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Linux Outpacing Macintosh On Desktops 796

An anonymous reader points out this article in the International Herald Tribune about corporate acceptance of computers running GNU/Linux, which includes this snippet: "Linux is already outpacing Macintosh on desktops: "Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst for International Data Corp., said Linux had a 3.9 percent share of desktops worldwide, outpacing Macintosh's 3.1 percent." The article does not specify from where Kuznetsky draws either figure, but can it be true that Linux systems currently outnumber Macintoshes?
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Linux Outpacing Macintosh On Desktops

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  • ....Tux eating an Apple.
    • Well, I just replaced MacOS 9 Server + ASIP with Debian. The corporate monkeys are gonna freak. I feel I stand a good chance of losing my job this week, 'coz the corp monkeys are going to have a freakin' fit. Whatever; mail's flowing smoothly, file services seem to be going great (once I replaced the braindead Debian netatalk package with a hand-built netatalk) and it hasn't crashed (yet.)



      Of course, OS X Server would have been a nice choice, but I didn't feel like warezing it or talking my boss into plunking down money on the darn thing.

      • That's interesting I used Mandrake's netatalk for a while and it worked perfectly. I'm kind of suprised Mandrake got a weird server right that Debian messed up.

        • by leviramsey ( 248057 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @12:15AM (#4225866) Journal
          That's interesting I used Mandrake's netatalk for a while and it worked perfectly. I'm kind of suprised Mandrake got a weird server right that Debian messed up.

          And how old would the debian package in question be? For some things, a newer version of software will be better.

          <RANT>

          I'm getting sick of seeing Mandrake written off as a desktop distribution. When I think desktop distro, I think Lycoris, Lindows, or even SuSE (SuSE doesn't seem to really emphasize server use). Mandrake aims to be a sort of Win2k for Linux: graphical (though all the GUI config tools can be run in ncurses) and adept at both server and desktop roles. For evidence of this, consider that Mandrake's build of Apache (AdvancedExtranetServer) is the fastest growing webserver brand on the Internet.

  • Odd (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GoatPigSheep ( 525460 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:11PM (#4225235) Homepage Journal
    I find it odd that mac hasn't had more acceptance in business as OS X is now well supported and apple seems to have shifted from it's 'colourful' looking green and pink computers to more conservative silver colors more appropriate for a corporate environment. Then again the cost of a good linux based system could easily be 1/3 of that of a good mac system that can run OS X.
    • Re:Odd (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EvilAlien ( 133134 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:19PM (#4225295) Journal
      Its not odd at all, really.

      For one thing, Apple just isn't taken seriously by most IT departments I've had experience with. The graphics or desktop publishing people might "demand" an Apple in some cases, but the geek population (which outnumbers the graphics/publishing people) will usually have better luck getting a Linux workstation. I would also suggest that most geeks will PREFER a Linux workstation. OS X has a high cool factor, but it still doesn't have anywhere near the acceptance level among the hardcore users that it needs to displace Linux.

      What surprises me is that this figure didn't come out last year.

      • It's easy to upgrade a Windows machine to Linux*. It's difficult to upgrade it to a Mac; that takes capital expenditure, though if you've got a Mac that's new enough, you can upgrade it to MacOS 10.x+1 as needed.

        * Ok, in fact it's sometimes difficult *not* to upgrade your Windows machine to Linux :-) In particular, it's often easier than upgrading to a newer version of Microsoft Office (I've found recent upgrades of the Windows operating system seem to work pretty well, if your hardware is fast enough, but the real reason for upgrading is usually driven by Office.)

        Upgrading a Windows machine to Linux doesn't quite require negative capital expenditure - eliminating bloatware makes the machine a lot faster, but some of the recent window managers get amazingly doggy on less than 64MB RAM, and some of the installers do really stupid things with disk drives smaller than 4GB, and some of the distribution systems really don't netinstall well unless you've got a large spare disk to copy all their CDs into, but desktop machines that don't hav e CDROMs in them are usually too old to bother with. The Register [theregus.com] recently reported that many businesses ppear to be moving to a 4-year upgrade cycle for PCs rather than 3-year cycles - Linux makes it easy to do this, and makes it easy to do low-cost bandaid upgrades like adding bigger disk drives and more RAM rather than replacing a whole machine.

    • VERY easily 1/3. more like 1/5 to be realistic.
      • Decent Mac systems are available for $800 or so new. I do not believe that corporate Linux boxes would be available for 1/3 (particularly not 1/5) of that. Maybe a Frankenstein's box put together at your kitchen table out of old parts, but not a corporate Linux box.
    • During my last trip through Mexico's interior, and recently in Peru, I noticed that a lot of cybercafes that had previously been using pirated copies of Windows were now using Linux. Apparently a recent crackdown on piracy scared a lot of the cybercafe owners, and they installed Linux on their (usually low-end, first gen Pentium) machines.

      These people, who expect a good 5 years of use out of their computer at least, are not likely to move to MacOS, indeed are probably not likely to spend much money at all if they can help it. It's not a big stretch for me to think of these sorts of places as a good part of the expanding Linux desktop sector.

