Very Computer

Hi,
  I need some data on the relative market shares of the various Linux
distributions available today (particularly the Redhat and Suse
distributions). Does anyone know where I can get this kind of
information?

thanks in advance,
Siddhesh

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

That's a tough one, maybe some business professor or marketing research
firm could take this one as a project. I'd say it is safe to say, however,
that Red Hat is in the lead in terms of sales volume.

Neil

--

Neil

That's going to be a tad difficult.  You might be able to get relative
marke shares of Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera and maybe Mandrake from their boxed
sales, but distros like Debian and Slackware are usually bought from
Cheapbytes etc. or downloaded.

I do remember a poll on Mozillazine a while ago about the distro
people used.  Red Hat had something like 30-40% IIRC, followed by
Debian at around 20%.  I'm not sure if this is even close to accurate
since the reader base of MZ is so small.

Now, I don't think it can be reliably done, but I'm sure Rex will
come up with another of his 300 line posts showing the various
distros' market shares to a percent :)

--
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Quote:

>That's a tough one, maybe some business professor or marketing research
>firm could take this one as a project. I'd say it is safe to say, however,
>that Red Hat is in the lead in terms of sales volume.

        For any company that has to make federal trade disclosure,
        this sort of information should be in the public domain.
        Redhat is such a beast and I believe so is Caldera. Suse
        seems to be such a company as well.

--

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Quote:> That's a tough one, maybe some business professor or marketing research
> firm could take this one as a project. I'd say it is safe to say, however,
> that Red Hat is in the lead in terms of sales volume.

IIRC, Mandrake is the best selling distro ATM.

--
Darren Winsper - http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/darren.winsper
Stellar Legacy project member - http://www.stellarlegacy.tsx.org

"The Tuxomatic 2200(TM) with patented Gates-Be-Gone(TM) gets rid of blue
 screens in a flash! It forks! It blits! Look at those fantastic pixels!
 It surfs the web! You could even host an ISP with it!"
                                                -- Matthew Sachs on Slashdot

No, that was a month or two ago.  With new releases from several
distributors (including Red Hat, SuSE, and Caldera), I bet it's
a bit of a horse race right now as to who is selling the most.

--
Mark Hamstra
Bentley Systems, Inc.

Re: Market share of distributions:

According to an article back in July, Mandrake was out selling
RH by almost twice... This is primarily due to Macmillan,  as
it is the version shipped in their books.  Since Macmillan
has already established a large distribution channel for their
traditional books, it's not surprising that they have an advantage
over RedHat and others just in terms of their distribution channel.

www.newsalert.com/bin/story?StoryId=Cn:HuqbKbytaWmJK

I haven't seen any figures since then..

Brian

Hi,
I seem to have generated a few responses to my earlier
posting requesting for more information on the market shares of
distributions within the Linux community.
As common belief, including my own, would have it, Redhat is ahead
by quite a large number. This seems perhaps to be reinforced by the
fact that it is the most high profile of the companies involved in
Linux distribution, as also RHL being carried by all CD issues of
computing magazines in India (where I'm from).
Four responses later, though, I'm more confused than I was before. I
think the problem of accurately estimating the market share is
compunded by several things:

1. The sheer channels of Linux distribution ( books, magazines, from
retailers, by mail, from ftp sites of companies as well as others, et
al) are enormously difficult to monitor

2. A single Linux CD, in the spirit of Open Source Software is often
used for several (legal) installations unlike other software

3. Tracking sales/downloads could be done, but only at a price. I do
not think Linux is sufficently 'famous' to ensure there is anybody
interested in investing the time and money to do this sort of a
thing.

So perhaps the coirrect question at this point of time is:
Is it possible to determine the market shares with any degree of
certainty at all?

Thanks,
Siddhesh

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

Quote:

> <snip>

>So perhaps the coirrect question at this point of time is:
>Is it possible to determine the market shares with any degree of
>certainty at all?

Hiya,

I think you're asking the near-the-correct question above... IMHO
there's no fair correlation between market shares and likings. For
example, Slackware was the first "real" distribution I had ever used,
and I still think it's the best ever, although I've been using RedHat
for about a year now, and the 6.1 I reinstalled a week ago is simply
due to Slackware being less available than RedHat (no downloadable
ISO images for SW :-(...).

I've been to www.linuxcare.com, and they have a nifty little rating
going on there - evaluate distributions according to your experience.
Slackware is *way* ahead with ~2270 ratings, RedHat being second with
only ~1050 and Debian being the third with ~680 ratings. Again,
although RedHat is the second rated, only comments I've seen in the RH
section were flames. "They make this useless", "They make that hard",
that sort of things.

The point is, even though a distro has a great market share, it does
not offer you any warranty whatsoever about its quality. Take a look
at Windows for a great example :-).

Hopefully, the Good Thing will prevail afterall, it would be pretty
sad and ironic to see a company such as RedHat take up the majority
of marketspace simply because they have shareholders and thus
financial backing, and Patrick Volkerding doesn't - we've seen that
many times before, it might get boring... Yep, nothing's there to
assure you that Slackware won't fall out of the game, but it's my
opinion (again :-)) that a company distributing Linux shouldn't make
a significant difference in the overall availability of Linux
software. They are distributing something they (mostly) simply
assembled and bundled together in a neat way so people don't have to
collect all around the 'net when they're starting fresh.

If you're looking for tech support, that might be another story, but
RedHat and-the-like only offer it for free during the first two months
or so anyway.

Cheers,

--
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