Is Linux's "Overall Market Share" Statistic Meaningful? 300
ruphus13 writes "Linux recently achieved 1% market share of the overall operating system market. But, does that statistic really mean anything useful? This article makes the case that it doesn't. It states, 'Framed in the "overall market share" terminology, the information (or how it was gathered and calculated) isn't necessarily questionable, it's more that it's meaningless. It's nebulous, even when one looks at several months worth of data. [How] Linux is used in various business settings answers an actual question — and the answer can be used to ask further questions, form opinions — and maybe one day even explain to some degree what 1% of the market share really means. ... Operating systems aren't immortal beings, and by rights, there can't be (there shouldn't be) only one. ... No one system can be everything to everyone, and no one system (however powerful, or stable) can do everything perfectly that just one person might require of it in the course of a day. While observing trends and measuring market share are important, the results (good or bad) shouldn't be any platform's measure of self-worth or validation. It's a data point to build on (we're weak in this area, strong in this area, our platform is being used a lot more this quarter, where did all of our users go?) in order to improve and stay relevant.'"
of course it means something numbnuts (Score:4, Insightful)
slashdot, missing the point as usual....
Quick response: No (Score:5, Insightful)
To the developers, at least, marketshare is absolutely irrelevant to their efforts. With some exceptions, the GNU/Linux systems is largely built to benefit the developers themselves, and if other people find it useful, good for them.
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
These statistics seem to a be a bit flawed. Windows has 90% of the market, Mac OS X has 9%, and Linux has 1%. However, Linux is heavily used in servers, handhelds, and other devices. Not to mention, the fact that there is no way reliable way to track Linux installs (100s of dstributions with users installing everywhere and no phoning home to report it).
I don't think this statistic is meaningful. I think Linux should keep chugging along and show the world that freedom, volunteers, and good will can equal money. Something to tip the scales...
Not so difficult (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not meaningless at all (Score:5, Insightful)
The quote from TFA misses the point entirely. It's not about there "being only one," it's about there being enough users to make Linux (or any OS that isn't from Microsoft) a viable alternative to Windows. If a particular OS has 0.0001% or 0.01% or even 0.1% market share, very few developers are going to develop for that OS. You won't be able to connect your machine running that OS to anyone's network, even if it's technically capable of making the connection, because IT will be paranoid about this unknown platform. Etc. But if you reach 1% or more, that's kind of a magic number. You may still be seen as kind of weird for not following the crowd, but you'll be able to use your computer for the same tasks for which everyone else uses theirs.
I'd say 1% is about what any non-Windows OS needs, as long as the aggregate of "alternative" OSes stays above 5% or so, as is currently the case with Linux + OS X. When the number gets significantly below that, as it did in the days before Linux took off and when you couldn't say "Apple" without first saying "beleaguered," things are pretty rough for anyone who's not running Windows on the desktop, using IE for the web, and writing everything in Word.
Is it really that little? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, how is that measured? I mean it certainly must be way more. Do they measure commercial sales of distributions? Well that's certainly misleading. For example I have a laptop which came with a Windows XP license, now it runs Ubuntu. Few Linux users actually buy their distribution and the amount of them has decreased over the years. That would also explain why the market share of Macs seems to be so large. There they simply could count the sold machines.
Measuring the user-agent strings of web-browsers also isn't verry precise as different sites tend to attract different kinds of users.
Re:Quick response: No (Score:4, Insightful)
...To the developers, at least, marketshare is absolutely irrelevant to their efforts....
That maybe true to those dedicated souls who give time and effort for free to develop the software, but not for the companies who make the hardware. They have to provide support for their products. Building up an entire support team for such a small share of units sold is disproportionately expensive and will not be done by anyone who wants to make a profit. For all products, with computers no exception, most people look to the manufacturer to address an eventual problem. Ordinary users are not sophisticated enough to determine whether the problem is with the software or with the hardware. They will instinctively call the manufacturer of the computer box and expect help. Giving this help will cost a manufacturer a sizable bundle of money.
Overall Marketshare? (Score:4, Insightful)
Overall marketshare? I'm highly doubtful that a 1% marketshare includes servers, much less all the Linux-powered devices (like my router) out there.
I don't think I've ever seen an OS marketshare report that wasn't flawed in some way.
My gut says about 5% (Score:2, Insightful)
For some intuitive, illogical reason, I feel as though 5% is probably a reasonable current number where desktop Linux is concerned.
Virtually the only major growth going forward is going to be with Ubuntu. There simply isn't any other distro out there which mimics Windows closely enough for the Lloyd Christmas [wikipedia.org] demographic to be happy with it. So in mainstream terms, we're going to have a Ubuntu monoculture; to the uneducated, Ubuntu and Linux will become synonyms.