  • Well... maybe (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Squareball ( 523165 )
    I used windows since back in the Win 3.1 days. I finally had had it when Windows deleted a TON of my files for no reason. I looked into getting a MAC but it was just too much money... and I had JUST built a new Athlon 1500+ system. So I switched to Linux and haven't had any problems since. Linux is great because you can run it on just about ANY THING.. and you have CHOICE.. something you don't have much of in Windows or Mac.
    • Re:Well... maybe (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:19PM (#4225293) Journal
      (* I finally had had it when Windows deleted a TON of my files for no reason. I looked into getting a MAC but it was just too much money *)

      Perhaps you should invest in a data backup drive instead.

      Bleep happens regardless of the OS, sometimes due to hardware failure, user error, application bugs, cosmic rays, spilled Mtn.Dew, etc.
      • Hmmm... interesting advice.

        I think I'll tell Ford Pinto owners that they should just invest in some automatic fire extinguishers.
  • Logical... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seems logical to me, x86 hardware is so much more common than the mac stuff. You can make your windows box into linux, but not mac.
    • Re:Logical... (Score:5, Informative)

      by timdorr ( 213400 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:20PM (#4225309) Homepage
      uh..not to be the bearer of bad news or anything:

      YDL [yellowdoglinux.com]

      oh, and that's not the only distro...
      • Re:Logical... (Score:5, Informative)

        by P!erCer ( 578708 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:26PM (#4225337)
        Umm yeah, so mac users can switch to linux. What I meant (when I posted as anonymous coward because I was too lazy to login) was that the majority of people who are switching operating systems are going to be Windows-to-linux users, because the majority of people right now are running Windows. You can't go Windows-to-Mac using the same hardware like you can with Linux. (As of right now...anyone remember that story on here a few days ago about the x86 port of OSX? Linux is a lot easier to switch to. You can go back to windows if you think it sucks, with no hardware changing involved.
      • Re:Logical... (Score:2, Redundant)

        by jpt.d ( 444929 )
        he meant that you couldn't turn awindows box into a mac box
  • by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:13PM (#4225247)
    ...does it matter? Linux, Max OS X, Solaris, any of it?

    I'm running whatever Ellen Feiss tells me to.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      she is cute and doesnt sound like she has much in the brains dept, both hot qualities in a woman
  • Probably (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ABetterRoss ( 216217 )
    I'm fairly certain that pound-for-pound, there are more computers running Linux than MacOS (Servers & Desktops), but... the numbers seem a bit fishy if they are saying that Linux outnumbers MacOS on the desktop...
  • by jpt.d ( 444929 ) <[abfall] [at] [rogers.com]> on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:17PM (#4225264)
    http://www.google.ca/press/zeitgeist.html :

    "Operating Systems Used to Access Google - July 2002"

    Mac 4%
    Linux 1%
    Other 4%
    the rest being windows.

    Of course this data is rounded, google is probably the best place to get this sort of data anyways - as google is the best search engine around right now.
    • Apples and oranges (Score:3, Insightful)

      by einhverfr ( 238914 )
      IDC only looks at corporate desktops, and I think that it is safe to say there are more of these running Linux than Mac. But look at the consumers. Most /.'ers will say "more Linux than Mac" but how many of these are atypical samples.

      So I think that the IDC is right, and so are you, but they are different markets.
    • "Mac 4%
      Linux 1%
      Other 4%
      the rest being windows."


      Yeah but how many of those 'other windows machines' are actually linux users using opera faking itself as MSIE or, perhaps some other user agent morphing tool?

      Why, just recently, according to my useragent, I was using the miniature-giant-spacehamster-browser-v0.26 on on WheatonixOS [thinkgeek.com].
    • "Operating Systems Used to Access Google - July 2002"
      Mac 4%
      Linux 1%
      Other 4%
      the rest being windows.

      This gives the totals, but I suspect that once you remove the school and home users, and are left with corporate users, then the figures in the article are probably correct.
    • by Eloquence ( 144160 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:37PM (#4225412)
      Desktop usage != web usage. US web usage makes up the largest share by far [statmarket.com] of international web usage: 42.65%, followed with considerable distance by China (6.63%). Since Microsoft is ultra-dominant in the US, this skews the data. A lot of threshold nations have a large amount of PCs but relatively little Internet use, mostly for cost reasons. And let's not forget censorship -- China recently censored Google, for example.

      One great advantage of Linux, besides being free, is that when correctly tuned it works on very cheap hardware. Even if you just have a 386 or 486, you can still use thousands of decent console applications (including stuff like MP3 players and web browsers -- heck, you can even use mplayer with an EGA graphics card [mplayerhq.hu]) and get drivers for modern hardware. An old Pentium is fast enough for a simple X11 setup with small desktop aps like WindowMaker, LyX etc.

      That being said, I don't buy the 3.9% number without some supporting evidence. Even in developing nations Windows is only slowly being replaced by Linux desktops, with relatively few major rollouts in recent months, and while Linux can run on low cost computers, the problem is that it's not exactly easy as pie to tune and configure properly. Internationalization is another issue ..

      • Linux can run on low cost computers, the problem is that it's not exactly easy as pie to tune and configure properly. Internationalization is another issue ..

