SoylentNews

Linux on the Desktop: Interesting Webstats Lately

posted by janrinok on Saturday March 07 2015, @10:16PM   
from the marketshare dept.

"gewg_" writes:

Many people view webstats with a jaundiced eye--with good reason. (page)[1][2]

Linux advocate Robert Pogson finds these statistics interesting; while not taking the numbers as gospel, he finds the trends to be fascinating. In recent weeks, he noticed an upward trend in online Linux usage numbers that has continued.[3]

oiaohm,[4] in the 3rd comment,[2] suspects there is a correlation with the revelation of the preinstalled Superfish malware on Lenovo consumer PCs, with owners apparently abandoning their manufacturer-supplied "recovery" mechanisms, defecting from Redmond's easily-exploited OS, and going instead for Linux install media.

So, Soylentils, any other guesses on a cause? Any estimates on how long the current trend will last? Will it then decrease or increase?

• [1] The comment that was referenced was quickly removed by Ziff-Davis from their site, of course.
• [2] Comments on Pogson's blog are numbered top-to-bottom but appear chronologically bottom-to-top.
• [3] Did Internet Exploder ever get .SVG support?
• [4] oiaohm is a very knowledgeable guy but his dyslexia can make his writing difficult to decipher.

• There's stats, and there's stats.. There's stats, and there's stats.. (Score: 4, Interesting) by Appalbarry on Saturday March 07 2015, @10:25PM

  by Appalbarry (66) on Saturday March 07 2015, @10:25PM (#154256) Journal

  If you drill down [statcounter.com] through the various levels of reportage, you'll find that the "massive" increase since February 18th is from 1.52% to 1.76% of total pageviews. Hardly enough to really establish much, both in terms of numbers and timespan.

  Nonetheless, I wonder how this number might be skewed (eventually) by all of the TVs and other connected appliances running variants of Linux?

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+2
  Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=2
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		4

• Re:There's stats, and there's stats.. (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 07 2015, @10:59PM

  by c0lo (156) on Saturday March 07 2015, @10:59PM (#154260) Journal

  Re:There's stats, and there's stats..

  0.24% of internet users [statista.com] means 7 million of them.
  (do what you please with that number).

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0

  Parent

• Re:There's stats, and there's stats.. (Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Saturday March 07 2015, @11:09PM

  by choose another one (515) on Saturday March 07 2015, @11:09PM (#154262)

  Why would appliances be counted in the "desktop os" stats, surely they would come under console or maybe tablet ?

  But the real question is why is anyone interested in a small increase in desktop market share (just over an eighth the size of WinXP - an OS MS discontinued security patches for over a year ago...) when the desktop market is cratering - now smaller than mobile in several countries, see:
  http://gs.statcounter.com/press/mobile-internet-usage-soars-by-67-perc [statcounter.com]

  Mobile market looks very different, with about zero windows share, and of course excellent for Linux - well Android/Linux at least, GNU/Linux is as irrelevant as Windows on mobile:
  http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201402-201502-bar [statcounter.com]

  All the above is all assuming web usage market stats actually matter, and that you believe them...

  Parent

• Re:There's stats, and there's stats.. (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @05:16AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08 2015, @05:16AM (#154351)

  Well...there's lies. Then there are damn lies. But worse of all there's statistics.

  Parent