Linux Is Popular? Now Wait a Minute
link: original article - section: common
My Linux-Watch colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' definition of desktop Linux popularity is rather disturbing.
Today, he recounted the results of the Linux Foundation Survey 2007 in a post at DesktopLinux. Maybe he loves Linux just too darn much, because his take is—shall I say—over the top.
SJVN is an excellent dot-the-eyes and cross-the-tees kind of reporter. There's nothing really factually wrong with his reporting on the Linux survey. Sometimes, though, his Linux lovin' ways come through too strongly.
"The first thing we can say about the Linux desktop in 2007 is that there are more users than ever," SJVN writes. He seems to base this conclusion on the number of survey respondents, supposedly twice as many as in 2006, or 20,000 Linux desktop users. No disrespect, but twice as many respondents to a self-selected survey does not mean "more users than ever."
Now here's a choice paragraph: "The Linux Foundation survey also found that the Linux desktop has become a mainstream desktop replacement. While many businesses use Linux as a development desktop (53.3 percent), almost two-thirds (66.1 percent) use it as a client desktop. Linux is no longer just an operating system for the technically inclined."
Linux is a mainstream desktop? Oh, please, get a life! That's quite the audacious statement based on the responses of 20,000 Linux users. A November Forrester Rsearch survey of IT decision makers revealed that worldwide only about 2 percent of businesses run Linux. By contrast, Windows is on 94 percent of business PCs.
"Ubuntu rocketed to a near-household name after it signed with Dell on May 1 of this year," wrote Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray. "But Dell has yet to commit Linux on enterprise-class PCs despite Michael Dell's promise to unleash Linux on the SMB market eventually."
What's perplexing about the Linux Foundation survey: Around 55 percent of respondents run Ubuntu at the office and about the same number at home. Those numbers don't resonate with other analyst data, where distributions like Red Hat are regarded as market leaders for business deployments.
Linux "also is an operating system that its users have near complete trust in," SJVN writes. Really? Which users? Most people run Windows—or so says Forrester.
I love this: "When desktop Linux is deployed in a business, it's being deployed in a big way," SJVN writes. He quotes a ridiculous finding from the survey that is just so easy to blow out of context: Nearly 41 percent respondents run Linux on more than half of their PCs; the comparable for Windows 57.5 percent. No wonder SJVN is giddy. Either desktop number, for Linux or Windows, is the open-source Holy Grail. Windows is beatable, damn it. Long live Linus Torvalds!
Wait, put the cork back in the champagne bottles. This survey is no cause for celebration. The survey respondents are self selected and, presumably, they are more amicable to Linux than other folks. Among this group of presumed Linux enthusiasts, only 40.6 percent have the operating system running on half or more of their desktop PCs. Among this group, the percentage should be a whole lot higher.
File this in Joe's "simply couldn't resist department": Last month, I blogged about how Linux is no threat to Vista. I asserted that driver support/installation is a problem area. Some Microsoft Watch commenters called me bad names for this assertion. For shame! The Linux Foundation survey asked about major obstacles to Linux adoption. No. 1 obstacle: "Missing device driver support" (40.8 percent).
I understand that SJVN is a true believer as, presumably, are the good folks over at the Linux Foundation. I'm sure that if I surveyed Americans working for tobacco companies about cigarette smoking that lots of them would in fact be smokers. X percent of respondents say they smoke and X percent prefer Lucky Strike. But the self-selected group wouldn't speak for the broader US population.
The Linux Foundation survey doesn't speak for the masses of IT organizations. No amount of Linux lovin' from my esteemed colleague SJVN will change that fact.
