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Red Hat Software Businesses

Red Hat's Linux Market Share Eroding? 164

Posted by Hemos from the sometimes-a-fedora-is-just-a-fedora dept.
chamont writes: "Even though Red Hat is still number 1, this article states that Caldera, SuSE, and Turbo are gaining ground fast. The article also mentions that Corel is pretty much history." Interesting to see -- what's cool is that the Linux market, at least what they measured, grew 89% overall. Turbolinux had monstrous growth overall -- you can see a lot more is happening on Pacific Rim.
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Red Hat's Linux Market Share Eroding? More

Red Hat's Linux Market Share Eroding?

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  • Horribly inaccurate (Score:4)

    by jailbrekr2 ( 139577 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @03:00PM (#781204) Homepage
    And *where* is LinuxOne listed? Oops. Time for my medication now.....
  • There was no sales decline. Sales of Redhat were up by 69% but total Linux growth was 89% or something like that. Redhat didn't grow as much as the other distros.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • What will happen if one Linux distrubutor becomes so dominate as to knock the others out of business? Do they become the new MS? Sure geeks will get it from anywhere they want, but what will regular users see on the shelves? Let's say that RH does become overly dominant. They can esentially control what version will get rolled out to the public, and what gets included in that distro. Is this a scenario to be concerned about?

    nate
  • I have a Linux Developer's Resource CD-ROM in my hand. It has Slackware 2.3 with ELF beta. It also has Red Hat Mother's Day release +0.1. It's dated August 1995, and also has things like tsx-11.mit.edu, sunsite.unc.edu, Kernels 1.2.13 and 1.3.15, XFree86 3.1.2, Japanese Linux stuff, and Doom :-)

    From this, one could assume that Slackware was further ahead of RH on the great "ELF changeover," as RH seems to have been pre-1.0 back then. Any other Linux History majors care to clear this up?
    --
  • Looking at their web site sure is wierd. It's like time stopped 4 years ago.

  • >Unix (and Unix-like)

    these would be "*nix"

    So far, so good. But how is *nix pronounced?

    a) Unix
    b) splat-nix
    c) Unix-like operating system
    d) FreeBSD-like operating system

    I choose d), though no doubt it would be more popular to go to e), Linux like operating system . . .

    hawk, who really should be making slides . . .
  • After reading the /. headline and the article, I couldn't help but feel bad for Corel, who are giving Linux their all. I use Corel Linux at work, where SMB/MS connectivity is a must. Corel performs well on the PII-350 64M, and I access all of my SMB shares through point-and-click interfaces. This is what I need at work to be productive. (home == slackware)

    But after seeing your stats, I realized that the articles were misinformed and were only spreading FUD in my mind. I bought Corel Linux SE and I like it.
  • Mandrake is based very heavily on RedHat. At first, Mandrake was just a repackaging of RedHat. Abit's Gentus is also a repackaging of RedHat. So is LinuxOne *shudders*. Storm Linux and Corel are repackagings of Debian. I'd say that if it's a repackaging of a distribution, it belongs to the family. Or if it borrows heavily, such as Mandrake does now.

    --
    you must amputate to email me

  • The methodology used is great if you're trying to figure out who's making how much money from selling Linux distributions, but isn't so great if you're trying to figure out which distributions are good ones, or popular ones.

    This wasn't a review of what distros are good - we've had many flame wars over that - It is about sales. It is sales of bundles that keep these companies alive (O.k., we have some like Debian that are volunteer) and generating the software. The point of this is not "Oh! Redhat is starting to suck" it's "Uh oh... Redhat, the company that is funding this, this and that is starting to suffer a sales decline"
    That's all.

    ---
  • Hmm I dunno, maybe because it's the old verion? They did release the Second Edition of Corel OS only about a month ago...
  • Two weeks ago I "installed" a 1"x1" Debian "swirl" sticker, and my hard drive is 14% faster, CPU is 23% faster, and RAM increased by a factor of 1.5.

    shit. now we have computer riceboys, too. just what we need.

  • The Yggdrasil disk was from mid '94, the Redhat install must have taken place after your Slackware 2.3 release. I've never installed Slackware, but not out of bias against the dist. It's clear that I'm mistaken WRT which distributions were prepared for ELF support first. However, I certainly have had this installation running since RH-2.x, and before that I ran an Yggdrasil dist.
  • I got so disgusted with the having to register, and the slower response, and all the other crap, I just decided to throw up a mirror. How like me. If anyone is interested, the ad-less, faster, clean version is over at http://johncglass.com/mirror/distwars . htm [johncglass.com]
  • ummm your .sig disagrees with your post or is that the other way around
  • Redhat grow slowly but stil has a good Market Share in the US. This also leaves room for competion. Which is a good thing if one company controls the market then that company that can lean to abuse (Microsoft) I am glad to see this study out. It show linux is heading the right direction.
  • It was very easy for Linux newbies to use. Just some minimal questions and 20 minutes later you had a working Linux box. Yast presented a bazillion options to confuse the new user. Debian's dselect STILL SUCKS today. Slackware, the free CD in every Linux book, cane with no docs or help. So Red Hat gained popularity.

    And the red hat "control-panel" made simple administrative setup and configuration easy for the newbie Linux user migrating over from windos.


  • No offense, but I believe that the majority of the Linux market is due solely to "momentum" and people who are investing in "cool shit" rather than profit margins.
  • yggdrasil [yggdrasil.com]was the first linux distro I ever tried whatever happened to them ?
  • Whether Debian is good or not is irrelevant. This
    doesn't change the fact that Corel is a flop
    because of their choice of Debian instead of
    Slackware or RedHat. I had to recompile code
    to get it to work on Corel while I didn't have
    to do that to go from Slackware, RedHat, SuSE
    Caldera or Mandrake.
    Corel chose Debian so you couldn't easily
    just use pieces of their distribution with
    SuSE, RedHat or other distributions.
    This is not to say that Corel Linux isn't
    good (assuming that you ignore the installation
    program blowing partition tables) but that they
    chose to act like Microsoft which is to try to
    take over the market. In Linux you either join
    the crowd or hit a brick wall.
  • Obviously it's because they have a cool logo. Any Linux newbie has to be attracted the that cool guy in the hat. After one has used Red Hat for awhile, [s]he realizes that it's considered the "newbie distro." That's when they move on to a truly one-three-three-seven (as the kids say) distro like Debian.

    The Debian logo is only slightly trailing the Red Hat logo in one-three-three-seven-ness. Two weeks ago I "installed" a 1"x1" Debian "swirl" sticker, and my hard drive is 14% faster, CPU is 23% faster, and RAM increased by a factor of 1.5.
  • I started with caldera 1.0 eval (in '95-'96)... which was built on top of redhat 3.x (I think). I was really tired of reformats for each upgrade of slackware.. But I didn't trust redhat (It took 10 months of no SLS releases for me to trust slackware ;). Here are some tips:

    1) Get check-packages from rawhide. It's really simple.. A cron job that does 'rpm -Va' and 'rpm -qa'... nightly and sends you diffs... start getting rid of programs that's install are screwed.

    2)Now, go into /bin and run "rpm -qf * > /dev/null". The list that returns are proggies that aren't in the rpm db. Do you need them.

    I was going nuts since I've arrived on rh6.2. But after going to rh7.0beta and a couple weeks of the above, my distro is pretty stock. But better... I keep some .rpm's from my caldera desktop..

    But this is the main point of why I chose redhat. Who the fsck cares about installs... You only do one of them for the life of a computer (and in my case this install survived two computers and three hardrives). I like an aggressive distro, using the latest and greatest, and not too many issues. Put it simple, take PAM. I like and use pam, and redhat wrote it for linux. All the other punk distro's were _so_ behind on this awesome part of linux...

