Debunking Linux-Windows Market Share Myths

bc90021 writes "Nicholas Petreley has a great article over at LinuxWorld explaining why it seems that Windows has such a high market share when 40% of developers are focusing on Linux. From the summary: "There are dozens of reasons why people have underestimated how quickly Linux has been grabbing Windows' market share. Windows starts out with a false boost and maintains its illusory market share even as it gets replaced by Linux. In 2004, don't be surprised when Linux overtakes Windows to become the main focus for developers.""

Re:As a concerned American patriot,

[patr10t]

A yes, before anybody mods parent down as offtopic: Linux is a hacker's OS, only used by pir8es, and as everybody knows, piracy funds terrorism.

Linux needs snoopware!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if a little kernel-level snoopware accounting could help provide some solid usage numbers once and for all. We could just have the network stack send every machine's IP/MAC to Real Networks, for example.

The reason is easy

[jedijacket]

85% of statistics are made up! :)

YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the first person ever to coin the phrase "windows is dying"! You heard it here first on slashdot.

Re:The reason is easy

[Mr2cents]

Last year, it was still 90%. So there is some progress :).

Re:Say what you want...

[MaxQuordlepleen]

50% of the Linux developers at my firm use Windows as the desktop. The other half (me) use Linux :)

Is that statistic meaningful?

Did you like his writing style?

[Sam the Nemesis]

The answer is a resounding NO.

Re:Who cares about developers ?

[Permission Denied]

Who cares about developers? Well, apparently, this guy [ntk.net] cares about them.

Re:Say what you want...

[Anonymous Coward]

"95.7% of statistics are meaningless."

And 50% of them are made up.

Re:Who cares about developers ?

[Just Some Guy]

My girlfriend cares about at least one developer...

Erm, better make that "two"... ;-)

Re:Say what you want...

[IWannaBeAnAC]

And 50% of them are made up.

Hey, you just made that up!

The real figure is 83.04% of statistics are made up, of course!

Re:Ignorance Maybe

[$rtbl_this]

And quite honestly if your computer already comes with XP on it, there is no point to downgrade to a Linux distro.

Quite right, but there are some fairly compelling reasons to upgrade to one.

Re:Windows Inferior?

[Anne Thwacks]

You clearly goofed here .. you should have upgraded your grandmother, not her PC!

Re:Who cares about developers ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uptime is overrated. I reboot XP every 4-6 months, and it takes about 45 seconds total. Once you put 2 and 2 together, you will realize that your 24/7/365 uptime obscession directly correlates to your glum sexual prospects.