has existed for some time in Mac OS X server -- and from what I understand, Mr. Amelio was going to bet the company on it.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Since Dell actually charges more for a Linux pre-installed machine then a windows one I don't think that would be such a good measure. Maybe getting shipment numbers from VA or Penguin.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • They seem to be getting more aggressive though. Office will soon require registration before it functions and I doubt the servers are far behind. It remains to be seen weather such agressive tactics will lead to defections to Star Office. One can only hope.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • I very seriously doubt this. Almost every computer sold today comes with windows pre-installed. There may be a few (1-2%) of people building their own systems and pirating windows but it's a miniscule amount. More likely though is somebody buying a 5 CAL NT and putting 25 people on it. Until the MS stormtroopers find out they get to use NT for free . Once the Piracy squad shows up then they have to pay up but it's still cheaper not to pay for it until you have to.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • What is this other at 23%. I would guess that it's mostly *BSD. I doubt there are that many macs, amigas, as/400, be, OS/2 web sites out there (did I miss someone?).

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • Maybe it's time to sell that stock. By keeping the stock you are helping to perpetuate the monopoly. If enough people sold their MSFT stock it would drive the stock down and take away an important revenue stream for MS. Besides your conscience would be clearer and there would be one less smudge on your Karma. Why not invest in a nice ethical company I am sure there must a one or two out there someplace. I remember you posting about how much money you made from the redhat and VA ipos so obiously you are not hard up for money and can take a smaller gain in stock value in exchange for better sleep.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • > which totally misses out on all of the downloads.

    Sure, but don't forget that these are business-type-guys here. To them, the interesting copies of Linux aren't the ones Joe Schmedly installed, but the ones that SchmedlyCo bought support contracts for.

    Trying to actually determine the market share of Linux by counting the number of sales is just a futile as counting Win98 CDs to determine the number of Windows installs.
  • At work, we have around 30 Linux machines, and around 10 boxed sets of Red Hat, most of which came with Penguin Computing or IBM servers, and half a dozen shrink wrap packs of Red Hat media, which came from Dell. So our machines to media ratio is around 2:1, whereas my personal copy of RH6.1 media was used to install at least a dozen systems, about half of which were dual boot.

    By contrast, our ratio of machines to media for Windows 98 is about 0.8:1, as some of the above Linux machines were bought from Dell Factory Outlet (we're in Austin TX) who are subject to the Winopoly contract and ship all their systems with Win98 (and no, you can't even get NT instead).

    Even that data hides some more complex truth, as we blew away Linux off a few of the Penguins, and '98 off a couple of the Dell's, to reload with FreeBSD.

  • Although you have good points for number of machines running Brand Y OS, it is fairly hard to count multiple installs off of one license, or downloads from sites that don't publish the information.

    Also by discussing the number of licenses sold they can address the issue of how each platform has, is essence, cashed in on the growth of the market, along with keeping track of how the market grows. The figures that they are stating are extremely intertwined with measurable growth of the market. These numbers are very important for the market and its trends.

    Once again, Linux doesn't fit into the normal boxes used to judge these things

    Linux isn't the only one, if you go to Sun Microsystems [sun.com] web site you can see the statistics for the number of Solaris 8 downloads, which is over 700,000 right now, and you can install it on multiple clients. Also, other than really big companies, not many places follow the actual licenses given them by MS and will install the product on several machines.

    These numbers ARE a very good guestimate of where the market is right now. Frankly, I am very glad to see MS drop below the 90% control range.
  • Ahh, but the number does give us some information about the problem. It gives us a rough minimum number of machines with Linux on them.
  • Actually I would much rather it stay like this until Linux has a much bigger share of the market. By standing as one platform it give the impression that we stand as one instead as several major groups each with multiple splinter groups.

    These numbers are used by marketing groups to decide whether it would be worth while to support an OS. By having the numbers for Linux be Linux and not RedHat, Debian, Caldera, SuSE, etc... there is a better chance that after seeing 4.1% of market and growing at extemely high rates, combined with OSS being a buzz word these days, companies may consider porting their products.