  • This is a beautifully illustrative example of why it pays to observe important caveats, like: Don't trust a statistic that's published without its methodology. Good science is grounded on being reproducible -- the core of which is telling you how they did it. Simply saying "Based on the latest figures from IDC" doesn't tell you what the collection methodology was, or allow you to judge whether that methodology was or was not accurate.

    Of course, those of us in the community can look around us and see that their numbers were wrong -- which makes this problem even worse: the site it came from is targeted to the "manage by magazine" crowd, which makes their complete omission of Slackware and Debian, and their gross underestimation of Mandrake's US installations, substantially more dangerous, since they are misinforming already grossly-underinformed decision makers.

    MOO;IANAL.

  • Over the past few years, I either install Debian over the net or from a CD set purchased from cheap-bytes. I install onto 20+ machines at a time per upgrade and I'd be surprised if my aquisition methods were counted in this survey.

    From personal experience, if RH is seeing a decline it is because their "support" is not a good value. I know I've made my last purchase from them

  • I've used Redhat since 5.1 and I've become increasingly disllusioned with its progress with each release. While each point release has meant a few package upgrades, the inclusion of some important new software (e.g. 2.2 kernel, Gnome & KDE etc.), the fundamental operating system has hardly changed at all.

    In particular, Redhat Linux is hardly more usable (to a casual user) than it ever was. There has been no substantial steps made to making the thing more user-friendly. A cobbled-together "solution" of Gnome or KDE, linuxconf and a few other disparate tools is not user-friendly.

    Secondly, Redhat is still too happy to install a load of unwanted shit onto your harddrive as part of a default install. Most people simply do not need mail, news, ftp, http servers installed and running by default. What the hell are they thinking to leave these things enabled? Not only does this leave the box with gaping wide ports, but it degrades the overall machine performance. If anyone really needs them then they should have to turn them on themselves.

  • It's kind of hard for me to figure out how RedHat got on top so quickly (and stayed there, it seems). Is it simply because they were the 'first' to offer Linux in a box with a tech support number? It just seems like there are so many better options, and RedHat doesn't stand out as a clear winner in any category.

    -levine
  • I always get a kick out the distro list on LWN:
    Distributions
    Alphanet
    Alzza Linux
    Bad Penguin Linux
    Best Linux
    Black Cat Linux
    BluePoint Linux
    CAEN Linux
    Cafe Linux
    Caldera OpenLinux
    Circle MUDLinux
    Complete Linux
    Conectiva Linux
    Corel Linux
    Debian GNU/Linux
    deepLinux
    Definite Linux
    DLite
    e-smith
    Elfstone Linux
    Eridani
    ESware Linux
    Eurielec Linux
    eXecutive Linux
    FTOSX
    Gentoo
    Gentus
    Gibraltar
    HA Linux
    Halloween Linux
    HispaFuentes
    IceLinux
    Ivrix
    ix86 Linux
    Jurix
    Kaiwal Linux
    Kondara MNU/Linux
    KRUD
    KSI-Linux
    Laonux
    LASER5
    Leetnux
    Linpus Linux
    Linux Cyrillic Edition
    Linux MLD
    Linux-Mandrake
    LinuxFromScratch
    LinuxOne OS
    LinuxPPP
    Linux Pro Plus
    Linux-SIS
    LNX System
    LoopLinux
    LSD
    Lunar Penguin
    Lute Linux
    MageNet
    Mastodon
    MaxOS
    minilinux
    nmrcOS
    NoMad Linux
    Nuclinux
    PingOO Linux
    Plamo Linux
    PLD
    Project Ballantain
    PROSA
    Rabid Squirrel
    Red Linux
    Red Flag
    Red Hat
    Repairlix
    Rock Linux
    Scrudgeware
    Serial Terminal
    ShareTheNet
    Slackware
    Small Linux
    Spiro
    spyLinux
    Stampede
    Stataboware
    Storm Linux
    SuSE
    Think Blue Linux
    TimeSys Linux/RT
    TINY
    Tom Linux
    Tomsrtbt
    Trinux
    TurboLinux
    VA-enhanced Red Hat
    VectorLinux
    Vine Linux
    WholeLinux
    WinLinux 2000
    Xdenu
    XTeamLinux
    Yellow Dog Linux
    ZipSlack
    ZipSpeak

    Now all I need is one of those s/390's to install these suckers on!
  • Big Iron is not dead, no cluster has the I/O of Big Iron, anyway, I think he was talking OS/software, not hardware.

  • Bad Link (Score:4)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @02:34PM (#781232) Journal
    The link said: "The parameter is incorrect." Try this. [technologyevaluation.com]

  • Indeed. I chose d, and subsequently typed it as I'd pronounce it. :-)

  • Blargh. Make that "c".

  • Yes. It's because they were first.

    In marketing, the absolute best thing you can do is be first. Everything else you can do is compensating for not being first. If you can't be first in an existing category, invent a new category you can be first in.

    Occasionally 'better' beats out 'first', but it's the exception.
  • I just keep on truckin' with Slack.
  • What makes you think Perl is "USELESS STUFF"?

    With the exception of a weak argument on office software, every single criteria you have mentioned relate to games. Linux is not a gamers' OS. You'd be happier with a Playstation then a real computer.

    (Being just as good as Windows is no use?) Again, in many areas, especially that of networking and multi-users, Windows is not even close.

    But then again, why don't you weight you BeOS on the same criteria and see for yourself?

  • No Surprise (Score:4)

    by Bouncings ( 55215 ) <.moc.redniknek. .ta. .nek.> on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @02:36PM (#781238) Homepage
    It's really no surprise. As standards merge more of their styles of doing things (LSB slowly developing), it's easier to switch from one to another. Also, Red Hat has for a long time held the title of being the best for newbies, and with all the other distributions catching up and passing it up in that category, you gotta figure.

    Finally, I might note that Corel had really bad timing. It is good in theory and is nice to see Debian-based Linux distros. If only they were to wait for Potato and base it off that. (Actually, I'm typing from a Corel Linux box right now -- it's pretty slick on a work network with Windows'ish stuff flying around allover. Comes shipped with Acrobat, Netsc(r)ape and a slick little Samba browser)

  • You've been reading the MS Anti-Linux FAQ haven't you?

    Let's see. The OS becomes more popular. So somehow the available knowledge pool shrinks to the point where developers are supporting newbie installations? The OS becomes more ubiquitous, therefore people stop developing for it and it's no longer cutting edge?

    The idea that Linux is a small market OS that relies on spare time is a myth, although this has been true, it's quickly changing. There are several businesses who exist solely to develop and sell Linux solutions (whether they are viable is another question, but I think they will be). The Free Software Foundation (albeit a non-profit charity) has taken in several $100K in donations according to their "Thank GNUs" page, some of it from major hardware corps like IBM-- and their software is Free! As people start to realize that they don't have to be addicted to proprietary OS'es, the primary selling point of Linux won't be it's zero price tag, it will be the Freedom, something many of us are happy to spend a little money to preserve. In fact, some of the distro companies right now are basically using free ISO downloads as a loss-leader. It is not wise to clam up the servers right now, since it will alienate the people you need to hook the most, but there is nothing in the GPL that says they have to provide free downloads of compiled software in install-ready form-- certainly RMS encourages charging mightily for distribution costs, so that money can be given to developers. It's quite possible that at some point giving away binaries and whole distributions for free is going to be seen as doing the Free Software community a disservice, since it does nothing to help pay people for all their hard work.

  • Makes me wonder, what is it really behind the success of a distro? Technical facts, or marketing?