        The other part to that is that IT labor is often very cheap in other countries. While computer hardware prices are (I assume) approximately equal worldwide, IT labor for the same skill set can vary widely in price.

        In countries like the US, especially in the last few years, labor is a dominating factor in the price of corporate computing. In some other countries, this is definitely not the case, IT workers may get paid a tiny fraction of the cost of hardware in a company IT budget.

        So to the people who argue "Linux is only free if your time is free", now that statement gets turned around on you, because in a lot of countries, the labor is very cheap compared to license costs or Mac hardware costs.
      • In developing nations there aren't going to be the same sorts of major rollouts you see in the US. Hardware doesn't come in as a big purchase; it trickles in piece by piece, depending on what's available and affordable, so you'll just have many instances of "We got another computer, and we put Linux on it."

        Linux isn't actually that hard to tune for the low-end, because the core system (kernel, libraries, and such) are actually generally more efficient than they were 8 years ago, not less. Since they ran fine then, they'll run fine now. There are a lot of programs which are just too big and complicated for old hardware, but the old programs run better than they ever did.

        Internationalization isn't actually as big an issue as you might think, because people tend to understand a bit of English, and it's mostly jargon anyway (knowing the English words "shell", "prompt", or "window" won't help you understand the computer terms, and having these terms translated into your native language doesn't help either). The issue is really documentation, but if you have an active local user's group, that's better than most of the documentation in any language (for most software, really).
    • You wrote:
      http://www.google.ca/press/zeitgeist.html :


      "Operating Systems Used to Access Google - July 2002"

      Mac 4%
      Linux 1%
      Other 4%
      the rest being windows.
      I see at least 3 reasons why this figure is an underestimate:
      1. Many people change their browser identification as IE in Win* to be able to read moronic web pages (they shouldn't do this BTW)
      2. It is likely that given the variety of browsers and Linux flavors, many Linux visitors to Google are not counted properly
      3. People using computers in wealthy countries have both the money to pay M$ licenses and surf the web more frequently. Google's stats give a higher statistical weight to these users.
      I still think giving a figure for Linux' market share with no data to back it up is vapor. But I am pretty sure Google's figure is an underestimate.

      And by the way, the article gives a very nice overview of Linux on the desktop today, success stories included, from a mainstream media point of view. By far, the less interesting bit of the article is this 3.9 Market share figure for Linux ...

    • You seem to be forgetting that, for whatever reason, many people using Linux (or even alternative browsers for Windows) have their browsers set to "spoof" as Internet Explorer. For instance, my roommate can't access online banking unless he has Mozilla report itself as IE. Last time I installed Opera, it *defaulted* to spoofing as IE. In Konqueror there's a pulldown menu right on the menubar that lets you spoof as pretty much any browser (even Lynx, wcm, and WGet).

      The point being, your "reliable" data is nothing of the sort. I'm suspicious of pretty much ANY data that tries to quantify things like this -- it just doesn't work. Assemble ten legitimately unbiased researchers, turn them loose on the web to gather this same data, and I bet you end up with 10 hugely varied answers. Assemble 10 *biased* researchers and the "data" can be manipulated to represent the "facts" in whatever light the reasearcher desires.

      In other words, the Google data is only reliable if every browser in that sample was truthfully reporting itself to the server. Not to mention the fact that there is such a thing as dual booting, after all.

      My roommate is just as likely to boot Windows as Linux (depends on his mood, so he claims). So which is he? Does his computer add to the 90%+ Microsoft tally? Does it get added to the Linux tally? It is certainly not *likely*, but suppose 40% of those "Windows" users were dual booters who just HAPPENED to have booted into Windows that day. Like I said, that's *highly* unlikely, but who's to say? Who has the REAL numbers? No one. So MY number (40%) probably strikes everyone as incredibly unrealistic -- but only by virtue of being so *obviously* wrong. But in the end, that doesn't mean I'm any more wrong than anyone else since the data itself isn't reliable ... seems to me, the whole thing is a waste of time.
    • If "corporate" means large corporations (which I suspect it does by IDC's definitions), then their numbers may not be too surprising when compared to Google. In my own observations, I have seen more Macs used in small companies (e.g., storefronts, small offices) than Linux, but I would not be surprised if the tables are turned in large corporations with dedicated IT support staffs. Most large companies already use Linux on servers, and when the PCs number in the thousands, the cost of Windows based solutions becomes very significant.

      Google, on the other hand, collects data from every type of user, including home, small business, and student, as well as large corporations. It's not surprising that for this much broader cross-section, Macs have higher usage than Linux. I think we're dealing mainly with a sample space issue here. Both sets of numbers probably equally "real" within their respective sample spaces.

      The article also said worldwide. I suspect there are many countries, particularly some European contries and China, where the percentage of Linux usage in large companies may be higher than here in the US, and certainly higher than Macs, which must be even more expensive relateve to PCs in those countries than here in the US.
    • I wonder how many of those Windows browsers were really Opera or Mozilla running in Linux and masquerading as IE 5 on Windows?

      I've done it, for sites that only accept IE or Netscape....
    • What's really interesting is if you go back through the historical data. Linux has had 1% since Jan 01, and Mac has had its 4%.