    There have been surveys that have been conducted to see which is the most used Linux distribution. I cannot remember where I saw it but if my memory serves me correctly Debian was the most widely used.
  • Never can tell if people are seriously asking questions here or just making statements alluding to things but I will try to answer seriously so please yell at me about how you weren't being serious.

    If you look at the growth/decline of other groups what you will see is that Linux is taking some of its market share of the other UNICES, Novell, and what is left of OS/2. SCO used to have the largest *NIX install base on the x86 platform (maybe it still does, don't have exact numbers), now they have just been bought by Caldera (except tarantella).

    Another thing one should look at is that the market is growing very rapidly. Theoretically everyone could be growing in a growing market but if one or two companies are growing more rapidly than the others then their market share will increase. Microsoft is growing steadily, but if you look at the numbers roughly 3 years ago you would see that MS had nearly 95% of the market whereas now they have ~87%. They are growing but Linux and especially Apple are directly eating into their marketshare.
  • Slices in 3-D pie charts, like their figure 2, distort the underlying numbers. The area of the linux slice is smaller than 4.1% of the pie. They should use a table or a 2d chart. Guess that bad toilet training is showing again...
  • As a server it far outstrips NT. I've run both for many years, and if there isn't a solid neccessity to run NT as the server (mainly for Exchange only), I feel much safer trusting linux than NT.

    This isn't due to some bias on my part, some excitement about something new, or some peer aproval thing, I just don't enjoy junting down the bizzaro issues that often drag my NT servers down.
  • These numbers don't show what's used more, it's just showing what's been bought and installed.

    Installation numbers aren't there, all that is listed is what has been shipped, which as ?I sadi earlier, is no reflection of the numbers of downloads a free operating system gets.
  • Given a choice of home gaming machines, I would choose Win98. Given a choice of workstations, I would choose NT. Given a choice of servers, I would choose linux.

    I think this is a very fair representation of the current OS marketplace. I've tried all 3 OSes in all 3 situations for years, so I'm not going off half-cocked. It may not be a popular choice in the context of /., but it's honesty.
  • The load balancing within Linux far outpaces anything Windows dreams of. If you're running Java servlets, it buries NT. If you're running application servers and passing over linux to go with NT, you're totally missing out.

    Basically, for a lot of server tasks, the applications for linux are finally reaching a solid, competitive level, and in many instances, they're surpassing NT.

    Samba isn't quite fully mature yet as a fileserver, but only because of the handicap its got with integrating with a system that is purposely obfuscated. I've integrated several Samba fileservers into our network without any of the end users even noticing it.

    These are programmers, not salespeople. They never knew a thing. It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, but it's a lot easier than it was 2 years ago.

    "We replaced your regular fileserver with new decaffinated Samba."

    So you've got a popular viewpoint there, but I don't thinks it's as informed as you would like.
  • I can't seem to find any pricing information on OpenMail. It sounds promising, but I don't know if it will end up being cost-effective, and HP is very careful about not listing price information on their site.

    Also, it's not open sourced. From the site: [hp.com]

    So will you be opening up the source code to OpenMail?
    No, but we plan to open source our OMGUI client.

    Still, it's something to check out. Thanks for the heads up.
  • There are things that IDC, DataQuest et al do by special request. These can be bought - that's well known. There are things they do regularily, such as the operating systems report, the database market report, etc. I would be surprised if these were bought.

    That's not to say this report is completely accurate - by no means - but I think these are a lot less corrupt than the things they do by special request.

    And besides, IDC has the image of being the most "vendor-neutral" analyst out there. Once a new platform springs up, they try to capitalize on it. They were there with Amiga World, Mac World, Network Computer World and yes, even Linux World.
  • I find it hard to believe that FascDot [slashdot.org] has not squeezed in with a plug for MailOne [openone.com]...

