On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 16:26, Rahul Kumar wrote: > Recently I overheard a conversation about How many Linux users there are > in India.
okay, the context of this thread: dq reported that in the previous month, the installed base of pcs in india touched 10 million. (1 crore) pcs. that makes it 1 pc for every 100 indian on the sub-continent. that's very poor diffusion of pc in india. [no, i hate using the word 'pc penetration' in india, as i find it a bit offensive] okay, so a group of us started wondering at the ilug-d meet, what's the big deal about IT in india, with that extraordinarily low pc stats in india. i mean, we've got more than 30 million cell users in india. IMHO, the cellphone is a computing device too. we also started wondering how many PC-users are there in india. through various "highly educated" guesses ;-) over delicious glasses of chai, we arrived at the precisely random figure of 100 million pc users (10 crores). it so conveniently fits into "one in every ten indian is a pc user." your mileage will vary tremendously. anyways, the real question we pondered on: for all the hype, how many linux-users could there be in india. if you add the number of user groups and each's membership, you come to a figure so low i'd rather not mention it. and rahul takes on the gauntlet: he wants to know how do you define a linux user? he wants to know whether you count a windows user who browses the net/lan thru a linux server, as a linux user? and so on. by which time, i was ready to escape into the mind-numbing movie-hall.... please, everyone, do respond to rahul's stupendous email with your thoughts. rahul, would be nice if you could post your email to the linux-india mailing list too. let's try to get to our definition of a linux user, and to guestimates of linux users in india. my takes: anyone who uses run-level 5 *only* and with OO and evolution only, on a dual-boot pc, *is* a linux user for me. anybody who has a linux installed on the desktop or laptop for their individual use (whether at home or office) is a linux user. but someone who uses a linux server from a windoze desktop, is *not* a linux user. in this case, the user is not directly interacting with linux. it is set up to handle this without intervention from this windoze user. okay, what's your take. i *think* the total number of linux users in india could not be more than 20 lakh. why? because linux has usually 2% market share, and this is 2% of the 10 million pcs in india. (10 million=1 crore. 20 lakh = 2 million). i'm also sure this figure is off by +- 90% [grin] what do you say? :-) LL _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
