Attempts to Count Linux Users Remain Pointless 304
An anonymous reader writes "A great deal of attention is paid to numbers, but rarely does one actually ask what these numbers mean. One problem that many people have been trying to tackle is gauging the extent of use of Free software, including Linux. Questionnaires are not a solution here and neither are statistics, which are usually derived from the wrong data. The following article looks at the various challenges at hand and concludes that the growth rate of Linux is likely to remain an enigma."
hmm. (Score:3, Insightful)
(1) a lot of foaming at the mouth rants and statistics from Linux evangelists
(2) some distie bashing thrown in for good measure
(3) the inevitable vista comments and hints about massive marketing campaigns
(4) maybe some mention of PCs shipped with Linux pre-installed
(5) if we are really lucky maybe the odd referenced fact
It depends on your definition. (Score:5, Insightful)
Full Liberation is Not Pointless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Desktop liberation is important because it prevents sabotage in other seemingly unrelated areas like, power management and portable music players. As long as M$ has the lion's share of desktops, they can put pressure on vendors, equipment makers and even on line service providers like Google. Everyone else loses when M$ wins.
This power is severely degraded now, thanks to Vista and Apple. When you combine Apple's 10% share with the GNU/Linux 5%, you get numbers that have bottom line implications. That goes double when all the "decision makers" are in that 15%. The bottom line is performance. M$ suffers as much or more than anyone else from their attempts at sabotage because the kludges add up to workarounds, bloat and instability. These things show painfully in Vista and it's hurt sales.
Despite the attempts at sabotage, GNU/Linux continues to work better than other software. This is key to both adoption and motivation. Desktop adopters get systems that are light years ahead of others for networking and stability, without losing applications and features. Vista is not much better than XP, but the average GNU/Linux distribution is better than both. The average Windoze user has a spectrum of ageing, non free software that has trouble talking to itself, much less sharing files across a home network or the internet. Purchasing Vista and a $400 office suits does not improve the situation for them, it just adds another box that won't talk to the others. Replacing everything with free software fixes every computer in the house. The sooner the end user moves, the better off they are.
Re:Start counting here (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why it's hard to count. Windows users are easy: it's almost all 1 to 1. I have 1 windows machine, so mark me down for 1 in the windows category as well. You can be even more specific and count windows licenses; this is misleading...My workplace has a great number of unused windows licenses...But it's a good number with documentation behind it, whereas linux can only count support contracts with big linux vendors.
For the Bogglers (Score:3, Insightful)
For those boggling over WHY this matters, try and keep in mind that Microsoft, Apple, et al provide these figures regularly. Whether or not they're valid is a source of debate, but some kind of numbers are out there. This is how we get to say things like 'Windows is 90% of the market', etc.
Perhaps we need a 'BeCounted' daemon that merely tracks the stats of those that would like to be counted? It would still be a fraction, but if that number were out there we'd at least have some kind of data point to discuss. Perhaps FSF or GNU or some other party would host the servers that collect the data? You could even make the thing multi-platform, reporting on specific apps, and providing other useful data and pitch it to Google and company. Not that they're not already tracking this in their own apps, but this would be OSS. You could have all sorts of opt-in/opt-out toggles for it and it would be transparent as to what it tracked. You could also have it gather from different places and homogenize the data after it was submitted. The possibilities abound.
Maybe there already is such a creature? If we supporters of Free-with-a-capital-F want to be relevant moving forward, a detailed head-count could certainly be a step in the right direction.
Know what, mr.G can help with this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
QFT.
As a side note, I've always felt the precision vs accuracy thing was a bit odd. What good is one without the other? Being precise and innacurate is pointless because you -know- the number is probably wrong, but it's always the same wrong. Being imprecise and accurate is pointless because your numbers are right, but you don't know what they mean. (They're -right-, but right for what?)
No, instead, you need both. You need the accuracy to get good data, and precision to guarantee that all the data can be measured against the other data.
Sounds Like BS to me.... (Score:2, Insightful)