      Not to troll, but the only real shifts have been which version of windows people are using. The increase in W2K also suggests that this is representative of corporate desktops as well...
    • http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=848&aid=- 1

      OS X 10.*, 14%
      OS 9, 1%
      Linux, 32%
      ...

      I think it's obvious where they got the data from.
    • by Paul Komarek ( 794 ) <komarek.paul@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @12:18AM (#4225874) Homepage
      Google is almost certainly *not* the best place to get this sort of data. The population that uses google is almost certainly not representative of the large population of computer users. And how do they count the accesses? Per access or per "machine"?

      I suspect these numbers indicate that Windows users are generally complete nincompoops that require 91 times as many google searches to get the same data as a GNU/Linux user gets in 1 search. Mac users, bless their souls, rate much higher at 1/4 the intelligence of a GNU/Linux user.

      -Paul Komarek
  • by PotatoHead ( 12771 ) <doug@NoSpAM.opengeek.org> on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:17PM (#4225270) Homepage Journal
    Linux!

    Really, my situation has to be fairly typical. Older 400-800Mhz PC's running Linux make for very nice desktops once they are configured.

    I have to believe the numbers are close.

  • Whoa! (Score:5, Funny)

    by flacco ( 324089 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:18PM (#4225286)
    Where have I been? When did Linux desktops break the 1% barrier?
  • This makes good sense when you think about it. What are the inherent benefits of a Macintosh over a windows system? It's, in theory, easier to use, but generally familiarity is more important when it comes to ease of use. Once you've learned a difficult to use system, learning an easy system is just more work.

    In order to use OS X, you need to have apple hardware. If you'd like to try out Linux, you can usually do it using your existing hardware. This is the main reason I haven't explored OS X is that, though I think it could be cool, I'm not willing to drop the money on hardware just to try out an operating system.

    If I want to have multiple installs of OS X, I have to maintain licenses just like I do with Windows. If I've got Linux, I just install Linux and then if I need support I can pay for a support contract that's not tied directly to the exact number of installs I have. So, I save myself a lot of hassle in the auditing of software.
  • by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:19PM (#4225292)
    Before I'm labeled a troll, I'm writing this from OS X. Been using a Mac for 8 yrs.

    Judging what from what I have seen, Linux is taking the workstation market, hands down. They already have Unix pros running the networks, so integration Linux is no biggie. If you taked that into account, it wouldn't be infeasable that Linux has a higher "Market share" than Mac. I wouldn't be suprised at all.

    This being said, I suspect Linux's "desktop" market is coming from people jumping the SGI/DEC ships for their big jobs. Not exact what most envision as a desktop. When I walk into a shop, the Linux machines are doing custom jobs, the Windows machines are fancy typewriters, and the Macs are doing graphics and playing the music to the rest of the room.
  • unlikely (Score:3, Funny)

    by Matthew Luckie ( 173043 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:19PM (#4225296)
    Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst for International Data Corp., said Linux had a 3.9 percent share of desktops worldwide, outpacing Macintosh's 3.1 percent.
    the margin of error on the survey was 3 percent?
  • http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html acording to july macs at 4% linux at 1% other at 4%
    I trust these numbers far more then some hear say
    • I agree. Numbers coming from Google are probably the best out there. Not only is it a hugely used website, but they have no interest in any particular OS.
  • Could it have something to do with the fact that Intel(AMD) based systems are cheaper than macs, as well as easier to upgrade.

    Switching to Linux involves downloading an ISO, burining it onto a CD, and installing on the same hardware. Going to Mac involves buying a whole new system, as well as the software to go with it.

    This survey makes sense. I'm suprised that Linux didn't blow Mac's share out of the water.
  • Ohh well... (Score:2, Informative)

    by mlk ( 18543 )
    OneStat says otherwise.

    http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=1706
  • So what's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pongo000 ( 97357 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:27PM (#4225353)
    At the risk of losing karma points I don't need, I confess to being at a loss as to what the point of this article is...does this mean Linux is better than OS X? Given that both Linux and Darwin are open-source, shouldn't the headline be something like "Open-Source Desktops Gain on Proprietary, Non-Customizable Desktops"?


    Why do we insist upon parading Linux around as the "spokesmodel" for the open-source movement? Wouldn't the advancement of open-source efforts be better served and made more visible by combining the efforts of Linux, *BSD, Darwin/OS X, and other open-source O/Ses, and comparing their collective advance against the Evil Empire?

    • isn't it obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ender Ryan ( 79406 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @07:31AM (#4226972) Journal
      OS X is not open source. While Darwin is open source(with the exception that Apple supposedly keeps parts of it locked up from developers on x86), the Apple GUI is not. It's completely closed and proprietary, with Apple being the gatekeeper. You want OS X, you HAVE to buy a computer from Apple.

      On the other hand, GNU/Linux systems are 100%(usually) open source/free. Everything from the kernel to GUI's runs on super computers to PDA's.

      There's a HUGE difference between OS X and Linux.

