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GNU is Not Unix

Where's GNU/Linux Usage Headed? 376

Posted by timothy from the where-will-the-madness-end dept.
deego writes: "Here are the plots of GNU/Linux number of users, on a regular scale , and on a log scale . Though projections have no real bearing on what actually turns out to be the numbers, they are fun :). The final projections from the two plots would seem to be a bit different to the naked eye. So, is GNU/Linx usage asymptotically headed towards, say 'all users' (first plot), or 'half a billion users' (second plot)?"
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Where's GNU/Linux Usage Headed? More

Where's GNU/Linux Usage Headed?

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  • MyOS (Score:5, Funny)

    by scotch ( 102596 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @06:39PM (#4094318) Homepage
    I wrote an operating system yesterday. Today, my friend started using it as well. Based on this growth rate, every person on the planet will be using MyOS by the end of september.

    Wow!

  • Both? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @06:40PM (#4094322) Homepage Journal
    So what are the errror bars on these graphs? It seems likely that they include both asymptotes.

    • ...at least two more sample points, one in about 1995/6 and one in 2001 or 2002. And why not at least one every year?

    • Re:Both? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by plaa ( 29967 )
      So what are the errror bars on these graphs?

      Huge. So huge that this has absolutely no statistical meaning whatsoever. He gives some reasoning [umd.edu] to the numbers [umd.edu], but as far as I can tell, he just threw those user counts from his head. He says there are 40 million Linux users today. The Linux counter [li.org] fellow estimates it at 18 million.

      As he says on the estimates page [li.org]:

      Of course, the only thing really shown here is that if I am allowed to pick any number, and multiply by any factor I want to, I can get any number I want to get!

  • Google offers interesting desktop usage stats (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mTor ( 18585 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @06:41PM (#4094324)
    Google's new Zeitgeist is out and they updated stats for the July 2002. Google keeps anon stats of users who visit their website and Linux numbers are still at 1%. They've been at 1% for a while. Mac numbers are steady at 4% as well.

    Take a look at the chart here: http://www.google.ca/press/zeitgeist.html [google.ca]

    • slightly diffrent, but also usefull (Score:5, Informative)

      by ealar dlanvuli ( 523604 ) <froggie6@mchsi.com> on Sunday August 18, 2002 @06:44PM (#4094340) Homepage
      mail from "Barry Schnitt"
      Mon, 15 Jul 2002 15:49:14 -0700
      to "Sean Fritz"
      cc
      subject Re: Zeitgeist item suggestion
      memo Dear Sean,

      We continue to update, expand and improve the Google Zeitgeist. Thank you
      for you suggestion. For now, I have included the June percentages for
      browsers below. If you have any further questions, please let me know.

      Browsers
      --------------
      MS 6.0--37
      MS 5.5--25
      MS 5.0--25
      MS 4.0--2
      Net 4.x--4
      Other--7
      • The problem with these numbers is that many browsers
        are forced to announce themselves at windows, as
        internet exploder, in order to gain access to
        some content of interest.

        The statistics are *reported* platforms. There is
        a strong motivation for linux users to lie in
        their reports.
    • hmmm...everything seems right, but Dell as to search in Japan? hmmm...
    • ...that since June 2001 (the first month when OS stats were available), that Windows 98 usage has only dropped from 12% (from 55% to 43% of Google users)?

      Windows 2000 and XP have obvious benefits over Windows 98 -- stability being the biggest one, but also a true multi-user OS with protected memory, a real task manager, etc. They also run almost 100% of the existing Windows 98 programs.

      So, if people won't switch off something as flaky as Windows 98 on to 2000 or XP, what makes anyone think that these people will switch to something like Linux (which can't even promise that your old programs will run on it)?

      This isn't a troll... it's something we all need to think about.

