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Open Source Weblog
Germany, Australia and Italy lead desktop Linux adoption
February 06, 2008
I’ve penned a few blogs about Linux on the desktop, and the fact that various statistics I’ve uncovered suggest it has less than a 1% market share.
There’s nothing wrong with that – Linux, indeed all open source software, has been doing pretty awesomely in other areas.
Anyway I just came across some more stats from OneStat.com, which analyses the operating systems in use based on a sample of 2 million visitors to a wide range of websites. Its technology can basically tell which OS you’re running when you visit certain websites.
Anyway as previously blogged, the stats showed that Linux has a 0.36% market share worldwide, with Macs coming in at 2.7% and Windows at 96.72%. Windows Vista came in at 3.23%. Even Windows ME, at 0.64%, is bigger than Linux. Big deal. Or perhaps since it’s ME we’re talking about, little deal.
Anyway I thought the data split out by country was quite interesting too. I would have thought Linux on the desktop would have been biggest in the US: it was obviously just an impression, but you always think of the US as having a particularly vocal and passionate Linux community.
That may still be the case, but they’re not necessarily voting with their feet when it comes to using Linux on the desktop...
... In the US, 0.39% were running Linux as their desktop OS. The highest usage was actually in Germany, with 0.83% -- more than twice that of the US. Australia was next with 0.73%. Linux is clearly relatively popular down under.
Speaking of passion, I was surprised which country came in with the third-highest Linux desktop usage: Italy, with 0.63%. Belgium followed at 0.61%, then the UK with 0.46%, Canada at 0.44% and France with 0.43%. Finally of those tracked, the Netherlands came in at 0.32%.
That means that usage of Linux as a desktop OS actually ranges from 0.83% in Germany, to 0.32% in the Netherlands. I welcome any anecdotal evidence from readers in those countries (or those in-between) that might support or refute these stats…
The original research is here. I asked them to send me some updated stats but my email disappeared into a black hole; I note the latest press release on their site is from October last year.
Comments
You've misread the figures for Australia and Belgium. Australia comes in 2nd with 0.72%, ahead of Italy.
[Jason comments: thanks fake, I corrected the blog. You're quite right.]
The figures that you quote from OneStat are for August 2006 and a little behind the times.
Such web stats are quite biased. If you go to w3schools.com, you find stats of 3.5% for GNU/Linux. They cannot both be right and I believe the w3schools stats are biased in favour of M$ because sections of the site are .asp/.Net specific.
Surveys by IDC and such sell for thousands of dollars a copy and show GNU/Linux was at 3% of the desktop years ago and has grown more rapidly than the PC population ever since. Worldwide, GNU/Linux is about 6% with a few hotspots as high as 9%. China will blow those numbers away in a few years and it is not likely counted in NetApplications/Onestat. One needs to have a customer list of those guys. I suspect they are in big business to big business leagues and not reflective of the universe of PC users.
Here is another source:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=9
[Jason comments: these stats apepar to be tracking browser usage, which is not the same thing as dekstop operating system that OneStat's systems track. But thanks for the additional source nonetheless.]
What a complete waste of electrons. . . original conclusion: Linux has < 1% of market share; new conclusion with "new" data: Linux has < 1% of market share. Geesh, whata bonehead!
[Jason comments: hey dustbin. Actually in my previous blog I didn't look at share by country. This blog did. But I'm sorry you thought it a waste of time. As some have pointed out the data is a little out of date, so I point to it really just to make some comparisons from one region to another. It surprised me that the use of Linux as a desktop OS is lower in the US than some other countries, at least according to this data.]
Well, as a Linux user I clicked on your link to the original research page, but could not access it :). I have a list in my hosts file that obviously has an entry for onestat.com. I use this to stop me accessing advertising and monitoring sites etc. I also use Firefox with noscript and also Konqueror. And sometimes fudge my headers so my browsing looks like I am coming from a windows box!. Many people who use Linux are likely doing similar. as many are from a technical computing background. Most people don't like being tracked.
Am I a typical linux user? So I would think the stats are wrong, and are higher then reported.
Being from Belgium (which is *actually* 2 countries in one, like former Servia-Montenegro) I'm quite happy to see us as third in the list!
I have recently installed Ubuntu on a cousin of mine her pc, she was thrilled, everything ran smoother, it didn't crash, ... You know the drill!
I'm hoping I'll be able to crank that percentage point up a little bit ;)
In the Czech republic, Linux just broke 1%. According to the largest stats from Toplist.cz (stats from thousands webs) Linux has 1,04%. According to Navrcholu.cz (also thousands webs) Linux has 1,44% during weekends and 1,01% during working days.
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