How Many Linux Boxes Are There?

It's impossible to accurately say how many Linux boxes are out there. Estimates range from a half a million to 10 million. TBTF has an interesting writeup in their latest issue using various estimates to guess at how many boxes there are. Alessandro Russo recently sent me an email saying we should make a small kernel patch that sends some sort of registration information to a central server occasionally. Such an idea has amazingly complicated issues (forging? dynamic IPs? bandwidth? privacy?) associated with it, but is certainly interesting. Back when I first installed slackware I remember it telling me to send email somewhere to track installations. Various other Linux Counting Projects have been underway, but maybe it's really time to get into doing this. Linux Installations potentially outnumber MacOS! Let's prove it.