With the release of its first Linux laptop last week, Hewlett-Packard predicts this year the free operating system will unseat the Mac as the No. 2 desktop operating system behind Windows. Indeed, some analysts say Linux displaced the Mac as the leading alternative in 2003. Today’s the Day. But the Mac hasn’t been relegated to third just yet. While Linux machines are shipping in ever greater numbers, especially to giant markets like China, the vast majority are stripped of Linux in favor of pirate copies of Windows, experts say.
Mac Keeps Lead on Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I just want to take this moment to chuckle at all the mac bashers and linux drones that felt the need to so lovingly take shots at the mac platform not long ago as being #3.
#2 isn’t so great if its a hoax.
on the other hand, this piracy thing is getting out of hand. but i wonder if that is a byproduct of inexpensive hardware getting people who will basically get the cheapest computer by any means.
As usual the article makes a claim (95% of Linux installed computers are wiped when bought) and fails to back up that claim in any way other than to say that google reports a smaller user base than mac. What a load of crap.
well, Google is a pretty good measure.
well, Google is a pretty good measure.
Really? Tell me how google is a good meausure of what percentage of people who buy linux computers then pirate windows.
Do the Chinese use Google as much as Westerners do?
what about those of us who buy windows computers, wipe the drive and install linux?
More people access Google using Mac (3%) than using Linux (1%). Read it for yourself at Google: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html Google may not be the best measure, but it’s better than most I’ve seen.
No reason to think Chinese are less likely to use Google, unless they’ve got Windows installations. Google has a Chinese portal.
Better question IMHO: do Windows users use Google as much as Mac or Linux users do? Windows users are more likely to use MSN. If anything, Google underrepresents Windows — but between Mac and Linux, I doubt it underrepresents either.
Google isn’t a good measure of desktops in use. It’s just a measure of desktops going to google.com. There are many desktops that never need to visit Google.com. How many Linux desktops are in use at places that give workers a Windows machine as an office/internet box? In many places, a *NIX machine (previously, often Solaris, now Linux) is used for “real work”, and a Windows machine is there for internet/mail/reports, which often need to be in Word format. Such a configuration is quite common in workstation markets (graphics, software development, engineering, scientific computing, etc). Heck, I used that exact configuration at work, until recently. Beyond that, how many Linux desktops are at use in a business setting, where workers aren’t allowed general internet access (salespeople, accounting people, etc, often fall into this category). So Google’s stats might be a good measure for *home* user desktops, but not desktops in general.
I’m an expert and I say I stripped my Toshiba laptop of Windows XP Home edition in favor of a pirated copy of Slackware Linux 10!
Oh, and, who really cares?
Having OEMs ship linux is good for consumers even if they decide to install a pirated OS later because they don’t have to pay the MS tax. And to MS it is not good either, since much of their windows revenue comes form hardware sales. Who buys Windows separetely from a computer anyway?
Selling computers with Linux pre-installed supports piracy! Stop selling computers with Linux pre-installed, you pirate scum!
—
How ridiculous… People buy computers with Linux pre-installed because they want a computer with Linux pre-installed.
Question is – which analyst has most credibilty IDC or the Aberdeen Group?
Leave the answer to your critical facilities
the fact that we are having this conversation is interesting, and highlights the fact that Linux is growing.
Mind you, I believe Linux is stealing users from Windows, not from Mac. And if Mac is seeing growth, it’s stealing users from either Linux of Windows.
Personally, I am in the market for an iBook, but will continue to run Linux on the desktop for the foreseeable future. I honestly don’t see why the Mac and Linux community should be at each others throat. They are both bred from the same realm of open source software, and are both Unix-like. Indeed, my GF, a die-hard Mac user, has no problem using Linux, but hates with a passion Windows.
So c’mon, if myself (a Linux user) and my GF (a Mac user) can get along, why can’t the rest of the Linux/Mac using public?