      Personally, I like Apple more than MS, but mostly because Apple doesn't control 95% of the market and is less dangerous to the future of general computing for the masses. Plus OS X runs on top of a Unix... and is prettier... ;-)

      So, what I'm saying is that everyone has different goals. Some just want to topple Microsoft, some want to push open/free computing. Of course, there's plenty of room in there for these two groups to work together, and I personally believe that Apple can co-exist with Linux a lot better than Microsoft can.

  • What if... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ghoser777 ( 113623 ) <fahrenba&mac,com> on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:33PM (#4225391) Homepage
    you run linux on a macintosh? Or if you dual boot between linux or MacOS, or even if you run Mac-on-linux? Is the author comparing PPC vs Linux on x86 or what?

    It really doesn't matter who's winning the desktop market. They're both (hopefully) beginning to carve out a section out of Window's dominance. When the sum approaches 20%, then good stuff is going to start to happen... then again, I'm assuming linux and mac users numbers continue to grow (I guess no necessarially simultaniously).

    Linux takin market share from windows is good; Macintosh taking marketshare from windows is good. Both situations leads to more competition, more developers, better software, etc.

    I just wonder - how is the market share of Mac users now compared to a year or two ago. Same for linux. How many people have stayed, how many have switched from windows, how many have switched from mac/linux, how many have switched from *nix. That data would be pretty interesting.

    Also (and I should have read the article), does the account for what's happening globally? I don't think Apple has much of a chance gaining marketshare in countries where price is of up most importance.

    F-bacher

    • Re:What if... (Score:3, Insightful)

      Linux takin market share from windows is good; Macintosh taking marketshare from windows is good. Both situations leads to more competition, more developers, better software, etc.
      Bravo!

      At this point, the only market share comparison that matters is Windows vs. Everything Else -- especially since at this point, Everything Else is some flavor of Unix. As a Mac guy, of course I'd like to see more people using Macs, but I don't have any particular desire to see Apple take over the world. (Steve Jobs may be a brilliant nutcase, but he's still a nutcase.) I cringed at the "Send other Unix boxes to /dev/null" ads. Folks, right now, whether your OS of choice is Linux or MacOS or BSD or Solaris or what-fucking-ever, you only have one enemy: Microsoft. Once they're put back in their place, then we can start fighting over other kinds of market share.
  • The study's data is skewed because most Linux systems dual-boot with Windows, whereas MacOS systems typically ONLY boot MacOS (X or otherwise). I personaly will dual-boot Debian and MacOS X 10.2 when my new PowerBook arrives. (Woo hoo!)


    • Well THAT Dan Kusnetsky just responded to my pointing out that these numbers are made up, on this very same thread, claiming that they are, well, made up.

      But he hasn't dared to respond to your catching him in his blatant hypocracy. Too bad.

      Yeah, he says what he's paid to say. That's actually ok for PR flacks. There's honor in *that* position.

      Foisting it off as *research* or having any quality of *fact* however, is a fraud and lacks honor.

  • by crovira ( 10242 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @10:46PM (#4225453) Homepage
    I use OS X and Macs on my desktops and Linux on my server.

    Frankly, Linux as a desktop sucks and blows. The guys at Gnome, KDE and the app writers REALLY need to rip-off Apple's GUI Guidelines [apple.com] and get something consistent and usable into user's hands.

    The desktop is no place for the ignorant and its no place to try to re-invent the wheel because users don't fuckin' want it, okay?

    Apple spent sixty million bucks developping the GUI. If you think you are going to come up with some thing so overwhelmigly better that it will blow the old order away, then you are an arrogant ass-hole.

    Be that as it may, I an NOT buying a windows box.

    But lately, I'm thinking that I could run my server on an OS X box.But then again why throw away a perfectly good Athlon.

    • The desktop is no place for the ignorant and its no place to try to re-invent the wheel because users don't fuckin' want it, okay?

      I do, which is why I use Fluxbox. Don't tell me what I want.

      Apple spent sixty million bucks developping the GUI.

      Apple spent millions, as did Microsoft on a different desktop. If $$$ are the only criterion, which desktop is right? The one which cost the most?

      If you think you are going to come up with some thing so overwhelmigly better that it will blow the old order away, then you are an arrogant ass-hole.

      Then what does it mean when the company that spent millions makes wholesale changes to the desktop, as Mac did in the transition between 9 and OS X? Does that make them their own arrogant assholes? This argument from the authority of cash never washed and never will. Ironically, Apple's solution looks like the XFCE, FVWM or Afterstep dock with a finder, each themselves a spin-off of Job's NextStep desktop, developed without the benefit of millions of research dollars.

      Do the Apple GUI guidelines contain valuable information? Undoubtedly. Does it mean the Mac desktop is the world's best? Only for the Mac Faithful.

  • I suspect that the quote is talking about desktops used in companies, not at home. After all the title of the article is 'IT managers cite security and competition when choosing a Linux system', so it implies their only considering the office environment.

    I could very easily believe the Linux market share for office desktop computers is bigger than at home, while, as has been pointed out, the Google stats place overall usage at 1%.
  • Most businesses already own Intel boxes which are underweight for Windows but plenny okay for Linux.

    Which is cheaper?

    $50 for a Red Hat box or $1,200 for a new iMac?

    Case closed.