    --
  • On a Mac OS X server (the shipping version) uname returns rhapsody.

    Now, the developers release 2 (DR2) of X86 Rhapsody did exist, and you could take the method detailed on the FreeBSD e-mail list for 'getting Solaris X86 binaries to run on FreeBSD' would work with the Rhapsody binaries I tried it on.

    I would not be at all shocked that Apple is paying people in the company to keep a version of Mac OS X running on X86 hardware.

    Jobs wants to have a big stick to beat up his vendors. Jobs seems to like beating up on vendors. He's on record having told Motorola "It will be great in 2 years when we arn't using your hardware". And look at how Jobs is kicking around ATI. Then Apple was 1st formed, he kicked one PCB maker around for $25,000.

    (Given ATI's treatment, would YOU want to rely on Apple for your business?)

    A funny look at Jobs in 1997 [turnleft.com].
  • ...but it sure seems like IDC could afford to make better graphs than they did. Those pie charts looked like they were from five-year old versions of Excel...
  • The first slide (Client Operating Environment) shows:

    Windows: 87.7 %

    MacOS: 5.0%

    Linux: 4.1%

    Other: 3.8 %

    My addition is rusty, but isn't this 100.6%? Even if each of the four entries were rounded up by the least sig fig, wouldn't that be 100.4% at most?

  • First of all, let me say i'm impressed that your post wasnt as an AC.

    My machine dual boots Windows and Linux (SuSE), and i do admit that i can get more work that i need to get done for school under windows, it is a better desktop environment in my opinion (although that is a little biased since starting a KDE or Gnome session on under X-Win 32 gives me the advantage of having a windows and a Linux desktop under windows, which is a better solution than VMWare (running the windows desktop from Linux) for me.

    While i say windows is a better desktop for me, i also recognize the superiority of Linux for servers. You wont catch me loading Win NT / 2K on my servers.

    > Given a choice between running Linux, and needing more diskspace for Windows apps, Linux will be deleted.

    Actually, i went out and bought a 7200 RPM 40 Gig HD to supplement my 13 Gig HD.
  • They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.

    This brings up another question. How does one really count the number of Linux users? I mean, you can't just say its the number of people who have purchased box versions because we all know that many people (maybe even most people) actually just download their copies.

    Perhaps add up the number of downloads and the number of purchases? Well, the problem we have there is figuring out the number of people who actually downloaded their copy, installed it, and actually kept it. I know I've downloaded a distro a few times and never used it... or sometimes I just peaced it together. Thus we can't really count the number of downloads. (I'm begining to feel like Vezzini in Princess Bride here)

    I suppose you could poll web page hits, but then you have all sorts of other problems with demographics and the like. What the correct answer to this is, I don't know, but its a very interesting question to pose.

  • In fairness, they do list both in terms of revenue and in terms of copies (actually licenses) shipped. It's especially informative to compare the revenue streams v.s. the copies sold. Linux (which is the only free software OS separated out) has a lot of licenses shipped but very little revenue, while mainframes have huge revenue but a tiny number of licenses shipped.

  • This just fyi:

    Linux is apparently becoming the OS of choice in many third world countries. The Chinese government publicly stating they'll only use Linux from now on is only one, very obvious example. I know for a fact that a lot of Indonesians use Linux, but I'm sure it's popular in other, similar, countries as well. It's cheap (even though Indonesians, at least, don't really care about copyright that much...God, I miss the days a new game was the price of the floppy and 25 cents USD), because copies are easily made without running the risk of an occasional gov't crackdown on piracy. But you can bet those installs aren't counted.
    This is not a .sig
  • And my hope is that the near-automatic market reception OS X is going to receive, the popularity of the entire *BSD family tree will get bumped up.
  • Actually a very good point. I haven't seen the same amount of attention devoted to stripping BSD variants down to simple setups for anything other than network appliances, though. Is there some architectural issue that makes it more difficult to minimize a BSD system, or is it just the hype that Linux has right now that's making people want to hack it?
  • ...where I think we'll see Linux start cleaning up in the next few years is the portable and embedded markets. Windows CE makes no sense for most small, low-power devices; it's just not worth the overhead for all that Windows-alike functionality when a device has very few resources to spare.