“Personally, I am in the market for an iBook, but will continue to run Linux on the desktop for the foreseeable future. I honestly don’t see why the Mac and Linux community should be at each others throat. They are both bred from the same realm of open source software, and are both Unix-like. Indeed, my GF, a die-hard Mac user, has no problem using Linux, but hates with a passion Windows.
So c’mon, if myself (a Linux user) and my GF (a Mac user) can get along, why can’t the rest of the Linux/Mac using public?”
I strongly second that. They don’t exactly compete in the same markets, and are usually have a symbiotic relationship.
More people access Google using Mac (3%) than using Linux (1%). Read it for yourself at Google: http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html Google may not be the best measure, but it’s better than most I’ve seen.
You just repeated what the other guy said. That’s not the question at all. I want to know how that proves that 95% of computers sold with Linux are wiped and pirated copies of Windows is installed. It’s just a random statistic thrown out there with nothing at all to back it up.
“Even Leigh Day, spokeswoman for Red Hat, one of the largest Linux distributors, said Linux isn’t yet ready for the desktop.”
Apparenly Szulik isn’t the only one over there with chronic foot-in-mouth disease.
Red Hat users always say Linux isn’t ready for the desktop. What they really should say is “Red Hat Linux is not ready for the desktop.” Mandrake, SuSE, and Linspire certainly are.
No reason to think Chinese are less likely to use Google, unless they’ve got Windows installations. Google has a Chinese portal.
That information can probably be found out. The link to zeitgeist that you posted ealier in the thread shows that about half of the time google is accessed in English. Now all we have to do is figure out if roughly half the desktops out there are owned by native english speakers. Otherwise it would be pretty safe to assume that people in other countries do use other search engines. The other thing to think about is whether or not these people even have internet access.
Who are the experts who make the claim that Linux boxes sold overseas are stripped for pirated Windows? Why none other than our good friends at Gartner. You know, the folks who claimed SCO would prevail over IBM because they had seen the code.
both linux and mac is growing and by now their userbases are way to big for hardware manufacturers and gamedevelopers to ignore, hence comes the hardware support and the games linux is lacking and everyone’s happy!
So c’mon, if myself (a Linux user) and my GF (a Mac user) can get along, why can’t the rest of the Linux/Mac using public?”
I strongly second that. They don’t exactly compete in the same markets, and are usually have a symbiotic relationship.
Except that there are many Linux users, who are unfortunatly some of the loudest, who simply hate mac because parts of it are proprietary. For these types, it’s often “use Linux or you are the enemy”.
Now all we have to do is figure out if roughly half the desktops out there are owned by native english speakers.
I wouldn’t go along with that at all; I often search in languages that are not my native language (Italian, Russian); I had a Russian coworker who often searches in English, etc. Right now a lot of information about computers is more readily available in English than in other languages.
In any case, I didn’t say it was a perfect measure; I said it was better than most I’ve seen.
I have a G5 and use OS X as my primary OS, but would love to use YDL 4.0 when it’s final version is released. Why can’t people just accept both mac and linux
“So c’mon, if myself (a Linux user) and my GF (a Mac user) can get along, why can’t the rest of the Linux/Mac using public?”
I believe this is a Windows biased person or group trying to bath Linux. Another way of putting it. MS and their fans are hoping to divide Linux and Mac users into two separate groups. The funny thing is that this won’t stop the erosion of Windows on the desktop.
As for why most of the Linux people I personally know that hate Macs (and the fact that an iMac is my main computer) is that they want one and don’t to pay what they think is twice or three times the price that it should be. That’s their words.
Bought Thinkpad with preinstalled legal Win XP PRO – no options to buy MS-free thinkpad here. Immediately removed it, reclaimed 3 GB hidded for MS-needs HDD space, installed pirated BeOS PE and Mandrake.
Unfortunately my money had go to Redmond, and statistic counts me as Win XP user.
So say thanks for IBM for that. Only non-branded laptops here may be sold as MS-free, with Linux or freeDOS preinstalled.