I think however that it's too early to tell, at this point, what longer term effect Ubuntu's mainstream success will have on the broader Linux community. I've already seen some vague suggestions online that in some cases Ubuntu acts as a gateway drug for Linux; Ubuntu is used at first, and then as a user learns more, and develops more confidence, they sometimes move somewhere else, distro-wise. I don't think this happens a lot, though; something tells me that with most people, Ubuntu's long-term retention rate will be high, with most staying in GNOME and avoiding the CLI more or less completely.
The overwhelming mainstream demand of Linux is that it become as much a clone of Windows as possible. I believe that this will greatly damage Linux's technical integrity long term, which is why I've moved to FreeBSD, which I am hoping will remain relatively immune from the insistent screaming of Windows refugees for a monetarily free XP clone. I had one Ubuntu user inform me on IRC, only a few hours ago, that Linux's primary reason for existence was to apparently provide users like her with only a marginally more stable Windows clone; it is interesting just how arrogant and forceful Windows refugees are becoming with this demand.
Of course, what I still haven't figured out is why those people who consider it important for Linux to become mainstream, do feel such a desperate need for that to happen. The one thing I can promise you is that mainstream adoption will not ultimately do good things for Linux; it is a fundamental law in my mind that the quality of any given thing is inversely proportional to its' degree of popularity.
Apart from anything else, Windows refugees generally have absolutely no clue what they are doing where serious software development is concerned. As more ex-Windows users migrate to Linux, there is, I feel, sound cause for therefore believing that Linux's overall code quality will begin to drop. The only thing Windows users care about is that computer use is, "easy." They don't know or care about stability, security, or hardware efficiency, and they also don't understand that a severe tradeoff nearly always exists between robustness and usability at the best of times.
The facts that Slackware is a rock-solid server distro, but not used much on the desktop, while Ubuntu is a nightmare in technical terms, but is the primary desktop distro, are not coincidences. Robustness and extreme usability are virtually mutually exclusive. For one to be present, the other must go by definition.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that they assume that the only reasonable metric for evaluating Linux adoption is to compare the number of Linux boxes to the number of Mac or Windows systems. That ignores the fact that millions upon millions of devices are running Linux (mostly embedded systems of one kind or another.) In most cases, it's not even apparent that Linux is under the hood.
Linux is here to stay, period. Whether or not it eventually becomes serious competition to Windows (or the Mac for that matter) is not relevant, since there's plenty of other application for it.
Re:Not 1%. Much more. Enough with the 1% (Score:3, Insightful)
So...
We trust the guy who "just says so" over the guys who collect and analize the data and compare the results for a living?
Sorry bro "just cause" doesn't cut it when there are mountains of data proving you wrong.
Linux extremely popular in a few areas: network backbones, pure data crunching applications (often a windows application passes data to a linux server farm for processing), web server applications where up-front OS cost is a significant portion of the cost (else the MS server product is often cheaper in the long run), web server applications that require very custom applications and very fine OS control, very small embedded hardware applications, etc. For a lot of these applications I'd wager linux has 50/50 market share with microsoft (roughly, novel still has a portion of the server market, and apple has a very small portion as well). In a few areas like embedded apps, MS has very little market share, and Linux is probably in the 50-70% range, maybe even higher.
However, ALL of those applications are trounced by the desktop PC market, and MS still owns that hands down, even with Macs at 9%. 1% is not at all unbelievable for Linux, MS has its hands in almost everything, and has very good products that are strong competitors in almost every catagory. Linux doesn't even compare, it's a niche OS used for niche applications and it is very very good at filling most all niche needs. Unfortunately "Niche" is just everything MS doesn't dominate.
Re:Quick response: No (Score:4, Insightful)
To the developers, at least, marketshare is absolutely irrelevant to their efforts.
Nobody wants to program a user application for a platform without users. Except as a training excercise, perhaps.
Re:Quick response: No (Score:3, Insightful)
My favorite distro is Slackware, but it's not easy to use (it IS fun to use). The reason it's unpopular has nothing to do with how similar it is to Windows. In fact, for Linux to take over on the desktop, it CAN'T just copy windows, it has to be better. If you could make it exactly like windows, people would say, "well that's cool, why not get the real thing?" It has to do something better, otherwise it will continue to wallow in unusedness.
Incidentally, the kernel programmers are relatively responsive to the needs of their users: a lot of their new features are added because people want them. They don't do everything the users want, but they don't ignore them. That was HURD.
Seriously. The day Linux is just like Windows is the day I boot OpenBSD.
Re:of course it means something numbnuts (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't seen surveys or stats that focused on business vs. home use.
I think the proportion can be important, for instance, it can tell vendors how much time and money they can justify spending to satisfy the wants of a vocal group.