    I'll talk about the distro I use, Slackware. It was the first distribution I tried -- and I think it'll be the last.

    I have installed other distributions for a few friends -- namely, Red Hat, Calera, Debian, Conectiva and Corel. But all of them lack what makes Slackware so special: simplicity.

    I believe that Slackware is a successfull distribution, not because of marketing, but because it gives you a GNU/Linux system. It's yours. You run vi and configure everything, and everything is under your fingertips.

    Sure, it's not for everybody. But it's easy to install -- although not graphically appealing. It make you learn lots of things about how to run you box; and this is a Good Thing (tm).

    And Slackware is almost always forgotten. But it's successfull, because people who use it keep using it, and the word about this clean, stable, transparent system spread with them.

    (Slack also has a great forun, by the way. Answers almost never stay unanswered, and there's really a sense of "community).

    I would really like to thank Patrick for this great distribution... :)

    --

  • Market share by type (Score:3)

    by Uruk ( 4907 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @02:36PM (#781241)
    There really aren't *too* many different distributions, there are just a holy sh**tload of distributions marketed under different names with very subtle (and sometimes meaningless) differences between them.

    What I'd like to see is marketshare information by type of distro. Since a large number of users are using redhat, debian, or a knockoff of one of the two, I'd be interested to see how it stacks up by type. (i.e. debian-type as in debian, storm, corel, etc, and redhat type, redhat, mandrake, etc)

    Even if corel is dead, it doesn't mean debian is. Makes me wonder, what is it really behind the success of a distro? Technical facts, or marketing?

  • I'm going to call up some of the #'s on their web site and see if I can get an answer :)
  • I notice that the distributions that are growing the fastest are those that tend to be distributed on magazines.

    We downloaded one copy of RH6.2 and have it on numerous servers. I would assume those obtaining it via magazine are more likely to have it one only one or two machines.

    Sorry cannot say more as I believe the link to have been /.. already!
  • I may have missed it, but what was the market share of slackware?
  • Fighting to be the top dog of a market that you can't make any money in.

    Who-hoo! I'm #1! I'm losing money the fastest!
  • What's the name of that Samba browser? I haven't seen anything good in that area...
    ---
  • If Linux becomes a popular OS can it really attract sufficent people to ensure the OS and its applications remain cutting edge?

    Of course it can!

    If Linux is more popular, then there is a larger pool of people interested in its success. That means more people contributing stuff.

    If a large portion of the people are willing to pay for a commercial distro, then the distro companies have more money to spend on developers.

    Even if we assume that people don't ever want to pay for Linux, the larger pool still means more contributions. Suppose that Company X wants to roll out Linux, but Linux is missing one crucial feature. Perhaps Company X can hire someone to add that feature, for less money than buying Windows 2000 for everyone in Company X. Once the feature is added, it's there forever and everyone can use it.

    Try as I might, I just can't imagine any way for large numbers of users to be a problem making Linux grow less quickly.

    steveha

  • It's the logo. I use YellowDog Linux because I am a mailman who also likes dogs. Waiting for YDL2.
  • How do you decide what `family' a distribution belongs to? Package
    management system isn't enough, since SuSE is a very different beast
    to Redhat (due to configuration management), but uses RPMs.

    One thing that struck me as odd in the article was the comment
    about `betting your company' on a distribution: well, it isn't
    completely trivial to switch from one distribution to another, but I
    can't see how anyone could regard making the change as a disaster.

  • Pathetic moron! George Bush (not the boob but
    his father) started the fight against Microsoft.
    The inquiry was slowed down when the democrats
    got into office but the justice dept eventually
    was allowed to get back in the game.

    This is just a case of the laws being enforced
    and to claim that enforcing the laws is a liberal
    idea is ridiculous.

    Both liberals and conservatives want laws to
    be respected, only criminals don't.
  • Well... even if 1000 vb programmers install Linux and play with it this doesn't mean that Linux and Alan give up Linux for Windows...

    No matter how many newbies enter the ranks of the Linux users... there is enough place for everyone.

    Or you do think you have to use all of 1,500 applications SuSE ships on their CD?
  • One of the beauties of the Linux world is that even as comanies and distributions and come and go, as long as they open-source the stuff they do, even if they die, the good parts of what thev's done get left behind and aded to Linux overall, making it better. This process seems similar to evolution, or maybe the accretion that forms coral reefs.

    If "Company A" writes "Awesome Install Program X", and open-sources it, then even if Company A later dies, the good work still remains behind and gets added to the body of Linux code, improving future versions. In this way, good code still gets passed on even if individual distributions may go away.
  • RedHat is easy to install compared to what? Maybe compared to Debian and Slackware. But Mandrake and Caldera (and Corel from what I hear) are much easier to install than RedHat. You said RedHat need a push to stay current. I agree... too bad it isn't working. I consider their distro about a year out of date.
  • Now I dont want to start a huge distro flaming war because everytime one breaks out it's just silly, however; I have also been using SuSE for a couple years but not after trying R.H., Mandrake, and Caldera. The reason I stayed with SuSE is for the large amount of programs I get (6 CD's!!! How great is that?! To bad they changed that with the new release unless you buy the "professional" edition, which is still worth it to me...you may feel different and please flame away) and the configuration programs they have. The only reason I'm saying this is to back Graymalkin's point. Which is a good one. Now to argue one of his/her points. The basic point behind a distro is to "distribute" Linux, I could be wrong here though because there is the money thing. Which they all do very well and I say this because I have never had a problem finding a distro in the stores when I go looking for it or being in stock on the net. What you do get with a distro is all pretty much just butter. I'd be willing to pay $19.95 for a Linux distro (being only a CD, the kernel, and enough programs to get it installed and connected to the net for downloading the rest of what I actually want to have on there...and I only have a dialup connection.) The time they would have saved me getting those few programs on a bootable CD-ROM so I can take care of the rest exactly how I want it is worth the 20 bucks. Thats all they really need to do. The rest of it we have just come to expect. Which is wrong. Here's why: A competitor who shall remain nameless but will be referenced from here on as M$ sells an OS for ~$150US which comes with just basic software (enough to get you set up and going to go "purchase" the rest of the software you want) ,however; Linux distros include tons of free (as in beer and speech) software with their distribution on CD which you don't have to spend your precious bandwidth and time on getting for a price much more resonable then M$. That's more than what you could ask for a company to do. I often feel like I'm ripping them off, but I love it!!! So basically unless a distros price becomes outrageous I dont think they really need to go out on a limb for me they already do more than enough for my needs to get my money.
  • In Linux you either join the crowd or hit a brick wall

    No, thanks, leave that kind of thinking back in the Microsoft world.

    Corel is failing because of other reasons: their policy to be bad citizens of the free software community rather than good partners is the biggest reason. Nobody knowledgable wanted to recommend them. I still remember suggesting to a Corel P.R. person that they assign someone to listen to the free software community's complaints online and address what they said. She actually sneered. These are the folks who made major changes to KDE and then held them back 6 months, until they could no longer be merged back into KDE. They took software that had to a large extent been written by legal minors and applied a license that didn't allow those same legal minors to use the software! They changed the licenses of other people's software for a beta test in ways that violated those licenses.

    After that, we get to their applications. Word Perfect is a Windows executable running emulated under WINE. This is so absurd that people don't believe it unless they actually test the software. It doesn't work very well. IMO the pending GPL release of StarOffice strikes the death knell for Corel. Most of their advantages go down the drain with that.

    Anyway, the study is farcial because it counts sales, not installed systems. Thus, Debian doesn't get reported.

    Bruce

  • Maybe if they lose enough of the mainstream market it won't be so un-hip to use Redhat?