    If Linux is going to take off in the *consumer* mobile/appliance market, though, there are a few things missing -- like a lightweight GUI toolkit with sufficient support and applications available for it, hardwriting recognition, and a slim, usable browser (preferably something open source, so it can be modified for different target uses).

    I know there are efforts underway in most of these areas -- anyone more up-to-date on it than I want to weigh in with some names and URL's?
  • It gives us a rough minimum number of machines with Linux on them.

    It does no such thing. If anything, retail sales of Linux are going to be to newbies and the MCSE gearhead faction that are just looking to play around with some new toy. The systems they are going on are probably duel boot workstations, and the odds are that they are going to be booted into Windows a large percentage of the time.

    On the other hand, the Linux saavy crowd who run the OS full time or nearly full time are more likely to download it or buy it at cheapbytes. Real servers at work usually have good Internet connectivity and admins that don't need installation handholding.

    Furthermore, because (unlike MS) Linux vendors don't have special "Upgrade" versions, it's impossible to know if a given sale/download of Linux is going onto a new machine or a machine that already has Linux on it. Since most Linux vendors have a pretty aggro upgrade schedule this throws the numbers off -- all those sales/downloads can't be new Linux installs.

    What would really be interesting would be to get Dell or IBM's numbers on Linux preinstalls. Given IBM's recent behavior, I suspect those numbers look very good for Linux.

  • Re:They're missing something though... (Score:3)

    by embobo ( 1520 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:51PM (#869539) Homepage

    I have the answer! Convince all distro makers to send a message to install-counter@example.com everytime the distro is installed. Suppose the installed machine has no 'net connection? Simple: require one! Disable the sw unless the email is sent (and an encypted and signed receipt using the ethernet card mac addr or some other guid of the machine to prevent spoofing) within 30 days of install. What's that? Its being done already? Well then, time to innovate!

    Have a cron job send an email to current-counter@example.com with the current time in the subject once a week. Then we'll know how many running linux boxes there are at any given week.

    I'll be damned if I'm going to run linux until I _know_ that there are at least 4.5 million boxes running it. My enterprise MIS CIO CTO MBA training has made me very smart, truly. Sure, I read Information Week. I see the one page ads with linux in 72pt type. But hell, I'm no fool. I need an official report from a $5000/yr newsletter, complete with facts and figures, before I switch my multi-trillion dollar dot-com from Windows 2000 ME Data Center SP4.1 to linux.

    This conversation can serve no pupose anymore. Thank you, please drive through.

  • Re:They're missing something though... (Score:3)

    by Matts ( 1628 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @10:54PM (#869540) Homepage
    See the latest netcraft addendum to the stats though... They found that most of those boxes are Linux+Apache boxes running massive virtual hosting. In fact register.com is responsible for (I can't recall the exact figure, but something line...) 20% of those numers, and they are just hosting default templates saying this site hasn't been uploaded yet. While in a way that's good for Linux+Apache ("Linux can easily host thousands of virtual domains"), it doesn't give any indication of the number of unique machines running linux. And neither does the number of unique IP addresses for similar reasons.

  • Re:They're missing something though... (Score:3)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:41PM (#869541) Homepage
    Not so. If a business-type guy wants to sell software, he is (or should be, at least) concerned with the number of people who are actually running Linux. OS sales figures might be interesting for people thinking of marketing a Linux distro, but not for someone who wants to sell software that runs on Linux.

    --

  • Maybe there should be a mechanism in distros. (Score:3)

    by Hanno ( 11981 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @04:26PM (#869542) Homepage
    Sometimes I think that there should be an anonymous counting mechanism included with the distributions.