“In emerging markets like China, Russia and Latin America, many locally assembled PCs are sold without an OS or with Linux,” wrote Gartner analyst Annette Jump in a report published last week. “On 90 percent to 95 percent of these PCs, a pirated version of Microsoft Windows is installed within the first few days.”
Gartner analyst Annette Jump says so. It must be true.
OSnews could have saved everyone the eyestrain from reading this article had they let us know the “experts” making this claim were from Gartner.
In any case, I didn’t say it was a perfect measure; I said it was better than most I’ve seen.
It’s so far from perfect as to provide no useful evidence whatsoever. They only thing we can prove is that the vast majority of computers that connect to google are ones running a Microsoft operating system. There is no reason to assume that google is used by a cross section of people that adequately depicts the rest of the world. Until I see some statistic showing what percentage of people actually use google that own personal computers, I cannot take this statistic for anything other than noise. It most definitely does not provide any evidence to show that 95% of people who buy linux computers proceed to pirate a copy of windows.
About google statistics. Look at content of top 10 requests, and you will have good picture about people who construct majority of Google requests:)
No wonder about OS and Browser results there, if you take that contingent specifics in account
“both linux and mac is growing and by now their userbases are way to big for hardware manufacturers and gamedevelopers to ignore, hence comes the hardware support and the games linux is lacking and everyone’s happy!
“
What happened to Loki?
The very essence of Linux is free(beer or whatever), even non-free licenses are unacceptable, where do you see the commercial attraction here?
The zealots who think that all of OS X should be Open Source aside, we OS X lovers have to battle a regular stream of misconceptions:
1) You can’t run Microsoft Office on it. (A friend of mine doesn’t want my husband’s next work computer to be a mac because there’s no Excel for the Mac. I educated him otherwise.)
2) You can’t use Linux programs. (No, there’s a way to port them.)
3) You have to use the Aqua windowing environment. (See #2)
4) You can’t get to the command line. (Total BS.)
4a) The command line is by default the interface I don’t like. (Then go to the command line and change it, you berk!)
5) There’s no root. (By defalt, yes, there is no root. As the sysadmin you own everything except the System folder, where you really shouldn’t be mucking about anyway. However, if you really really want root, you can turn on the root account.)
6) It only runs natively on Apple Hardware. (True. And IRIX only runs on SGI Hardware, just as Solaris runs only on Sun Hardware. The point is?)
7) It’s not secure. (Oh please. It’s out of the box pretty well locked down, can be firewalled with a mouseclick, and Apple generally issues updates and patches to preemt problems *before* they are widely exploited.)
If Linux distro where NOT FREE (as beer), would it be so talk about?
What would their be to say about Linux? How good it is realy?
The fight would probably still be between Windows and OS X.
How can someone live while giving away his work for free? Oh yeah, you have another job while coding for Linux, right….
Linux and Mac market shouldn’t compete, I believe that were seeing more Linux influence on the Mac plateform from users who use both systems. OS X has opened the door for both to work together, and why not?
How can someone live while giving away his work for free? Oh yeah, you have another job while coding for Linux, right….
IBM has no problem paying folks to do Linux dev, since Linux netted them almost $2 billion last year.
Other companies, such as Sun, HP, OSDL, etc., etc. also have no qualms about paying engineers to develop FOSS apps.
I don’t understand where you folks get this mental image of teenage hackers living in their parents’ basement, working at McD’s by day and writing Linux at night. It’s just ignorant.
And how many languages does Annette Jump from Gartner speak in order to know what is being used and sold overseas? How often has she visited Brazil or Spain recently?
This is just damage control, after the fact, nothing more, nothing less. See, some people cannot live with the fact that Linux may be growing quickly and gaining hardware support.
At least, HP’s Wade gives some numbers to back up his estimates, such as:
“Wade said HP already sells 100,000 Linux desktops per quarter. (That’s between 30,000 and 40,000 Linux computers, not servers, per month.) ”
What else besides innuendo do the other “analysts” offer? But let them continue to spread lies. Linux continues to grow irrespective of their lies. The more lies they spread, the more that self-righteous people see that there must be something to Linux when all these analysts that live off by whoring themselves to the industries they cover keep speaking poorly of it.
