There have been many rebuttals published to this article all over the
Internet: aboutlinux.com, linuxtoday.com, lwn.net, and even ZDNet
itself. Gartner Dataquest's figures (sponsored by Microsoft) are in
direct contrast to those made by other research companies. IDC, for
example, gives GNU/Linux a share of about 24%. IDC and others
recognise that most GNU/Linux installations are not bought
shrink-wrapped like proprietary OSs are, and that a single copy can be
used on an unlimited number of computers.
Also, many vendors don't give the option of buying a computer without
Windows. People are forced to pay for Windows licenses, but when they
get their computers they wipe the hard drive and install GNU/Linux. As
the computer is not purchased with GNU/Linux initially installed, it
is counted as a Windows machine.
On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 17:01, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> A story from www.theregister.co.uk:
>
> (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19662.html)
>
> No one's using Linux, claims Microsoft
> By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
> Posted: 13/06/2001 at 11:21 GMT
>
> Gartner Dataquest has pegged the proportion of
> Linux servers shipped in the United States at 8.6 per cent.
>
> Gartner analyst Jeffery Hewitt claims that this
> figure - which includes 'white box' shipments, but excludes server
> appliances such as Sun's Cobalt range - is dramatically lower than
> the 20 per cent plus cited by arch rivals IDC. Of that 8.6 per cent,
> eight per cent is attributed to Red Hat and 0.6 per cent to other
> distros.
>
> The survey is dated May 30, but was made public
> yesterday.
>
> We don't usually hear about analyst surveys from
> vendors in advance of publication. But yesterday a note dropped in
> from Microsoft's PR company, Waggener Edstrom.
>
> "8.6 per cent is... certainly in line with what
> we are hearing from our customers and partners," wrote a friendly
> Wagg-Ed flak.
>
> Now there's some dispute over what a 'shipment'
> actually involves, as NewsForge's Rob 'roblimo' Miller points out in
> this analysis. And he has a very good point: for example, Gartner
> pegs Linux shipments in the supercomputer space as 'zero' this year.
> In fact Linux is well established on commodity parallel clusters at
> many scientific sites. Many of these were assembled in-house, so a
> shipment clearly doesn't correlate to a working installation.
>
> However, Microsoft's pre-emptive strike may be
> tactical. Hewitt actually predicts that volume shipments of Linux -
> even using Gartner's contested definition of 'shipment' and 'server'
> - will mushroom in the next four years.
>
> Total worldwide Linux deployment will quadruple
> from 2.4 million to 9.1 million, predicts Gartner, with explosive
> growth in the supercomputer area: up from that dubious 'zero' this
> year to over 5000 by 2005. In the $25,000 to $100,000 range - the
> low-end company workhorse - Linux shipments will increase ninefold.
> In the sub-$5000 space, Linux will grow over six fold.
>
> So this may be a case of the Beast getting its
> retaliation in first.
>
> Might be interesting to know :-)
> Paul
--
Sridhar Dhanapalan.
"There are two major products that come from Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
-- Jeremy S. Anderson