    Similar to pine's anonymous user counter (for those who don't know about it: The first a new user starts pine on a fresh system, it asks you wether it may send an anonymous mail to the pine developers, just so that they have a rough idea about their user base).

    Or similar to Debian's popularity contest (it reports the list of installed packages to the developers, so that they can see what is used most-often and thus deserves additional work over a rarely used software package).

    Just imagine if every Linux distribution would do something like this after its first run of the installation:

    "Have your new machine counted! May I send a one-time message to the Linux user counter for you?"

    It might even be an incentive for the distributions to do so if the user share of the different flavours of Linux were counted that way.

    ------------------

  • don't worry about this kind of data (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @03:28PM (#869543)
    Obviously, these numbers are strongly biased in favor of Windows: most installations of Linux never show up in them, and many "shipments" of Windows (OEM licenses, site licenses, etc.) never actually get used. IDC's numbers probably also underestimate the Mac user base.

    But why worry about it? Companies that make business decisions based on flawed data are likely to fare poorly in the marketplace in the long run. Just think of the relative costs and reliability of a Windows-based web site and a UNIX based equivalent.

  • Re:They're missing something though... (Score:3)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @04:25PM (#869544)
    Also, shipments of an operating system that can be installed a theoretically infinite number of times are obviously skewed when compared to OSs like NT, which are to be installed on a single server.
    I'll agree with you that box sales is a lousy way to sample linux adoption compared with other OS which are SUPPOSED to be installed only once per copy.

    NT's previous competitor in the LAN server market was Novell Netware, and Netware was super strict about licensing -- if you installed it on your network, you installed it once and it had rigid user limits. NT had the honor system, which lets people install it more than once. I think that NT's growth in the LAN server market can be partially attributed to the "honor system" licensing approach. And I'm curious how many shops take this to conclusions they probably aren't supposed to.
    "It's just temporary until we get the new hardware."

    "The IT staff were evaluating a new product and didn't want to do it on the production system."

    "We just needed a new box really quick. I think the legit software has been ordered."

  • Re:They're missing something though... (Score:3)

    by Mullen ( 14656 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:23PM (#869545)
    Exactly!

    Even suff like the Linux User Registration (or whatever it is called) is not useful for all known installs of Linux.
    It is too easy download an ISO image of your favorite Linux dist and install where ever you want.

    I had an extensive discussion with one of my old Statatics professors in college. After explaining what Linux was, how you can get it for free, how there is no central Linux download site, how there are so many places to get Linux, how there are no restrictions on installing Linux, and how easy it is share the same CDROM, NFS, or FTP site; she came to the conclusion that there is no way to count the machines that have Linux on it.
    There are simply too many variables in the "Linux counting problem."

    So my point is, when you read something about how many Linux machines there are out there, the author is smoking crack. It is nearly impossiable to count all the Linux machines in the world.

  • Re:Linux's relative growth (Score:3)

    by SoftwareJanitor ( 15983 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @06:07PM (#869546)
    Exchange isn't even a reason to run NT anymore. HP's OpenMail is a replacement for Exchange that is open source, more cost effective, and runs on a better platforms, with a choice of platforms (Linux and many commercial UNIXes). And yes, Windows 9x and NT desktop users can use Outhouse... Errr... LookOut... Err Outlook as their mail client if they want. Although to be fair, it is really Outlook that is more responsible for the security problems with that system than Exchange.

  • Re:Linux's relative growth (Score:3)

    by SoftwareJanitor ( 15983 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @07:36PM (#869547)
    But you don't know me. I'm not interested in changing that, either.

    I'm not that interested in changing that either. What you don't say in order to interest me is any reason why I should care. I never said Linux was for everyone. Being for anyone is different than being for everyone. There is no product that is for everyone, and no product should try to be. Products that try to be everything to everyone inevitably end up being self-limited to being mediocre at best.

    At any rate, as far as I can tell, the number of backsliders like yourself is far outweighed by the number of people going the other direction.

