irv
February 17th, 2006, 02:01 AM
Today is a snowy day in Minnesota and what a good time to clean out my shed. I know I am a packrat and I hate to throw things away. While cleaning out some old boxes I ran across some old computer software and magazines. I found the first Linux desktop OS I ever installed, It was Caldera 2.2 it included KDE Desktop, Staroffice 5 Wordperfect 8 and Partitionmagic Caldera Edition. It was 1999 when I installed it, and it came with Netware client 4.2.2 for Openlinux. Since those days I have tried Suse, RedHat, Mandrake, and now Ubuntu, (starting with 5.04 and now 5.10).
In one of my old Linux magazines (November 2000) they had some Desktop and Server stats that went like this:
Desktop market share: 1996 1999 2003
Windows 78.5% 87.3% 88.9%
MacOS 6.8% 5.0% 5.2%
Linux <1.0% 3.9% 5.5%
Server market share 1996 1999 2003
Windows 23.8% 36.8% 44.5%
Linux 6.0% 23.8% 36.7%
NetWare 28.9% 18.0% 9.5%
Unix 18.6% 14.8% 8.9%
I tried to find some up-to-date stats on these counts but found the following:
Out for the Count
Like any statistics, market share figures are subject to many factors that can affect the resulting pattern. Some are coincidental; others may be intentional. Are they tracking sales or users? New orders or existing user base? Servers or desktops? Domestic or worldwide?
For example, any guesses on how many Linux users are out there? That question seems to be on a lot of people's minds lately. According to The Linux Counter, there are probably somewhere between 2,747,850 and 68,689,500 Linux users worldwide. Why such a spread? Linux users are invited to identify themselves by registering on the site. The pollsters guess that between 0.2 and 5 percent of all Linux users have done so. That assumption, extrapolated, gives a margin of error of nearly 66 million.
What about worldwide Linux usage as a proportion of national populations? By that measure, the United States ranks down at number 33 in Linux use. Who's on top? The Faroe Islands.
More subtle, but no less challenging to accuracy, are situations like the one that arose in 2000, when Gartner conducted a study in Linux penetration sponsored by Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) . It found that in Q3 of that year, just 8.3 percent of all new servers shipped with Linux. IDC disagreed, saying Gartner's definition of "shipped" was too narrow, excluding in-house builds and replication of free Linux systems. IDC thought the figure should be 10 to 15 percent.
Painting by Numbers
Bearing these warnings in mind, what follows is not comprehensive, just a few snapshots from sources that do not necessarily agree. The desktop scene is most easily analyzed. Most pundits seem to agree that Microsoft will maintain its nearly total dominance for the foreseeable future -- which is, in analyst-speak, until 2007.
IDC's most recent figures, published in October 2003, actually relate to new licenses issued the previous year, when Microsoft clients overall amounted to 93.8 percent of the total. Linux desktops accounted for just 2.8 percent. Tom Bajarin of analyst firm Creative Strategies says IBM (NYSE: IBM) might be pushing for Linux on the desktop, but not for dropping Windows.
This was quoted from the LinuxInsider (Stat Wars: Measuring OS Market Share 1/29/2004.
In 2004 Slashdot posted that Linux-powered servers comprise 28.3% of all server sales in 2004.
Thursday November 3, 2005
Table 1: Global Server Operating System Market Share
Platform 2000 2003 2006
Windows NT/200X Server 14.0 mil (58%) 16.0 mil (53%) 18.0 mil (50%)
NetWare 3.5 mil (14.6%) 1.6 mil (5.3%) 1.0 mil (2.7%)
UNIX (all) 2.8 mil (11.7%) 2.3 mil (7.7%) 2.0 mil (5.6%)
Linux (Servers) 1.5 mil (6.3%) 5.2 mil (17.3%) 11.0 mil (31%)
Total 24 million 30 million 36 million
In 2000 the guess was 36.7% on server in 2003 well it was only half that many, but by 2006 it was closer at 31%.
