Linux OS usage since 2004

[charles052]

You know, I can't help but wonder if some of the statistics are wrong because of our web browser? I'm running Linux, but if Google checks my user agent thingy, it'll think I'm running Windows. I had to change it to watch Netflix.

[charles052]

The link Woody gave in post 1.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

At one time I had set Firefox to report itself as IE so I could see sites that would respond to IE only. Now I just go elsewhere. I'm wondering if browser popularity data could be skewed in IE's favor by this sort of thing.

Maybe MS encouraged web developers to do this for that reason. Why would any developer make a site to work with IE only? Even Micro soft is not that stupid.

Ken.

Dangit! You beat me to it.

[GreyGeek]

Exaxtly, Icorken! Also, you'll notice unreasonable jumps in the statistics. The mac dropped from 7% in Dec of 2010 to only 0.7% a month later. Someone is obviously using a faulty model or is manipulating the data. Netcraft, for example, used to feature a graph which showed which OS was on Internet server sites since Aug of 1995. Linux was constantly around the 70% level or higher, and Windows was at 20% and decreasing. One month there was a huge jump in Windows hosts and a similar drop in Linux hosts. What happened was that when GoDaddy switched their parking servers from Linux to Windows Netcraft counted EACH of the 5,000 parking server as a Windows host. However, they counted Google's 100,000 Linux server farm as ONE host, with the justification that they "were all doing the same thing". As if parking thousands of IP addresses and domain names is not doing the same thing. You could almost hear the coins tinkle as they changed hands.

A Canadian company, SecuritySpace.com, also counted operating systems running web servers and their data continued showing Linux web servers out numbering Windows web servers, by nearly 4 to 1. SecuritySpace had (has?) a service which allowed one to analyze the OS count by domain and by country. One could see where some countries had 80% Windows and other countries had 80% Linux. (Their site can be pinged right now but their index.html page does not respond. I think they've gone entirely private.)

One can never forget, however, that the playing field was and is constantly tilted against anything non-Windows. Microsoft made sure of that with their "Slog", and "Stacked Panel" tactics, and a team of digital terrorists (a.k.a "Technical Evangelists") created, trained and led by James Plamondon, who was forced to declare "Mea Culpa" when the Combs vs Microsoft trial revealed secret MS emails detailing their dirty tricks. (There were apparently two groups of "Technical Evangelists", those working in marketing, and the others, who hid under that title but did nefarious things.)

However, just investigate all the areas where Linux dominates. Just about every area except the desktop and gaming. Banks, Small Business and Enterprise servers, military servers, foreign government severs, Hollywood and Bollywood graphics, Supercomputers and on and on. Steam and Valve are building a Linux market share in gaming, and the desktop is going away, sooner or later, as small form factors take over the Joe and Sally Sixpack market.

So, the desktop wars are over, and are no longer of any consequence. Fortunately, you and I can run the desktop of our choice, and probably will always be able to do so, as long as some form of 14" or larger laptop or desktop is made.

[GreyGeek]

Ah, SecuritySpace.com is back up. The OS marketshare page is here.

        [TABLE]
[TR]
[TD="align: left"] Web Server Survey 
February 1st, 2014[/TD]
[TD="class: xsmall, colspan: 2, align: right"]For analysis of other domains:[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
  
[TABLE]
[TR]
[TD="class: title"]Across All Domains[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #ff6600, align: left"][IMG]http://www.securityspace.com/sspace/images/orangebar.gif[/IMG][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
 
Market Share Change (Total servers: [B]71,236,334[/B]) 
 [TABLE]
[TR="bgcolor: #cccccc"]
[TD="class: xstitle"][B]Server[SUP]1[/SUP][/B][/TD]
[TD="class: xstitle, align: right"]January
Count[/TD]
[TD="class: xstitle, width: 16%, align: right"]January
%[/TD]
[TD="class: xstitle, width: 16%, align: right"]December
Count[/TD]
[TD="class: xstitle, width: 16%, align: right"]December
%[/TD]
[TD="class: xstitle, width: 18%"]Change[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #eeeeee"]
[TD]Apache[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]45,653,870[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]64.09%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]46,051,776[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]64.93%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]-0.84%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #eeeeee"]
[TD]Microsoft[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]11,227,358[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]15.76%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]11,239,792[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]15.85%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]-0.09%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #eeeeee"]
[TD]Zeus[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]83,047[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.12%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]88,960[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.13%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]-0.01%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #eeeeee"]
[TD]Netscape[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]8,409[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.01%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]8,610[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.01%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]+0.00%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #eeeeee"]
[TD]WebSTAR[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]2,464[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.00%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]2,474[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.00%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]+0.00%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #eeeeee"]
[TD]WebSite[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]1,417[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.00%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]1,521[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]0.00%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]+0.00%[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #eeeeee"]
[TD]Other[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]14,259,769[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]20.02%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]13,533,443[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]19.08%[/TD]
[TD="align: right"]+0.94%[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

You can find an historical graph here.

I have to recant a previous statement I made. Several years ago, when I last looked at these graphs, many of the European countries gave Microsoft a larger market share. I find today, however, that ONLY China gives Microsoft a greater market share, by 2 to 1. All the previous countries that gave the nod to Microsoft no longer do.

[Feathers McGraw]

I wonder what makes up that "other" category?

It takes a lot of ~0% market share categories to make up 20%.

Do you think most of that 20% is custom coded servers?

[NickStone]

I do not teach my students anything.
woodsmoke

Reading this statement from you Woody reminds me of a joke that I first heard when studying teaching skills back in the early 90's.

Boy1: I taught Spot how to whistle
Boy2: I can't hear him whistle?
Boy1: I said I taught him I didn't say he learned it

[GreyGeek]

I wonder what makes up that "other" category?

It takes a lot of ~0% market share categories to make up 20%.

Do you think most of that 20% is custom coded servers?

There is a LOT of other web servers in the "Other category". Here are a few:

 			[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15885"]4D WebSTAR[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/17169"]Abyss Web Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15829"]AOLserver[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/16235"]BadBlue[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15853"]Baikonur Web App Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/17073"]Covalent Enterprise Ready Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/16351"]Enterprise WebServer for NetWare[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15875"]ESAWEB[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/16137"]GoAhead WebServer[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15851"]Hawkeye[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15843"]iTools[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15837"]Java Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15867"]Jigsaw[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/17191"]Lighttpd Web Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/17199"]nginx[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15897"]RapidSite[/URL]

[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/17075"]RomPager Embedded Web Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15871"]Roxen WebServer[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15869"]Savant[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15873"]Servertec Internet Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15863"]Shadow Web Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15879"]SimpleServer:WWW[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/17079"]Sun Java System Web Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/16131"]Tcl Web Server[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15889"]URL Live![/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15859"]Viking[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15841"]vqServer[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15861"]WebBase[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/16489"]WN[/URL]
[URL="http://www.serverwatch.com/stypes/servers/index.php/15817"]Xitami[/URL]

[woodsmoke]

Ya know Nick...............there was a Koan once......

but

I can't remember it because the Sensei broke a teapot over my head!

woodaddledsmoke