    I run Redhat. I know that makes me less "l33T" than if I ran, say, Slackware. I bought my Redhat CD, way back at 6.0, with the book. As a newbie I found their book to be somewhat helpful. I still run Redhat because I just haven't found anything that better suits me. I'm not enough of a zealot for Debian, I don't know anything about Suse or Turbolinux, and Mandrake just scares me. So Redhat it is. It's a great system for those who like to tweak and mess around with the system, but don't want to worry about breaking it completely. Although the stability of the next release is anyone's guess, 6.2 has been a good solid base for me.

    Besides, what other distro has such a bad-ass logo to compare with the shadowy guy in the red fedora?
  • What is a 'r33t h4x0r'? A Japanese script kiddie with a heavy accent?
    --
  • It can be sold, but it is sold by 50 different companies, not all (or even not any) of which were surveyed. Nor are the free downloads surveyed.

    In any case, the survey is bogus. Counting installed systems would be about 10 times as accurate as counting sales. How many organizations buy 1 CD and use it to install 10 systems?

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • well, i think you're missing my point. Linux
    distros will hold your hand to a degree in the
    area of partitioning and such. But, what
    happens when your video card or some other device
    crucial to getting the system working doesn't
    without tweaks? Windows doesn't hold your hand
    it directs it. Until linux can do that we will
    remain a hobbyists and experts community. The
    only proof that open source works is if everyone
    can use it. not just the geeks
  • With the Linux market growing so much in the Asian market (ie, Turbo Linux), and with a number of my free Linux games [newbreedsoftware.com] being mentioned in 3 or 4 Japanese Linux magazines in the last 6 months, I'd love help localizing my games to Japan. :)
  • Perl is useless if you don't use it. I don't use it, but most distros force you to install it anyway.

    1) Would you care to argue that office software point? StarOffice has fewer features and isn't really more stable than MS Office. Who cares if the OS is stable if the office suite is unstable. WordPerfect2K isn't that stable either. Also, in terms of features, MS Office has many things the other two don't expecially for spread sheets and presentations.

    2) How do GIMP, Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, iMovie, and 3D Studio MAX relate to games? Please, let me know. These aren't apps that nobody uses you know. I know a lot of (regular) people that fiddle with Truespace SE, or edit images in Photoshop LE. My friends use Fireworks a lot, and all those iMac users use iMovie. Linux has nothing comparable. Linux is weak in games, very weak. And games are a big market for consumer PCs. Linux is still weak in apps too. If you're a desktop user, chances are that Linux apps either don't have all the features you need, or aren't simple enough to use. Most Linux apps are middle-ground type stuff. While GIMP isn't as easy to use as MSPhoto Editor, it doesn't have all the features of Photoshop. If you need the power of either, then you're ass-out. Variety is important. One app doesn't fit everybody's needs. (Yet another reason why all those people making X toolkits should go work on something usefull.) Not to mention the fact that Linux is severely lacking in several software catagories. Notably
    A) WYSIWYG editors. Yes they suck, but not everone wants (or needs) to learn HTML.
    B) Photo editors. Sure there are image editors, but I don't see anything on Linux that is a good match for that simple stuff that comes with your scanner.
    C) Super-high-end apps like 3D Studio, Photoshop, Premiere, SoundForge, Cakewalk, etc, are totally non-existant. Not only that, but no Linux apps have features even comparable to the features of those programs.
    D) AOL. Believe it or not, there are 12 million people out there that will never use Linux until it gets AOL.
    E) Games. If you took a look at the figures for PC games sales, you wouldn't say that "I'd be happier with a Playstation."
    F) Code-generator-type apps. Sure there is a port of Delphi on the way, but I don't see it yet.
    G) Need I go on? I'm running out of letters here.

    Sure the Linux software lineup meets the needs of a lot of people, but in the specific case we're talking about (read messages in context to their replys, we're talking about whether or not Linux will own 15% of the home market within a year) but for home users, it doesn't.

    Linux is not good in the things that are important to home users. Networking and multi-users are decidedly non-important. If Linux were equal to Windows in the other areas, (which I shall enumerate shortly), then multi-user and good networking would be a nice perk. However, it's a small advantage compared to all the disadvantages Linux has.
    A) It's still too hard. Unless your computer is blessed by God and happens to jibe with the driver in your distro (how likely is that?) then you still have to do some config work. Also, there are dozens of little annoyances still present. For example, you have to give the IRQs and DMAs of your ISA sound card. You have to recompile the kernel if you want certain features. (It annoys me how many people tell me Linux is easy to use, but say if I want to do some particular thing I should use this or that patch for the kernel.) You don't get gamma controls in X. You can't arbritarily control refresh rate. You often have to live with stuff you don't need (I don't use Sendmail, why the hell does RedHat 6.1 load it by deafault? Before you answer, remember that the solution cannot involve the command line.)
    B) It still lacks important software.
    C) It really isn't any faster than Windows if you use a reasonable system. Sure WindowMaker may do it for you, but most home users need GNOME and KDE (both for proper app support) and in that configuration, Linux isn't any faster or smoother than NT. It's smoother than Win98, but isn't faster than it. Worse, KDE2 apps take insanely long to startup, even longer than windows explorer with Active Desktop enabled. And I'm talking about a Slackware 7.1 XFree86 4.01 machine here, I'm sure 3.6.x (which comes with most distros) is worse.
    D) It's more stable. It's definately more stable. However, many of the important apps are flaky (StarOffice, Netscape) so the stability aspect is somewhat negated.
    E) It has much worse hardware support. There is decent 3D acceleration for only a handfull of cards, and even on those cards that are well accelereated (NVIDIA) the Windows version is still faster. Not to mention the fact that there is no support for 3D sound cards or force-feedback joysticks.

    Given these things, what's the point of running Linux on a home machine? All you really gain is stability and maybe $90 for not having to upgrade Windows.

    I didn't compare BeOS on those criteria. However, notice that I didn't say that 15% of home users would be using BeOS within a year...

    However, to be fair, BeOS does still have some advantages over Linux on the desktop. It's faster, and there is some genuinely innovative software for it. However the hardware support is worse, and there is a dearth of apps. Still, it fills my needs, and the needs of many others. I can do most stuff from BeOS, reboting (to NT) only to do rendering, image editing, or DirectX coding. If your needs are simlar to mine, or your needs are very simple and you just need a fast, stable OS that has all the software you need, then give it a try. For a lot of people, who just do simple word processing and play around on the Internet, BeOS makes a great OS. However, if it doesn't fit your needs, then don't use it. I don't proclaim it suitable for the general computing public like many Linux users proclaim Linux is.
  • Would you like to quote where you got the idea Linux will own 15% of the desktop market in a year? I quote from ZDnet

    "International Data Corp. predicts a 25% annual
    growth rate for Linux into the new millennium"

    HOWEVER, same article,

    " Linux is making steady
    progress on the server side, especially for must-stay-up
    installations. But it's making no dent in Windows NT's
    growth as the standard OS for departmental servers. And
    it is light years away from being a threat to anybody on the desktop."

    What you must remember is that it is fairly hard to track the number of desktop users of Linux. Most desktop users tend to download it, compared to corperate users who buy it (for technical support.) Thus, there are not statistics on desktop usage of Linux. However, remember that while Linux is having phenominal growth, that's mainly in the server sector. In the desktop market, distros like Corel Linux and McMillan, and Mandrake are selling poorly (compared to the Windowses.) Also, even BeOS had a home computer with it preinstalled (AST machines.) Even if you see the same for Linux, one preinstall is quite far away from 15% of the market.

  • Debian is slow to mark a release as "stable" however the "unstable" branch is very up to date.