The fact that Linux can be installed after purchase is kind of a red herring, because the proportion of people that browse the web using a Linux system hasn't been shown to be much larger than 1% of all browsers. I think to claim that the user base is a lot larger than that, you'd have to say that either Linux users as a group are predisposed to avoiding http, or that they don't visit the top several hundred most popular web sites, which those stats are based on, and that's encroaching into a special pleading argument.
Re:Not 1%. Much more. Enough with the 1% (Score:3, Insightful)
Because there are sound commercial reasons to do so.
Which vary in each specific instance, while the figure itself remains largely unchanged.
It boils down to human counting systems with only three or four distinct values: 0%, 1%, 90%, 99% aka nobody, hardly anybody, most people, almost everyone.
When you cite 1% it spares you from deciding whether to write "hardly anyone" or "a tenacious few". For exponential distributions, 1% is the glass half-full point: the optimists read that as the upward inflection of immanent domination; status-quo pessimists read that as annoying cohort who forgot to take their meds.
If you write "5% of desktops run Linux", it's like saying the glass is 5/8s full. It only complicates the knee-jerk response.
If some materials science wonk invents an exotic new material which they have absolutely no idea how to commercialize, but raised money anyway, the obligatory quote is that commercial products will be available "in five years". It's kinda PR speak for "don't call us, we'll call you, if we ever get our shit together".
There are sound reasons not to take precision too seriously.
http://www.scientificblogging.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/nitpicking_omega_b_discovery [scientificblogging.com]
Re:My gut says about 5% (Score:5, Insightful)
The overwhelming mainstream demand of Linux is that it become as much a clone of Windows as possible.
No no no!!! Please, if anyone gets anything from this let it be that Linux cannot be just a Windows clone, it has to be something better! Why would anyone go through the trouble of installing a completely different operating system that is exactly the same as the one they have? There HAS to be something extra, even for the average user.
Really, it shouldn't be too hard. Look at what Apple has been doing: they make little applications that draw people in, like photobooth. It is totally silly, and mostly useless, and really easy to make, but I've seen teenagers in the Apple store after school just taking pictures of themselves in photobooth. It's easy to get to and addictive.
Another example is time machine. It is simple, straightforward, and fun to use. It makes you WANT to go buy a second hard drive, just so you can look at the cool animation. Never mind that you've seen way cooler animations in made-for-TV movies, that animation is seductive.
The dock was the same way when it first came out, it bounced when you put your mouse by it. It was fun to play with. It drew you in. Linux needs to draw you in.
And it can. Linux has Compiz, which is graphically the most impressive of any desktop. KDE has some great artists. Now they just need the focus to make Linux sticky, make it draw you in, make you feel happy when you look at the screen. That's what Linux needs to do. Be better than Windows.
1% is meaningful as a milestone (Score:3, Insightful)
You really have to cross 1% before you can achieve better proportions like 100%.
Market share implies usefulness, or that people use, want to use, or are forced into using it.
For Linux to have 1% market usage would mean that there is also a decent sized pool for community.
A 98% market share for Linux would be great; it would mean a massive pool of users to form community, to find issues, test new versions, etc.
Resulting in an even better product that more people will find beneficial and easy to use in an advantageous way.
The trend is more useful than the absolute value (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree completely that you cannot place much trust in the percentage, for all of the reasons that get mentioned whenever we talk about OS or browser market share.
The trend, however, is much more interesting because it cancels out much of the systematic bias that will be present in any given series of results.
In this particular case Linux shows a fairly steady increase from 0.43% to 1.02% over the last two years, a compound annual growth rate of about 50% (albeit from a low starting point). I think that's good news.
(In fact the actual figure may be even better than that, because there was a suspicious 25% decline in October 2008. It could be that they changed methodology in some way, perhaps by reclassifying one of the embedded Linux-based platforms, because that month's change stands out as being very unusual.)
of course it's meaningful (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Quick response: No (Score:3, Insightful)
Good thing then that those dedicated souls who give time and effort for free to develop the software aren't requiring manufacturers to build anything themselves, and in fact have been very clear from day one that all they want are open specifications for the hardware. And that only requires a change of mindset, no need to hire new people to cope with extra work.
Well of course it would be... (Score:3, Insightful)
I switched to OS X 13 months ago, and I honestly don't see a point in switching to Linux as my primary system (I'm a software developer, mostly working in Java).
The only reason one would do that would be philosophical, rather than practical. I use Linux of course, but I don't miss anything available on Linux using OS X. But if I were to switch to Linux I would miss quite a few things (mostly having to do with images and video and Nikon and Canon software support for Linux in particular. Of course there is the issue of Photoshop and Adobe video suite).
Re:of course it means something numbnuts (Score:5, Insightful)
I claimed, and continue to, that linux can be a fine desktop for people who know how to set it up well enough. I personally don't want to invest the time to do that.
