Star How Many Linux Users Are There? Will We Ever Know?
Linked by Amjith Ramanujam on Fri 15th Aug 2008 04:15 UTC, submitted by computerishcat
Linux The traditional market share numbers would say that Linux is currently at less than 1%, but some more recent numbers suggest that it might, in fact, be almost even with the Mac. This all brings the question of how many Linux users are there really? Unfortunately, we may never know. Certainly, there is no way of knowing currently, but it should be possible to at least get a rough estimate.
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RE: Another consideration
by Gunderwo on Fri 15th Aug 2008 05:07 UTC in reply to "Another consideration"
Gunderwo
Member since:
2006-01-03

Counting IPs wouldn't work because a lot of hosts hide behind a NAT firewall. However you could count MAC addresses.

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RE[2]: Another consideration
by Kokopelli on Fri 15th Aug 2008 12:54 in reply to "RE: Another consideration"
Kokopelli Member since:
2005-07-06

Counting IPs wouldn't work because a lot of hosts hide behind a NAT firewall. However you could count MAC addresses.


Unfortunately you cannot. MAC Addresses are not transmitted past the first router. After that only IP is transmitted (not counting special cases like packet encapsulation for VPN traffic and such).

Once on the local segment ARP is used to match up IP address (or whatever protocol is being used if not IP) to MAC address.

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RE[3]: Another consideration
by Gunderwo on Fri 15th Aug 2008 16:06 in reply to "RE[2]: Another consideration"
Gunderwo Member since:
2006-01-03

Well, I guess my networking skills are lacking, thanks for the info ;)

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RE[3]: Another consideration
by darknexus on Fri 15th Aug 2008 18:02 in reply to "RE[2]: Another consideration"
darknexus Member since:
2008-07-15

Unfortunately you cannot. MAC Addresses are not transmitted past the first router. After that only IP is transmitted (not counting special cases like packet encapsulation for VPN traffic and such).

Once on the local segment ARP is used to match up IP address (or whatever protocol is being used if not IP) to MAC address.

Exactly. But this wouldn't stop firefox from sending your Mac address as an anonymous usage statistic if you chose to do so. It could send the mac address of the default network interface, along with the operating system and other stats. Obtaining the mac address of a network interface is trivial enough for a program running locally.

Edited 2008-08-15 18:05 UTC

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RE[2]: Another consideration
by Lennie on Sat 16th Aug 2008 08:47 in reply to "RE: Another consideration"
Lennie Member since:
2007-09-22

Just look at a security update in the base install (or a very frequently used package), the number of times that gets downloaded is probably a good indication.

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RE[2]: Another consideration
by Piranha on Mon 18th Aug 2008 20:24 in reply to "RE: Another consideration"
Piranha Member since:
2008-06-24

Counting MACs wouldn't work either since the MAC address that shows up is the one facing the internet behind NAT... Same issue as counting the IP addresses.

There are some distros that allow new installs to send anonymous info about the new install to servers. This would be a much better method.

Edit.. redunant. Never looked at thread view before posting.

Edited 2008-08-18 20:25 UTC

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