Mark my words. Linux will be very, very healthy on the desktop by the time Longhorn ships. There is no going back. IT professionals should be reading themselves for the fact that this is no longer a windows-only world, never really was, but some acted like that was the case.
And home users can look forward to more interesting and cheaper, more secure computing.
I don’t get it. How can anyone compare the market share of an OS (Linux) and of a hardware plattform (the Mac).
Since one can run Linux on the Mac, how would that count?
People not able to distinguish between a hardware plattform and an OS shouldn’t be trusted.
And people putting “Linux == OS on x86 hardware” don’t do Linux a favour, since that is one of the greatest plus points of Linux: choice..
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Wow, you’re on to something there..
You see, the reason Linux is so popular has very little to do with its cost or value in some amount of dollars and cents. It has more to do with the license that covers most of the software, including the kernel.
There are open source licenses like what opensource.org offers and free software licenses like what gnu.org offers. These licenses vary on several points. The key points that make Linux so popular are:
1) Its open source, you can get access to the source code.
2) You can modify the source code and use it internally within your business w/o giving away your modifications OR you can sell it, redistribute it and/or include it in your products, provided you comply with the license.
3) You get assurance that your modified product will get to compete in a fair market where your competition must release their modifications under the same license and can not legally attack you with patent or copyright infringement claims. (BSD licenses don’t provide you this protection)
4) You get the opportunity to call your distro a GNU/somethingorother (pronounced: “new somethingorother”). Contrary to popular belief, this is very cool! Its cool cuz GNU’s Not UNIX! That rules out BSD, Solaris, IRIX, AIX, OSF, HPUX, and OSX from being part of your click. Its not Windows either, but they weren’t even important enough potential competition to mention and GNUW would be stupid.
Nvidia has been distributing linux drivers for quite while in a format that suits most distros. They know their market share of the PC market and can see how much of that uses linux according to the number of driver dowloads….
It’s not very reliable but I think it’s better than most estimates available around.
…I use booble.com, so the stats are off
“well, Google is a pretty good measure.”
Actually it’s a horrible measure. It’s a geeks tool, and a search tool for others. And there are a large numbers of computers out there that can’t even access google, because not everyone is online.
It’s hard to measure from any perspective though. From my perspective there are two kinds of people, geeks who use linux, and everybody else on Windows. I know a lot of linux users though, but I meet uncountable numbers of Windows users.
“For these types, it’s often “use Linux or you are the enemy”.
Funny you should say that because in this thread I see alot more Mac users bashing Linux and it’s users than the other way around.
That is because the users of proprietary systems have not yet grasped they are in an entirely different universe than us. They don’t matter to us, because they don’t share in the same joys we do.
Software wrote:
“How can someone live while giving away his work for free? Oh yeah, you have another job while coding for Linux, right….”
bfelger wrote:
“I don’t understand where you folks get this mental image of teenage hackers living in their parents’ basement, working at McD’s by day and writing Linux at night. It’s just ignorant.”
bfelger – right on there! Another misconception that really gets my goat is that if you’re a coder, you must therefore work on a project 24/7 so you couldn’t possibly hold down a job as well!
Software – you just don’t get it, do you? The vast majority of coders that work on Linux itself, or the myriad of applications and supporting utils that make the system useful, do precisely that. They do not spend 24/7 coding for free. It is, if you like, similar to economies of scale. You could take 10 people and work on the project for 10 hours, totally 100 man-hours. Or, you could take 1000 people each working on a project for 1/2 an hour, and you get 500 man-hours! Understand now?
I’m a Cisco tutor and I write Linux software (mainly lame BASH scripts) and give it away freely. News flash for you Software, there are many thousands like me!
Solaris can run on x86, too.
