Open Source Blog

Barnicle’s figures, as reported by ZDnet’s Larry Dignan, suggest that only 15% of Red Hat users are considering a switch to Oracle, down from 33% in November, although 23% of the operating system buyers surveyed by Dignan are using Oracle’s Linux support.

Only one user surveyed by Barnicle has switched from Red Hat to Oracle, while another switched from HP to Oracle. Overall, 17% of HP Linux customers would consider switching to Oracle; compared to 12% of IBM customers.

It will be interesting to see what Oracle has to say for the success – or otherwise – of its Unbreakable Linux plan. The only previous indication of adoption rate has been Oracle president Chuck Phillips’s announcement in December that it had been downloaded 9,000 times in the first 30 days.

As previously noted, that download rate compared to 325,000 downloads of SUSE Linux Enterprise in its first 28 days and 12,500 Fedora Core installations *per day* in its first few weeks.

I suggested at the time that first 30 days were likely to be the peak of interest in Oracle’s newly announced alternative. It remains to be seen whether tomorrow’s figures will prove otherwise.