Oxford says Apple's OS X is a Linux distro 9297

When you are using a sample to draw conclusions about the entire market, that is by definition an 'estimate'. Numbers from a single ISP does not include every computer user even in that geographic region. Nevertheless, they can be useful for projecting the trends. At a minimum, monitoring them over time can at least tell you which direction the trends are moving.

The local ISPs I've worked with the most are Powercom.net and Dias.net (I used to be part owner of DIAS). The web stats I listed earlier are from sites hosted on a colo server at Powercom (they cut me a good deal because I've done consulting work for them). I no longer have much contact with DIAS, and Powercom is a much larger regional provider, so you are better off contacting them if you are really serious about digging up stats. Unfortunately, most companies don't just cough up that data because you ask nicely... they tend to treat it as a proprietary business buttet. My contact there is a fellow by the name of John Larkin. He might not have the stats at his fingertips, but he could probably put you in touch with someone who does, buttuming they are at all interested in helping you. Good luck.

I could of course make my own web logs available if you were really curious. As I stated before, it is a rather small sample and thus not terribly scientific, but I still find it interesting and useful to track the changes over time. One thing is certain; Linux is on the increase.

Just for grins, I'll bounce an email over to the guys at DIAS and see if they are interested in sharing their logs. They don't serve as large a region as Powercom (last I checked), but they could still provide a much larger sample than my few web sites.

The stats I had access to was Consumer Debt clbutt dialup and DSL accounts. The buttumption was that these were just home users, but realistically I now that many small businesses use Consumer Debt level accounts to hook up their business networks. A linux system is a popular choice as a NAT firewall in front of a home or small office network, but it is difficult to tell from the ISP side of things if that box connecting via DHCP is a dekstop, server, laptop, or whatever. Until recently, my primary Linux desktop was doubling as the house firewall. Now the media center PC does that job. Blury lines indeed.

My point is, even two years ago, there was an impressive number of people connecting to the Internet via Linux, enough that local ISPs that I work with took notice and officially support it now. The line between desktop and server, Consumer Debt and business, it can be rather blurry on the low end... but ultimately does that really matter? It is verifiable Linux usage and the market is responding to it.

Cheers,

Thad