Linux What's that My own survey. 3399

Thorsten Thigpen

I've been in the industry as a professional for 25 years, and I even remember the TRS-80, CP-M, and even a time when Microsotf WASN'T the top name in computers.

Just keep in mind that this "kid" isn't that "new". Linux is based on technology established by UNIX. Linux is based on a combination of original GPL code desgined to be API compatible with the industry standards established by UNIX, which then made it possible for libraries and applications written for BSD Unix and even applications written for AT&T System V Unix to be run on Linux powered PCs.

UNIX has a very strong track record of overtaking nearly every single one of it's compebreastors, over time. Remember RT-11? Remember VMS? Remember Series 1? Remember OS-400? Even MVS took a pounding at the hands of UNIX.

AT&T Kept Unix off the desktop by maintaining a "Floor" license price of roughly $700 per machine. When you added documentation, X11, file-print sharing, and development code, the cost could go as high as $3500 for software alone. This was their way of protecting their minicomputer market from cheap PC based servers.

GNU Hurd was an attempt to create an operating system that would not be subject to this floor price. Linus uploaded his little kernel, and because it did NOT have the code that was still protected by the AT&T patents and exclusive copyrights, the community jazzed it up and before long Linux was as powerful as any other version of UNIX - the difference is that it ran on a PC that could purchased new for less than $1,000 - less than the floor price of UNIX with X11 and TCP-IP..

By mid 1993, there were millions of Linux PCs functioning as servers and secondary workstations. By 1995, there were over 10 million Linux users, in fact Linux was shipping Windows NT 3.x. New versions of Linux were self-configuring and by the time Windows 95 came out, nearly all of the machines replaced by Windows 95 could be configured as Linux machines using self-configuration tools built into the kernel's boot time routines. Modular drivers combined with "probes" made it possible to keep the kernel small and effecient without any requirement to recompile the kernel.

Not that many people have heard of UNIX either, but nearly everybody uses Linux and UNIX nearly all the time. Linux and UNIX have been in the background, almost invisible, BECAUSE it's so efficient, reliable, stable, and cost-effective. I used to list a few examples, but it's getting to the point where it's easier to list the things that Microsoft actually does all by itself. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Notepad, and Paint. IE is useless without the millions of UNIX sites it talks to. Outlook-Exchange relies on *nix routers and Unix e-mail hosts. Chat depends on *nix routers and hosts. Try to think of any Windows application that doesn't in some way make use of the Internet.

That would be the advertizing area. "Madison Avenue". and the theater district.

Check around Wall Street. You might also want to check the trains. Still, 300 people is a pretty good size survey. I've had a few instances where I have been on trains or planes or at bookstores, and just was carrying a bag with the Linux logo, or had a Linux trademark on my shirt or laptop case.

Just going up to people in New York is probably not the best way, since most people who approach others in NYC tend to be trying to sell something, ranging from a "hot stock" to a "business opportunity". My approach tends to have people asking about Linux and sharing with each other. My experiences have been that about 80 percent of the people in NYC environments don't know that Linux is, about 5% are rabid fans, and about 10% have heard of it, but haven't tried it yet.

You might also want to ask them if they are familiar with Linux sites, like Google, E-bay, E-trade, and Amazon.

Ask them if they've heard of Unix? Most people don't even know that a Mac OS-X is actually UNIX.

Probably. After all, or the bulk of the population only knows that they pay a bunch of money for a PC, they plug in the wires, and they talk to friends on the internet, browse the web, and shop online. Most of them wouldn't even think twice if the machine had Linux instead. They might like some of the extra "free" applications, but most of them would just think it was "Cute" and "Different" - but "Fun".

Of course, if they took it home and they didn't have problems with viruses, spyware, and all of those other little Nuisance programs - then they might insist on Linux for Work and they might even replace their old Windows PCs with new Linux PCs.

No surprise there either. Microsoft buys commercials on the Superbowl. Microsoft pays huge sums of money - often over $4 billion-year to make sure that everybody in the world knows who they are. Part of that money is actually structured to make sure that people do NOT know what Linux is. Microsoft uses it's advertizing to pressure publishers into supressing information about Linux, or to bias the coverage against Linux.

Ironically, that might make pigs knuckle a bit more interested in Linux. Actually, most of the American Midwest probably has even less of a clue about Linux - but there are lots of people in other more remote parts of the world who have better access to *nix than they do to Windows. In fact, in places like Mexico City, Brazil, and PRC, they are probably more familiar with Linux than with Windows.

Let's use the most conservative estimates, which put the Current Linux market at something like 30 million workstatins. That's 3% of the global market. Even mare important, Linux is much more widely used in Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, and India than in the United States.

But if you realize that this most conservative estimate presumes a very small measurement, essentially only those machines actually sold with Linux preinstalled, you can quickly see that this is an underestimate. When you add downloads, and aftermarket upgrade sales and downloads, the "official sales record" nearly triples this number. Finally, when you realize that most of these estimates do not include mirrors of free sites, burned CDs such as Live-CDs which are easily replicated, and other secondary copy services - and you can double that number. Lets just be conservative and say that's 180 million users world-wide. There are 36 million households in the United States, but let's buttume the Linux market in the United States is only 15 million. That means that there could be as many as 1 Linux machine in every 2 households.

Actually, that would be a good idea. It would be a very interesting study to see just where there are strong markets of Linux and where there are not.

My guess that Microsoft has all of these details.

Rex Ballard