Linux, Mac OS gain from Windows losses

Doesn't mean much. From running web servers I notice that Windows XP machines from corporate IP addresses surf much less often than home desktops. Actual estimates installed of installed bases always put Windows at a higher %, Apple a fair bit lower % and interestingly Linux a little higher. This means the market share of Apple is greatly exaggerated - I've seen double the number of Mac users visiting a server in the weekend, indicating Macs don't have much of a presence in the working week. This also completely ignores the extraordanry number of linux machines which are not attached to a web surfing human!

I understand that since Apple has decided to use Intel guts in their rigs that the MAC OS X stands a lot better chance of being installed on a "PC" than every before. I also see that it takes some slickery on the part of the user to get OS X to install on a home built PC.

So given that Windows is one of the few operating systems that I can hand to over 80% of the computer owning populace and help them over the phone to get it completly installed, I don't see how Windows is going to loose that much ground.
While most enthusisats have more than one machine in their house, and may either dedicate second rigs to a non Windowds based OS or even dual boot - i don't classify those or that as Winodws loosing ground.

It really comes down to how much a person wants to USE their PC rather than constantly tweak it.

Fact remains: For the majority of non-enthusiast level PC users, Windows offers the highest degree of simplicity in use and upgrading. From turning it on to replacing older drivers......

0.8% - Finally the year of the Linux desktop is here.

Blackberry, Simbian, Nokia et al must have higher penetration than Linux....

I guess those on Windows using Chrome are now, Apple Mac user's since the latest patch identifies them as Safari users? or is that just for MSN Hotmail?
So are Windows Safari users also classified, as Apple Hardware users?
I would guess they would be, correct me if I am wrong! Wouldn't it also be true for OS X IE users as well, but the other way around? :)

Also I know many PC illiterate funky young yuppie gay people whom have brought an iPod, to only install iTunes and then Safari along side of it on there Windows system. All because they thought it was necessary for iTunes, since iTunes pushes it like Windows pushes IE in there face.

Time for an Apple anti-trust case in the EU me thinks, they are worse than MS these days.
Before you say it, no Apple shouldn't be excluded because they are small etc etc and are not a monopoly (questionable really, they have a monopoly on hardware that isn't unique in anyway except for the BIOS).
It's like saying the local crack dealer down the street should be let off, just because he is a small time operator.

Good for the linux desctop people... ROFL!!!!

0.8%... oh my god... hahah...

Seriously, some people should sit down and and take a long, long thought about why that's so and what to do about it, before yelling that Linux is a next best thing since sliced bread... Think there was at least one INQ jurnalist among them...

You say:
"correct me if I am wrong!"

Okay. You're wrong. Safari on a Windows XP machine identifies itself something like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-us) AppleWebKit/XX (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/ZZ Safari/YY

While Internet Explorer on a Mac identifies itself like this.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.23; Mac_PowerPC)

(Although, since IE for OS X hasn't been available for six years, now, I doubt many are using it.)

Typically Linux browsers, and Opera for Windows, would deliberately mis-identify themselves as 'IE for Windows', by default, but that is less and less the case, now that poorly-built websites attempt to deliberately lock-out specific browsers. Some users will still be manually changing the user-agent string on their browsers to make them look like Internet Explorer on Windows, but this is mostly to get past company poxies and firewalls, that try to stipulate Internet-Explorer-only policies.

An exception is Google's Chrome, which still lies about itself out of the box, but only for hotmail (the browser will identify itself properly as "Chrome" for most normal sites but as "Safari" for URLs ending with mail.live.com). The reason being, that although Chrome works perfectly well with hotmail, provided hotmail thinks it's Safari, it stops working, the moment hotmail no longer knows what browser it is dealing with. Another case of browsers, tehse days, being much better built, than many of websites they are used to surf.

As for Mr ROFL, yes, I can remember all those fat greasy old guys saying that 'all these Japanese cars and motorcycles will never take off because people were comfortable buying the same tired, worn out, poorly assembled and outdated designs the British manufacturers had to offer'. After all, those guys knew the innards of a Lucas alternator like the backs of their hands, and had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo: and how right they were! Things never change, and users should never crave for anything better than what they've got, because a whole host of Lucas alternator specialists might suddenly find themselves out of work.

Now, I'm off to get in my Leyland and drive home, because the electrics are so poor, I daren't drive it at night, and the brakes were designed in 1942.

You can laugh at us, but this will not change one fact -- we are winning. How many operating system you know who have gain as much support as Linux has in last four years?

VMWARE runs anything you want under any operating system soi you can try before you buy!!!

@tina: 100% growth on fuck all is still fuck all. Linux isn't nearly ready, as a mass market operating system, to compete with OS X or Windows. I've had an AA1 for a couple of months now, and while it works pretty well, the learning curve to get it to do anything has been much steeper than with either of the commercial alternatives. Linux is brilliant for sysadmins, and for consumer devices where the user doesn't come into direct contact with it. As a desktop OS for the mass market, it just isn't there - and I doubt it ever will be.

@michael - OS X copes with these things pretty well, too. And tends not to release new versions that break all the drivers, which is pretty handy.

I am hoping more adopt Linux this coming year. Linux has been attempting to make its way into the desktop market and has failed to do so. I tried it back on 2004 and I gave up due to lack of adequate software. However, last year in 2008 I tried migrating from Windows to Linux on my desktops and succeeded. The software has come a LONG way in just a few years, and is now to the point where it's solid and can replace many Windows applications. Plus, Wine (the Windows emulator) has also come a long way. Now, it can run many Windows applications, even games in full 3D mode. This is huge.

I believe there are many many downsides to using Microsoft closed source software:

a href="http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux" http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux /a