Study: Linux Desktop Should Have About 40% in a World Without Windows Piracy

Once again with the BS adoption numbers for Linux of 2% (and even made that seem pie-in-the-sky). MS's own Halloween Documents put Linux adoption at ~5%, and we are to assume that adoption went down?!?! I don't think so...

Agreed. I once did a couple of articles demonstrating why the real number was almost certainly nearly 10%. I was attacked for it, not only by Windows fans but by Linux supporters as well. Never mind that none of them had reasonable math or analysis to back the 1%-2% claim.

The solution is a "call-home" function that produces a unique one-way hash for each installation.

Other than that, I call the whole Linux Desktop % BS.

Once upon a time there was a Linux User registry of sorts. I got a number about 15 years ago or so -- and have never looked at the number or gone to the website.

Oh... here it is, I think: https://www.linuxcounter.net/

So -- since I have no idea what my counternumber might be and I do not have access to the email account I had way back whenever... Do I dare register a second time and throw off the official 'count' ??

= þ

Aside from a few exceptions like the Red Hat Network, SLES, SLED or Debian's popularity-contest, Linux distributions don't track their users, so there's simply no way to tell. I have a Slackware subscription, which means a DVD and a boxed CD-Rom set per release. But how would someone count the number of installations I made from these? The only truly honest answer is: you'll never know. Only your crystal ball will tell you.

dotmatrix: considering how many are not yet registered, i would not worry about that one double registration :-)

greetings, eMBee.

@mbaehrlxer:

Done. Got a new number... registered several systems... in the middle of writing a bash script to automate registering new servers through the simple API. Perhaps someone has already done that - but I didn't take the time to look too hard.

If requested -- I'll post my meager script here for those interested. BTW: I don't use github - philosophical decision.

dotmatrix:

Could you expound on your philosophical reasons to not use github please. I'm getting ready to release a GPL python library and I've been going through the thought process on whether to use github or to simply put my code on one of my own servers. I'd be interested in your perspective on this.

>I'd be interested in your perspective on this.

It's simple... whatever you think RMS might think about software that's probably pretty close to my philosophy on software and where to post it.

I'm an ideologue in terms of software. Github use is probably just fine for most people.

The benefits to using Github are clear... high bandwidth for necessary sharing, beneficial social networking, and secured source code [mostly].

My arguments against Github are: github is proprietary... placing code on github removes some of the control over the source code because now you need 'permission' to share it -- meaning github can boot you from the service and remove your code without any warning or notice if they want to.

gitlab is a more 'open' git-to-web solution than github:

https://about.gitlab.com/

Personally, my advice is: don't listen to my thoughts on this one, you'll probably lose mindshare, visibility, and feedback on your code.