[Discuss] Linux desktop market share

[Alan W. Irwin]

I have been looking for a replacement for the google zeitgeist market share
numbers.  (Several years ago google discontinued those market share reports
just after there were rumours that their long-reported rounded figure of 1
per cent for Linux would increase to 2 per cent, i.e., from 1.49999 per cent
to 1.50000 per cent).

Just ran across http://marketshare.hitslink.com/ That site keeps track of
browser and OS market share for "small to medium enterprise" customers which
of course is a very different mix of "customers" from the google survey, but
still quite interesting.

Following the links to Browser Versions Trend it is clear that Firefox has
consistently and smoothly gained market share (with firefox 1.0+1.5 climbing
from 8 to 12 per cent) despite many stories about rapid ups and downs that
must have been following different surveys representing various mixtures of
customers.

Linux share is still too small to be plotted, but if you look at the "O/S
Share Trend" link and click on individual months, the Linux numbers show a
growth in the last year from 0.30 per cent to 0.40 per cent.  So this is
roughly a third of the historical google numbers, but this is a quite
different customer mix.  If you look at the individual months, the Linux
numbers show substantial variations.  However, the higher numbers tend to be
in the later months (up to 0.49 per cent in one case) so the positive trend
is probably significant. What will be more interesting is establishing the
Linux trend from this survey over the next several years.

Finally, note that the google survey and this survey are web-based so
broadly fall under the category of desktop share.  Linux server share and
embedded share are much higher (in the double figures) than its desktop
share most likely because of MS control over pre-installs for desktop
computers.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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