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Linux Business Businesses The Almighty Buck

New Numbers on Linux Market Share Soon 611

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pc-nielsens dept.
prostoalex writes "New numbers on Linux market share are due this week. As far as global PC market is concerned, Gartner claims 5% of all PCs shipped this year ran Linux OS, although by the time the PCs were actually on the user's desk, only 2% of them run Linux. In the server world IDC estimates that Linux-powered servers comprise 28.3% of all server sales in 2004."
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New Numbers on Linux Market Share Soon More

New Numbers on Linux Market Share Soon

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  • Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:41PM (#9776548)
    I'd think that the percentage of computers that actually run Linux would be higher, not lower, than the % that ship with it... my family has three, one (soon to be two) exclusively Linux.

    • Re:Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 ) on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:48PM (#9776589) Homepage
      And here goes the danger of thinking that your family if somewhat representative. Or the slashdot community for that matter.

      • Re:Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:51PM (#9776608)
        Well, yeah. I know that. But I'd think the number of people adding linux would be greater than the number who buy linux boxes and format them, just because there are so few linux boxes sold.
        • I'd think the 98% of people who don't know what linux is would boot the computer, say "wtf is that" - then get little Timmy around with his windows XP cd to "fix" it.
          • Still, I know nobody who bought a computer with Linux. Altough I know quite a few Linux users.

    • Re:Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:54PM (#9776626)
      Yea, because no one is going to buy a low cost Linux computer at Walmart and slap a pirate version of Windows on it. Nope. Never gona happen.

    • Re:Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by UserChrisCanter4 ( 464072 ) * on Friday July 23, 2004 @12:23AM (#9776780)
      If I'm not mistaken, Dell offered business users a choice of some random flavor of Linux or FreeDOS preinstalled on their computers.

      The logic was thusly: Licensing agreements force them to ship the computer with SOME OS on it, but a lot of businesses already have a Windows site license. Because the price of the non-windows Dells was slightly lower than effectively purchasing the license a second time, the companies order these computers with one of those two OSes preinstalled, then wipe the drive and install WinXP/2000.

      So while there are a small number of users purchasing their computers with Windows pre-installed and migrating to Linux, that number is effectively buried by businesses doing just the opposite.

      • Re:Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:39AM (#9777363) Journal
        "So while there are a small number of users purchasing their computers with Windows pre-installed and migrating to Linux, that number is effectively buried by businesses doing just the opposite."

        MOST users running linux don't purchase a computer with it preinstalled. Since linux requires far less in terms of hardware to get the same or better performance usually they put a little memory in the computer they have and install linux on it. That includes businesses.

        But what dwarfs the linux factors one way or another is the windows site licenses. For every desktop that an alternative OS was purchased on there are hundreds in which it was not, where they simply paid the MS tax despite their site license (like they've always done before).

        Of course the difference in the numbers should be obvious, this could well constitute a pretty big chunk of the market, significantly reducing what is believed to the size of the market. This means x number of sales is really a larger percentage of the market than it is portrayed to be.

        When it comes down to it, compared to legitimate copies, there really aren't that many pirated copies of windows... there just aren't. While they are common among techs, giving us the impression they are rampant, in reality I'd be surprised if techs and their families amount to even 1% of the market.

        The kid/teenager of the house isn't an OS installer anymore than his parents or grandparents. He is wise in that he can successfully work the mouse and install most programs... a far cry from a pirated OS installation.

        With linux on the other hand, there is a strong prevalance of technically literate users (the reasons for this are debatable and not the issue here). Almost every linux user can install the OS. Couple this with the fact that companies normally act as if linux is a "cheap and inferior" solution. Normally the pc's that come with linux preinstalled are in the $200-300 range and worth more like $150, they are usually crap a literate user wouldn't touch.

        Aside from the price on the pc's, I fully admit I'm educated guessing the numbers. But from what I've seen... well I've never actually seen a system with linux preinstalled on it. I've seen lots of linux systems mind, many I've setup and have lots of friends using linux. Most of their computers are homebuilt (but not all). All in all, among desktop users I'd guesstimate about 200 linux pc's. Not a single one of them would be counted in these numbers.

        In the businessworld it's much the same. Support contracts are an issue for obscure software only in small businessland. Corporations want accountability, small business wants it to work and wants someone to call to fix it when it's broke, they don't care about fingerpointing.

        On the business side I've setup countless workstations and several hundred linux servers. Out of all of them only one was even a purchased license, all the rest were download editions of the software. A support contract would be pointless, if they have a support contract it's still us they call if they have a problem, we are local and can fix the problem before they finish holding.