  • you must be one dumb muther f. did u READ the article. (now as a small aside to most of the flames i read on /., READING the articles is KEY to understanding the topic) If you READ the article you would see that linux aggregate sales are UP 89%, now if u take into account the 10% RELETIVE sales loss you see that infact, Redhat still GAINED customers.
  • Um, no.

    1) ATI video cards do *plenty* of things wrong, even in Windows. They have traditionally had transparency problems as well as not being fully compatable with the DirectX API...OK, so the drivers included in RedHat don't work completely, but neither do the drivers for Win98. I have several games that specifically say they do not support ATI chipsets...

    2) Nagging bugs...OK, try updating your GNOME packages from the ones installed on the disc, the ones I have run perfectly fine even on my Athlon with an NVIDIA vid card. I recommend Helix GNOME since it is easy for newbies to install.

    3) OldHat...RedHat may be slow to update packages, but not *nearly* as slow as Debian has. Try to learn about the distros before bashing one.

    I'm not trying to say that RedHat is the best, most stable, smallest, or anything else, I'm just saying that you are far too opinionated about this distro for the amount you know about linux in general. Enjoy your Windows 2000, there are only 63,000 documented bugs left...
  • Or at least, it's favored in Europe precisely because cable isn't as widespread here and you have to pay for your local calls. So a distro that contains six cd's worth of apps is very worthwile over here, especially since it's just as expensive as the lesser hung Red Hat.

    Furthermore, SuSE has succeeded in getting a number of universities in Germany on their side, which doesn't really hurt them either.

    --rant on-- BTW, why does RH insist on installing Gnome even when you explicitly demand a KDE workstation? Sure, I know how to fix it (now), but it seems a bit obtrusive to me. To be fair, though, SuSE (KDE sponsors) insist on warning you that GNOME is still in early beta stage as well. --rant off--
  • In the pacific RIm they are growing in there adoption of Linux. It is inexpensive, which is one thing that they like, TurboLinux has a presense there which RH does not. Suse is big in Euroland, so that leaves Cladera an RH for the US. Caldera is actually producing pretty good distro these days from what I have seen, and were one of the first to do the full X GUI install. So it makes sense.

    Corel added crap into KDE that added problems to people who tried to compile other programs against it, atleast that is what out on slashdot a while ago, which probably pissed some people off. Corel seems to have gone down the tubes in all its business though that is another story.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • As greater amounts of less technically able users begin to adopt the OS, then this could cause problems in that too few Linux users will actually be contributing to the maintenence and upgrading of the OS itself. Quite simply, Linux has for a long time been a small market OS that has relied on its users contributing there spare time and energy to the actual specifics of the OS. If Linux becomes a popular OS can it really attract sufficent people to ensure the OS and its applications remain cutting edge?
    I really don't understand your logic here. It's flawed in all sorts of ways:

    Your concerned that as the user/developer ratio ->0, Linux won't be able to compete with 'cutting edge' technologies. Now how does that ratio differ from any commercial software product you care to mention?

    Even if the number of core developers doesn't grow at the same rate as the OS use, it doesn't matter. The number will grow, since the OS is open and anyone can look under the hood. Contrast this with a closed-source OS that is limited by the developer resources (money) an organization can throw at it. It's almost no contest. The open source project can expand to the practical limits bounded by the organization governing its code. No private project can match that.

    I'm not even sure your base premise is even valid since:

    How will more developers contribute to the improvement of the OS? Development is proceeding at a furious pace as it is. Throwing more bodies at a problem doesn't always lead to faster development.
  • So you seriously think Linux will own 15% of the desktop market with a YEAR! Do you realize what kind of growth rate that would take? To clue you in, there are somewhere around 300 million copies of Windows out there. Millions of PCs ship every year. Right now, not ONE consumer vendor ships with Linux preinstalled. Not even Dell, which is pretty supportive of Linux, ships Linux on home machines. Eventually Linux might succeed in this market, but not that soon, and not in it's present state.

    Second...
    Stability: Yes, it's more stable.
    Speed: A nominal desktop config with GNOME 1.2, KDE2.0, and XFreee86 4.0 is slower than a comparable WindowsNT machine. Sure you can say, "oh, but with WindowMaker Linux is faster" but then you can't say that Linux has an object model and a good desktop environment. Also, nominally, both GNOME and KDE have to be installed (Gnapster is good, KDevelop is good) which bloats up the system and uses more memory. 3D on WindowsNT is still significantly faster, it seems to handle multimedia better (though I don't have any benchmarks of that) and the system feels much more responsive.
    Compactness: How? My super-tweeked Slackware 7.1 config takes up 650MB. 200MB base system, 100-something for X, and with GNOME and KDE installed, 650MB. My comparable Windows NT install with all the little utilities and IE takes up 294MB, plus 150MB for Visual Studio (since I've got KDevelop)=450MB. What were you saying about compact?
    Ease of installation: It's only easy if you don't tweek it. I had to recompile XFree86 4.01 (since there aren't Slack packages) I had to manually edit the network config files (to set up NAT and my second ethernet card) I had to edit modules.conf for ALSA, I had to edit XFree86config for the NVIDIA drivers, I had to use xf86config to configure XFree4.0, and I had to recompile the kernel. Aside from recompiling the kernel, my NT configuration is functionally similar, and took much less time and effort.
    X: This is an advantage HOW?
    IP apps: True, networking is great on Linux.
    Empowerment: Empowerment for me is being able to run at the highest frame-rates, render quickest, and have my desktop redraw without flicker. What about you?

  • Distributing pure funk (Score:3)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @09:16PM (#781280)
    I've been using SuSE for a couple years now, I'm happy to see that its market share is gaining on RH. Not because I want to see RH die but because I think SuSE is a great distro. The problem I have seen in my years using Linux is no distro really going out of their way to make a Linux system that was original and went out on a limb. The difference between distros is very small, the base Linux system is virtually identical as are the third party apps packaged with the distro, the real difference comes in the config tools as the arrangement of certain things (most of these differences exist in /sbin and /usr). I would like to see a completely original Linux system. How about bash+ with better realtime language support (i.e. move all the files in this directory to that one then delete this one) and some standardization of included packages. Sure it might limit the "choice" of users but if you're so hardcore on what you want on your system build your own fucking distro. What new users want is the consistancy that Windows and MacOS offer by default. You don't have 20 apps that all do pretty much the exact same thing only with different commands and names (for the most part). Distros: stop renaming the same cloned system, venture forth and do good!

  • People don't know what "enterprise" means (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    (Big, frustrated rant ahead)

    It really burns me when I see technical pundits talking about "enterprise-class" systems when they clearly have no idea what an "enterprise" is.

    Here's a big, fat, spelled-out clue for them: "Enterprise" means more than just "really big". "Enterprise" means more than "lots of bundled pretty lights".

    1. Enterprise systems have to be able to handle a tremendous load without sweating. This means lots of processes and lots of threads running smoothly at the same time. When overloaded, enterprise systems degrade gracefully.

    Let me spell that out in caps -- ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS DEGRADE GRACEFULLY. They may refuse additional client connections, they may log error messages, but they may not EVER collapse under pressure. Anything less is not an enterprise system. It is a toy. Period.

    2. Enterprise systems integrate with existing systems. A REAL enterprise often has legacy systems -- some of which have been running since before the new web developer was out of diapers. Companies offering enterprise solutions like to talk about how well their products work with your existing systems. Companies selling toys also want to help you with "updating", "migrating", or "replacing" your existing systems (which were working just fine before you strolled into my office, twerp). Consider that a red flag.

    3. Enterprise systems stay up. In a real enterprise, rebooting costs money. Usually it costs BIG money. A company who doesn't understand that doesn't understand what an enterprise is. Beware -- toy-makers will try to sell you aftermarket add-ons for clustering, failover, or maintaing your "quality of service". Don't be fooled. You will pay more to maintain "quality of service" than you would pay to get a solid system in the first place.