Google might not be able to tell you how many Linux boxes are wiped in favour of pirated Windows, but it’s still a pretty accurate indication of which OSes are connected to the web. Even if Google only has about half of search engine market share, that’s statistically significant enough to extrapolate to the other half.
this is a very long, very offtopic rant about the stupidity of the current marketshares in the IT world. i would love to talk about or clarify any of the points i make, this is not a troll but my honest opinion as someone who is a programmer and has been a computer enthusiest for all his life.
its really simple. general purpose computers are _complex_. the only way to make them usable by people who dont know anything about them is to have a kickass interface that abstracts the actual things going on well enough that you dont need to know what those things are. linux is god awful at this, windows fails miserably, mac succedes.
this is from personal experience with family and friends. ive taught people how to use the mac and receive the odd call once in a blue moon asking for help. by contrast, i refuse to help people with windows anymore unless they pay me (my girlfriend being the exception to this rule 😉 ) because when you install windows for someone, its sort of like writing a website for someone. it doesnt end. ever. the average user cannot admin a windows machine, and this is why there are so many windows zombies flooding my inbox with spam every day. please note, i dont consider linux even on the radar for administration by newbies.
last point is satisfaction in user experience. try to find a longtime mac user that hates the macos. its not that easy, cause apple does such a fantastic job at providing a good user experience that it is a borderline religion. look at the size of the amiga community, or the BeOS community, both of which are dead technology. people loved their beboxes and amigas, again, because of a fantastic user experience. now from a geek perspective, i find linux a joy to use, and have alot of trouble using non *nix operating systems now for serious work, because of certain things i expect to have. again, catering to its niche market, linux offers a fantastic user experience.
now, i have a friend who is the ultimate in microsoft drones. he has been using microsoft operating systems for a good 15-20 years now, is a rabid apple hater (you can find alot of them from that era of microsoft users) has attempted to use linux several times, but gets frustrated then embaressed at not being able to do things the same way as windows and has concluded that “linux sucks”. this guy is in my opinion the ultimate in microsoft zealots, comparable to both the apple ones and the linux ones. and as much as he would never admit it, he hates working with windows. i cannot count the amount of times i have seen him curse at it. i cannot tell you how many times he has fought with the interface to perform simple tasks (the armchair usability expert in me wants to puke every time i see him clumsily trying to work with more then one app at a time). he is the most devoted microsoft user i know, but he is far from happy with it, even though he doesnt know it.
windows is a fantastic os for the office. its relatively cheap (compared to mac at any rate) was designed for office work, and performs admirably well in conditions where you dont ask too much from it. the office should be microsofts market. by contrast, the mac was designed to be a home desktop, it is a joy to work with, and apart from some crimes against usability introduced with osx, delivers one of the best interfaces available for general purpose computing. the home desktop should be apples market. linux is pure heaven for a programmer or technology enthusiast. it gives you the chance to learn everything there is to know about how your computer is working. it gives you the chance to take part in some of the coolest projects ever, and gets better at a rate that is impossible for a commercial product to sustain. the geeks should be linuxs market.
but hey, this is just an overly long rant about the effect that marketing has had on the computer world. the best marketing has won, to the detriment of everyone but the guy on top. i actually admire bill gates, he not only played the world for an idiot, but then procedes to laugh his way to the bank leaving the majority of computer users in the world with an operating system that is wildly unsuitable for their needs.
I agree with your overall statements, but the pluses you hold out for Linux also apply to the Mac…
(I have an iBook and love it, and I have a Mandrake server and love it…!!!)
the Chinese do not use Google as often as westeners do. Other portals like sina.com, sohu.com and even cn.yahoo.com are much more widely used. Most people use the net more for reading news/sending flash greeting cards/etc at big/complicated portals. Searching isn’t that big.
I’d like to clarify a couple of things regarding this article. First of all, I am in China now and I think I know better what’s going on here than most of these “so called experts”. It is definately NOT true that there’s a big Linux market for the general public in China. All I see all around is Windows computers, and If I want to buy one, I get Windows on it. Most people here don’t even have a clue about what Linux is. It is true that they use pirated copies of Windows tho, so fortunately I can pay cheaper
But it comes with the computer when you buy it. So it is major BS to pretend that people buy Linux computers and install Windows over it. Never happens, at least not in China. If someone knows where I can buy a computer with Linux pre-installed in China, please let me know, because I’ve never seen such thing. However, It IS true that the government is using Linux for some public services, such as the flat panels in the metro that display entertainment or TV commercials. I’ve seen them reboot quite a few times and it is indeed running some flavour of Linux.
