I'd love some figures for Linux's WORLDWIDE desktop market share, or overall worldwide market share, especially how it's doing vs. Apple.

I do have a figure for Apple . . . . . 1.18 % worldwide market share as of late 2003.

Any help?

I think this is a tough number to hit because so many people download Linux instead of buying it. I think Gartner group did a study and showed more Linux users thatn OS X, but I wouldn't know where to find it. My personal feeling is there are more Linux installs than documented by any of these studies, at one client site we have on Linux box serving one web page, but behind the firewall we have 4 other boxes doing print and file serving, and a couple console workstations, so I think the number will be elusive for a long time to come.

http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/jun04_pie.gif

this may one of the most accurate statistics we have. ofcourse it doesnt help when people set their browsers to identify as IE 6 on Win XP. but it probably is the most accurate we have at this point.

I should point out that the 5% 'other' is in all likelyhood mostly linux, and I would venture to guess that 1/4 linux users or more have their browsers report themselves as ie6 in XP.

I remember reading somewhere that more people use Linux than Mac....

I have at least the impression that the number of Linux users in total is under-estimaded. Also, I bought a PC with WinXP preloaded, but now I hardly ever use it anymore.

So how does that count? +1 for Linux and -1 for WinXP??

Trouble is, there is no real way to take these situations into account.

I think this link is good:

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

I like that link.
Though in some ways it tries to be a little missleading if you look at the numbers for all M$ os's they are fairly steady in number, only loosing a few tenths over the last year. Mac is dead steady in numbers. And Linux is making the best headway almost gaining 50% over january numbers.

Mozilla is blasing up the charts in usage and Exploder in all forms is the only one loosing out.

I can almost see the M$ gleam starting to tarnish.

It's the same problem there though. It doesn't realy say anything about how many people use what, it says what people's browsers report themselves as. So in all that, you have Mac users runing ie6 fror mac and linux users running konq reporting itself as ie6 or running ie5 or6 in an emulator or in wine, and then you have windows and mac users running mozilla and when it's all said and done, it's a totaly useless statistic.

Oddly enough,

many many people I've asked this question here in South Africa say they will use linux as a server before usin it as a desktop. I run linux on my notebook, personal PC's and 26 servers. And I have plans to convert everyone in the companies I'm associated with to linux, both desktop and server.

regards,
Armond

Steven Jobs mentioned in his latest key note that "OS-X is the Unix derivate with the highest desktop market share worldwide". AFAIK he counts Linux as a "Unix derivate".

He didn't provide any sources for his claims, mind.

93,
-Sascha.rb

From that web site:
They don't list those "other sources around the Internet." So, for what it's worth, these figures just reflect who's browsing www.w3schools.com as well as those unnamed web sites, and doesn't take the huge number of office workstations or the vast majority of home computers into account. Not everybody builds web sites as a hobby (or as his day job, either).

Browser stats are a poor means to gauge market share.

93,
-Sascha.rb

The question is what is market share!
Browsers are a perfectly good metric in one sense.
The whole concept of marketshare is grey and simply inapplicable to linux/floss

Microsofts sells by the license. Its the only legal way to use it.
Linux sells sometimes per license but just as often free ...

Some people dual boot... how does that count one for each?

Mac's are hardware based so they are a per unit ....

What is measured,someone who uses a PC everyday or occaisionally?
I have 6-10 distros installed at anyone time but Im only using 2-4 at any time how does that count...

XP is counted even if you never open the box... I can DL an ISO does that count?

IDC quoted figures of 3% last year already...

Google Zeitgeist isnot an absolute indicator, but the moment it jumps from 1% to 2% this is significant.
BTW many seem to think it is just the browser id. Wrong, they check the OS string in the communication, which even with opera on Linux set to id as IE will be linux something...

I was looking more at the M$ totals pretty much staying the same. IE6 is just eating its own older brethren. Just watching the changing numbers from past to present. Moz and linux is eating M$ and not touching the Mac numbers. Mozilla is growing way faster at this rate than anyone thought and linux will soon be following that curve.

Though it only reflects the reported browser and OS. I really don't think too many are miss representing. Its stats like this that tend to make companies take notice.

What about IE6 running on Linux ?
yes it exists: just disguize a Mozilla or else as IE. Too bad there is no statitics on those strange mix....

I disguised my browser (browser ID string) as "Mozilla FireTruck"... been trucking away for almost a week now