    I am so tired of magazines pandering to managers who think that they're running an "enterprise". Real enterprises already HAVE professionals to do these comparisons. They have no choice. In the long run, having a professional who is accountable is whole lot cheaper than trusting some twit at IDG, CNN, or ZDNet.

    Now, with that perspective, I ask: do any of these NOS qualify as "enterprise-class"? If not, which ones come closest?
  • Redhat's been around for a long time, though. That might have a lot to do with it. Caldera and Turbolinux are fairly new. And Mandrake is an offshoot from Redhat 5.2. I believe Slackware was the first. I don't remember there being any noticeable competitors for several years. Slackware didn't have the concept of a package management system, and there wasn't really any polish to it. For an experienced UNIX user, it was good enough. And Linux users back then pretty much had all prior experience with UNIX.

    The fact that Slackware even provided precompiled software was itself a pretty sweet thing. SunOS gave us squat. Redhat came in later with basically 2 contributions. Redhat introduced the first popular package management system, RPM. And they created all these GUI configuration tools. Perhaps it was RPM that made Redhat successful. Now you could install 3rd party software for Linux without having to compile it. That must have been very attractive to Linux newbies or to people like me who are generally too lazy to compile stuff.

    That and a lot of marketing probably made Redhat what it is today. And since then Redhat has built up hardware alliances with VA Linux and Dell. And companies tend to feel more comfortable with an operating system from a known established provider. Redhat's an American company and so they've put more work into marketing here. Suse has been around for a long time in Europe, and they directed their marketing efforts there. The same with TurboLinux in the Pacific Rim. So 3 of the top Linux distributers have distinct geographic strongholds.

    And as you said, Redhat isn't really a clear winner in any category. They're slow to provide security fixes and slow to update kernels and other software. But when they gained that marketshare, it was pretty much the opposite. But now after having grown so much, they've gotten sluggish.
  • "According to recent figures from IDC"

    Oh, yeah, there's an ultra-clued in group if I've ever heard one.

    For comparison, check out this spring's Tucows downloads [lwn.net] for some alternative statistics. Can anyone find any more recent stats?

    Anyway, this spring, Red Hat's share of new downloaded ISOs ranged from 14-31%. Great. But were it's biggest competitors SuSE, Caldera, and TurboLinux? Hardly. Ahead of Red Hat was Mandrake, which "TechnologyEvaluation.com" does not "believe will make significant inroads in the US". Funny, our local LUG has chosen Mandrake for two or three installfests running now. Oh, yeah, and thanks to Macmillan, Mandrake's leading in retail sales, too...

    And maybe Corel is teetering on the edge of death financially, but it's distribution was doing pretty good with 15-29% new market share. Maybe "Corel Linux" will go down with the company, but even then all the good changes would likely be folded into Debian eventually.
  • Mandrakeforum.com [mandrakeforum.com] already had a story explaining [mandrakeforum.com] it. As someone noted above, this data is pretty old, and Mandrake has some data from July [mandrakeforum.com] that gives Mandrake the lead with 31.5%.

  • Redhat 2 was better than slackware and yggdrasil (Score:4)

    by maynard ( 3337 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @03:42PM (#781296) Journal
    My primary desktop is a Redhat install I've kept upgrading since Redhat 2.0; that was after I dumped Yddrasil from mid '94 or so. Frankly, they had (at the time) a good package manager, they included a great list of common applications precompiled in package format, and RH-2 and 3.0.3 were excellent distributions. For one thing, I seem to remember that Redhat made the transition from a.out to ELF binary formats faster than anyone else, which made their distribution popular simply because recompiling libc and, ld.so, and binutils, and then recompiling your entire operating system, was a major PITA. Redhat made the transition as simple as plopping in a floppy and a CD. Also, I seem to remember that 3.0.3 attempted an X based install (which was dumped in 4.0) which wowed a bunch of people.

    Also, Redhat gave away rpm under the gpl... this gained them significant user and developer mindshare (even though Debian had dpkg out before -- go figure). Redhat promised a simple, easy install from the start -- and they mostly delivered. The complexity of the install process is what killed Debian to begin with (in my recolection), even though the Debian install process allows for much better tailoring of each individual package. Redhat offered a simple way to install Linux without all the hassles of decisions about how to configure hundreds of programs -- which is largely why they took off. And, they've always had a cutting edge distribution with the latest software and tools. This is what wows the newbies, even though after 3.0.3 all of their major new revisions have been a major mess. 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0 were simply unfit for sale... and I think this is why they're losing momentum. Other distributions have done better with quality control while maintaining modern packages... and Redhat is suffering from the competition. Oh well! This is what the free market is all about!

    I like Redhat and think they've done a tremendous service to the Linux community. And I own some of their stock... so take what I say knowing I'm (in a small way) an investor. Though, I admit I wish I'd been upgrading a Debian box all these years simply because a five year old RH install has become a real PITA to maintain.
  • Myself and many others "in the know" realized that Red Hat was heading in a downward spiral every since people starting proclaiming Mandrake's flavor or Linux as "a better Red Hat than Red Hat." Moreover, once we installed and played around with Mandrake, we realized that all the hype that surrounded it truly was deserved.
    ______________________________
    Eric Krout


  • To be even more fair, note the message that comes up when you enter the kpa diskset.

    It warns you that the applications are alpha and unstable, even though many of them are quite stable, they simply have <1 version numbers. I can't live without many of those apps, Kuickshow, Gehieimnis, Korganiser, Kdevelop, Kcmdate, Kmysqladmin, Ksysv, and, of course Kfortune.

  • Corel is actualy #3 and rising (Score:5)

    by frank249 ( 100528 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @04:39PM (#781299)
    If Corel Linux is dying why is it in the top ten in the Computer Shopper Hot Products listing [zdnet.com] and ranking 385 in sales at Amazon [amazon.com]?

    It is because Corel Linux is currently #3 in sales and by next month should be number 2. The stats given in the article was from Dec 99. Corel Linux was only released in Nov 99 so obviously it did not have much of a market share in Dec. Since then Corel has launched WPO2K-L, CD9-L, PP9-L and CLOS SE. Since Corel is after the desktop and RedHat is in the server market it is hard to compare. Here are the IDC stats from Jul 2000 [prnewswire.com]

    Retail sales in July 2000 - Source: PC Data With a 32,966-unit-sample selected by PC Data

    1 - Linux-Mandrake: 31,5%

    2 - Red Hat: 24,9%

    3 - Corel: 23,0%

    4 - TurboLinux: 8,4%

    5 - SuSE: 6,1%

    6 - Caldera: 4,3%

    The only reason Mandrake has these numbers is that it is bundled with MacMillan's books. I can tell you that I have their cds in one of the books I bought but they have never been used. If you could find out what people actualy have installed I am sure that Corel would fair better. Now if I can find these stats why can't the rest of the media? Here is IDC for Feb and Nov

    Linux®: US RETAIL MARKET SHARE PCDATA RETAIL

    Revenue - Share_____Feb-00 _____ Nov-99

    Red Hat________ 40.4% _____ 58.5%

    Macmillan _____ 19.6% _____ 21.5%

    Corel ________ 19.3% _____ 2.3%

    S.U.S.E. _____ 7.1% _____ 0.7%

    TurboLinux _____ 4.1% _____ 1.1%

    Caldera _______ 3.0% _____ 6.9%

    The CNet download stats are interesting also. While downloads don't directly translate into revenue they are a good indication of popularity, brand recognition and potential upgrade_apps sales. Total download stats from CNet [cnet.com] show:

    Corel Linux (since Nov 99) 307,840

    RedHat (since Mar 98) 334,857

    Caldera 39,495

    Mandrake 86,505

    SuSE 5,946

    WordPerfect 8 for L PE (since Dec 98) 1,134,190

    Star Office PE (?) 160,644

    If you look at the monthly trend this year you can see that CLOS is more popular than RedHat by 30% and WP almost 350% more than Star Office.