Secondly, about that “so called” expert woman from Red Hat who said “Linux isn’t ready for the Desktop” and “Multimedia and video is not there yet, blah blah”. It’s not the first time I hear such comments from people working at Red Hat. I think it’s about time that these people at Red Hat open their eyes and take some time to try other distributions of Linux, such as Mandrake, for example. They probably think they are at the top of the top all the Linux distros or something like that and it’s true that Red Hat might not be ready for the desktop but for god’s sake Red Hat is NOT the ONLY Linux distro out there! WAKE UP geez, it’s 2004, not 1991 anymore, stop looking at your belly-button and look at what’s going on around you. Linux is more than ready for the desktop now.
Apple v MS for years
Now we also have
Linux v MS
Linux v OS X
Linux Distro v Linux Distro
even silly ones like
Classic v OS X
and even
10.2.x v 10.3.x
and so on…
I love OS X, like Linux a lot, and XP to some degree. Here’s the thing, Linux is great for OS X. I was looking for tools to use XSLT within an XCode projects, and will probably use some Xalan code written for Linux originally. How cool is that, code written for one OS being used by me on another one.
“Unfortunately my money had go to Redmond, and statistic counts me as Win XP user.”
Unfortunately, when I go to google when I boot into Linux, I get counted as a Linux user, even though I just dink around in Linux like 5% of the time and spend the rest doing real work in Windows.
which is obviously 5x bigger than the Linux market share. Isn’t that more interesting what the heck that is? Perhaps stuff like Solaris Workstations or BeOS boxes, QNX boxes etc etc etc…
I mean seriously Linux is just pretty darn small marketwise. No matter if Googles figures are flawed 50% Linux still remains tiny on the market…
Not strange though as it’s a serverOS
If those numbers are indeed who is accessing Google with what, they really are not that reliable, I don’t think. My guess would be that Google reports my system as accessing with IE6.0 and, therefore, Windows, which would be 100% false. I have Opera set up on my Debian box to ID itself as IE6.0 so that certain “broken” websites will display properly.
Apparently, some sites that report that they are only compatable with IE actually work fine under alternatives like Opera, and are only set up not to work based on what the browser IDs itself as.
At any rate, I believe my copy of Opera 7.something defaulted to that setting. There may be a lot of folks out there ID’ing themselves to sites as “IE” when they are in fact not running IE or Windows.
Wow. All of these wonderful statements about how the count of who uses what OS is wrong because my opinion does not agree with the authors. On that basis I say that CPM, my favorite OS, was way undercounted and I want to set the record straight. Obviously, Google does not have the tools to properly recognize a CPM system so it wasn’t even counted.
Long live CPM
Well, I’m a linux user and I don’t hate Mac OS at all… I’m planning to buy a second hand iBook and I will put linux on it, because I think that is important to run a free (as in speech) OS. But this doesn’t means that I hate the Mac Platform (or even windows). It’s just my personal choice.
I started dual booting, now I have an extra Linux only PC next to my dual-boot.
I changed two of my neighbor’s PCs to dual boot as well.
First thing I did to the new Laptop of my gf was that I Partition-Magic-ed the shitty XP Home to half and put Linux next to it — now, where’s that in the stats..?! Exactly, nowhere. Of course there are less Macs. PC has 95% market share – out of these maaany, maaaany people, even more temper with Linux out of boredom than there are Maccies with there sub 2% market share. Someone counting sold boxes (software packages) in this context is a plain moron.
This is not good or bad + not to bash anybody, it’a simply a plain matter of fact.
it’s a f&cking computer you morons. get a life.
slurp.