    I've noticed for quite some time now that Linux advocates always try to dis W2K any time they can.

    Most of that I think comes from being fed up with Microsoft. I spend less than 10% of my time (less and less lately) dealing with Microsoft products, and that causes 90% of the frustration I have. There are very few OSes that I've used that I haven't grown to like more with use. The only two things I can think of that have gone the other way have been VMS and MS-DOS/Windows/NT.

    At any rate Microsoft and their apologists (paid and otherwise) also try to 'dis' anything that isn't Microsoft any time they can. That is just the way it goes. Ask yourself this -- if Microsoft was so great, why do they get so much negative reaction these days? If Linux had no merits, why would so many people be lining up behind it even though they often have no financial interest in doing so?

    It's gonna eat their lunch in the end.

    We will have to agree to disagree on this one. While I won't venture to say that Linux will ever rule the entire world the way that Microsoft has, that isn't a bad thing. In fact, what I really want isn't necessarily a world without Microsoft, it is a world in which NO single company or technology rules everything. Something, someday, may manage to unseat Linux from its place on my machines, but it sure won't be Windows 2000, and its highly unlikely that it will be any of its successors. Maybe one of the *BSDs, maybe something totally new.

    In the end, Microsoft will implode due to its own gravitational force or break up from within or gradually succumb to outside pressure from various competitors. It is inevitable that every empire will fall.

    Hopefully Linux will be one of the things that brings Microsoft down a notch or three, but hopefully it won't be the only thing.

  • Re:Linux's relative growth (Score:3)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:37PM (#869548) Homepage
    I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but...

    why your toy OS is better than Windows.

    That's the real joke. I and many others have been calling Windows, and it's underlying DOS, a "toy OS" for years. Think of all the things Windows can't do that a real OS can -- like protect itself from a renegade app, or permit multiple, different simultaneous users, or just manage to stay up for a few months without a reboot.

    Now, I'll grant that NT, being based on VMS, was more of a real OS -- but even VMS was never the Unix killer that DEC had hoped. And that's was ... more and more application level stuff (the GUI? come on!) has been crammed into the NT 'kernel', to its detriment.

    No serious observer of operating systems considers Linux to be anything less than a real OS, nor Windows (9x) any more than a toy. A few will grudgingly grant NT 'real' status, with caveats.

    On second thoughts...

    The above troll question can simply be answered:

    Because it will run an IBM S/390. Some "toy".
  • Just about everybody that I have spoken to who has Linux installed, has it dual-booted with Windows. Because of this, the number will show them growing the same, because many casual users (not all) have both the Windows and a Linux OS on the same machine.

    These numbers don't show what's used more, it's just showing what's been bought and installed.

  • Licenses (Score:3)

    by alehmann ( 50545 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:04PM (#869550) Homepage
    Linux has seen a dramatic increase in new license shipments growing from 15.8% of server operating environment shipments in 1998 to 24.4% in 1999, absorbing much of the expansion of the market.

    Since the GPL is freely transferable, am I the only one who doesn't think that license shipments have anything to do with Linux growth or sales?

  • Re:They're missing something though... (Score:3)

    by AugstWest ( 79042 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @02:56PM (#869551)
    Well, our CEO is definitely a business-type guy. We're building a portal, and hsoting some applications in-house. You should hear him on the phone talking about Linux as the greatest thing since sliced bread....

    Why is it important to the biz-types? Well, it's because of the price tag.

    The free downloads and installs are very important to biz guys, just not in this context.

    Which of course, you weren't denying, and this isn't an argument with your points, just kind of a further clarification.

  • Re:Distortion (Score:3)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:07PM (#869552)
    No, businesses make decisions with money. Assessing the financial strength of different players also uses money. This is measuring percentage of server license sales.

    Who cares how many servers are deployed? It is irrelevant to EVERYONE. Your decision to use an OS should be completely independent of what other people are doing, right?

    Numbers matter to zealots and brats who want to scream and yell.