    As long as they're tossing M$ for anything better...
  • he Apple number might just be right. The PC market this year is estimated at 135MU, assume 6 years life time and 10% annual growth (Corporate is 4 or so) that gives you approx. 700Mu out there.

    3.1% for Apple is 20Mu+- and assume same life span corrected for no real unit growth over last 6 years, gives approx 4Mu / year or 1Mu/ Qtr. That is exactly what Apple is reporting.

    Now using the knowledge that Linux as been in the "mainstream" for only 3 years or so. That means the 3.9% equates to 27Mu users or 9mu added each year. That sounds high to me. Remember we are talking people using Linux as Desktop not Servers of various kinds.

  • Something that struck me as an 'obvious' reason why Linux would have a higher market share is the fact that it will run on an X86 platform, while MacOS require the Mac hardware to run it. Anyone with a/an (ex)Windows box can run Linux.
  • My boss is what I would've called a "Mac Zealot", a year ago.

    He just ordered a KVM so he could run a PC alongside his mac, in his office.

    Why? Web browsing. We got a 10MBit line a few months ago. IE on mac blows. It's SLOW and buggy. Performance of the network in IE degrades from 800K/sec down to 35K/sec (reproducible).

    This, of course, doesn't happen in OSX, but it's going to cost us a lot of cash to buy new versions of all the Adobe and Macromedia software we need all over again (we have OS9 stuff now). When those machines need upgrading, we'll prolly go PC. Why? Price.

    Meanwhile we're gradually phasing out our Windows boxes (registry rot) and I've been taking every opportunity possible to make the switch to Linux (servers).

    OSX is expensive to upgrade (classic mode is slow). Mac hardware is far from "cheap". That's the bottom line.

    S
  • Apple's numbers (Score:2, Informative)

    by foo12 ( 585116 )
    FWIW, Apple shipped around 808,000 Macs last quarter. If you look at their recent quarterly numbers, they're shipping about the same number per quarter so that's 3.2 million units per year, give or take a few 10k.

    And that's on top of an installed base of at least 25 million.

    Anyone have similar, hard numbers on Linux installations? I realize it's substantially harder to extrapolate (multiple vendors, free to download, etc.) but physical media sales might be a decent indicator.
  • by Arkham ( 10779 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @11:25PM (#4225653)
    I love Linux. I ran it for 2 years as my desktop OS for development at work and at home. But I have worked at mega-corporations and tiny companies, and I have NEVER seen a non-geek running Linux. I, like many of you, like to be able to compile my own software from the source.

    The fact is that no one's mom runs Linux unless someone set it up for them. My mom can't install a plug-n-play modem on Windows. My dad is an Mechanical Engineer, and he has trouble with his computer all the time. There's NO WAY regular people like this, who are very smart, will ever install Linux of their own volition.

    Macs on the other hand are almost universally seen as "easier than Windows" by everyone, including Windows and Linux users. Regular people buy Macs for lots of reasons (creative people, geeks who like the UNIX OS and neat hardware, soccer moms who want to use AOL, computer phobic people who want to see what the fuss is about, college kids who like to edit video and rip MP3s).

    It's just absurd to think that Linux could be overtaking MacOS at this stage of market share on the desktop. I like Linux a lot, but I run MacOS X on my laptop now, because as a desktop OS it's just better.
    • by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Monday September 09, 2002 @11:37PM (#4225703) Homepage Journal
      The parent comment is quite insightful, imho. I know people who ABSOLUTELY HATE Microsoft, but when I ask them, "Why don't you use Linux?" they tell me, "Uh, look, I hate Microsoft, but I don't know the first thing about command lines."

      I'd love to hear from someone at a company other than the Burlington Coat Factory, from a department other than IT, who is using Linux.

      I simply find it hard to believe that there are more Linux desktop users than Mac desktop users. For one thing, what are all those supposed Linux desktop users *doing* with their machines. I'm not saying this as flame bait, but while I love Linux for server and development work, most people simply equate Linux with "geek stuff".

      It's hard enough to get most users to even entertain the notion of converting to the Mac, and that is an OS that runs plenty of Microsoft software, is oriented squarely at consumers, and has a reputation for being easy to use.

      In any event, I don't buy the argument that Linux and Mac OS X are enemies. To me, they're part of an array of options to Microsoft, and in my book, options are good.

    • by aengblom ( 123492 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @12:05AM (#4225818) Homepage
      Better yet. I'm a 22 year old quasi-geek (few geek friends) and I've never SEEN linux--ever. Now, I don't have a lot of geek friends, which makes this easier. But I sure as hell run into Macs all the time.

      Granted, I probably haven't had many web pages served by Macs either ;-)
    • People who use computers at home are only one segment of the market. There's a huge area called the business world where pretty much everyone has a computer as well as somebody to look after it for them. Macs have nearly a zero market share here but linux is ideally suited. Being able (much less required to) admin a work machine is not necessary. If it breaks, call helpdesk and somebody will fix it for you. Of course it's much better if it doesn't break and/or can be fixed by somebody else remotely both of which are pluses for linux over Windows and Mac.

      This is the market where linux will gain it's market share and it could quite easily surpass Macs in the near future. The home market will be niche for linux for quite a while but it'll still be there for geeks and family/friends of said.

