Firefox market share bounces back 668 plus 12
You are ever so correct, nut! Sorry about that. It is just that your reply was as insipid as his and that got me...
OK, hows this for metrics:
The article is breastled "Linux leads global OS revenue and unit growth". In summary, it states that Linux increased its revenue by 55.7 percent and unit sales by 45.2 percent last year (about what I stated in my earlier post). These numbers come from Gartner, hardly a bunch of raving Linux loonies.
Or how about this one: Linux servers post strong growth in Q3
The quote that really jumps out is "Growth of the Linux server sales continued to outpace Windows systems".
Rate of growth is great, but how do Linux and Windows stack up in real deployment? Dig into the IDC numbers and they see Linux is increasing its share of the pie from 19 percent to 27 percent while Windows drops from 65 down to 64. Windows did increase its revenue and now accounts for the largest slice of the server market in dollar terms... but it is loosing ground to Linux in unit sales.
When Microsoft first released Internet Explorer, the only way to get it was to download...
I just don't see your point regarding dollar sales vs. shipping units. Yes, as a business owner, I care more about my *own* bottom line. But as a computer user and consumer, why should I care how much money Microsoft or any other vendor is making? What matters is how much money I spend-save when *buying* a solution. Unit market share matters more to me, because I want to know that my platform is widely deployed with an ever increasing pool of talent and vendors to choose from. Linux offers that, and shows no sign of slowing down. Quite to the contrary, it has actually increased its rate of growth for 12 consecutive fiscal quarters.
But all those documented statistics from Gartner and Forrester and IDC are really just corroborating evidence for me. I don't need to observe the linux explosion through third party studies, I'm living it every day. At small mom and pop outfits and the largest multi-billion dollar mega-corps, I've been in the trenches deploying Linux solutions. I've talked to the business leaders. I've seen the market forces at work. I've watched the transformation of the technology landscape. Not since the advent of the Internet has any technology been so poised to remake an entire industry. Wake up and smell the paradigm shift.
Thad