Most long time users don't want to fiddle with their machines any more. Been there done that... wrote X11 conf files and modelines, compiled kernels that would actually run their hardware (after getting the missing drivers), wrote window manager rc files... now most of the "old timers" I know just want their stuff to work. Hence the popularity of "ready to use" desktop distributions such as Mandrake, ?Ubuntu, SuSE or any of the less vocal ones. Even with experienced people (not to mention the newcomers of course).
It's really exceptional nowadays that you have to do anything more complicated than add a repository when you need some exotic software. I think I haven't even compiled anything in ages. It just works. And when it doesn't, it's a regular system that's (usually) easy to fix. So I can just do my stuff, process my images, talk to my servers, in a comfortable environment. Works for me at least. To each his own of course.
Re:of course it means something numbnuts (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who's been using unix for years i can agree with that... I used to have a lot of time on my hands and enjoyed messing around with the system, tweaking every last thing... Nowadays i have Ubuntu and OSX as my workstation systems... They work out of the box and present very little hassle, but the underlying power and flexibility is there incase i need to do something obscure. I do find OSX's lack of package management extremely limiting tho, apple should port the iphone app store to desktop osx, but make it apt compatible so it's possible and easy to add third party repositories...
Re:of course it means something numbnuts (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, what market share is required to achieve this?
I doubt that it has much to do with market share, it seems more to be an issue with Linux being pretty much incompatible with how hardware manufacturers like to ship their drivers. Most drivers in the Windows world are not just drivers, they come bundled with a whole bunch of software and stuff that is tied to the specific piece of hardware (i.e. standard Windows Logitech mouse driver is 50MB instead of a few KB). A clean separation between the code that makes your hardware work on all that other additional software doesn't really exit, because the supplied software plays a big part in the marketing and feature lists you find on the box.
I think to get proper Linux support hardware vendors would first need to learn that their job is to produce hardware, not software. Once thats done they might have less problems with releasing specs, but I somewhat doubt that this is going to happen anytime soon because of Linux. The best thing for Linux hardware support in the end are really the open standards. Any USB HID or storage device works on Linux out of the box, not because the hardware vendor cared about Linux, but because he implemented the spec. The more specs we have for common hardware, the better the Linux support will be.
Simple = Smart (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly right. What you describe is a mellowing of the hardcore Unix sentiment that is never reflected in things like "market share" studies, about *nix in general or a specific "desktop" distribution. Years ago carrying bootstrap tapes or that popular 50-pack of floppy disks to install a new machine with your favorite flavor of *nix was a real badge of honor. Sure, you might have to recompile the boot blocks and stay in the office until 4am cursing at your phosphorous green terminal.. but you know what, it was all worth it because it separated the men from the boys.
Guess what else happened over the years? Many of us chose to focus our attentions on other things like real life. We still love to tinker, but on our own time without our arcane systems forcing us to when it's not convenient. Modern inventions like "desktop *nix" are a work of genius whether you are a greybeard or a greenhorn.
Give all the naysayers who are crying "newbie!" a few more years of smashing their forehead into a keyboard because their elite operating systems outsmart them on a daily basis to come around...
Re:Quick response: No (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a developer.
Market share is EXTREMELY important to me. You are an idiot if as a developer it isn't to you. The only time it doesn't matter to a developer is never.
Something with 1% market share is not a safe bet to build anything on. If you are large enough, with something like Linux you can take the Google approach which is 'its not a safe bet, but if no one else maintains it going forward, we can'. But for the rest of the normal businesses out there, using an OS with 1% market share is risky as hell.
For any business, knowing the investment in using the OS is going to be around for a while and not disappear tomorrow is important. You get that with Windows, Solaris and OS X. With Linux you get nothing but the source. Source is great for Google who can just do everything internally for marginal costs when spread across their entire network. Source to Linux is fucking pointless to anyone selling software to end users. Source to Linux is pointless to a company who is trying to hit a solid target, not the inconsistent mess that is provided in the tiny fractured Linux community of distros.
Marketshare doesn't matter to the people who make Linux, this I agree with. And that in and of itself is one of Linux's primary reasons for not being all that useful to a great many people. Most of the world doesn't use a computer because they like programming, most of the world uses a computer to get something accomplished.
You'd do well to recognize that or if you happen to be a developer, just go ahead and get yourself a new job now cause you are part of why people get frustrated by computers.
Re:of course it means something numbnuts (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe that portability is a quality. A particularly important one.
Re:Quick response: No (Score:3, Insightful)
Good thing then that those dedicated souls who give time and effort for free to develop the software aren't requiring manufacturers to build anything themselves, and in fact have been very clear from day one that all they want are open specifications for the hardware.
Which is why there wasn't ever a case of manufacturer releasing the specs (or even driver code) to add to the kernel, and then a year down the line it is abandoned and no longer working... right?