    • by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @01:36AM (#4226102) Homepage
      The fact is that no one's mom runs Linux unless someone set it up for them.


      True -- but no one's mom runs Windows unless someone sets it up for them, either.

    • I had a geography professor that used Linux. Totally surprised me too. All I did was tell him the margins of my paper were off a bit because of the Linux print driver. We then got into a discussion about Linux. There are more Penguins than you think.
  • by Snuffub ( 173401 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @11:25PM (#4225654) Homepage
    This is way off topic but Im going to mention it none the less becuase so many of the posts are talking about how expensive macs are so I thought I should at least broach the subject. Just about every major study which comes out points out that macs have about half the cost of ownership to a business than equivalant PCs (usualy compared to windows PCs) this is because 1 tech support costs are dramaticly lower, and 2 macs tend to be used longer opposed to most PCs which companies throw out after three years. This isnt my opinion or a personal anecdote, this is what these same profesionals are saying. so im sure there are many reasons why macs arent used in business (key apps like MS access being one) but if an IT department is looking at cost of ownership its not true that macs are more expensive.
  • by mackertm ( 515083 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @11:26PM (#4225657)
    Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.
  • by harlows_monkeys ( 106428 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @11:36PM (#4225702) Homepage
    I've been using OS X at work, first to develop a product, and then for the last few months as a box to SSH to the Linux box I'm working on.

    My main machine at home runs Linux, with KDE for the desktop.

    I've also got a WinXP machine for when I do Windows programming for work at home, and, or course, for Everquest. I'm reasonably good at using all these from a user's point of view, although I've never done much RTFMing for the GUIs, just experimented.

    I was an exclusive Mac user at home from 1985 to 1994, and a Unix user at work from 1981, so am reasonably familiar with them.

    Here's what I've found. OS X is beautiful. However, it is full of little annoyances because Apple is stubborn, and won't admit that anyone else ever did anything better. E.g., little things like not allowing windows to resize from any side.

    There's no doubt that KDE has a steeper learning curve, and is not as beautiful, but it is not that steeper, and once I've learned something, it generally works better on KDE. Basically, at the cost of being a little clunkier at some things, KDE gets in my way a lot less.

    So, among technical users, I certainly have no trouble believing Linux is beating Mac on the desktop. However, among home users, I don't see it. It's just too hard for the average home user to acquire a Linux machine, compared to a Mac.

  • by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @11:49PM (#4225748)
    I was looking at a lot of web browser statistics around the web recently. I found pretty consistently that Linux was at least as common as all Macintosh platforms combined, and on many sites quite as common.

    I'm not surprised either. KDE and Gnome are easily set up to behave almost indistinguishably from Windows--non-techies often can't tell the difference. And Linux comes with a complete suite of applications--OpenOffice and Mozilla really do satisfy the needs of most users.

    The biggest problem with Linux, in my opinion, is the excruciatingly painful way in which drivers and other kernel extensions are installed--often involving recompiling the kernel. Even the most painless driver distributions (e.g., nVidia) require much more computer know-how to install than the average user can muster. In corporate settings, this doesn't matter that much--the IT department probably likes it that people can't just plug things in. But in the small business and home market, it matters big time.

  • by gerardrj ( 207690 ) on Monday September 09, 2002 @11:51PM (#4225763) Journal
    But saying that X percent of desktop systems run Gnu/Linux is not a very valid statement. There are at least three major distributions of Gnu/Linux that are fairly incompatible with each other, given different directory layouts, package managment systems and the like.

    Saying "Linux system" has become some sort of misnomer and masks the fact that there is no single "Linux System". There are probably more than 20 different operating systems using the Linux kernel, many of which are incompatible with each other on some level, or at least present the user/admin with significantly different interfaces and tools. And yes you get the source, and can "fix" it, but that's a lot of cost in time and skills that never seems to get added in to the TCO of the system.

    Until THAT get solved (even within the same CPU family) no distro will ever challenge the major two desktop OSes. Both of which offer standard package management, user interface and administration to every user that installs them.

    To look at the larger picture for a second:
    The overall percentage of open-source (at least partially) based OSes seems to be growing, what with *BSD, Linux, GNU, and OS X (darwin). If more companies are seeing the light of non-Microsoft and open Unixy systems, then who benifits the most? Apple it seems.
    With MacOS you can write an app for OSX in the text console with all the Unix features you like, or compile most exising stuff. You can also take your base code and evolve it in to a Carbon app that will run on OSX and OS9 with all the "bells and whistles" of a standardised GUI that you know will be the same across all installations. None of this "do I have the KDE library installed, oops, I've got to install the BZip developer libraries".

  • by BitGeek ( 19506 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @12:36AM (#4225940) Homepage

    The penetration rates given by IDG and Gartner are, essentially, made up numbers.

    I've been in a position to deal with these analysts, give them information, and observe how they work. They are no different from Wall Street Soothsayers who predict whether a stock is going to go up or down-- except that the Wall Street types are MORE scientific.