      The fact that the majority of people using Google are still using Windows 98 says volumes: even if Windows 98 is flaky; even if Windows 98 crashes or gives weird errors; even if Microsoft makes something better that promises near-100% compatibility with their old programs -- people aren't switching. The question that must be asked is: why?
      • Because MS's "solutions" cost money, so if there isn't a real problem no way is anyone going to fork over cash. The majority of america won't upgrade until all of a sudden thier games break after W98 expires and DirectX stops getting developed for it. W98 is the best OS from almost every aspect if you aern't worried about a crash once a day, and your more interested in cost/performance than stability/stupid features that only "l33t" that watch TechTV could possibly find usefull.
      • 1- upgrading costs money, most people don't understand the benefits enough to want to spend money on it. (i.e. people so used to Win98 crashing every 2 hours, they just can't comprehend there's a way to stop that).

        2- A lot of people can't afford a PC powerful enough for WinXP or Win2k. I, for one, sure can't :)
      • that Amazon.com has the Windows XP Home Edition upgrade for $79.00. [amazon.com]

        I don't really agree that money is the true factor. I think, to partially answer my own question, that the "good enough" factor kicks in after a while. I suppose at this point people just expect computers to crash once a day (or more). It's a frustrating attitude, but it shows that "more stability" apparently isn't compelling enough to get Grandma to upgrade.

        So how do you get Grandma to upgrade? What features of Linux can you sell Grandma on? Or do you just let her keep runnning Windows 98 and expecting it to crash once a day?
        • I'd like to point out that for $79 I could either upgrade to a 1.5ghz processor, or "upgrade" to Windows XP home edition. First of all, Windows XP Professional is required if you don't want to loose some functionality over win98 SE, second of all the $79 from purchasing XP slows my system down, while the processor speeds it up. Third, I'd have digital rights management shoved down my throat. Finally, I'd get a bloated ugly slow interface, and I'd still have to reboot just as often. (I work in Linux, so I reboot once a day regardless when I switch from work to gaming. Grandma would be in the same situation because she (like most people) turns her computer off when she's not using it. She never sees Win98 crash.

          So, in summary: Money is the primary factor, and lack of tangable benifit is the other factor.
          • You might prefer windows 2000 pro, since it won't
            (with media player 6.4) choke you with DRM management, or demand a blood sample when you
            upgrade your harddrive, and it uses less resources.
            It's substantially faster than XP or 9x in most
            existing environments for most applications.

            I just copied a friend's disk, and it cost me
            about $0.40 for the CD-R.
        • So you are saying that $79 is not a lot of money? It is, especially if the OS (98?) you are running is perfectly fine as it is.

          $79 becomes even more money in countries where the absurd exchange rate of the US Dollar makes Windows outrageously expensive. In Europe (Netherlands), I saw XP (full version) for sale for E270. That's about 1/10th of a monthly salary. Don't tell me XP is cheap.

          Other than that, my laptop won't run XP. Dell doesn't support it, meaning no ACPI, PCMCIA, all those things you cannot live without on a laptop.

          I'll keep on hitting Slashdot with my 98 that came with the laptop. Works great! All I run is Mozilla and putty, anyway.

      • The parent post brings up a very very important question, perhaps the very crux of the state of Linux today.

        ...So, if people won't switch off something as flaky as Windows 98 on to 2000 or XP, what makes anyone think that these people will switch to something like Linux...?

        There is a very easy answer: There must be something more important to them than any of those factors. But what could it be? Maybe that doesn't sound very profound, but I think that there are many things that the Linux community is missing the boat on.

        BTW - Posted using Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)

      • Re:Does anyone else find it depressing... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by haggar ( 72771 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @07:44PM (#4094569) Homepage Journal
        I'll tell you why: because they either don't have the money (like me) or don't consider it worth.

        Dear friend, the cycle of upgrades has been way too quick, and even though I am sure Gates would love us all to upgrade everytime Microsoft burps up a new version of Windows, people just got annoyed with cashing out every year. When Win95 came out, everybody thought it would be the greatest OS we'll ever need. As people started using Win95 they realized how f*cked up it really is, but they started getting used to it. Then came Win98, and it didn't make any difference in stability, and really very little in functionality. And then came Win98 SE, and it changed so little that, no doubt, many got burned right there right then.

