How many is the marketshare for Linux?

[hecato]

Hi there, I was reading somewhere that about july of this year was the first time that passes 1% and that let me thinking... if this is "reallity"...


I have always thinked that the marked share more than 4% less than 16%... thought I really dont know.

[akakingess]

I would keep in mind that all of the Companies out there that have 1000s of computers are all going to be Windows machines with the possible exception of a linux server (mail or data or what have you). Then, the home users, there are still quite a few that are computer illiterate and may be a little "scared" (for lack of a better word) to try anything new. Also, some like me, I have 2 dedicated Linux machines, 2 dedicated Windows machines, and 2 dual-boot. So really anything approaching 5% would be a great triumph in my book at this stage of the OS battle.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Market_share_and_uptake

Estimates for the desktop market share of Linux range from less than one percent to 10-12 percent

It's important to distinguish between market share for Linux on the desktop, and Linux on servers.

[fluffman86]

Nobody knows, and nobody can ever truely know, at least as long as PC manufacturers continue to sell Windows only. With the rise of netbooks, we've started seeing more choice, but the stats are still confusing.

MS counts every single sale made, plus other stats thanks to pirates. That means they count my computer, and the computers of many of my friends, as part of their market share...even though none of us EVER use Windows.

How many people on this forum say "I've completely switched to Ubuntu now!"

How many of them still use Windows "just for games"?

How many used Ubuntu for a few months until their mom yelled at them and made them switch back to Windows?

How many got tired of rebooting for games? How many actually *LIKE* linux, but website X or program Y or TV show Z simply won't work?

edit: interesting MSFT graph:
http://www.osnews.com/story/21035/Ballmer_Linux_Bigger_Competitor_than_Apple

[harrismh777]

I'll give you a personal for instance to think about.

Every machine I ever purchased came installed with some flavor of Windows. Every single one of those machines today is running some flavor of Linux.

My latest additions to the family were two slimline HP s7400n machines running XP. They still have XP partitions (the only two I own, incidentally) but they always bootup into Ubuntu 9.04 / On the other hand they each have a boot partition into openSUSE (yes, both machines are triple boot) and sometimes (rarely now) I boot into openSUSE to compare something, or test something.

Here's the deal... of the 18 machines that I own including two laptops, all of them are running ubuntu 9.04, ubuntu 8.04 server, or openSUSE 10.3 with the exception of my firewall/server which runs an undisclosed kernel and custom load. :) Two of my machines are still running openSUSe for server functions and I'm just too lazy to change them over right now.

So, as for market share... if anyone was tracking what could be tracked... (whatever I mean by that)... it might show that Windows has the highest market share. But the reality is that without anyone really knowing how or why all of that share is *not* running windows at all ! And more to the point, all of the share is open, free (as in freedom), and entirely community produced.

There are thousands of active users on these ubuntu forums... that should tell you something... by the way, there are thousands of openSUSE users on their forums too...

:popcorn:

[HermanAB]

Every year more than 300 million embedded Linux devices are produced, so if you assume a 5 to 7 year life and add everything together, then you can see that there are more than 2 billion Linux devices out there. Of that 2 billion, a few million are desktop systems.

Marketing data by a company like Microsoft, will always ignore the 2 billion and focus on the few million desktops.

[hecato]

Is there a source that we can trust?

[SunnyRabbiera]

Is there a source that we can trust?

No, personally I think the linux market share is actually much higher then people say it is but there are no real numbers to see.
Most will say the linux market share is only 1%, but I think its more like 4%, still small compared to OSX and windows but bigger then what most think.