    Money, however, matters. It makes a lot of BIG differences. If I am a interested in the revenue model of a OS, then the money does matter.

    Business analysis is not aimed for slashdot, it is aimed towards business executives. Ya know, the people who worry about this for a living, not a pissing contest.

    Alex
  • They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.

    Yeah, this is an important point. They give Linux 4.1% of 98.8 million client shipments and 24% of 5.7 million server shipments. That suggests that Linux is now shipping more units for use as desktops than for servers.

    The question, though, is whether that accurately represents the usage patterns. I'd expect that a lot of server farms either use downloads or a single install disk for multiple machines. At the same time, I'd expect a lot of home user/hobbyist types (like me) to try out multiple different versions of Linux to find the best distribution. Heck, you can get CD's for $2 or less from places like Linux Mall, and I have probably 10 different versions that I've bought either there or as the full distribution, while I have only 3 computers with Linux installed. When you look at the revenue from Linux (apparently less than $100 million on about 5 million copies sold) that suggests that a lot of the copies are the very low cost ones.

  • Biased polling is a time-honored tradition! It's the american way! Do the polling exclusively at slashdot. Announce to the world that Linux has 50 percent (or whatever) market share!

  • Distortion (Score:3)

    by joel.neely ( 165789 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @12:56PM (#869555)
    Notice how often these types of analyses measure "market share" in terms of dollar volume. This creates a built-in bias against Linux, FreeBSD, etc. "If you're inexpensive -- let alone free -- you must not count for much..."

  • A prettier graph (Score:3)

    by tagishsimon ( 175038 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @12:54PM (#869556) Homepage
    one of the graphs from the IBM page mantioned earlier today seems apropos [ibm.com] (and prettier...)

  • DUH (Score:3)

    by Kalrand ( 177637 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @12:59PM (#869557)
    It only stands to reason that as the market for PC's continues to explode, the number of operating system licences will expand as well.

    I could have told you that the number of people using any major OS would increase so long as new PC's are being sold.

    duh!

    Kalrand

    -the voice of reason

  • These numbers are bogus! (Score:3)

    by Ergo2000 ( 203269 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @05:00PM (#869558) Homepage

    The title is a humor title, however it's interesting seeing the reaction to anything like this. Okay folks, Linux users make up 90% of the population! There, are you happy? Is that more "real" to you?

    Shipments do mean nothing. There are countless hoardes of people out there who never paid for their copy of Windows, and by the same token there are tonnes of people who've picked up countless Redhat x.x CDs at the local bargain bin but have never done more than put them on their rack.

    All that really matters at the metrics of actual usage, because copies sitting on people's shelves mean nothing. By that token the most recent study put Linux users at approximately 0.29% of the Internet browsing public, down from 0.32% of a month earlier. I'm sure that will be a rather stark number for a lot of the rose coloured dreamers lusting for the day that Linus is the true leader of the masses.

  • Not a clue about Apple (Score:4)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:21PM (#869559) Journal
    Note that this paragraph is discussing clients, not servers.
    The upcoming Mac OS X (read "10") represents a complete overhaul and a radical strategy for Apple (for one thing, core OS X source code is freely available). Before birthing it, Apple aborted its Copland and Rhapsody OS plans and cut loose its MkLinux team after years of laboring on these projects, losing time and credibility. However, MkLinux (now independent) and LinuxPPC are shipping and can run on older Macs.

    Huh?
    • OS X is Rhapsody, albeit a lot later and a lot different than originally promised.
    • I hardly think resources spent MkLinux were what was holding Apple back. That was, what, three full-time engineers? How much time was invested in MkLinux, let alone credibility? And the work on Mach was valuable for OS X.
    • And, of course, OS 9 is still shipping and is at least as well suited for office desktop use than MkLinux or LinuxPPC.

  • IDC is not reliable. (Score:4)

    by BitGeek ( 19506 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @02:04PM (#869560) Homepage
    I used to work in the industry and had numerous discussions with "analysts" from IDC, Forrester, Jupiter, etc. My experience there showed me that all of these "Reports" and "Analysis" are really propaganda under another form.