    For instance, when counting mac hardware sales, they do not count mail orders sales, sales at the apple online store, sales at local apple retailers or sales at independent apple dealers. When they say "Apple has 3.1% of the market" they are really saying "Apple has %3.1 percent of the Retail x86 Market" which is pretty absurd since apple doesn't seel x86 machines. They only look at the distribution channels that x86 manufacturers use, they ignore the majority of Mac sales.

    And that was the case in the one instance where they actually gave the source for their data... usually they never provide a backing research, or any explanation where they get their numbers.

    As a reasonably scientific person, this data is bunk. It is unsupported, unreviewed (peer review? Ha!) And, of course, it comes from companies who are paid by Microsoft to create a marketing perception that supports Microsoft's' agendas.

    I'm not going to say I know for sure what the market share is for Apple or Linux machines, but its worth pointing out that Apple machines have a service life of 2-4 times that of the average x86 PC-- the quality is better, and its shocking what the 2 year failure rate is for the average PC.

    Furthermore, I suspect Linux boxes are kept around a lot longer as well -- though we have no way of knowing which ones are used on the desktop and which ones in the server room.

    So, these fabricated "annual sales" numbers are irrelevant on the face of them-- the TAM (total addressable market) is going to be much different because people don't replace their computers every year.. but they do buy software every year. IF you're a mac software maker, you know that there are far more customers out there, as people tend to keep their macs for years. Annual sales figures aren't that relevant.

    Anyway, I think all of us should make sure we don't take these numbers seriously. And we should not repeat them, and should write to every (idiot) journalist who quotes them pointing out that they are false. Just as %95 of the computers out there are NOT x86, these figures for linux adoption are wrong as well.

    These numbers are not scientific, they aren't even "facts". They are, essentially, fabrications.

    • Sir, I salute you. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Howzer ( 580315 ) <grabshot&hotmail,com> on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @02:08AM (#4226176) Homepage Journal
      Although your points seemed completely obvious to me, I was stunned reading through the stack of posters above you who seem to be taking the numbers quite seriously. And so, well done for pointing out the truth in a calm and reasoned way.

      My window on this? In my job I have been approached many many times by these "number inventors" trying to sell their product to companies I have been working for. You know the names. Everytime they release a "report" you get that awkward phone call where the guy tries to convince you that your company will go bankrupt if it doesn't know what percentage of users use Visa as compared to Mastercard online, or something equally stupid.

      Occasionally I have tried to ask how they collect their data, even told one guy I would buy his report if he would make available to me the survey method, but that stuff is hidden carefully because, as you point out, it is utter utter non-scientific shite.

      I remain firmly convinved that these numbers would be more accurate if someone literally pulled them out of their arse. Don't feed these people - don't buy their reports.

      • by BitGeek ( 19506 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @06:02AM (#4226641) Homepage

        Yep, it was an eye opener for me. I was employed in the online gaming industry (think quake, not gambling) in the early days and they were predicting adoption rates for the online games going forward. By this point, it was supposed to be larger than hollywood... wow, it was 6 years ago. Anyway, the tellign thing was their numbers for what was currently being done-- they were literally based on what the CEOs of the companies in question told them. The CEO of MPATH would tell them that they have x active members and the CEO of TEN would tell them that they have Y members, and they'd just add x and y and go from there.

        Just now I was reading the press release from apple talking about going to all OS X macs in 2003... and they said that %75 of the people who get OS X on the new machine keep it, rather than switch to OS 9.

        What struck me about that fact is that in every assesment of Windows adoption, it is assumed that every box MS sells and every computer that ships with Windows runs Windows. That means that there are literally tens of millions of computer out there that have been counted as running windows 5 of more times.... Because business are often buying boxes to upgrade the OS, so it gets counted when it ships, it gets counted with the first upgrade, then there's a site licens and it gets counted again, and then there's another upgrade and it gets counted again....Hell, I'm sure there are almost as many computers that have been decommissioned but are still on the books and counted when the company buys its site licenses....

        Like the dead voting in Chicago elections, its a sham.

  • by rcs1000 ( 462363 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .0001scr.> on Tuesday September 10, 2002 @03:15AM (#4226298)
    I am always sceptical of numbers from market research companies - whether they be from Minitel, Gartner Dataquest, IDC, Datamonitor, or whoever.

    Why? Because I used to work for a market research company.

    We were a bunch of 22 year old kids, a year out of university working to such tight deadlines that we just made up the numbers. And guess what? Management had no problems with us doing that.

    My favourite story was when I was reseaching a certain market in South America. Because I don't speak Spanish, I decided the way to work out the size of the market was to use some (probably wrong) number for the US, divide by the number people in the US, multiply by the number of people in Venezuela, and apply - say - a 80% discount.

    Unfortunately, some where in my Excel formula I had managed to multiply the market size by 10. So, Venezuela appeared to have the largest market in South America.

    When I realised weeks later, did I bring this to my boss's attention and risk a telling off? No, I just forgot about it.

    Anyway, four months later I had left this job and got myself a proper one, and was reading a magazine. *Another* market research company was touting that "Venezuela [x] market biggest in South America!..."

    I was astonished. We hadn't done any real work, and another market research company had just copied our 'work' verbatim.

    And here ends my tale as to why Slashdot readers should avoid paying to much attention to market research.

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