    Summary since 30 Apr 00

    ___________________WP84L_____CLOS_______RedHat____ ____Star Office

    27-Aug________________ 5,610______ 3,188_______ 2,728______1,634 weekly snip

    25 Jun - 16 Jul_________21,730_____13,304 _____12,501(monthly total)

    28 May - 18 Jun_______27,318_____19,573 _____15,106

    30 Apr - 21 May ______25,900 _____24,805 _____15,512

    Totals________________107,149______81,478_____61 ,103 BTW the above story is just a rip off of a CNet article of 31 Aug Red Hat holds huge Linux lead, rivals growing By Stephen Shankland [cnet.com] It also cited these 'recent figures from IDC.

  • Corel (Score:2)

    by jfunk ( 33224 )
    Actually, I received my happy shrinkwrapped CorelDraw box on Monday.

    I was really surprised how much the stability has increased since the last beta. It hasn't even crashed on me yet, and loads and operates really quick, especially considering it's a Wine app. It blows away StarOffice 5.2 in efficiency and stability.

    It also works great with my Graphire and supports xcf files. It's quite impressive.

    The 12" infaltable penguin is cool, too. It even comes with a repair kit...
  • I have been using Debian [debian.org] for the last few years and I rarely see them mentioned in this sort of article.

    This makes me wonder if the statistics that articles such as this quote are really worth bothering with! It seems to me that unless you take statistics from debian.org and all it's mirrors that you won't be getting a true picture of the marketplace.

    Debian is a significant force, and one which increasingly deserves recognition as we see other distributions based around it's excellent package management system.

    I've been using Storm recently and find it an excellent way to get Debian installed, with all the power of Debian's management system available to me afterwards.

    The Walnut Creek downloads of ISO images is particularly bogus in this regard - why download an ISO image of Debian? Grabbing a couple of floppies and doing a net install is much easier...

  • Pfft (Score:2)

    by Booker ( 6173 )
    Red Hat made plenty of money pre-ipo, and now they are taking calculated losses to advertise and grow. They expect to be profitable again in the near future.

    There is most certainly money to be made in Linux...

    ---

  • Linux definately won't have 15% of the desktop market by next year. Currently it probably has less than 5% and it's growth rate in the desktop market isn't exactly spectacular. Also, Linux currently doesn't offer a tangible advantage to the desktop user.

    A) Linux is still lacking some important software catagories. Office software is spotty. Not so much a lack of, but the fact that in general StarOffice and WordPerfect aren't the highest quality applications. The stability of the two are no better than Office, and being just as good as Windows is not good enough. It's also lacking games. As Nintendo will tell you, variety is very important in a game library. Sure Linux has several games, but aside from Quake and UT, the majority of them are older games. Even Descent III is pretty dated. Until Linux get's many "A" titles, it's not going to be a player in the home market. Lastly, there are a severe lack of "best in class" desktop apps in Linux. The whole Office suite is arguably better than WordPerfect (in the database, spreadsheet, and presentation arena, not the word processor) GIMP still doesn't compare to Photoshop, there is still no equivilant for Fireworks or Dreamweaver, 3D Studio MAX still isn't there, etc. Sure all these apps have Linux counterparts, and some of those may be quite good. However, don't think of them as Linux apps, but apps in general. There are a lot of feature and usage issues with Linux apps that Linux diehards usually ignore. Think hard about it. Would Linux apps, if reviewed in a conventional computer magazine, come out with 9's and 10's, or 5's and 6's? Lastly, there is a lack of "simple" software. For example, the iMovie-type software that is so popular. Or basic web-builders like CuteHTML or AOLPress. Stuff that let's ordinary people do basic projects without dealing with a lot of features.

    B) The system itself isn't robust enough. Sure it's more stable, but hardware support still sucks. There are only a few 3D graphics cards supported, and poorly at that. (Poorly being defined as not being faster than the Windows versions.) Sound-card support is severly lacking, with half the cool hardware on most modern soundcards being totally unused. That's only if you talk about ALSA. Stuff get's worse with OSS. (A plea, everyone stop programming for OSS. Somethimes a standard just needs to be replaced. Killing OSS and X is like getting rid of ISA. Everyone knows it should be done, but nobody wants to do it.) Then there is the lack of force-feedback support for joysticks. You specifically may not care, but tell that to the guy who spent $200 for his force-feedback wheel. Second, there is no real evidence of what exactly makes Linux better. It's not noticibely faster, it usually takes more harddrive space (a nominal install, you can't get by with Linux without installing GNOME, KDE, and all the useless stuff (for an average desktop user anyway) like Perl, Lisp, Guile, etc.

    Sure many of these things will change. However, it will take a lot longer than a year. For Linux to take 15% of the market, it has to be better. Being just as good as Windows is no use. It has to not have any major gaps over Windows and has to totally blow it away in several catagories. Only then will it succeed.
  • Right.
    And how is the fact that FreeBSD is neat related to a discussion of Linux marketshare?
  • If Corel Linux is dying why is it in the top ten in the Computer Shopper Hot Products listing and ranking 385 in sales at Amazon?

    Read the following paragraph from the TechEval article: [technologyevaluation.com]

    From 1998 to 1999, the Linux market overall grew by 89% (by units shipped), but Red Hat grew "only" 69%. This is in sharp contrast to the growth of SuSE (175%), Caldera (175%), and TurboLinux (450%).


    I think the 1% figure they cite for Corel was their market share for an IDC survey conducted in 1999, after they had just released it. So it would be impossible to conclude the direction Corel was going from just the first survey they appeared on.

    If I was Corel, I would be getting my lawyers on these guys right away. Hopefully with a press release indicating what their actually sales figures have been.

  • Ignoring the business and Wall Street-centric mindset, we're all playing for the same team here. RedHat market share dropping relative to other distros is a good thing IMO. More variety, more incentive for others to join in, rather than giving up saying "I can't compete with RH, why bother?"
  • Very likely they were the first ones to offer Linux in a box via normal retail channels at all. SLS and Slackware were there before Red Hat, but not available in any store at that time.

    Red Hat also is a very good distribution. They have a fairly good packaging system (and brought it to the market first) and they offer distributions not only for Intel, but also for SPARC and Alpha.

    Finally, Linus used to use Red hat early on (probably because of the Alpha support), which very likely gave them a boost in popularity.

    Over here in Germany, SuSE was the first distribution widely available in shops, and while I have no hard data, it certainly is the dominant player here.

  • Good. A little competitive pressure on RH might help motivate some improvements that others are including in their derivative distros.

    All the same, I wish my company's products were doing as "poorly" in our market as Red Hat's are in theirs.

    Although people still peddle the "Linux factions will kill the market" story, I want people to exploit the fact that there's more than one way to do things, and retain the understanding that as users, many of us have competing needs and desires.

    It's a shame...Corel blew it by distributing their first release pre-broken (wrong kernel headers, etc.), and by focusing on bluster rather than code, but it has come closest to being my Linux distro Holy Grail: one I can give my dad on CD and not have to come over and help him install/configure.

    BTW, did you notice the amusing "please don't flame us" disclaimer:
    "(This does not imply that SuSE or TurboLinux are inferior - merely that they were not rated in the mentioned report.)"

  • Does this count magazine distributions?

    No.

