There are over 1 BILLION Linux users.

[fuduntu]

It doesn't work like that actually. A dormant account is not tapped for any server load. It has to do with pageviews per second. A thread with several hundred posts by a single user is going to have the same load on the server if the thread was done by several hundred users. It's a cacheable resultset. A better way to reduce the server load is to move threads to archives when they become dormant for a period of time... still searchable, but with less graphics and features of an active thread.

Right. Inactive user (bots, etc) records only use a few bytes of disk space too.

[alexan]

By sure they are now more than iPhone ones.

[tgalati4]

I'm pretty sure it's 1% plus or minus 1%.

[cookiecloud]

Unless they buy support, how is it possible to even begin to quantify how many users of a free OS there are?

You couldn't even calculate it from the number of members on all distro forums, ISO downloads, etc. It is just impossible to say. Maybe you should re-title this to "There are ~ 1 BILLION (passive) Linux/*nix users.

[disabledaccount]

Number of linux users can be estimated indirectly by counting speciall events.
It could be something like this:
- every increase of 200K-500K new users causes releasing one FUD on some "non-commercial" blog
- every 5M-10M new users triggers MS self-defence mechanisms - they buy pseudo-proffessional opinions and releasing them in form of OS comparison or "case-studies"
- every 20-30M of new linux users triggers alarm in MS HQ, so they make speciall offerings for selected companies and sue others.

This way someone who will search the WEB carefully can get quite accurate numbers

[walt.smith1960]

Number of linux users can be estimated indirectly by counting speciall events.
It could be something like this:
- every increase of 200K-500K new users causes releasing one FUD on some "non-commercial" blog
- every 5M-10M new users triggers MS self-defence mechanisms - they buy pseudo-proffessional opinions and releasing them in form of OS comparison or "case-studies"
- every 20-30M of new linux users triggers alarm in MS HQ, so they make speciall offerings for selected companies and sue others.

This way someone who will search the WEB carefully can get quite accurate numbers

[cprofitt]

By sure they are now more than iPhone ones.

Actually no.

As the OP stated a majority of Websites use Linux... the logic was that if you use the web you are using Linux. So a person on an iPhone accessing this website would be a Linux user.

I am not sure that is how I would measure things though.

If you count Android as Linux, which most do, then Linux users would still outnumber iPhone users at thhis point if you were only counting smartphone usage.

[cprofitt]

Number of linux users can be estimated indirectly by counting speciall events.
It could be something like this:
- every increase of 200K-500K new users causes releasing one FUD on some "non-commercial" blog
- every 5M-10M new users triggers MS self-defence mechanisms - they buy pseudo-proffessional opinions and releasing them in form of OS comparison or "case-studies"
- every 20-30M of new linux users triggers alarm in MS HQ, so they make speciall offerings for selected companies and sue others.

This way someone who will search the WEB carefully can get quite accurate numbers

So that is why they are suing Barnes and Noble.

[Grenage]

I know of about 20 people that use Linux, and I live in the UK; I assume that we are the only people in the UK using Linux. The UK accounts for just under 1% (0.91) the global population, so I'll extrapolate and assume that the global user base is just under 2000.

As flawed and deranged as that logic is, it's probably about as valid as the other figures floating around.

[KL_72_TR]

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } It is sad to seat and see the statistics. Yes indirectly there may be more than 1 G using Linux. I think we should spread even more the word about the possibilities and the quality Linux can offer, so more people are going to use it directly in their PC-s.