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Microsoft should 'fear the Penguin' (vnunet)
Vnunet looks at a report
from Goldman Sachs that says Linux is moving into the heart of corporate IT
infrastructures. "Goldman Sachs said that Linux will expand from
running web or storage servers because of its reliability and the cheap
hardware it can be deployed on. It also expects Linux to become the
dominant operating system on the higher-end servers of the enterprise data
centre, where mission-critical functions are run and most IT budget is
spent."
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Interesting percentage Posted Jan 11, 2003 1:47 UTC (Sat) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link] ...19 were using Linux in low-end servers, 14 to support databases and 11 had deployed it on mainframe computers. Twelve per cent had rolled out Linux on the desktop. Notice how the figure for Linux on the desktop, traditionally held to be Linux's weak point, is in the same range as the figure for Linux on low-end servers, which is traditionally held to be Linux's strong point. I think the oft-cited claim that "Linux may be good for servers but it doesn't have a chance on the desktop" is wrong, and that the people who claim it are looking too much at home use and not enough at the corporate desktop. Furthermore, I expect that when people get used to using Linux at work, they will want to use it at home too, just like the way it happened with MS Windows. The future is bright.
Interesting percentage Posted Jan 11, 2003 14:41 UTC (Sat) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] I think the oft-cited claim that "Linux may be good for servers but it doesn't have a chance on the desktop" is wrong, and that the people who claim it are looking too much at home use and not enough at the corporate desktop. Furthermore, I expect that when people get used to using Linux at work, they will want to use it at home too, just like the way it happened with MS Windows. The future is bright. You are right with one caveat: the install problem. At work, there's a sysadmin to install whatever OS on your computer. Most users, however, are not competent to install an OS, even if the install is RedHat easy. (And, yes, the RedHat install is pretty bloody easy.) From what I'm told, the Windows install nowadays is harder than the RedHat install... but that doesn't matter, because you can buy a computer with Windows preinstalled. Until you can just as easily buy a computer with Linux preinstalled as you can one with Windows or MacOS, Linux is going to have a hard time taking off amongst the home users. The only folks who use it will be people like us (who are competent and indeed prefer to install the OS ourselves), and people with family members (or close friends) like us. And I'm not talking the $300 WallMart PCs. You need to be able to walk into a CompUSA, and find the Linux machines (with running demos) sitting in a section next to the section with the Mac machines and the Windows machines. I would never want such a machine myself; I'd rather have the bare metal and install my OS myself. But most people probably don't even realize that you can install your own OS; you buy the computer with something on it, and that's what the computer has. There are of course security issues too.... RedHat probably is getting pretty close to the point that a user could configure services, accounts, etc. well enough entirely from the GUI. (I hate this myself; I do *not* want to use GUI tools for that kind of system administration. If that becomes the norm, we will see that all those studies which show a sysadmin can run x times more Linux boxen than Window machines will start to turn around. I'm convinced of the crippling inefficiency of a GUI for somebody who really knows what he's doing and wants to do things in bulk. On the other hand, this is better for the individual home user, so long as the rest of us geeks still have distros where we can configure things the way we prefer.) And, of course, a grue home user distro should ship with a very secure default installation. Use stateful iptables to let *nothing* in, and only let stuff out. Don't even be running sendmail (or exim or whatever your MTA is), don't have inetd answer ftp or telnet or anything else, don't enable SMB servers or NSF servers by default. Anybody who wants to use that kind of stuff should have to learn how to enable it, as just a minimum barrier to give a slight chance that people using it will be aware of security issues. -Rob
Microsoft should 'fear the Penguin' (vnunet) Posted Jan 11, 2003 9:45 UTC (Sat) by landley (subscriber, #6789) [Link] Linux will do well in servers. In 2003. Well, it's nice to see Goldman Sachs going out on a limb with this prediction business, isn't it?The interesting question is when will the Linux desktop market become bigger than the Macintosh desktop market? (And for "desktop" here think "laptop", since low-end desktop systems are at $200 each and dropping. I used to have a VCR that cost more than that. The niche between "power laptop" and "high-end monster workstation" is in the process of drying up and blowing away. Apple sells lots and lots of powerbook variants. Laptops are the market Linux has to crack, and desktops will take care of themselves...) I'll stop now.
Microsoft should 'fear the Penguin' (vnunet) Posted Jan 11, 2003 16:44 UTC (Sat) by aotheoverlord (guest, #3993) [Link] I think you'll find that according to IDC, Linux has already superceded the Mac as the #2 desktop...
