Sign of the Times
I’m back at Maxfield’s House of Caffeine, my favorite caffeinated wireless access point, and I’m noticing several other laptops running GNU/Linux. I think any attempt to quantify free software adoption statistically is going to be flawed by the simple fact that market purchases are likely only a tiny fraction of actual uses. (You could make a similar argument vis-a-vis proprietary software since so much is pirated; but I’m willing to make an ad hoc guess that the pirated proprietary software “market” corresponds closely to the legitimate purchase market). At least in areas like San Francisco, I suspect the desktop/laptop usage of GNU/Linux is much higher than statistics suggest (e.g., see Is the Age of Desktop Linux Approaching?·, suggesting that only one percent of desktops run GNU/Linux).
Dylan Thurston Jan 28
If you read the article in the link, you’ll notice that the 1 percent statistic comes from Google searchers. Unless Linux users consistently declare incorrect operating system information or don’t declare it at all, I’d guess it’s fairly accurate. OTOH, from Google’s page, I see that “Other” operating systems have 5%, which seems awfully large.