I haven't found much on Desktop stats so if any one comes up with that they can add it to this post.
I hope you found this to be of interest to you, I like to keep up with where Linux is going in the upcoming years. All I know is I like Linux and am sick of Windows always taking the spotlight when Linux is growing better by the day.
Irv :-D
In one of my old Linux magazines (November 2000) they had some Desktop and Server stats that went like this:
Desktop market share: 1996 1999 2003
Windows 78.5% 87.3% 88.9%
MacOS 6.8% 5.0% 5.2%
Linux <1.0% 3.9% 5.5%
Server market share 1996 1999 2003
Windows 23.8% 36.8% 44.5%
Linux 6.0% 23.8% 36.7%
NetWare 28.9% 18.0% 9.5%
Unix 18.6% 14.8% 8.9%
I tried to find some up-to-date stats on these counts but found the following:
Out for the Count
Like any statistics, market share figures are subject to many factors that can affect the resulting pattern. Some are coincidental; others may be intentional. Are they tracking sales or users? New orders or existing user base? Servers or desktops? Domestic or worldwide?
For example, any guesses on how many Linux users are out there? That question seems to be on a lot of people's minds lately. According to The Linux Counter, there are probably somewhere between 2,747,850 and 68,689,500 Linux users worldwide. Why such a spread? Linux users are invited to identify themselves by registering on the site. The pollsters guess that between 0.2 and 5 percent of all Linux users have done so. That assumption, extrapolated, gives a margin of error of nearly 66 million.
What about worldwide Linux usage as a proportion of national populations? By that measure, the United States ranks down at number 33 in Linux use. Who's on top? The Faroe Islands.
More subtle, but no less challenging to accuracy, are situations like the one that arose in 2000, when Gartner conducted a study in Linux penetration sponsored by Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) . It found that in Q3 of that year, just 8.3 percent of all new servers shipped with Linux. IDC disagreed, saying Gartner's definition of "shipped" was too narrow, excluding in-house builds and replication of free Linux systems. IDC thought the figure should be 10 to 15 percent.
Painting by Numbers
Bearing these warnings in mind, what follows is not comprehensive, just a few snapshots from sources that do not necessarily agree. The desktop scene is most easily analyzed. Most pundits seem to agree that Microsoft will maintain its nearly total dominance for the foreseeable future -- which is, in analyst-speak, until 2007.
IDC's most recent figures, published in October 2003, actually relate to new licenses issued the previous year, when Microsoft clients overall amounted to 93.8 percent of the total. Linux desktops accounted for just 2.8 percent. Tom Bajarin of analyst firm Creative Strategies says IBM (NYSE: IBM) might be pushing for Linux on the desktop, but not for dropping Windows.
This was quoted from the LinuxInsider (Stat Wars: Measuring OS Market Share 1/29/2004.
In 2004 Slashdot posted that Linux-powered servers comprise 28.3% of all server sales in 2004.
Thursday November 3, 2005
Table 1: Global Server Operating System Market Share
Platform 2000 2003 2006
Windows NT/200X Server 14.0 mil (58%) 16.0 mil (53%) 18.0 mil (50%)
NetWare 3.5 mil (14.6%) 1.6 mil (5.3%) 1.0 mil (2.7%)
UNIX (all) 2.8 mil (11.7%) 2.3 mil (7.7%) 2.0 mil (5.6%)
Linux (Servers) 1.5 mil (6.3%) 5.2 mil (17.3%) 11.0 mil (31%)
Total 24 million 30 million 36 million
In 2000 the guess was 36.7% on server in 2003 well it was only half that many, but by 2006 it was closer at 31%.
I haven't found much on Desktop stats so if any one comes up with that they can add it to this post.
I hope you found this to be of interest to you, I like to keep up with where Linux is going in the upcoming years. All I know is I like Linux and am sick of Windows always taking the spotlight when Linux is growing better by the day.
Irv :-D