| The problems of counting Linux desktops |
Sep. 04, 2007
Analysis -- Here's what we know beyond doubt. First, the Linux desktop is gaining in popularity. Second, it's doing so at the expense of the Windows desktop. After that, things get muddy.
For example, our recent DesktopLinux survey results, clearly show that there is simply more interest in Linux desktop. After all, more than twice as many people filled out our survey this year when compared to the 2006 survey.
But, while I would love to claim that this means that the Linux desktop usage has more than doubled in the last year, I can't. As Ladislav Bodnar, the editor of DistroWatch remarks in his comparison and analysis of the DesktopLinux survey and DistroWatch's own Page Hit Ranking (PHR) statistics, "At the end of the day, we still know little about the popularity of distributions."
For example, in his analysis Bodnar notes that "DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking doesn't mean all that much and we have been saying this for years." At the same time, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint, and Sabayon Linux show very well in PHR but didn't do nearly as well on the DesktopLinux survey. In particular, I, personally, found PCLinuxOS’ and Mint's poor showing hard to understand.
Bodnar also comments that DistroWatch's "Web log analysis of DistroWatch.com visitors' user agent strings indicates that PCLinuxOS represents 6.2% of all Linux-using visitors, which makes it the third most popular Linux distribution (after Ubuntu and Debian). openSUSE, which received nearly 20% of votes in the DesktopLinux survey, is used by less than 5% of those DistroWatch visitors who visit these pages with Linux."
Part of this discrepancy is, I think, we're looking at somewhere different slices of the Linux desktop community. DistroWatch has a worldwide audience of desktop Linux enthusiasts. DesktopLinux, by design, spends more time focusing on desktop Linuxes, such as openSUSE and MEPIS, which have more of a connection to business desktop users.
Bodnar also wrote that there "is one set of figures that is perhaps more important than any of the distro market share surveys. When I started DistroWatch in 2001, 95% of the visitors used Windows and Internet Explorer to access the site. Some six years later, only 19% of you read this site with Internet Explorer. As for operating system statistics, the usage of Linux to access the site has risen from a near-zero to a whopping 36% today!"
Here, at DesktopLinux, we've seen similar results. In August 2005, 51.4% of our visits were XP users, with only 29.3% Linux users. Two years later, Windows XP users had dropped below 50%, to 48.3%, while 35.1% of our visitors are now using Linux.
These numbers are on the high side. Linux sites, of course, attract Linux users. What's far more interesting is that other sites, which aren't Linux-specific, are also showing higher numbers of desktop users. For example, W3 Schools, one of the best known sites for Web development training, is now showing that 3.4 percent of its visitors are using Linux.
Will we ever see more accurate numbers? Thanks to projects like Dell Linux IT strategist Cole Crawford, statix, a Python-script that will anonymously track Internet-connected Linux desktops, we may finally get hard data.
At the same time, neither DistroWatch nor DesktopLinux seem to reflect a great deal of interest from corporate business Linux desktop users. I strongly suspect that's because to those users, Linux is simply what they use at the office.
While readers of both DistroWatch and DesktopLinux are interested in operating systems in their own right, most users use the desktop that's put in front of them. For all the debate about Windows vs. Mac vs. desktop Linux, the vast majority of office users are indifferent to what's running in front of them so long as it lets them get their work done.
That's why I focus so much of my own coverage on the growing acceptance of desktop Linux by hardware vendors like Dell, Lenovo and HP. It really doesn't matter how much better Linux is than Windows, although it is. What matters is that business and home users can buy a PC and use Linux without fuss or muss.
The easier desktop Linux becomes for anyone to use, the more desktop Linux users, by anyone's count, there will be.
—Steven J. Vaughan Nichols
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