1% Linux Market Share = 100% Dishonesty

Why let it bother you so much? What difference does it really make? So what if it really is only 1%? So what if it's 99%? Does that make you any more/less significant? Does it make you feel like you chose the wrong OS if yours isn't the most popular?

Why is your ego so tied to the success of Linux?

Inquiring minds want to understand.

Seems more like a rant about shoddy journalism to me, and indeed that's something worth ranting about. The general public get a plethora of "facts" thrown at them every day that most just eat up as truths. This is not excusable as "just to sell newspapers" as it is a potentially harmful thing to do.

It's not really the 1% or 6% or 45%. It's the sloppy, biased journalism that rankles.

Examples abound: http://www.inlumineconsulting.com:8080/website/ms.treatment....

That one calls out newpaper and news service editors for sloppiness and amnesia, but the point stands: mainstream news leans way over to give Microsoft a good slant in just about every article. The internet "trade press" is worse.

I'm with jacog. Sloppy journalism is used as justification for wasting billions per year at sloppy, shoddy, insecure, and flat-out dangerous programming. Rather than put Linux to the test, a big manufacturing corporation (I have a specific one in mind here) would rather just read a few articles like the one-percent tripe, consult with its IT people, decide that its own IT people are ignorant, and stick with the Windows addiction.

So what were the reasons, they gave for sticking with Windows, and not taking their IT people's advice, gus?

The "retraining costs" would be "too high." As if the slightly different look of a web page in Firefox on Linux would cause it to work differently when someone clicked a link. And as if the costs of Windows' forced updates and incompetent anti-malware (I'm looking at you, McAfee) weren't already so high.

It just comes down to inertia. They don't want to change, saying essentially "better the devil you know than the devil you don't," and will make any excuse they can to keep the status quo.

gus3: "The 'retraining costs' would be 'too high.'"

That's a pretty common excuse and in many ways I'm sure it's true. Think of all the people out there who resist change and complain incessantly anytime they are forced to change their ways (thus causing more aggravation for admins and fellow coworkers). I've worked at a handful of places and at just about everyone of those places, there were at least a few people like that. While it could be argued that those people should just be fired (and I'd agree), managers often simply do not want to deal with problem people.

There's also the old adage: better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

But don't fret, Linux is constantly improving and people are moving to it. Change doesn't happen overnight ;-)

Quoting:The "retraining costs" would be "too high."

The training costs too high should be fairly easy to debunk. Perhaps the IT people should do a study, write up a cost comparison.

Nothing is possible, to the mind which refuses to believe.

Sander: yes and no. If you notice a competitor targeting the same audience you are... PLUS some people using a different OS and the people on OtherOS are flocking to them in droves, then you obviously need to reassess what platforms your products/website are built for. But that can all be gathered via real market research. I didn't mean to suggest you use website stats alone ;-)

Also keep in mind that Linux+Konqueror (as an example) users aren't going to know that your website doesn't work with that setup until they try it ;-)

Quoting:what would be really interesting would be to base the survey on popular commercial websites.

Even that wouldn't work well I think. Just take a look at the average Linux user. What are they? A tad geeky, technically inclined and well versed at finding their way around the internet. I'd say we are less inclined to use the big commercial sites and more likely to use niche sites that suit us better. I would even go as far as saying that the only large commercial website that would give a somewhat accurate sample would be Google.

Quoting:If you notice a competitor targeting the same audience you are... PLUS some people using a different OS and the people on OtherOS are flocking to them in droves

You'll never know. Unless the website in question is tech oriented or requires special technology then you can't tell if a website caters to Linux users or not. A site about growing your own vegitables or your local gym aren't going to scream Linux compatibility from their websites. They simply work or they don't. There's no way of knowing that they specifically cater to Linux people.

And you'll never know how much Linux visitors your competitor gets without getting access to their web statistics.

I know lots of linux users who e.g. shop @ amazon.com or search on google - a look at those server logs would probably be a lot more meaningful than looking at the stats from some obviously slanted site e.g. microsoft.com

Sander: yes, Google would absolutely be a great example of a site that could actually shed some half-way decent light on what the actual linux desktop install base is.

However, I think that if Linux desktops really are only used by "tech geeks" as you say (and I have no evidence to disprove your assertion), then it will never have much of a real desktop market share simply because the "tech geek" population is tiny. Maybe you are right, I don't know, but if you are right, then it's even less reason to get all upset (not that you are specifically) about about the 1% figure ;-)

Think about it... I heard somewhere that worldwide there are only about 9 million programmers. What is world population? Something like 7 billion? That would mean that even if all programmers in the world ran Linux on the Desktop, Linux would only have 0.13% desktop market share. What's the ratio of "tech geek" to programmer? I doubt it's more than 10:1 (which would give us the >1% mark assuming every techie in the world ran Linux on the desktop).