        You also don't need to buy a boxed version for updates. Really using the vendor update mechnism is probably the last thing I'd recommend to a customer. With redhat distros in particular, redhat drops support too fast and is slow on the updates in comparison with well known and trusted 3rd parties (*cough*freshrpms*cough*) who still provide updates for redhat version 6.2 last I checked.

        5% of the desktop market, I doubt it's that low. 5% of oem preinstalls, perhaps. As for whether it had that OS on it when it hit the desktop, if you consider that, you have to consider all the rest I've mentioned above and more and the result is the desktop market, not the OEM preinstall numbers gartner is claiming.

      • Re:Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @06:55AM (#9778125) Homepage Journal
        I thought Dells running Linux costed more than Windows, at least that was the case when I last checked several months ago.

    • Re:Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by golgotha007 ( 62687 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @01:27AM (#9777067)
      I'd think that the percentage of computers that actually run Linux would be higher...

      not only that, but how the heck can they possibly know how many people are running linux or not running it?

      I understand they can count the number of linux pc's going out the door, but how do they know people are installing winxp or not?

      also, how do they know how many linux desktops are out there? are they just counting how many copies of mandrake were bought at CompUSA?

    • Re:Ship % should underestimate, not overestimate.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:54AM (#9777419) Homepage Journal
      U.S != World.

      In India about 5-10% (probably closer to the latter figure by now) PCs are sold with linux pre-installed. Obviously, not all stick with linux. My guess is 2-3%.

      Its the same situation in most of Asia. Linux PCs are reportedly selling like hotcakes in Malaysia. In China, it is even more extreme than in India because the number of people actually using linux is negligibly small.

      The reason for this is that most home PC users in these countries use pirated software whereas OEMs still have to pay for Windows if they want to install it. The amount of wipe-out-linux-and-install-windows going on in Asia totally dwarfs the number of geeks in the world installing linux on their machines after paying the windows tax.

      Slashdotters are living in the 1990s. The new reality is vastly different from what it used to be. The vast majority of linux users are non-geeks. There is no problem at all in getting linux PCs. The number of Linux PCs sold significantly overestimates atual usage.

      The reason that linux usage continues to hover around 2% is no longer due to Microsofy bullying, but because Linux is still quite hard for non-geeks to use.

  • The other way around? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BladeMelbourne ( 518866 ) on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:41PM (#9776549)
    Gartner claims 5% of all PCs shipped this year ran Linux OS, although by the time the PCs were actually on the user's desk, only 2% of them run Linux.

    And how many people buy PCs with Windows on them, and immediately format the disk(s) and install Linux?

    • Re:The other way around? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nmoog ( 701216 ) on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:50PM (#9776600) Homepage Journal
      I dont know about that. My computer was assembled by me and contained no OS when I bought it. Probably a good chunk of linux users are in the same boat.

      And if you consider the stats from Google's zietgeist [google.com], it really can't be too many.
      • Of course, home builts arn't counted in these numbers either so you've still got new systems running linux that weren't accounted for.

      • Re:The other way around? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:53AM (#9777408) Journal
        "Google's zietgeist"

        That's a pretty poor metric, it goes by the user agent string. I can't say I know any linux user (or any nonIE user for that matter) who doesn't change their user agent string to be IE 6sp1 on windows. They do this for a simple reason, 99% of the pages that don't load in alternative browsers, magically do load if the browser claims it's IE.
    • no one? the types that load linux custom build.

    • Re:The other way around? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @12:28AM (#9776823) Homepage Journal
      "And how many people buy PCs with Windows on them, and immediately format the disk(s) and install Linux?"

      How many people that buy PC's even know that Linux is something that could replace Windows? Don't dismiss the number of Linux users out there that buy components instead of assembled PCs.

    • Re:The other way around? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jmv ( 93421 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @12:36AM (#9776858) Homepage
      That's especially true for laptops -- try to find a laptop that ships with Linux. There are some, but there are so few they're not likely to have the config you want.

  • Point people seem to be ignoring (Score:3, Interesting)

    by McAddress ( 673660 ) on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:42PM (#9776553)
    The article claims that there will be 1 billion windows users by the year 2010. IMO, this is the most important number in the whole article.

    The best hope for linux is in getting new users from the pool of non-users instead of from the pool of windiws users. Once people use windows, they believe for some reason that they will be unable to switch.