    Or at least I don't think so. Since the article continually spoke of 'numbers shipped,' its my educated guess that only retail sales are being counted. The article did specifically mention that preloads were not counted. In all liklihood, downloads, promotional disks (such as that in magazines), and discount sellers (ala cheap bytes and linux systems lab) were not included in the number.

    I've installed Linux around ten to twelve times, only once have I purchased a retail box (Caldera OpenLinux 2.1) and its not the flavor of Linux I run on any of my machines (Storm 2000 2nd edition on my desktop, Debian Slink on my laptop). I sure wish there was some way to do a breakdown of numbers that included actual installs instead of retail box sales.

    On the other hand, I think the article did raise a good point that only Linux companies with a decent number of retail sales will stay in business. Of course, balance that because the overall best distribution (in my lame opinion) is Debian which is compiled entirely by volunteers and as such is not dependant on marketshare for its survival.

    That's my take,

    -l

  • Distribution statistics (Score:3)

    by hta ( 7593 ) on Thursday September 14, 2000 @03:47AM (#781333) Homepage Journal
    This is from http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.html

    distribution
    ============
    79826 reported
    80104 values
    1588 1.99% DIY
    13089 16.40% Debian
    3440 4.31% Debian ==DEBIAN-VERSION==
    4898 6.14% Mandrake
    23666 29.65% Red Hat
    6006 7.52% S.u.S.E
    21657 27.13% Slackware
    5760 7.22% Others

    Unlike all the others, if you don't like the numbers, you can DO something about it. Go register!

  • Since Debian is the free distro, it can't be bought, can it? Actually, according to netcraft (I can't find it on their site, but I know I saw it there), Debian is the Number 2 Distro in terms of total number of boxes running it.

  • Re:Can the open source model support such growth? (Score:3)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @05:08PM (#781342)
    Expanding market share causes a cluebie problem all right, but it's not a problem with cluebie users. No number of new users is going to slow down development, and the nice thing about software is that it doesn't take much longer to write an application for a billion users than it does for a thousand.

    The cluebie problem I'm talking about is all the cluebie journalists who "need" to write an article about Linux but don't actually have anything to say... so they ask loudly and often whether the sky is falling. Such as the one over at linux.com right now.

    --
  • Linux definately won't have 15% of the desktop market by next year. Currently it probably has less than 5% and it's growth rate in the desktop market isn't exactly spectacular.

    Would you care to quote where you got that idea? And maybe give a few examples of OSes with a higher growth rate than Linux?
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.

  • not a good measurement? (Score:5)

    by gbroiles ( 22589 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @02:50PM (#781347) Homepage
    I think "market share" deserves more careful thought when applied to free software - the study would seem to describe "market share among people who purchased packaged distributions" which is pretty different from number of installations, which is what many people think "market share" means, or ought to mean.

    Is Apache's "market share" of the webserver market 0%, because the Apache Software Foundation doesn't sell any copies? I don't think so.

    The methodology used is great if you're trying to figure out who's making how much money from selling Linux distributions, but isn't so great if you're trying to figure out which distributions are good ones, or popular ones.

    In particular, distributions which are easy to install via the Net and/or easy to install without documentation are much less likely to require the use of floppies, CD's, or installation manuals - so it may be that distributions which sell a lot are actually inferior, technically, but that inferiority drives sales.

    I don't say that to pick on Red Hat - one of my boxes runs Red Hat, and I've been pretty happy with it, and don't know enough about the other contemporary distros to pick on them. I just think it's a shame to read more into these numbers than is reasonable.

  • Can the open source model support such growth? (Score:3)

    by MonkeyHanger ( 196265 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @02:53PM (#781349) Homepage
    Although its a good sign that Linux is increasing its market share, the point must be raised about whether the open-source model of system production can cater for a massively increasing market. As greater amounts of less technically able users begin to adopt the OS, then this could cause problems in that too few Linux users will actually be contributing to the maintenence and upgrading of the OS itself. Quite simply, Linux has for a long time been a small market OS that has relied on its users contributing there spare time and energy to the actual specifics of the OS. If Linux becomes a popular OS can it really attract sufficent people to ensure the OS and its applications remain cutting edge?
  • Was its market share too small to bother mentioning, or was it just not counted at all? Anyone have any idea (other than "IDC") where they got their numbers from?

    --meredith
  • I was at my local large bookstore, and they carry several distro's (RH, SuSe, PPC, SlackWare and more if you count the books with free CD), and some linux games too (Civ:CtP, MythII). Some apps too... that's Scholtens Wristers in Groningen, NL.
    They're renowned for having a very well-stocked computer-related section.

    //rdj
  • The methodology used is great if you're trying to figure out who's making how much money from selling Linux distributions, but isn't so great if you're trying to figure out which distributions are good ones, or popular ones. This article just goes to show that Red Hat is not Linux [redhatisnotlinux.org]. There are many distro out there, each with their own pro's and con's. I am a big Caldera fan(1). The main thing I see from this article is which distro do businesses want to use, verses which distro do the geeks/nerds(2) want use. Obviously Japanesse business want Turbo Linux, IBM wants Caldera, Dell wants RedHat. The geeks well I would recommend the Linux from Scratch [linuxdoc.org] Distro.

    (1)This is my personal opinion. Anybody can disagree if they wish(3).
    (2)Geeks/nerds is used as a term of enderment in this case.
    (3)They are coure will be wrong if they disagree ;)
  • The article also mentions that Corel is pretty much history."

    How about adding an update to the story like;

    The Technology evaluation article uses IDC data as of Dec 99. IDC data [prnewswire.com] for Jul 2000 indicates that Linux-Mandrake is #1 in retail sales in US 31,5% with Red Hat #2 - 24,9% 3 - Corel: 23,0% and 4 - TurboLinux: 8,4%.

    I don't know why you would post a story based on 9 month old data but an update would clarify the situation somewhat.

  • Ok, this is a short guide for those people who actually want to get a running system, not just look at the pretty source code :-). You'll certainly need minix for most of the steps.

    Hmmm. I guess that must have been out of date even then, because I certainly didn't need Minix when I installed Linux. IIRC, my first install was done with a boot/root disk from Linus (0.12?), but it wasn't really useful enough to do anything other than play around with. The first full Linux install I did was the MCC distribution, which I got on 4 high-density 5.25" floppies. I didn't have enough hard drive space for the "huge" SLS distribution at the time (it was 65MB, I think). No trace of Minix anywhere...

  • Heh (Score:3)

    by Th3 D0t ( 204045 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @06:19PM (#781361)
    Linux "Market" Share
    ---

  • Percent Increases are Meaningless Here... (Score:3)

    by cowboy junkie ( 35926 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2000 @02:54PM (#781364) Homepage
    Ummm, this seems kind of basic, but when Red Hat has a greater market share than the rest of the packages they chart combined, how can it possibly match their growth in a percentage? I can create my own distribution, install it on three machines and claim 300% growth, but that really doesn't mean anything...

    I'd much rather see some hard numbers that might actually tell me something about how real this growth is...
  • No Debian. No Slackware. No download figures/estimates taken into account.

    It seems to me that when you're dealing with a freely downloadable product, basing market share estimates on retail sales is a little... narrow. Then again, if you're concerned with how much money the players are going to make, it's not a bad place to start...
  • It seems to me that whenever a company goes public, starts making money, or makes things easier for the user, /. reacts against it. I personally like Redhat - and I don't care if they are the biggest - I just like the distribution! Now, I've heard good things about Mandrake, so I plan on setting up a box to try it out soon. The point is, use the distribution that works for you, and remember, there's nothing wrong with:

    - Making money
    - Making product more usable
    - A Company that goes "public"


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