Of course this is only 1% of world population, not computer-user population, and I have no idea what that ratio is.

In an event, it's entirely reasonable to conclude that in order to take much more than 1% of the computer-user market share, Linux will have to appeal to more than just tech geeks because a vast majority of computer users are not and do not care to ever be tech geeks.

Shepard, a couple of things:

First off, tech geek != programmer. There are many, many more tech geeks than programmers. Also, I refuse to believe that there are only 9 million programmers out there. That figure seems to be off by at least an order of magnitude. As you say, 9 million makes about 0.13% and I can't believe that such a tiny market share could support the large amount of programmer oriented websites out there.

I do believe that most Linux users out there are tech geeks. Not all, not by far. And we're actively out marketing and growing in the non-tech non-geek market pretty fast and that's a good thing. But the browsing habits of the average Linux user (or even average geek) is very, very different from the average internet user.

"I do believe that most Linux users out there are tech geeks."

That certainly was the case a few years back. It's been changing for quite a while now and I no longer believe it's true. A few million Linux netbooks have been sold and I think a lot of the folks using those aren't technical at all. I also know more and more businesses are using Linux on the desktop. While the percentage is small it trickles down to home users. Folks who are forced to use something at work may discover they like it and start using it at home. I remember how many IBMers used to run OS/2 at home not because they had to but rather because they had gotten used to it and found it did a lot more for them than Windows with less aggravation that Windows.

I think the tech geek:Joe/Jane Sixpack user ratio is certainly higher among Linux users. I just don't think it's an overwhelming percentage at this point.

I think it is, but I define "tech geek" pretty broadly here. In this case, it doesn't even necessarily mean linux geek or even computer geek. Millions of netbooks are sold, but what group do they mostly sell to? People who love tech toys and such things I think. People who already have one or more computers and who'd love to have a netbook on the side for some couch surfing or commute surfing. People who want to be online. A lot.

And those are IMHO the people who don't rely on big, commercial websites to get their daily fix. They are very experienced surfers. They get their fix from a number of smaller, better targetted sites that deliver exactly what they want. Sites that don't get tracked by NetApplications.

Sander: well I did give an estimate of geek:programmer being 10:1 ;-)

The 9 million estimate came from Joel Spolsky, I'm not sure where he got it but was talking about it in one of his recent podcasts. I'd have to go back and listen to it again but I'm not that interested to be honest.

Wet finger in the air time again.

We are getting a number complaints/commemts (when it's possible to view Silverlight on Linux, our company would like to sign up with you) directed at our personal training on the net client http://www.ptonthenet.com, they still only acount for a fraction of a percent of our users, but the fact that fitness companies/finess trainers/professionals are actually using Linux, is, I think, significant, and points to a siginificantly higher user base than NetApplications 1% would suggest.

The requests/complaints are significant enough that we will be testing our websites on Linux based browsers.

@Tracyanne: Will they also be dropping Silverlight in favour of something else?

Or just dropping Silverlight on general principles?

@sANDER, no, too much invested in it for starters, second it's almost too easy to develop Silverlight applications.

The answer to that is not politics. It's a better mousetrap.

Quoting: That's Hanlon's Razor.

I prefer Stihl's Chainsaw. Crude but effective.

Gillette or Schick?

Hanlon's Razor is just a psychological twist on Occam's Razor, which reduces to "Make as few assumptions as possible."

I don't know. 1% seems like a reasonable estimate. Maybe I'll get flamed but I could definitly see 1% of personal computers running linux.

So you see a 3.2% to 1% overall decline in desktop over a 2 year period reasonable? Curious.

Quoting:So you see a 3.2% to 1% overall decline in desktop over a 2 year period reasonable?

Especially when Linux has even more mind share than 2 years ago (at least the Ubuntu version), and more people than ever are very dissatisfied with Windows, and Net books are available and selling with Linux, in some countries at least.

I stumbled across the source of the "9 million programmers" quote. Joel Spolsky said that there were 9 million professional programmers in the English speaking world. He made that statement with regard to the number of visitors on stackoverflow.com. So that's 9 million people in the US, UK, Canada and Australia that get paid to write code full-time. That excludes a lot of countries, excludes non-professional programmers (and FOSS has a ton of those) and also excludes perl and bash hackers who are sysadmins rather than full-time developers.