Recently I overheard a conversation about How many Linux users there are
in India. The definition being used seemed to be : anyone using a linux
desktop.
The persons talking included some who have been using Linux even before
SCO wrote it, so i had (have) to tread carefully. Some of the points
raised were:
- What about servers ?
- if you have a departmental server catering to 1000 employees, do you
count zero.
- if your coders telnet/ssh from a Win machine, do they get counted or
not ?
- if I move my company over to Linux (forcefully), do you count these
sufferers as linuxen ?
- what if these folk dont even know they're using Linux ? Are they
*still* counted ?
- my grandpa/wife/kid uses my Linux machine to browse, and hasnt heard
of Linux
- you just started a cybercafe and installed linux because it you heard
its free and has a browser
- Windows decides to use Linux as the underlying OS - do 5 million
suckers become Linux users automatically
- Here's a provocative one from me personally : if you use Linux only to
use OO and Evolution are you a Linux user ? I mean you havent a clue
about the shell or command line...
Having grown up on the CLI, its hard to think of Evolution users
or OO users as Linux users. Maybe i cant explain it properly, maybe its
just a personal thing - if you cant grep/awk/sed/tr/vi,
if Linux is just a free Windows for you, what Linux user are you ?
I thought about it a bit while drinking err driving back, and here are
my quick thoughts:
- the definition depends on what you need the data for (so obvious)
For ME, a Linux user is probably someone who's favorite/preferred OS is
Linux.
I thus dont count:
- persons forced to use it
- persons who dont know they are using it
- persons who use it only becos its free and they would use Windows if
that were free
None of these folk would stand up for Linux, so I dont count them.
Look forward to some thoughts ...
--
no flames please,
rahul
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft.
That will just be a completely unintentional
side effect
-Linus Torvalds
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