Biased!

TFA article quotes biased web stats showing GNU/Linux with less than 1% of somebody's hits. Other biased published web stats show GNU/Linux with more than 3% of the hits on W3Schools which has plenty of Windows-centric parts.

Industry surveys such as IDC makes found GNU/Linux was as prevalent as MacOS several years ago and both have been growing rapidly since. Vista has given both an impetus. One thing not considered in TFA is that MacOS can only be installed on a PC sold by Apple, because of the terms of the licence, while GNU/Linux can be installed on just about anything.

If one views IDC/Forrester data one finds a much different picture:
see http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P2229
see http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P2438
"On the desktop side, IDC sees Linux' share more than doubling, from 3% today to 6% in 2007, while Windows loses a bit of ground."

I think things are even better than that for GNU/Linux today, because, while growth has been steady in North America, growth in China is huge. There the government outlawed naked PCs and OEMs started installing GNU/Linux.

TFA is using biased statistics unrepresenative of the world. Surely in the USA, GNU/Linux is weak on the desktop, but with Vista that is changing. I am meeting Vista users greatly disappointed by the DRM, WGdisAdvantage, lack of interoperability with XP and so on. M$'s hold on the retail market has pushed huge numbers of Vista machines out there to disappoint users. Businesses are installing XP and looking for alternatives. There is no way that GNU/Linux is less than 1% of the desktop these days. In the past year I have installed almost 200 GNU/Linux seats and I hope to do another 50 after Christmas. In my whole life I have only installed a few Windows seats. GNU/Linux is hot.

One man, closing all the Windows.