    • I don't think Linux will ever be able to touch Windows on the desktop, people have a hard enough time running Windows, much less a sometimes finicky Linux flavor. Linux will, however, pick up steam in the server rooms, especially if Microsoft continues to try and roll out a new server product every 4 years, as planned. No one will want to upgrade their server every 4 years, just as Microsoft has finally released enough service packs to get their current server install working properly!
      • This is very true. People simply know how to use Windows, regardless of its GUI design, or lack thereof. I personally don't see why the average Joe would have an incentive to use something they've either never heard of, or have only read about in passing, and basically know nothing about. I used to use Gnome back in the 1.x days (I went back to using a Mac once I bought a PowerBook a couple years ago), and I personally felt that it had a more intuitive, albeit very similar, user interface than Windows.
      • Doesn't Linux toss out a new kernel more frequently than every 4 years? Isn't that a new NOS of sorts?
      • Linux is already past windows in terms of sophistication, reliability, and utter wow factor. Have you seen screenshots of any really nice kde or gnome desktops?

        I know... You can do a lot of that stuff with windows, too. I know this because I too am a (closeted) windows user. I am sitting at a (presently) windows2000 machine that has bore this same skin (my own version of "Beacon") for years now ala windowblinds. Yes, it makes it a bit slower but goddamn windows is ass-ugly without it!

        My system is my TV se

      • people have a hard enough time running Windows, much less a sometimes finicky Linux flavor.

        Finicky? My Suse Linux 9.0 installed far faster than Windows 2000, autodetected all of my hardware, and set up my broadband connection without any intervention on my part - without needing a reboot once. In addition, I got a boatload of apps I'd otherwise have to pay for; and no matter what the Microsofties say for most people (text editing, spreadsheet, browsing, email) these apps are more than up to the job.

        Li
    • "Once people use windows, they believe for some reason that they will be unable to switch."

      I would say most Linux users these days once used Windows as their primary OS but were then able to switch. Sure, the less technically inclinded portion of the population will not be able to do that, but I wouldn't recommend that they start out on Linux in the first place.

  • Ok, you got IBM linux, SGI linux/altix, Solaris technically has linux too. Then within linux you have a thousand distros. What about people who run windows but use linux thru vmware, does that count? And you wonder why I hated statistics class.

  • I started a new job recently, and they seem to live and die by these fucking Gartner reports. I hadn't heard of them up until recently. Can someone tell me what the deal is?
    • I started a new job recently, and they seem to live and die by these fucking Gartner reports. I hadn't heard of them up until recently. Can someone tell me what the deal is?

      No, we can't, because the fucking Gartner link is to a PAY ONLY site: "This article/section can only be accessed by ComputerWire registered users". What was the point of that?

      • OK, so I went to Google and dug up a link [64.233.167.104]

        Gartner Encourages Realistic Desktop Linux Expectations

        Excitement might be growing about the prospects for Linux on the desktop following several high-profile government contracts, but research firm Gartner Inc is injecting a dose of realism by playing down the potential for desktop Linux.

        High-profile contracts with government organizations such as City of Munich in Germany have raised excitement about Linux on the desktop, with Gartner's prediction that 220 mi

    • Re:Gartner? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ami Ganguli ( 921 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @12:22AM (#9776776) Homepage

      They're a pet peeve of mine. It seems like what they do is interview CIO types about their opinions on various technologies and then turn that information into speculation about where the industry is going.

      The result is a bunch of very credible sounding propoganda that reflects all the biases prevalent among their target audience: CIOs who need backing for their opinions. The CIOs naturally buy the reports and use them to pursuade other people in the company that the CIO's favourite pet project or technology is "industry best practices".

      Gartner reports tell a lot about what people who worked in technology ten years ago (and have since moved to management) think. They consistently overlook trends that are bubbling under the surface, obvious practitioners, but not yet noticed by management.

      If you want to know what your boss thinks about the industry, read Gartner. If you want to know about what's really happening, read the Usenet group that deals with the specific technology you're interested in.

    • Think "prostitution". (Score:5, Informative)

      by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Friday July 23, 2004 @12:59AM (#9776968)
      Gartner is in the business of selling "reports" and "studies".

      Most of the "reports" and "studies" you'll see from Gartner are linked from vendor's websites. Vendors who paid for the report. So the vendors use those "reports" and "studies" as marketing materials.

      I've only seen Gartner stuff used to justify a decision that has already been made. And, IMO, that's all they're good for.

  • Wasn't this the opposite argument we were making? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vondo ( 303621 ) * on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:44PM (#9776567)
    Isn't this the opposite of the argument that Linux users have always made. That because it is so hard to get a PC (as opposed to parts) without Windows, that the number of linux installs running was higher than the shipments?

    I mean, really, what evidence do they have that hordes of people are buying machines with Linux pre-installed just to go through the pain of installing XP in order to save, what, $40?

