“BSD is now three times as popular on the desktop than Linux, Apple’s Ernest Parbakar told attendees at the annual USENIX BSD Conference here yesterday. That’s thanks to Mac OS X, of course, which is a BSD-based Unix (although much of this remains hidden). Read the rest of the story at TheRegister. Our Take: This is definetely true for the desktop where Linux holds less than 1% (and Apple a bit less than 3% according to Oct 2001 stats), but that is certainly not true for the server market, where Linux holds around 25%.
Apple: BSD is 3 Times as Popular as Desktop Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393310728/103-6806099-68054……
that the BSD is hidden in OS X?
it is not, the Console is in the frigen Utilities menu.
that is likesaying that Linuxis hidden under KDE or somthing. what, because apple chose Quartz over X makes it some how not a full BSD?
go ahead, make BASH scripts or CSH, what ever, use Apache, use NFS, it is all possable with OS X, it is just not as easy as doing it the apple way….but then again, when you have a standard FreeBSD it is not as easy as in OS X.
BSD is BSD it does not matter how the screen looks.
And where does Apple say an iMac is a server? 🙂
– chrish
Where are those statistics from?
I’ve been under the impression that BSD was very popular in the server market, largely because of its reputation for rock-solid stability.
–Pablo
If they just ported the whole damn thing to x86, it would seriously give linux a run for it’s money. To bad Apple has got to shift its overpriced hardware 🙁
(i’m not bitter, no really (-: )
I have about 6 BSD servers in full run in one firm, using them for Samba, VPN, firewalling. Are there counted somehow ? Nobody ask me to count them…
I see no problem with this story, 3% is 3 times 1%. And as far as server stats, the story didn’t touch on that one.
I tell you everytime I see more percentages I wonder how truthful they really are?! Helk a few weeks ago someone was reporting that Microsoft had 96% of the server market and I was like huh!@#$%^&*? For me these numbers are probably about as accurate as the US censes on the population, close but no cigar!
Eugenia… it would be interesting if you could chase up the percentages of all the computer manufacturers and what market share they have including the software bits of operating systems and other software applications. That would be some interesting numbers indeed. The thing I think about is ok Apple has 3-5% of the desktop market share and the PCs have the rest (more than likely), but now that there are bookoos of PC makers out there, what market shares do they have… like Gateway, Dell, HP, Compaq, Sony, Toshiba and IBM… and the other non PC types… Amiga, Sun Microsystems, SGI and any ‘other’?
Just curious really 🙂
“I tell you everytime I see more percentages I wonder how truthful they really are?! Helk a few weeks ago someone was reporting that Microsoft had 96% of the server market and I was like huh!@#$%^&*?”
It’s important to remember here that stats don’t always tell the whole truth, and they can also be manipulated. Although there is no doubt that BSD is more popular on the desktop than Linux if you include OS X as a BSD, Microsoft’s server market share is much more in doubt.
For example, there was a report once that said that Microsoft Windows was the most popular web server platform in the world, having over 49% marketshare. But when you really dig into this report, what you find out is that this number was based on the number of individual machines running web servers. In otherwords, a Sun E 10000 or an IBM S-80 that was hosting hundreds of sites on a single server was not given any more weight than a Windows NT box on an ISDN line hosting a single small business site.
The lesson here? When you see numbers suggesting that Microsoft has 96% of the server market, make sure you figure out exactly what is being counted. It may be true that Microsoft has 96% of the server market. But if it is, they are probably counting Windows 98 file sharing servers sitting on someone’s desktop in a company of 5 employees. If I were to count every single Windows based computer that was sharing files as a server for example, I could probably come up with over 98% marketshare for Windows on servers.
I’m not famililar with the article you are talking about, so I don’t know what they considered to be a server. But remember, statistics don’t always tell the whole truth.
>>I’m not famililar with the article you are talking about, so I don’t know what they considered to be a server. But remember, statistics don’t always tell the whole truth.<<
I think it was a comment made by a columnist on a tech website that was bashing Mac OS and Linux in the same breath. It was about a month or so ago and most of his arguments are non-valid and very unrealistic to say the least. Of course this sparked much debate in the Mac community and probably even the Linux community. I commented to him about the same thing you commented to me. I believe that number is correct if he was referring to mostly Office LAN/WAN type of solutions and I wont argue there since that is all I see in the business I work in in relevance to office productivity, but UNIX and/or even Linux that seem to cover the rest except for the special cases that Mac OS and/or other are preferred or required!