What market share do the different distros have?

[josephellengar]

Thanks. Can't find a graph or chart anywhere.

[Dragonbite]

You mean how much (%-wise) of the whole Linux pie does Ubuntu have, Fedora has, openSUSE has, etc.?

Do you mean desktop or server?

This is tough to track because, as it shows in many posts here, many people run multiple distributions at a time.

Every year LinuxQuestions.org run a poll on things like desktop environments, window managers, music apps, etc. I think they also include Linux distro so that may be a place to look for numbers.

Distrowatch is another good source though still subjective.

[saulgoode]

Debian 12.5%
Fedora 12.5%
Ubuntu 12.5%
Mandriva 12.5%
Arch 12.5%
Slackware 12.5%
Gentoo 12.5%
Others 12.5%

Or thereabouts.:)

[forrestcupp]

The truth is, nobody has any idea. Market share is normally measured by sales. Since most Linux distros are free, there's absolutely no way for anyone to know. You can measure downloads, but there are plenty of people who burn an iso to a disk and install it multiple times.

You can't go by Distro Watch because that just measures how many times people click on a certain distro's information page.

Nobody knows and until they start selling it and stop giving it away, nobody will ever know.

[josephellengar]

You mean how much (%-wise) of the whole Linux pie does Ubuntu have, Fedora has, openSUSE has, etc.?

Do you mean desktop or server?

This is tough to track because, as it shows in many posts here, many people run multiple distributions at a time.

Every year LinuxQuestions.org run a poll on things like desktop environments, window managers, music apps, etc. I think they also include Linux distro so that may be a place to look for numbers.

Distrowatch is another good source though still subjective.

1. Yes. 2. Desktop
Thanks!

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I think most of the market share statistics come from sales data. There's not much of that for Linux distros. However, there are companies that monitor visitors to websites, like Net Applications, Inc. I monitor visitors to my website. I can tell what version of Windows they are running, and if they are using MAC OSX or MAC PPC (although I haven't seen that in a long time). When it come to *nix I can only tell they are using Solaris Unix or Linux, but not what distro.