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On 15/09/10 18:51, Dan Dart wrote: > > Personally I don't believe a word of it. What would it take to convince you? > There are a lot of servers about, and use on servers is from 60 to 90% > so say reliable sources (like web software spiders)... Yes but servers aren't desktops. If you want to include bots from my webserver logs then yes there is a lot more Linux boxes accessing web pages than 1% but they aren't on desktops. > Usage on desktops, I've heard between 5 and 30% is a good estimate > (remember the millions who just use Ubuntu). How was the 5 to 30% number derived? If true one would have to explain why visitors to the websites I'm reporting on are disproportionately using Microsoft Windows compared to the general population of web surfers. With about 1 billion PC users globally, with 1% there would be 10 million desktop users with GNU/Linux. Debian has various estimates of their usage, but the one I took away last time was around 2 million installations (1.5 million unique IPs access security.debian.org last time data was published), with probably ~0.5 million desktop users. I dare say virtualisation has complicated the definition of a server..... Redhat claim of the order of a couple of million installations as well, but they are mostly servers, they have less than 0.2 million calling home regularly. They appear to get money for more servers than they can reasonably account for, but I guess that is the kind of business you want, and suggests a fair amount of backroom Redhat installs in places that keep themselves to themselves (how very last millennium). Canonical claim 12 million users but have never published the methodology on how they arrive at that figure. Estimates from Mike H the Iceweasel maintainer suggests that 4 to 6 million desktop users for Ubuntu based on the same method that gives us 0.5 million desktop Debian users. Until Canonical publish their methodology it is filed under "marketing". So 6M + 0.5M + 0.2M, means to get to 5% of desktop users we need to find another 40 million plus Desktop Linux users from somewhere. Where? Redflag Linux? To get to 30% another 250 million Linux desktop users would have to be found (roughly the population of Western Europe). I know the estimates are rough and ready, but I doubt they overlook an entire continents worth of GNU/Linux users. > 1% in 2010 is a joke. That is what my figures show and I have no specific reason to doubt they are representative of English speaking computer users web surfing habits. The 1.1% is based on the last weeks worth of data, 2.1 millions hits, which represents over 80,000 distinct visitors visiting over 600 web sites on a wide variety of topics. Based on the uncertaining the Wiki estimate of 1.33% looks very plausible. I have access to much bigger sets of data, but since the figure is consistent across a fairly large number of websites, and over a reasonably long period of time, I don't see the point in analysing larger samples unless someone can give evidence suggesting the data is woefully wrong. The DCGLUG website had 1792 unique visitors last week, and AT LEAST 1063 use a browser running on Microsoft Windows as indicated by their user agent strings. Again a lot of uncertainty, some misclassification of spiders in my stats, but seems fairly clear that on a website entirely dedicated to GNU/Linux we see three to four times as many web visitors using Microsoft Windows as using GNU/Linux for their desktop. For some perspective Android phones are currently selling more per day than the entire Redhat based desktop user base, it takes about a week to sell as many new Android phones as Desktop Debian users. Ubuntu will be overtaken in a few weeks (if it hasn't already), on current trends by Christmas we should expect to see Android rivalling iOS in terms of users. I don't think people do much general surfing on smart phones, it is more focused - social networking, email, local information, stuff I want to know now (i.e. Bus time tables etc), which explains why they are minimal in most people's web based log files (although iOS is showing up these days a bit). -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq