Jump to content

Surprising Statistics?


viking777
 Share

Recommended Posts

I just read a magazine article today that quoted information from a company that collect statistics on type of operating system used on various computers that access their sites. They reckon that they have about 160,000,000 visits per month to these sites so it is not a particularly small sample that they use for data.

 

Their figures for 2008 show that, in round figures, 90% of their site visitors are using Windows. Obviously no surprise there. 9% were using Macs, but what surprised me was that only 0.9% of their visitors were using Linux!

 

Now I would have thought it would be a bit larger than that. Apparently that figure has almost doubled in the past 12 months largely due to the rise in the number of 'Netbook' users, a lot of which use Linux.

 

Of course I am aware of the old adage about 'lies, damned lies, and statistics' but even taking that into account I was surprised that the figure was so low, it certainly deserves to be higher.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was surprised that the figure was so low,

 

No, that appears to be about right

 

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-...re.aspx?qprid=8

 

http://www.robertnyman.com/2008/09/18/oper...are-prediction/

 

http://getclicky.com/global-marketshare-statistics

 

 

it certainly deserves to be higher.

 

I would disagree, it's lucky to be as high as it is. Linux needs a hell of a lot of work yet, if it is to have any hope of even remotely taking it to Windows. It needs to be able to do everything Windows can do (bring on the virus jokes) and do it as well, ie, same functionality, same performance and most importantly of all, same ease of use, as Windows does.

 

And just a note on the Virus/Security issue, here's a quote "In practical respects, from the point of view of the individual end-user, a typical modern Linux system is only marginally more ’safe’ from malware ‘attacks’ than a typical modern Windows system." You may or may not except this, and you may not of heard of the author, his name is Adam Williamson, here's the link.

 

http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/01/20/on-linux-security/

 

Security is more so up to the user, I mean if you keep everything up to date, don't go opening every Email and attachment that comes your way, don't click on every little thing that pops up in your browser, and don't go visiting questionable sites, and downloading questionable software/files etc, you'll be fine, common sense goes a long way, however, do the opposite, and you've only got yourself to blame. I've been using Windows (as well as Linux) since 1997, never once had a problem with virus/spyware/malware whatever you want to call it, no firewalls before XP, and then only the inbuilt one, only free AV's. To me it's not even an issue.

 

Anyway, It has to have the same hardware support as Windows does, yeah, yeah, Linux has the best Hardware detection of any OS, bla, bla. Tell me, whats the good of being able to detect all that hardware, when after it is set up, the performance is so bad that it makes you want to eat your shorts, look no further than Graphic cards, sound cards etc.

 

Then you got the software, well, yeah, Linux Distro's do come with a lot of software bundled in, and available with a couple of clicks of the mouse via the distro's repo's, however, what good is that to anyone, in my experience, most of the software is buggy, feature poor, far from what I would call fully functional, and usually in Beta state at best. When you take this software, and compare it to what is available for Windows, either commercial or free, well, it just doesn't compare, it's as simple as that.

 

Linux has a long, long way to go, oh, although I personally have no problem with it, most people really don't want to see the Konsole/terminal EVER

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Adam Williamson is well respected on this board, and I found his security writeup of interest.

 

Then you got the software, well, yeah, Linux Distro's do come with a lot of software bundled in, and available with a couple of clicks of the mouse via the distro's repo's, however, what good is that to anyone, in my experience, most of the software is buggy, feature poor, far from what I would call fully functional, and usually in Beta state at best. When you take this software, and compare it to what is available for Windows, either commercial or free, well, it just doesn't compare, it's as simple as that.

 

There is some high quality software out there too. Kaffeine and K3b are second to none.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is quite a lot of high quality software out there. And I wouldn't say Linux is slow, it's faster than Windows that's for sure, and the filesystem is much faster than Windows too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

no way, even linux' s ntfs-3g driver is faster than native ext3; it is getting better though I remember before we had relatime, there was only atime and noatime, atime was so slow and so is the ordered mode of ext3, ext4 should be better too

 

 

 

 

linux is good on servers but on the desktop...I am not to sure it doens't feel like it (and I am comparing vista to linux)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn't compare using ntfs-3g since it's not available for use under Windows. So, you've confirmed that filesystem writing, even using ntfs-3g, is faster under Linux than in Windows.

 

Run two ftp servers, one on Windows and one on Linux - you can use ext3 or reiserfs as the filesystem. Then download some files using a Windows client or Linux client from the Windows and Linux ftp server. You'll find that it'll be faster with Linux than Windows. I was getting 10000kbps with Linux, and 4000-5000kbps with Windows. Twice the speed difference. Network was the same, so it's not that. Even sending files to one or the other server is probably a good test as well.

 

Run VMware Server 2 under Windows Vista. It simply doesn't work, it runs like a dog, you have to wait ages when you power a machine on and even then I gave up waiting for something to appear back so that I could continue using it. Under Linux, it runs like a dream, even if the web interface ain't that great. VMware Server 1.x on Windows wasn't so bad, but it was still slower than on Linux.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A simple comparison: the number of people who have a computer at work vs. the number who have one at home.

 

Why is this important? Because people only have a choice (most of the time, anyways) as to what they run on their home computer. If the don't have a home computer, or use their work computer to do more web browsing than there home (i.e. don't have internet), it would easily skew these results.

 

I think that's something that's hardly ever taken into account when doing these statistics, and it could have an effect on the results.

Edited by tyme
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Linux is certainly NOT slower than Windows, yes, some drivers are less optimized, but the fundamental difference is, Linux multitasking works ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE BETTER than Windows multitasking!

 

Just an example:

 

A friend of mine whom I installed Mandriva as dual-boot on his home PC (an old Pentium 3, 1GHz, 512MB RAM) a while ago, uses normally XP, he only wanted Linux out of curiosity but never bothered to use it seriously. Recently his XP install got so infested by spyware/viruses/whatever that it has become unbootable, so he started using Mandriva, as he had no choice.

Guess what, the first thing he noticed is that he could still watch a downloaded DVD quality movie without judder while in the background a 15GB file backup was running from an internal hdd to a USB hdd, and we were talking over skype at the same time too...

 

He was expecting the movie to seriously judder and the skype call too, as he was used from XP!

Edited by tux99
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And anyone here complaining about the (lack of) speed of ext3, should use jfs (my current choice) or reiserfs3 (used it in the past, fast and reliable).

 

Unlike 10 years ago, these days Linux is not necessarily ext2/3 , it's just one of the many filesystems you can chose from, any decent distro allows you to chose the filesystem during installation.

On the other hand how much choice do you have in Windows, FAT32 and NTFS?! I wouldn't call that choice...

Edited by tux99
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think Linux is better than windows

 

1. Windows --->>PAY like a stupid --->software (PAY!!!)

2. windows ---> unstable and easy to break and you don't learn anything....it uses 1 partition and it's very slow compare with linux usin 3 partitions and compiz and everything...

3. Windows ---->> tell you what to do....Linux --->> Obey

4. XP -->> possibly a good release but unstable (the worst ever is ME used to destroy pcs :P and Vista is the 2nd in that list I think)

5. windows --->> makes you believe it has hardware support (no the company makes it 4 windows)...Linux ---> makes it's own drivers and teach you (while you're configuring it) what you have there ....what is it.....you have to do your homework :)

......

.....

 

Damn linux is better than windows....the people that uses windows probably doesn't know that linux exist or is afraid.....or simply likes windows (they should kill them self)....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And just a note on the Virus/Security issue, here's a quote "In practical respects, from the point of view of the individual end-user, a typical modern Linux system is only marginally more ’safe’ from malware ‘attacks’ than a typical modern Windows system." You may or may not except this, and you may not of heard of the author, his name is Adam Williamson, here's the link.

 

http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/01/20/on-linux-security/

 

Security is more so up to the user, I mean if you keep everything up to date, don't go opening every Email and attachment that comes your way, don't click on every little thing that pops up in your browser, and don't go visiting questionable sites, and downloading questionable software/files etc, you'll be fine, common sense goes a long way, however, do the opposite, and you've only got yourself to blame. I've been using Windows (as well as Linux) since 1997, never once had a problem with virus/spyware/malware whatever you want to call it, no firewalls before XP, and then only the inbuilt one, only free AV's. To me it's not even an issue.

 

 

Many big windows virii don't depend on user action. They spread through exploits in windows processes and simple methods like storage device. The recent Conficker outbreak is one classic example of this. By doing something as innocent as connecting to a wireless network or using a storage device they're exposed.

 

To take a real world example, I discovered a virus on my girlfriend's flash drive yesterday. By chance too, I plugged the drive in on Linux and noticed some odd files which would have been hidden under Windows. This one silently infects the computer when the usb storage device is plugged in. It then silently infects any future storage devices. By analysing which of our storage devices had this, and when it was used we discovered the path of the infection. I tracked it down to 2 flash drives, 3 ipods, 2 SD cards, 3 laptops.

 

 

What's most interesting, is what _didnt_ get infected. My brother's windows desktop, despite being exposed not pick the virus up as it's a pretty heavily modified and stripped copy of Windows. A different environment. My recently installed Windows SP3 desktop did not get infected either, I suspect as it is more up to date than any other here.

 

The point of this is that different environments were enough to stop the virus, and this is the big advantage that Linux has. How many distros are there? Even if you attempt to target one distro, how many different programs are people likely to be using? There's far too much variation to create a successful virus.

 

Combine this with the strong security ethos amongst the Linux development community. Security has been a concern through the design of most components of Linux and the desktop right from the start. Compare this to Windows, where security wasn't the policy and now things we take for granted under Linux like permissions have to be shoehorned backwards. The first real application of permissions to the consumer windows desktop environment - UAC came in Vista. 2007. Permissions under Desktop Linux? From the start.

 

Similarly, servers out of the box. Windows had no firewall out of the box till XP (2001), and ran a large number of exposed services. Under most Linux distros, services are fewer and typically only accept local connections unless designed otherwise. Another example of security being shoehorned backwards into Windows.

 

The Linux desktop was built with security in mind, Windows was not. The above are but two examples of this, do you think there's more?

 

So while Adam is totally right in what he says and there's always the human loophole, "CLICK HERE" the design of Linux and the large variety of the install base help reduce the type of virus that I discovered infected computers around me, or at the very least help reduce the vectors a virus may use to spread.

 

Helping stop a virus spread is pretty important isn't it? A virus that doesnt spread fails evolution 101.

 

James

 

* The virus on our computers was a minor one that attempted to steal MMO game passwords, none of us play MMO's, nor used the infected computers for anything financial/personal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A simple comparison: the number of people who have a computer at work vs. the number who have one at home.

 

Why is this important? Because people only have a choice (most of the time, anyways) as to what they run on their home computer. If the don't have a home computer, or use their work computer to do more web browsing than there home (i.e. don't have internet), it would easily skew these results.

 

I think that's something that's hardly ever taken into account when doing these statistics, and it could have an effect on the results.

 

That is a very valid point tyme. The other thing about security is the numbers game. If there were as many people trying to attack Linux systems as were trying to attack windows ones then Adam's analysis would be completely correct, but there just aren't that many who are trying because if you only have a target 'audience' of 0.9% it isn't really worth the effort. Add to that iphitus's point about the huge variety of Linux desktops which would tend to make it even more difficult and I think we are definitely more secure than our Windows using friends.

 

There is also the wider point that there is no such thing as totally secure computing in just the same way as there is no such thing as totally secure life. Howard Hughes tried to attain the latter objective and he still died.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Linux is certainly NOT slower than Windows, yes, some drivers are less optimized, but the fundamental difference is, Linux multitasking works ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE BETTER than Windows multitasking!

 

Just an example:

 

A friend of mine whom I installed Mandriva as dual-boot on his home PC (an old Pentium 3, 1GHz, 512MB RAM) a while ago, uses normally XP, he only wanted Linux out of curiosity but never bothered to use it seriously. Recently his XP install got so infested by spyware/viruses/whatever that it has become unbootable, so he started using Mandriva, as he had no choice.

Guess what, the first thing he noticed is that he could still watch a downloaded DVD quality movie without judder while in the background a 15GB file backup was running from an internal hdd to a USB hdd, and we were talking over skype at the same time too...

 

He was expecting the movie to seriously judder and the skype call too, as he was used from XP!

 

Not what I am experiencing at all. Linux is fat more aggressive at swapping out by default than windows making switching between different apps quite slow; also video playback is not as smooth (when did ati implement xv again?) my girlfriends laptop runs (1.6GHz centrino m/ ati x600) runs windows very smoothly but linux, and I have tried a few,  :wall:

 

I wouldn't compare using ntfs-3g since it's not available for use under Windows. So, you've confirmed that filesystem writing, even using ntfs-3g, is faster under Linux than in Windows.

ntfs>ntfs-3g>ext3, there are plenty of benchmark rating linux (and bsd) performance very favorably compared to windows but all these benchmarks are situations you would never find in a desktop usage, only server usage; like I said: linux is optimized for servers, windows for the desktop

Edited by ffi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...