    Granted, a lot of machines shipped with Linux aren't running the version of Linux they shipped with, but I find their statement hard to believe.

    • I mean, really, what evidence do they have that hordes of people are buying machines with Linux pre-installed just to go through the pain of installing XP in order to save, what, $40?

      Perhaps the vast quatities of boxen that Wal Mart [walmart.com] is shipping has something to do with it. I still don't believe for a second that these numbers are fair and unbiased, and I think their polling methods may be in error, but Wal-mart does ship a lot of computers to people who are very familiar with Windows, not Linux.

    • The evidence is called a "ms windows site license."

      In order to avoid paying for windows twice, corporations that already own a ms windows site license choose to buy their new PCs with linux pre-installed. They choose linux over no os at all because MS has this silly little contractual requirement with all vendors licensed to ship ms-windows, the requirement is all machines must ship with *an* OS. The requirement used to be to explciitly ship with ms-windows, but that requirement was axed as one of the fe

  • NX support? That is soooo *LAST* month! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Asprin ( 545477 ) <gsarnoldNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:45PM (#9776572) Homepage Journal

    Gammage also stated that until Linux is shown to support the NX (No eXecute) security technology supported in Microsoft Corp's forthcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2, it will be seen as potentially deficient to Windows. However, Red Hat released a patch for the Linux kernel to support NX in June that has the full blessing of Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

    Yeah, right. Read 'em and weep. [kerneltrap.org]

  • NX Bit?!?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Teancom ( 13486 ) <david@noSpAM.gnuconsulting.com> on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:50PM (#9776606) Homepage
    What the hell? As long as Linux doesn't support NX, which *will be* supported in the *upcoming* SP2, it will be seen as deficient in comparision? Okay, ignore the fact that they themselves state there are already patches for Redhat, while SP2 hasn't actually shipped. I'm just wondering what the fascination with NX is. I mean, it's a nifty idea, but I can't imagine anyone getting down the wire of choosing between XP or Linux as the right tool for a job, and deciding on XP because of NX. I mean, come-on. This is just idiocy. Not that I had any respect for Gartner to lose, but if I did, there it went... There are plenty of differences, strengths and weaknessess on both sides, to differentiate between XP and Linux. Supporting the NX bit is not one of them at this time.

    • I can't imagine anyone getting down the wire of choosing between XP or Linux as the right tool for a job, and deciding on XP because of NX.

      Anyone with any knowledge of OS security will know that Windows automatically loses in the competition, because various OS components (Internet Explorer/ActiveX) allow bypassing of normal privilege isolation. Windows tends to fall apart on its own under security stressors, while UNIX holds its permission isolations -- assuming both are kept patched up to date, even.

  • 3.5% by 2008 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by droleary ( 47999 ) on Thursday July 22, 2004 @11:59PM (#9776651) Homepage

    Bah! Gartner's fabricated estimate is totally unnecessary for this. Actual usage measurements, like the Google Zeitgeist [google.com] are more telling. Linux has never broken 1% and as a desktop system I really wouldn't count on it passing the Mac any year soon.

    • Exactly. Have the slashdot editors revealed the percentage of OS's that hit this site?


      When Gartner makes up anti-Linux stats the slashdot crowd screams to high heaven, now that they have made up some pro-Linux stats everyone is celebrating.

    • I know a lot of people who swear by Google Zeitgeist but really, as a statistical tool, it can be limited. I'm not saying Gartner's numbers are perfect, but at the same time, consider the following:

      Google only uses cookies, as far as I know, to store my preferences. While that's good for security and privacy reasons, its bad for Zeitgeist.

      Its not unreasonable to think that 'power' web surfers probably use Google more than most computer users, on the whole. Who are power users? Are they Mac users? Lin
    • Naturally, with all those spare cycles available, what is a Linux box to do, but look up stuff on the internet. Must be all that server pr0n [google.com]. Remind me to uninstall Mozilla from all the company servers over the weekend.

      -Hope
    • I've sorted their numbers a bit:

      Win95 1%
      Win98 16%
      WinME 3%
      WinNT 2%
      Win2000 18%
      WinXP 51% (that's a lot of XP)

      Mac 3%

      Linux 1%

      Other 5% (What are these OS's?)

      Really, aside from all the Windows versions listed and the "Mac" category, what other OS's are out there? There must be at least 6 of them with marketshare just below Linux's. But I don't know what they are. Any ideas?

