Linux desktop share reaches 2%

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According to w3counter, a website statistic tracking service. I am sure you have all seen the little w3 buttons on some web sites? That is w3counter, a non partisan web stat company.

Check the global stats here. When I checked linux was 2.13%.

Also interesting is that OSX is just under 5.5%, but apples safari browser(2.19% over three versions) does not match that number, indicating that many Apple users prefer something else, perhaps firefox or internet explorer.

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

Firefox, as by a rare show of mercy Microsoft discontinued IE for Mac years ago. But Safari's pretty bad, too. Its user base, like IE's, is composed almost exclusively of people who use it simply because it came with their operating system. But Apple has an even worse rate of keeping people on their own browser than Microsoft does.

The numbers say that, but I dont know if you can draw that conclusion. The sample population might be too small. The standard deviation might be too coarse.

The sample population is relatively small in terms of overall market share, but in stats all that matters is raw numbers- there are millions of Mac users, and you'd only need to look at maybe a thousand or two to get a decent sample size. There certainly are enough numbers there to fill up a normal distribution, though I don't see where such a concept plays into the browser wars.

I can see linux surpassing OSX now. I wonder what a shake up that would cause?

lol, keep dreamin'.

Okay!

Well, it's a better OS, and it has a much larger software library to select from. I mean, in OSX I have immense trouble even getting a decent (free) stand-alone word processor. The Mac version of Abiword is outdated and looks funny, and how many Mac users know how to build the current version from source? I can't connect to my favorite chess servers properly without clumsy X11 apps that are (a) a b***h to install, worse than anything I've run into on Linux, (b) badly out of date, and (c) not at all integrated into the desktop as a whole.

I quite frequently run into the problem of "Dangit, where's the Linux app I always used for this? It's hard to get in OSX." I have never missed a single OSX program while running Linux.

^ word processor, Bean is nice and lightweight.

I remember seeing in Lifehacker that their visitors using OSX were like 17% (about a year ago).

But it's true, it came with the OS!

OSX used to be awesome, and quite innovative. But, like M$, they are failing to keep up with the demands of the people. Ubuntu has a 6 month release schedule. Now, granted, a lot of it is rebuilds of the previous release, but that just plays to the old adage, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

I think in the next three to five years it is completely possible Linux will supersede OSX.

It lacks the features I need. I mostly need a word processor in order to write history papers, and my professors demand footnotes, which Bean does not support. Abiword is perfect, but the Mac version is no good.

Everyone loves lifehacker. Its got plenty for everyone.

I like that a user of any operating system gets exposure to what the other companies are doing. Lifehacker fits that niche. Plus cooking!

And that is the exact reason I have used OO for years, not any of it's contemporaries.

well, w3's stats are just w3's stats keep in mind, so this is the desktop share of linux among users who are interested in web dev enough to be visiting w3's sites. But it is an interesting statistic.

at w3schools its at 4%

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

I'd also like to take this moment my personal reasoning to favor the safari project and thats the open source effort of the WebKit rendering engine. I disagree with the gecko design philosophy of throwing as much possible function into the engine as possible, keep it simple, let the browser do the other stuff. That way it can be lightweight and fast.

Webkit's javascript and general render performance is worlds apart from Gecko's and is a more fresh codebase built ontop of the foundation of KHTML, not the ancient mess of spaghetti code of netscape from the dark ages. (thats right, I went there)

All I can say is if your a linux user and support open source from beginning to end, try Midori and compare it's acid3 performance to firefox's

http://acid3.acidtests.org/

feel free to build firefox from the latest sources, it still wont pass and it wont be anywhere near smooth, and it will consume way more memory.

It needs to crack the server and embedded markets first... oh wait...