How many Linux users revisited- AT LEAST 11 million.

[murderslastcrow]

http://www.ukfast.co.uk/linux-news/1...ith-linux.html

Apparently, according to some numbers from the companies who've been selling netbooks, about 32 percent ship with Linux. That means that there are/will be at least 11 million Linux users, and that's just on netbooks! Consider the XPS and Inspiron laptops/desktops DELL has been selling in increasing numbers; zareason and system76 obviously make enough money to keep selling their stuff.

And this doesn't even include people who install Ubuntu on a computer that came with Windows or OS X (two of my friends did so LAST WEEK).

Also, YUM statistics puts Fedora at about 17 million unique connections. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics

And it just seems to me that, if this is the case, Ubuntu would MOST LIKELY due to its popularity (more than twice as popular as Fedora Linux according to Google search input) have more users.

So, how many users to date does Apple have? There is more than enough research being done in this field to say we have ENOUGH users, even if we're not able to give any solid numbers for the maximum amount of users.

Something tells me Linux is much more commonly used than even the generous claims would lead us to believe.

Surely not everyone uses Ubuntu. Am I being overzealous here? What do you think? Please give me as many details as you can that could point us to a more accurate minimum number of desktop Linux installations, and maybe we could make a reference thread to better inform people of the public status of installations.

[jrusso2]

Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Ask for some proof.

[gletob]

I wish Ubuntu would implement some nice statistics like that.

I need to hurry up and learn how to code.

[murderslastcrow]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/statix/

They could package and enable this by default with a disclaimer or something. Then again, that would be annoying, but I think Canonical's totally entitled to know the number of anonymous yet distinct IPs accessing their servers for updates.

I'm sure the numbers would make the job easier for those of us who are criticized for being geeks when we're just casual users.

[cariboo]

If everyone went to System-->Administration-->System Testing, and ran the applet, Canonical would be able to publish some numbers, and also add to the the HCL.

[Jekshadow]

I wish Ubuntu would implement some nice statistics like that.

I need to hurry up and learn how to code.

Why not just borrow Fedora's system? Given that it most likely works at the web server level (so the YUM-APT conversion should not affect much), would it not be easier to just borrow their system and modify it to our needs?

To add some privacy, the MD5s of the IPs could be stored instead of the actual IPs.

Edit:
Upon looking at how they do it, it seems like all they did was use some shell scripts to get the IPs out of the access logs, and then count them.

[murderslastcrow]

Lol. Wow, that's remarkably simple. Let's force Canonical to do it, or go to Debian Squeeze! :O

But yeah, I'm going to do system testing on all my computers now- good tip.

[gsmanners]

How many desktops? I doubt that's the larger number.

How many servers? How many routers? How many phones or similar devices? That might be the more impressive number.

[murderslastcrow]

I'm sure server installations are maddeningly high. Android phones are shipping like all get out, EVERYONE wants one. Even people with Blackberries and iPhones are getting very jealous of it, so when it comes to mobile phones, it's pretty obvious Linux is in the running.

I just think, if there were a concentrated effort on getting some valuable/reasonably concluded estimate of desktop users, it may speed up the vendor support we've already seen. I guess I'm just too lazy to wait for Chrome OS to come out to give us more serious support.

Then again, maybe commercial support would give us too many chances to have crapware on our systems from commercial vendors who think we'd like the stuff.

I hope people keep the junk software on the net when Chrome OS comes out. =_= Anyway, since people always seem to feign optimism on this subject, we might as well close this thread until someone really wants to know. I guess the mystery is a good thing. But at least 11 million sounds good to me.