        There is, of course, the corporate market that is more faitful to MS, and mostly they are the buyers of Win2000. But as recession sat in, even corporations started to press on the breaks. Point in case: in my company only about a third of the desktops have been upgraded to Win2000, the restis still happily running WinNT or, on laptops, Win98SE.

        • The shipping release of Win 95 was probably the worst OS Microsoft ever put out (I never saw Windows 3.0). While they did fix a lot of bugs with OSR 2, that release was never made available unless you purchased a new computer and OSR 1 (Win 95A) fixed like 0 bugs. Meanwhile if you bought Win 95 when it first came out, it was liable to have Explorer corrupt itself so thoroughly you couldn't even start the computer, make the icons lose their image and not be fixable, and a horrible TCP/IP dialup stack that tended to corrupt itself. It was on an order of days before you could expect to see one of these problems, whereas Win 98 generally degrades much more gracefully over a period of months and stays fairly useable for quite a while.

          The only fix at the time was to wipe the OS and install a copy of OSR 2 from someone else's new computer. And even against OSR 2 Win 98 was a bit better, especially if you made the mistake of integrating IE on Win 95 causing it to explode in a giant ball of flame.

          Win 98 was not great, but it generally got the job done...for a while, back when your only other choices were NT 4 with crappy game support and Red Hat = 5.2.

      • Re:Does anyone else find it depressing... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ergo98 ( 9391 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @07:53PM (#4094603) Homepage Journal

        The fact that the majority of people using Google are still using Windows 98 says volumes: even if Windows 98 is flaky; even if Windows 98 crashes or gives weird errors; even if Microsoft makes something better that promises near-100% compatibility with their old programs -- people aren't switching. The question that must be asked is: why?


        Because switching is an investment of time and money, and if someone has a working computer, why bother? The humorous reality is that Microsoft is their own biggest competitor to people upgrading: Even running Windows 98 you can still run IE 6.0, for example. Of course Microsoft has started to see the satisfaction that people have with their current OS, so things like Media Player are now only coming out in new versions for XP, for instance.


        Personally I find it very hard to believe that as many people use Windows 2000 as Google reports: Windows 2000 is a `professional' OS, and it was never marketed or really sold to the home population (and it's expensive as well), yet 20% of Google users use it? I have to guess that that 20% is mostly corporate users, or developers.

      • Linux host + VMWare + Win98SE guest = crashproof Win98SE.
      • It'd be interesting if slashdot had a few stats concerning OS and browser usage available to view. Here's the analog stats for OS use amongst visitors to my web server here at home on my ADSL line - it's only advertised on slashdot, so it's a pretty good measure of the OS slashdotters use (at least the ones that visit my server):


        no. reqs pages OS

        1: 272024: 110492: Windows
        : 115335: 46976: Windows XP
        : 64394: 26984: Windows 2000
        : 55761: 25105: Unknown Windows
        : 27537: 8576: Windows 98
        : 3458: 1344: Windows ME
        : 2828: 1317: Windows NT
        : 2697: 187: Windows 95
        : 5: 3: Windows 3.1
        : 9: 0: Windows 32-bit
        2: 66184: 31302: Unix
        : 61669: 28955: Linux
        : 3542: 1828: BSD
        : 654: 356: SunOS
        : 231: 115: Other Unix
        : 28: 22: IRIX
        : 46: 17: OSF1
        : 14: 9: AIX
        3: 25198: 12846: Macintosh
        : 24955: 12666: Macintosh PowerPC
        : 155: 97: Macintosh 68k
        : 88: 83: Unknown Macintosh
        4: 20107: 4163: OS unknown
        5: 39: 26: Amiga
        6: 35: 25: RISC OS
        7: 20: 15: Known robots
        8: 29: 15: BeOS
        9: 10: 5: WebTV


        What's really scary is that Win3.1 is still in use - although I'm guessing it's a robot/joke. Nice to see there's almost as my Linux users as Win2K! The WinXP stats are exagerated as I use it on my desktop, and I've been testing new scripts on the server lately...
        • I know of companies that still use Windows 3.11. They have custom software written for Access, and microsoft broke compatability when they released Access 97, so they stay with Windows 3.11. It always amazes me how blazingly fast windows 3.11 is on newer hardware. Almost all non DirectX windows 98 and 2000 software works in Windows 3.11 still, so they're in no rush to upgrade.

