Gauging Linux Popularity

[DigitalDuality]

Every week i stumble across biased articles.

Linux dominates the server market, or windows has stripped linux of it's dominance in that region. Linux is making a comeback and capturing a little more of the desktop market. or that Linux will never make it or is hopelessly failing.

Now that aside and my own, non scientific perception. I see more and more people on forums that are not tech related at all, making the switch. It kind of reminds me of 1999 when Red Hat was huge and there was alot of debate and discussion about linux and there were just a ton of converts.

But where's a reputable source that doesn't have a MS or FOSS vested interest that can give me some fair figures, not only of current percentages, but trends over say the last ten years. I'd like to honestly know how linux is fairing.

I'm pretty much aware linux is about 70% of the web servers in the world. Can't get much cheaper, effective, or efficient as an apache server.. though IIS has made a good deal of headway.

But what about the rest of the market?

[openmind]

W3 Schools have been tracking visitors to their site for quite a while, it shows 3.3% Linux visitors for the month of April.

[DigitalDuality]

nice site, but that too has it's inherent bias based on the subject matter of the site. Analyzing web traffic i don't think is a very useful tool. Even google trends.. that's just showing you how many times linux was searched for.

chances are the average linux person is online more than the windows person. Yet there are far more windows persons. So how are the numbers inflated b/c of that?

Same with the site you give. It's geared towards a particular subject matter. Web building. And those who use that site for information. What about those who don't use that site? If i was to go off that site alone, alot more webpages are ran from windows boxes. We know that's not so.

[ssam]

http://counter.li.org/

[unbuntu]

W3 Schools have been tracking visitors to their site for quite a while, it shows 3.3% Linux visitors for the month of April.

Interesting...WinXP's percentage is increasing steadily at around 1% per month.

[jeremy]

Interesting...WinXP's percentage is increasing steadily at around 1% per month.

Yes, but only because people are ditching windowses 98 & 2000.

I am surprised to see that Linux, while having increased during 2003-4, have remained more or less static since then.

[Kimm]

I think that we will see a new rise of users sometime in the near future. This is because companies like Novell and IBM focus more and more on Linux, and I am now seeing more and more articles about Linux in computer magazines and so on.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...47073&q=Novell

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...q=IBM+%2BLinux