[KLUG Advocacy] Linux Outpacing Macintosh On Desktops

[Dirk Bartley]

On Wed, 2002-09-11 at 22:26, Bruce Smith wrote:

> Personally I don't put too much stock in those numbers anyway.  It seems
> like it'd be very difficult to make number of Linux estimates since it's
> free and legal to copy.  What are the going by?  Results about browser
> info from web server logs?  Even that isn't very accurate since some
> browsers allow you to forge the ID string (i.e.  Opera on Linux lets you
> say your running IE on windows to trick some web sites into working). 
> And what web sites are they sampling these logs from?  Certainly not all
> of them, so does their sample really reflect the correct percents?
>

I prefer stats that are generated more like a neilson rating statistical
analysis.  These are at least slightly honest about the +/- of being
accurate.  I have not seen any numbers recently though.  Trying to get a
1000 person slice of computer users has got to be a nightmare to do. 
Consider home and office users?  Do you count me as 2 for home and
office??  Depends on the poll, desktop users vs. desktop systems.

Dirk