          • Almost all non DirectX windows 98 and 2000 software works in Windows 3.11 still, so they're in no rush to upgrade.

            Absolutely false. You can't possibly believe that. No modern (Win32) software works on Windows 3.11 unless the developer spent a significant amount of work porting it. And by significant, I mean it'd be far more feasable to port between Win32 and Linux than bring something down to Win16. Yuck.

            • You have no fucking idea of what you are talking about. Windows3.11 can run 32bit win software using win32s extensions.

              Using Calmira (http://www.calmira.org) win-3.11 is prettier than win95 and more usable, too.

              I never saw any need to update from win-3.11 to win-4.0 aka win95. I updated to SuSE Linux-5.0 in the end :)
              • Well, I was employed for almost a year maintaining and porting Win16 to Win32.

                There were quite a few changes we had to make.

                Remember, a lot of custom code out there ships when it works, not when it is done right. Things that worked due to a nasty side effects in Win16 failed to work in Win32 or worse, crashed the system.

                Joe
          • It doesn't make sense to blame Access 97 for not upgrading from Win 3.11 - Access 95 was a 32bit app for Windows 95, and Access 2 would probably run fine even on XP, and it definately works on 95/98.

        • the "unknown windows" are probably linux boxes
          with their user-agent set so that they can get
          into microsoft-only web sites.
      • XP is too expensive and too restrictive.
        I won't own it unless they change there EULA.
        And releasing a 100 piece of software that most people consider to be an upgrade, during economic down turn,is gooing to kill sales.
        if the home version of XP was 20 bucks, I would probable be the only person running 98.

      • Re:Does anyone else find it depressing... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @10:13PM (#4095041)
        people aren't switching. The question that must be asked is: why?


        The answer is simple -- The masses view their computers the same way they view their televisions, stereos, and vcrs. They're appliances. They'll use whatever OS comes on the computer they bought up until the day they buy a new computer. Then they'll use the OS that comes on that one, etc...

        Average users aren't geeks. Average users don't care about the pros/cons of a given OS. They just want an OS that will run the shelves of software they see in Best Buy.

      • Windows 2000 and XP have obvious benefits over Windows 98 -- stability being the biggest one, but also a true multi-user OS with protected memory, a real task manager, etc.

        Probably the dumber people don't know how to upgrade their operating systems and the smarter people don't want to sell their souls. The bulk of the market would be the former, who use their computers probably an hour a day to browse and e-mail. It doesn't take a whole lot of OS horsepower to do that.
      • Excuse me, but why should I shell out any more cash when 98 works just fine. The additional stability can't justify the over $100 price tag for the upgrade. Perhaps you have lots of cast buring a hole in your pocket (or perhaps you warez your OS), but until I absolutely have to upgrade, then I'll spend my money on better things.
        • If you make much use of your computer, I imagine
          you suffer frequent BSOD after your OS install ages
          for a while. I expect to reinstall any win98se
          system after 12 months of use -- windows 95, 98fe,
          and MEd, significantly less. If you have the
          option when that happens, it's a good time to switch
          to Windows 2000 Pro, the only reasonably performant
          and functional operating system Microsoft ever
          produced (or will produce, I expect, given the DRM/
          Palladium thrust). If you get a copy of Windows
          2000 from a friend, it only costs you $0.40 for
          a CD-R.

          Of course, for a substantial boost in performance
          and stability, with equivalent ease-of-use, you
          could always download or buy Mandrake or RedHat
          and use KDE3.0.x.

          • "If you get a copy of Windows 2000 from a friend, it only costs you $0.40 for a CD-R."

            It is that sort of logic that led us to the sorry state we are in, where MicroSoft has a bogus lead in the desktop market share, not because they had software people were willing to pay MicroSoft's price for, but because they were willing to steal from MicroSoft.