    The analysts are paid to write reports showing the growth and projected growth of various industry segments. These reports are commisioned by companies in the industries in question. They are then sold to other companies in the smae industry.

    For instance, say I'm a major software vendor, and want to do a new product in the project management software industry- I'll have IDC write a report justifying why this industry is going to grow at %20 a year for the next decade. They will go and look for supporting evidence, but since statistics can often lie, when you go looking for a specific growth rate, you will find it.

    So, for instance, while Apple continues to hold about %30 of the installed base of computers, IDC shows them with only %5 of the market, because its convenient for them to only count new computer sales for Apple. While Linux is probably 5 times as popular as they show in their "survey" windows is shown to be dominant.

    Why? Because the people who have the money who pay IDC have a vested interest in windows.

    This is no different than the investment bank that brought acompany public issuing a report with a buy recommendation on that companies stock.

    There is NO credibility here, whatsoever.

  • Meanwhile, back in the real world... (Score:4)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:53PM (#869561)
    See Netcraft's analysis of OS market shares in their July 2000 survey [netcraft.com].

    In short, and using the conservative numbers:
    • Linux : 29.99%
    • Windows (all types) : 28.32%
    • Solaris : 16.33%
    • Other : 23.59%
    • Unknown : 1.76%
    These numbers are for Web servers only; they filter out duplicate names for the same site, and also "placeholder" sites, but do not filter out virtual hosting. So it's "sites" rather than "machines".

    They also used some statistical sampling, but do not report a margin of error.

    --

  • Re:They're missing something though... (Score:5)

    by SoftwareJanitor ( 15983 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @06:28PM (#869562)
    I'll be damned if I'm going to run linux until I _know_ that there are at least 4.5 million boxes running it.

    Netcraft says that there are over 10 million servers running Apache on the publicly accessable internet. Those are machines that are running basically 24/7, not 'dual boot' machines or people's dialup boxes that are getting miscounted. Netcraft also says that over 1/3 of the Apache servers are running Linux as their OS. According to the Linux counter, less than 30% of Linux boxes are used as web servers.

    Given those numbers, how could anyone reasonably believe that there aren't well more than 4.5 million Linux boxes running out there?

    And yes, I am probably just feeding the trolls...

  • They're missing something though... (Score:5)

    by AugstWest ( 79042 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @12:51PM (#869563)
    They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.

    I've set up a good 30 linux boxes in my time, and I've never purchased a single copy.

    Once again, Linux doesn't fit into the normal boxes used to judge these things. The distribution model for it is entirely unheard of, and so they don't have any mechanisms for couting this massively popular means of obtaining linux.

    Also, shipments of an operating system that can be installed a theoretically infinite number of times are obviously skewed when compared to OSs like NT, which are to be installed on a single server.

  • Comparing Apples and Oranges (Score:5)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2000 @01:10PM (#869564)

    Interesting article, but there's some comparisons going on here that aren't quite as clear-cut as they seem at first glance.

    Figure 1 - Worldwide, 1999 Client and Server Operating Environment Revenues by Platform ($B) [idc.com]

    Well, DUH! Ain't much revenue for an "Operating Environment" that can be downloaded for free, so no wonder Linux lags behind 32-bit windows.

    Figure 2- Worldwide Client Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004 [idc.com]

    Now that's better, as they are now comparing the number of Licenses instead of Dollars, but what do they define as a "client"? Does a TiVObox running Linux count? What about an IBM watch? Besides, I can just as well install the server version of Linux (or NT, for that matter) on my home PC.

    Figure 3 - Worldwide Server Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004 [idc.com]

    Again, how do they define and differentiate between servers? I'd be willing to bet that a license for Solaris on a big Sun box is not really on the same par as a 486DX66 running a Linux server, but it seems that a license is a license is a license according to these stats.

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