      Not that I don't trust Google's numbers (I'm cynical) but that 51% looks awful high too. At work we have

    • Re:3.5% by 2008 (Score:3, Informative)

      by Reteo Varala ( 743 )
      When on Google, my debian system with Konqueror defaults to stating it's Windows XP with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

      I can change it, but how many other browsers falsely identify themselves for the sake of extra security against the internet?
      • It would really help if people don't do this. No matter how often it is said to customers that people do this just based on the statistics we get told by customers to make the sites primarily IE compatible. If more browsers would report their true user agent it would make life a lot simpler.

        It is pretty easy to make a site completely standards compliant and send it identical html. However to make it work well IE needs to get a different stylesheet from the standards compliant browsers which is basically ev

  • I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by flopsy mopsalon ( 635863 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @12:00AM (#9776660)
    Linux users need to decide what their operating system is all about. Is it about freedom and doing it your way, or is it all about sales and making money?

    I'm sorry, but the two are not compatible. Once your focus becomes "market share" (shouldn't that be "market selfish"?) then you start in with the competition and copyrighting and everything that goes with it [sco.com].

    It would be a shame to see the creativity and individualism that spurred the Linux revolution denatured and dilluted, like so many other initally promising social trends, by the invisible hand of the "almighty greenback".
    • It is about doing it your way. For some corporations and people, their way is sales aand making money. The two can stand side by side.
    • Linux users don't have to do anything buddy. "Our" work is not a product so it *can* be different things to different people. Some like it free, some like it embedded, some like it just like Windows, some don't like it at all.

      Personally, my focus is not market share - the only people talking about market share are Gartner, and the wording itself makes me wonder if they even considered the plethora of free downloads and copies going on in the Linux scene.

      As others have pointed out, the NX thing is a red he
  • the 150 desktops we bought and immediately wiped because D^H"they" wouldn't sell us anything without windows.

  • My own "statistics" says other (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Maljin Jolt ( 746064 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @12:26AM (#9776806) Journal
    In past 10 years, I bought a total of just a dozen PCs. Every one of them is now running Linux, completely eliminating all brands of Windowses bought with them.

    That's 100% of current userbase over past 10 years now. And 6 of the 12 are actually desktops. That's 100% of my desktops running Linux.

    Well, within above I do not count Linux replaced a toy WinCE in iPaq PDA, gaining a desktop capability in my pocket too.

  • While the released numbers could be a good thing for Linux, it's more likely to be representative of "size of capital market for Gartner services" than to truly represent a completely impartial measure.

    Like seeing a positive reference to OS/2 in a Windows magazine or reading how there are many qualities Microsoft should copy from Mac OS X in PC err eWeek, it really isn't a major or even minor coup when a firm that has completely been lodged in the cleft of Windowlingus for years starts including references
  • However insignificant the numbers might be do these figures include any boxes that or addons that are PowerPC based (other than IBM) - meaning a Mac or other custom box like a Yellow Dog Briq [terrasoftsolutions.com]? (Or any of the Macs they sell that ship with Yellow Dog Linux PreInstalled?)

  • Like nailing jello to the wall (Score:5, Interesting)

    by st1d ( 218383 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:53AM (#9777411) Homepage
    I still sometimes get a little pissy about articles/reports/surveys like this. Then after I spout my peace, I can't help but laugh. Linux has an advantage that most commercial desktops can't even approach. See, if I sell Windows, Solaris, Mac, or any of the other commercial operating systems, I know exactly how I'm doing.

    We all "know" MS has 90-95% of the market. The numbers shipped, the dollar amounts, all point to this "fact". Same with the others.

    Linux doesn't come close. From a dollar perspective, most distros pale compared to the others. From a "shipped" point of view, well, who counts little Linux shops in their numbers? This is about Dell and the big folks. And there is the dualboot/wipe issue.

    So, why do I laugh? Because, using these statistics, nobody will realize how many people actually use Linux until it's right in their faces. In other words, theoretically, MS could still ship 90-95% of the market, only to turn around one day, and find out that only 10-20% of users actually use Windows (with a few more using it occasionally).

    So, realisically, the better way of measuring this would be to measure the "other" sales related to Windows. Antivirus software wouldn't count, neither would Office software, or games. (These are necessities for dual booters, or things that might only be available for one OS.)

    My pick would be the "cheapy" software that people tend to buy for their computers. The productivity stuff, or "make your computer easier to use" kind of stuff. Better yet, if you want a long term guage, try the "educational" aisle.

    In other words, to guage an OS's success, compare it's market. Find something unusual about that OS, something that no other can share, and use that as a guage. Exact numbers don't matter, but trends can point out a lot.

    If money/users seem to be disappearing from these markets, yet the hardware folks are actually doing pretty well, you might want to bump up your Linux/OSS numbers a little.

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