** Reply to message from Tracy R Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Mon, 12 May 2008 16:02:35 -0700
> So there must be half a million XO's out there by now. There are or soon > will be half a million EEE PC's out there. Plus all of the other laptops > and desktops that have been installed over the years. That means there > must be at least a million or so desktop Linux users out there. umm, there are quite a few more than a million Linux desktop users out there. The Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth put the number at over 8 million in 2006 and that was just Ubuntu users. http://robitaille.wordpress.com/2006/12/30/ubuntu-now-has-over-8-millions-users/ As far as how valid those numbers are, consider that the ntp daemon on Ubuntu is defaulted to look to a ubuntu.com server. That should give a good idea of now many unique IPs/computers are out there. Add Redhat to that, Suse, etc and there's probably close to 20 million in total today. But as far as when the tipping point for hardware support goes, it probably depends more on Linux embedded device growth. Unless vendors like Canonical, Suse, Redhat prove their numbers to hardware vendors, they are only going to follow what the PC OEMs dictate. But I did recently read that OEMs are now "strongly recommending" Linux device driver support from their hardware suppliers. They are still restricted from promoting Linux but it seems that sales are growing enough to require the hardware get supported Linux drivers. It should also help that HP just came out with a UMPC laptop like the Eee PC and they have a Linux preload option. Doug -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