            When people complain that it doesn't make sense for so many people to still be running '98, and "don't they know better", they should realize the timing of MicroSoft's attempts to crack down on "software piracy".

            In the meantime, enjoy your stolen operating system, but please stop whining about the defects, afterall, you didn't even pay for the damn thing.

      • Actually, Windows 98 isnt very flaky at all. If you use it correctly.

        The problem is that a lot of people believe that Windows 98 is a multi-application operating system. Its isnt. It's a single application operating environment. That means, you make a clean install of Windows 98, and then install the application or game you wish to use. If you wish to use a second application you must first reinstall Windows 98, then install the other application you wish to use. Or, get another computer to run your second application.

        The same applies to hardware, of course. You never ever change hardware in a Windows 98 system. You install the new hardware and then reinstall the operating environment from scratch.

        This trick works fairly well because now you're matching a configuration that everyone's testing against. And using it that way you can get weeks and months of crashfree computing with Windows 98.

        And of course, this makes Windows 98 useful for certain categories of users. Linux users who keep it around for a few games, and the ones who use their computer as a dust-collecting surf-once-per-week terminal. For those categories the new offerings from MS have nothing to offer.

        Of course, the 'power users' who want to install more than one application can get rather frustrated by something like that and should probably upgrade (altho I doubt XP will prove resistant to the usual bitrot that tends to happen to MS OS's once you install a few too many drivers and apps). And, of course, they would probably be better off 'power using' Linux anyway :).
        • You happen to be right on this one. I do tech support and I am already starting to see Windows XP Home Systems that are having "bitrot" already. Things like spyware and adware are taken a straight on XP already.
        • If you wish to use a second application you must first reinstall Windows 98, then install the other application you wish to use. Or, get another computer to run your second application.

          The same applies to hardware, of course. You never ever change hardware in a Windows 98 system. You install the new hardware and then reinstall the operating environment from scratch.

          Oh bullshit. I'm running 98SE at home. Hardware-wise I've changed modems twice, added more memory, and added a DVD combo drive. I have at least a half dozen games installed plus most of the standard MS crud, the DVD software, the image software that came with my digital camera, etc, etc. And I've never had to reinstall.
      • Most people don't change the OS on their PC, they just use what was preloaded. It's not a matter of cost, merit, or any of that stuff. Most people just don't change or load the OS. When the machine starts getting too flakey, they do one of three things:

        1: Buy a new PC, because the old one is *obviously* obsolete and broken.

        2: Reload from the recovery CD, which isn't really the same as installing from generic media.

        3: Use the computer less, until/if they get around to buying a new one.

        We curse the preloads, because they're behind Microsoft's market lock. But the same inertia denies Microsoft the upgrade revenue they'd like, as well. I suspect that PC makers actually like the flakiness of Windows, because it helps drive new PC sales.
      • Forget about people who are more interested in the OS than the apps it runs -- that accounts, I suspect, for most Linux users. Then, the reason so many people continue to run Win98 is apparent: Nothing is acting as an incentive for change. If your current OS is handling everything satisfactorily, why change? Visually, the differences between Win98 and win2K are almost invisible. Even WinXP's default appearance is really new paint on the same building. So, after buying and risking the OS upgrade, they get something that looks pretty much the same. Why bother?

        Linux? Well, even if you accept the doubtful proposition that they've heard of it, it is doomed to be a nonstarter as long as no Linux apps are compelling enough to draw people away from Windows. (Forget Wine and all that. Why go thru the hassle, risk and cost of switching to Linux just to run the same apps you're running now quite happily in Windows? Again, why bother?)

      • The question that must be asked is: why?

        In my case it's because 98 (SE) isn't that flaky. All I use my home PC for is playing games, mudding, email, newsgroups, the occasional small Word document, watching DVDs, and dowloading pr0... I mean, surfing the Web. And I almost never have a problem, although the JRE 1.4 for Mozilla makes it go slightly wacky sometimes. But then, it makes my NT box at work go wacky too.

