According to the Wintrolls, desktop Linux has been stuck at 0.67% for years
now. Real desktop Linux usage appears to be much higher though. Let's add
up some numbers:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3786726/Red+Hat+Fedora+Claims+Its+the+Leader+in+Linux.htm
OK, that's 10 million users, or 1% of all desktop users, for just Fedora
alone. Let's move on to another big distribution, Ubuntu:
http://www.techspot.com/news/32243-ubuntu-has-over-8-million-users-says-canonical.html
Well, let's chalk up another 8 million Linux users. Then there's Mandriva:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mandriva-Plans-Development-Strategy-56500.shtml
Let's say that's another 8 million -- as these figures are well over a year
old. And what about the netbooks?
http://blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/2008/11/netbook-numbers.html
According to a conservative estimate, including with a pessimistic return
rate of 20%, 2 million Linux netbooks were sold in Q3 alone; let's say that
it's another 6 million in a year's time -- and netbooks aren't running
Fedora, Ubuntu, or Mandriva, so we're not counting doubles.
This would peg the total number of Linux users at 32 million, or at least 3%
of all desktop computer users. And there must be still several million
users of all the other desktop distributions -- so the actual number most
probably is closer to 4%. Not bad, er?
BTW, I'd like to know if anyone knows of more precise figures, as these are
mostly rough estimates.
Richard Rasker
--
http://www.linetec.nl
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