Topic: How many Linux users?

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

"We have no phone home or registration process, so it's always a guesstimate. But based on the same methodology that we came up with for the 2008 number, our present belief is that it's somewhere north of 12 million users at the moment," Chris Kenyon, vice president for OEM at Canonical, told InternetNews.com

In contrast, as of March 29, Red Hat's Fedora Linux was reporting usage of its Linux distribution at approximately 24 million installations.

Add the following assumptions:

1/ Redhat + Ubuntu are 2/3 of the Linux market.

2/ There are 1.3 billion PCs in current use.

That puts Linux on 4.15% of the PCs out there.  Without assumption 1/ that would be 2.77% of PCs.

[atheorhaven]

Don't know if you're polling for comments.. but am a Linux user right here.  Running Jolicloud on my laptop (Ubuntu-based) and remote desktoping into my XP box at the moment.

I have three programs I need Windows to run.. everything else I do I do on programs that have Linux and Windows versions. 

If someone can port 3dsmax to Linux, that's one less..

Although I'm seriously considering gmax for Lniux if its around.  And Paint Shop Pro is another one.  Now that Teamviewer has a Linux port, that's one less Windows app I need...

[Nemesis]

Don't know if you're polling for comments..

Not specifically, though I'm not against them in any way.

More accurately I was showing that the "1%" number bandied about for several  years is quite questionable. 

That 1% number comes from a site called hitslink and when I first checked it out under Linux it would never open.  Oddly enough it wouldn't even open for the Windows version of Firefox on Wine even though it did for the same version on Windows.  A site that just won't work for browsers on Linux or Wine doesn't seem to me like one that can be trusted to give accurate user info on the number of Linux users.  Since then the site has started to work for Linux but still I question whether it records them right. 

Last year I was tracking certain numbers from the hitslink site and for a couple of months they were not giving updates, then when they did they retroactively "recalculated" them to "adjust" for other countries not being "properly" accounted for.  When I say retroactively I mean all the older numbers on the site were changed to adjust to the "new system".  The Linux numbers stayed pretty steady but Windows and IE jumped up significantly at the expense of Apple, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. 

[stoneyface]

the only people who believe the 1% number these days are the microsoft PR department. most linux users have agreed for a while that the number is higher than 1% and rising everyday. glad to see some "proof" offered up. thanks for the article.

personally i have about 12 different linux distro's sitting in cd sleeves right here on my desk and two pc's in the house running linux. any non-gaming user could probably use linux and not have a worry. with today's gui's i could load up linux and make it look like a windows desktop and fool a good number of "basic skill" users.

[Nemesis]

the only people who believe the 1% number these days are the microsoft PR department. most linux users have agreed for a while that the number is higher than 1% and rising everyday. glad to see some "proof" offered up. thanks for the article.

Oddly enough a year or so back Steve Ballmer made a statement where it was pretty clear he believed there were more Linux machines than Mac. 

There are those Microsoft supporters who push the 1% constantly.  Some I think believe it others have their careers tied to MS and are "shilling" as part of trying to hold back the rising Linux tide.  How many IT workers ONLY know Windows and if Linux moves in they either have to learn it fast or look for new work?  Think back to the 1980s when the "computer people" who ran the main frames and mini computers resisted strongly the entrance of the PC into the office some I think honestly believed the PC useless others feared for their jobs.  There was resistance to networking the same way.

[knightstorm]

Oddly enough a year or so back Steve Ballmer made a statement where it was pretty clear he believed there were more Linux machines than Mac. 

Not really surprising.  From what I've read, Mac OS only runs well on apple machines.  There's a version of linux for pretty much everything.

[I, Mudd.]

Although I'm seriously considering gmax for Lniux if its around.  And Paint Shop Pro is another one.

I'm running on ubuntu right now with both nif-gmax (coupled with a winmm.dll manually dropped into the gmax installation folder to run the SFC plugins) and ps7 ported in via the current version of wine (1.1.42) AND winetricks (to port in the missing d3d and VB stuff).

It's freakin' beautiful, man. I don't see why psp wouldn't run.

Mudd.

[Riskyllama]

With steam going to macs this week, I think maybe even today, and Linux later this year it'll be interesting to look at the percentages and numbers of Linux users since steam keeps track of things like that.

[FoaS_XC]

I dualboot Mint and WinXP. I would use linux primarily except that 3ds Max doesn't fly in it - Thus i use windows primarily :-/