Microsoft should 'fear the Penguin' (vnunet) Posted Jan 13, 2003 19:27 UTC (Mon) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659) [Link] Really? Then why is MacOS so far ahead of Linux (five times the market share) according to the Google Zeitgeist?(Unfortunately, the OS list and chart were last updated in 9-01, but is visible in the archives. Anyone know why they pulled that chart?) Yes, I know, they aren't measuring market share of new installations, but for most practical applications what matters is fraction of installed base of desktop systems, and that's roughly what this shows. I do think it's funny that Windows 98 was so far ahead of the newer Windowses at last update...
Microsoft should 'fear the Penguin' (vnunet) Posted Jan 14, 2003 9:32 UTC (Tue) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link] It's hard to count linux desktops installed - lots of people never pay or advertise in any other way the fact that they are using a linux desktop system. Mac desktop usage can easily be (over)estimated by sales of Mac systems. Windows desktop usage can easily be (badly over)estimated by sales of "Wintel" PCs.My guess is that Google Zeitgeist measured linux usage by sales of boxed linux sets from the "major players" and compared that with sales of Mac systems. Don't trust anyone's figures unless they're truly independent of sales outlets. Other people may well get different results, and I certainly do _not_ condone scanning random address spaces. However, if I run "nmap -O" on my employer's address space, during prime time, I see about 10 times as many Windows systems as linux systems, with Sun Solaris running at about half the level of linux, Netware about half the level of Solaris and everything else (including Macintosh, but ignoring embedded systems like network printers, switches, routers etc.) just the odd few. This measure may underestimate the proportion of Windows & Macintosh systems, since my impression is that senior staff who are less likely to actually have their system running are very likely to have Windows or Mac OS installed, and very unlikely to be linux users. Once there is significant penetration of linux on the desktop (& notebook) systems of staff at a senior executive level, world domination is just around the corner! As it happens my job description (as security coordinator for a university) specifically includes scanning our local address space for vulnerabilities. I would _strongly_ advise anyone wishing to check my figures against their own to check that you have proper authority to scan any systems that you do not _personally_ administer. Unauthorized scanning is probably a disciplinary offence, even if it is not specifically outlawed in your jurisdiction. As for "fearing the penguin" - Microsoft should have _nothing_ to fear, since they are so convinced that their system is superior in every way. So just why are they so fearful?
Microsoft should 'fear the Penguin' (vnunet) Posted Jan 16, 2003 8:43 UTC (Thu) by webinfo (guest, #9107) [Link] Macintosh 2.61%, Linux .27%, Solaris .08%, FreeBSD .01%, all others less than .01% each -- for Jan 14th, 2003There are many caveats, please read on ... Hi - I work for WebSideStory. We provide web stats in an ASP model to a large group of the very highly trafficked web sites on the net - E.g. Disney, Best Buy, ESPN, Cisco, etc. Our big customers are largely US commercial web sites. We also provide service to medium, small and tiny web sites (we have a free product) all over the globe. This means that stats on 10 to 15 million unique web surfers a day pass through our software. We do this absolutely anonymously. No IP addresses or anything else personally identifiable is ever reported, just aggregated statistics. 10 to 15 million is a very large sample size. The percentages given above are what we saw yesterday, Jan 14th, 2003, from non-Microsoft operating systems. Keep in mind who our customers are and what sort of web surfers they will attract. For example German academic web surfers will certainly be under reported. Still, 10 to 15 million is a very large sample size. Also keep in mind that this information only pertains to computers that people use to surf the web. Computers that are used strictly as servers (Microsoft or Linux) are not represented in the above stats. With respect to the immediately preceding discussion of Mac vs. Linux market share the numbers that I give at the top won't be absolutely accurate. They're just an additional set of data points that should be factored into whatever guestimate the readers of this post would care to make about Mac vs. Linux market share. On the other hand retail box sales and/or the empirical observations of one administrator at a large academic institution won't be entirely accurate either. As far as OSs go I'm relatively agnostic. On the other hand I certainly wish the open source forces the best of luck in their "quest."
Zeitgeist is not based on sales Posted Jan 25, 2003 4:46 UTC (Sat) by barrygould (guest, #4774) [Link] My guess is that Google Zeitgeist measured linux usage by sales of boxed linux sets from the "major players" and compared that with sales of Mac systems.
In General, the Google Zeitgeist keeps track of what people search for on Google.
see here:
Barry
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