generic hardware not counted

Posted Oct 27, 2007 0:52 UTC (Sat) by wildpossum (guest, #17744)
Parent article: Is Linux really losing market share to Windows? (Linux-Watch)

Sites I know buy a generic rack server or even a white box and install Linux on it. Those get
counted nowhere.

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generic hardware not counted

Posted Oct 27, 2007 17:10 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (3 responses)

Yup, to a sales survey I can imagine the business I work for looks like

20-30 Windows desktops
10-20 Windows laptops
3-5 Mac laptops
1 Windows file & print server
100 or so generic 1U rack servers, no OS

So the fact that one laptop user runs Fedora, the Mac users often run Windows, and the generic
1U rack machines are all CentOS doesn't appear on the radar. But, the survey companies have
actually recognised this since the outset of their Linux coverage a decade or so ago. You will
see it mentioned in their full reports. It's just that it doesn't translate into a sentence
fragment for a magazine headline.

Of course most businesses probably own more desktops than servers, but there are going to be
more and more exceptions (Google may already be a very large and identifiable example...)

generic hardware not counted

Posted Oct 27, 2007 20:46 UTC (Sat) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link] (2 responses)

A better approximation would perhaps be calculable thus:

Total number of desktops = number of desktop CPUs sold  by intel + amd.
 (or, count motherboards).

Total number of Macs = number of machines sold by apple.

Total number of Windows machines = number that connect to windows update.

Total Linux = CPUs - (Macs + Windows).

That should probably give a decent-ish upper-bound estimate for Linux.

generic hardware not counted

Posted Oct 27, 2007 22:29 UTC (Sat) by keithw (guest, #3127) [Link]

Execpt for everybody who's bought a laptop & junked XP to install linux.  Taxes work best when
it is more effort to avoid them than to just pony up.

Chips and counts

Posted Oct 28, 2007 0:13 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Total Linux = CPUs - (Macs + Windows).

That kind of approximation needs a lot of refinement: some machines sold by Apple contain Intel chips, and some of them run Linux (both with Intel and PowerPC chips).

After all chips are properly accounted for, only Microsoft can do the math: only they know how many machines connect to Windows Update. Even so, many machines are not connected to the internet, or have been decommissioned long ago. You have to estimate the percentages for each scenario, so it becomes grossly inaccurate even with Microsoft data. And even before *BSD fans come screaming at you.

generic hardware not counted

Posted Oct 27, 2007 21:02 UTC (Sat) by danielhedblom (guest, #47307) [Link]

We have bought many servers destined for Linux but never ever have they shipped with Linux. We
also have converted old Windows boxes to various tasks like firewalling, proxies, ftp and so
on. 

Im pretty shure IDC doesnt count appliances either, even if they are big NAS servers with
Linux in them.

What theese numbers can suggest is also that more people buys white boxes and use them for
Linux. That would be a very high grade for Linux as it shows it demands less support from
vendors than other operating systems do.

not all servers are equal

Posted Oct 29, 2007 15:02 UTC (Mon) by Im26 (subscriber, #48749) [Link]

I know a site using a linux server built by us from commodity parts running all their business
critical database applications.

The same customer has 2 windows servers specifically for email, a windows sftp server, 3 file
servers, a datawhorehouse server, a vpn server and a couple of backup servers. There are
several other boxes whose purpose we have never worked out including a strange firewall box
that only has a single network cable plugged in. Most of this is duplicated across to a second
site.

Adding to that a couple of print servers and all the desktops gives you a pretty impressive
windows count. But its the linux box that is on 24x7, its the linux box that earns the money,
and its the linux box that has proper DR redundant backups off site that would be up 5 minutes
after the event.

Of course I would say that though, I think our data is important, that's why we chose Linux!

Ian