        I realize I am probably in the minority with regards to stability and 98, but my answer to why I don't switch is that I have no reason (and I HAVE a copy of XP).

    • Does that take into account that many browsers can change their their user agent string to anything else? For example, I use OmniWeb, but some websites insist that the user run Internet Explorer, so I set it to that and everything works fine and dandy.


    • Found myself here since this is about the only story not slashdotted today.

      As reading I reach the above and an idea starts to form, since there is little prospect of actually /effecting google perhaps we can /effect a search onto Google Zeitgeist ?

      So here goes:

      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=U TF -8&q=Linux&btnG=Google+Search

      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=U TF -8&q=Open+Source+Software&btnG=Google+Sear ch

      Don't forget to check back here next week :

      http://www.google.ca/press/zeitgeist.html

  • Insufficient data to draw any conclusions. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sommerfeld ( 106049 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @06:47PM (#4094354)
    This would be more interesting if the plotter had, say, more than three data points.

    Also, you should fit to a "logistic" curve, which is a better model when the population you're expanding into is finite...

  • Regarding the meaning of logscale (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fourier ( 60719 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @06:50PM (#4094367) Journal

    So, is GNU/Linx usage asymptotically headed towards, say 'all users' (first plot), or 'half a billion users' (second plot)?

    So, are you trying to tell me that these two plots contain different information?

    If you're going to extrapolate anything, the first plot seems to tend toward a linear increase, which means the second plot is tending toward a logarithmic increase. Neither has an asymptote. Go Linux!

  • Can someone please convert these into charts that I CAN ACTUALLY SEE? .jpg? .png? even maybe a .gif?

    Please?

    Thanks,

    _Am

  • A dark day for Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quakeroatz ( 242632 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @07:05PM (#4094421) Journal
    This is easily the worst weekend ever for flakey Slashdot stories. What are you thinking Timothy?

    Posting a chart with 4 data points?

    Slashdot seriously needs to lift the bar on its stories. It's like drinking de-alcholized beer. Wait, at least that's beer.

  • No (Score:2)

    by Hobbex ( 41473 )
    The final projections from the two plots would seem to be a bit different to the naked eye. So, is GNU/Linx usage asymptotically headed towards, say 'all users' (first plot), or 'half a billion users' (second plot)?"

    Umm, no.

    If you plot linear growth against an exponential scale, then the resulting graph will look like a logarithmic curve (just like the second plot). This does not mean that you have magically produced a finite limit point - the logarithm may look like the growth tapers off, but it's limit is actually infinity just like the line. (Think about - any point along the y axis is going to be log of some x - namely x=exp(y).)

    This is Mickey Mouse math people...
  • more likely than the "all users" outcome is the "epidemic" growth pattern that most DifEq students know and hate, where the growth is slow at first, then looks exponential as the number of "infectees" takes off, then slows down again as the susceptible population reaches 100% infection. If you'd like, you can use a rumour instead of a disease, and knowing the rumour instead of being infected, etc. etc. Or an operating system, and running that OS (though here the population itself is rapidly changing...hmm)

    Projections based on things like that have led to things like the prediction that the earth's maximum carrying capacity is something like 10,000,000,000. That shouldn't take much longer, now...

    Sorry, no time to find nice links for the foregoing, they're left as an exercise for the reader :-)

  • ObSimpsons Quote (Score:3, Funny)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot AT stango DOT org> on Sunday August 18, 2002 @07:13PM (#4094445) Homepage Journal
    Disco Stu: If these trends continue... A-y-y-y!

    ~Philly
  • So, is GNU/Linx usage asymptotically headed towards, say 'all users' (first plot),

    Yes, eventually all people will be using linx. With it's frame support, it is highly superior to the the older, yet more established lynx.
  • GNU/Linx usage asymptotically headed towards zero, eventually. Same goes for MSWindows, or any other OS you care to name.

    Eventually it will be replaced by something that hasn't been created yet. Or, taking the really long view, you can choose from: "The Big Crunch", proton decay, or the heat death of the universe.

