____/ Rick on Sunday 02 September 2007 15:01 : \____
> On Sun, 02 Sep 2007 01:08:10 -0700, John Bailo, Texeme.Construct wrote:
>
>> On Aug 30, 2:23 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Playing the numbers game: how many Linux installations and users are
>>> out there?
>>>
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | But smolt is only an opt-in tool and is not offered during text
>>> installations
>>
>> I don't see why estimating the number of Linux machines is so difficult.
>>
>> It's similar to the mark/recapture method for estimating the number of
>> types of species variants.
>>
>> We know roughly how many PCs there are -- 1 Billion right?
>>
>> Ok, so we take any random sampling of people who own PCs -- say 1,000 --
>> or even 10,000.
>>
>> You ask them:
>>
>> Are you running Windows on your PC?
>>
>> (I would hesitate to ask "Why Operating System are you running?" as this
>> would result in dead silence on the line in many cases).
>>
>> The Linux and Mac users will chirp up -- "oh, I'm not using Windows! I'm
>> using (Suse|Fedora|Ubuntu|OSX)."
>>
>>>From this group, you extrapolate across the 1,000,000,000 PCs in
>> existance.
>>
>> WHY IS THIS SO HARD FOR SOMEONE TO DO/NOT DO???
>
> One reason is that in order to have a significant sample the size would
> have to be rather large. Another is that sample might well be skewed by
> location.
There are also VMs and dual-booting PCs to take account of.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Useless fact: penguins are the greatest birds
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine
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