Linux Marketshare

This article is little more than Linux-bashing tripe from an Apple apologist. It does state that part of what gives Mac a leg up over Linux is that MS Office and Adobe tools are available for Mac OSX, but not for Linux, which is true.

The article uses statistics that are from a source which ... well... I don't quite get. For example, How are they figuring market share? I work in an office with 10 desktop PCs, all running Linux. There are a couple MS Windows VMs in there too. We all connect to the Internet through a NAT. Are they figuring market share based on the requesting IP address? If so, they're seeing one machine which flip-flops between Linux and (occasionally) MS Windows. I have 6 Linux PCs at home, from which I access the Web. I access the Internet through a NAT. Are they seeing my 6 machines as one?

And here's another thing. Not every machine used as a desktop computer is used to browse the web. I have a couple machines at home, which are "desktop machines" in that they have GUIs installed, with the full spread of standard desktoppy apps, but I rarely browse the web from them. My studio machine is mostly used for audio, video and image editing. My current HTPC is used for viewing movies.

Linux desktop adoption statistics will likely always be a little shady, and widely varied. Anybody can pull a rabbit out of their ass from such a pool of statistics and present a statistic that supports their own position. Statistics, in general are suspect by the very nature of how they're compiled. Linux desktop adoption stats are almost useless.

From my personal experience, Linux has about a 99% desktop market share. There are no Macs in my home or office, and 1 machine running MS Windows on hardware.

This, of course, is to say nothing of servers. We have 10 servers in our office, and 25 at our IDC running Linux, and about half of them are running 2 or more Linux virtual machines. I administer around 100 running Linux images... 1 MS Windows, 0 Mac.

So... Like I said to my girlfriend's mother about presidential candidates, figure out what works for you, and then pick the one that fits your needs. The advertising and the statistics and all the rest of it means nothing. Try it out. Give it a fair shake. If you like it, use it. If you don't like it, don't use it.

I run Linux all over the place because it works for me. Your mileage may vary.

PS I'm writing this on one of my eeePCs.