    -

  • Meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KidSock ( 150684 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @09:29PM (#4094911)
    I may have been pretty horrible at math but I would feel very confident about walking over and plunking these guys over the head with a big rubber bat for publishing these nonsense plots. Three data points?! Are you kidding me? They obviously freehanded those dotted lines which could have been in the perpendicular direction and maintain the same statistical significance. All these graphs prove is that there are a lot more "gnulinux-users" in 1998 than there were in 1992 and 1993.

  • Mmm..extrapolation.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ekidder ( 121911 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @09:49PM (#4094978) Homepage
    I love extrapolations. I do. They let you determine things which may have no effect on reality. I refer you to this. I wish I knew the author. I first saw it on Usenet long ago.

    Scientists have shown that the moon is moving away at a tiny, although measurable distance from the earth every year. If you do the math, you can calculate that 85 million years ago, the moon was orbiting the earth at a distance of about 35 feet from the earth's surface. This would explain the death of the dinosaurs...the tallest ones, anyway.

  • Why isn't this posted under "humor"? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Sunday August 18, 2002 @10:12PM (#4095039) Homepage
    Do the editors actually believe these graphs have any significance or even basis in reality?

  • Resurgence of BSD (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now that Apple is shipping more BSD boxes than all the other incompatible fragmented *linux distributions combined, *linux is finally dying from greed and overcommercialization. It time we banded together and start working on the truly free BSD source code again. It has proved commercially viable and lives on in both commercial Unix(tm) offerings like Solaris and AIX, as well as truly free source offerings like FreeBSD and NetBSD. *linux is an evolutionary dead end which has cost the computing world a lot of wasted effort re-implementing what's already been implemented.

  • Samurai accountant? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @02:24AM (#4095940)
    Slightly off topic, but when I read this, my weird mind remembered the samurai accountant skit from old SNL. He's explaining performace, which has a peaked graph, up then down. Someone questions that, why does it go down? Belushi takes out his sword and cuts the graph out at the peak. it all goes up. Everybody is satisfied.

    67.7234597% of statistics are made up.

  • No indication of what numbers he is using..... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hta ( 7593 ) on Monday August 19, 2002 @02:24AM (#4095944) Homepage Journal
    having counted Linux users [li.org] since 1995, I believe I know something about the error factors when estimating the Linux user population.
    This guy is not saying ONE word about where he got his numbers from; that's a new low in statistical harebrainedness.
    If I could invent my own data points, I could do considerably better than three datapoints, at least. So he's probably using someone's numbers. But whose?
  • This site has much more reliable data [li.org]

    Best regards from Linux user #127040...
  • Another chart that would be interesting would be one showing GNU/Linux vs. Linux.

    Some of us just don't give a rats ass about the GNU part of things.
  • That's what we were told in MBA school and I believe in it strenuously.

    Linux usage will exhibit fluctuations both up and down.

    Oh? you mean complete world dominance? Nah that's just the Ecstacy talking.

  • Linux is good. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by da5id_logik ( 602155 )
    I use Linux. The reason why I use Linux is because it simply doesn't crash and it actually uses the hardware I have underneath it. I had an incedent a couple of months ago where my Cheetah 10k died - drive motor burned out - but I was still able to use anything open... Now trying to open somthing caused errors, but the OS was still running. How is that for stability? Anyway, I am glad that people are still out there running windows. It gives me job security -- really it means that I am at least 6 months to a year ahead of the learning curve. You have to understand: Microsoft stole most of what they have and they continue to piss people off by trying to push out their competitors. The SEC has also told them to stop misstating their earnings... It is only a matter of time before that giant falls over and slays itself with it's own sword. So Windows users, cheers! Keep it up! You are making sure that I am employed when all your little icons get changed out for conf files. Anyway, IMHO Windows is like TV. It keeps you dumb. While Linux always presents new challenges. Even if you are a guru, you can still do things like create a distribution (started this weekend, got it to boot!) or basically do what ever you want. There are no secrets with Linux so the possibilities are endless. Somthing to think about.

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