One thing many of us would like to know, I am sure, is how many people out there use Linux? The usual numbers, those from Net Applications, would indicate that less than 1% of people use Linux. More recently, though, there have been some more optimistic numbers. Canonical is claiming that 11% of businesses use Ubuntu. (If that is the case, just imagine how many use Red Hat or Suse.) Gartner says that Linux’s market share is 4%, putting it about even with the Mac. And Context says that almost 3% of PCs sold in the UK have Linux pre-installed.

While none of those numbers are huge, they mean the difference between Linux and Mac OS X being about equal and Linux being a speck of dust in the sea. The fundamental problem is that it is really, really hard to know how what the marketshare of Linux, or any open-source software, is. After all, one download might never be used, or only be used for a short time, and another might be used to install Linux onto 100 computers.

In addition to the standard market share numbers I mentioned above, there are at least two others projects trying to determine how many Linux users there are.

The first is the Linux counter. Their idea is to get people to visit the website and register as a Linux user. Obviously, this has some flaws in that anyone can register many times and most people will not bother to register.

The second project is the Open Source Census. The idea is similar, except that you download an application. This presumably gives them better control over double submissions, but it cannot be perfect and it is still voluntary.

Short of every Linux distro calling home, which I hope will never happen, there may never be a way to know how many Linux users there are. Perhaps the downloads of some cross-platform application would give a rough idea, but that application would have to be something that a Linux user, a Mac user, and a Windows user would want equally. If anyone has a better idea, I would love to hear it.

A lot of people view Windows as Linux’s main competition, largely because Microsoft has, by far, the majority of the market and is considered “the standard” by most people. Mark Shuttleworth and I disagree.

The Var Guy, and plenty of other people, are reporting that Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, said during his keynote at OSCON, that Linux must not just match but exceed Apple’s Mac OS X, strongly implying that Apple - not Microsoft - is Linux’s main competitor. I agree. Here is why:

First, Microsoft has not shown that is headed anywhere except down. Net Applications shows Windows taking a steady fall since 2006, which appears to be as far back as their data goes. Unless Microsoft really gets itself together, there is no reason why this should change.

Second, I honestly cannot come up with many arguments for Windows, but I can come up with some for the Mac, even if I don’t agree with them. Seriously, why choose Windows over Linux?

1. It is the standard and everything is compatible with it.
2. You prefer Windows’s way of installing software…?

I am sure I am missing something, but I really cannot figure out what. On the other hand, why choose the Mac over Linux?

1. The closed system. Personally, I don’t think that is an advantage, but you could make the argument that things work better because Apple controls so much of the ecosystem. Let me put it this way, no one has proved that either the open approach or the closed approach is the “right” way.
2. You prefer the Mac’s way of installing software…?
3. You like the Mac interface better than any of the other options.
4. I would guess that more (edit: I should add “external” here.) devices work under Mac OS X than under Linux.

Once again, I am sure I am missing some arguments here, but my main point is that, as a technical user, I can see the argument for the Mac, but the argument for Windows seems… weak.

Overall, it looks to me, and some would very much disagree with this, like the future is not going to be Windows, so why fight it?

Regardless of what you think Microsoft is doing wrong, no one seems to think that Microsoft is doing a great job. They may still have the top position (by a lot) in desktop market share, but they are losing it fast. The point is, Microsoft seems to be shooting themselves in the foot. They may recover, especially with new management coming in, but they are certainly going to throw away a lot of market share, before they recover. The question is, how does Linux capture that thrown-away market share?

Right now, an average user who is frusterated with Windows is far more likely to turn to a Mac than Linux, since most people know some avid Mac users. As it stands, I suspect that Apple will pick up most of the desktop users that leave Microsoft, and Linux will pick up most of the business users. That’s pretty good, but Linux can do bettter.

As an average PC user looking to buy a Mac, you would most likely be surprised by the high prices. You can argue all day about Macs being more expensive for what you get or not, but they definitely start higher-end than your bottom-line PC. This is Linux’s easiest to understand advantage over the Mac.

To push this advantage, I believe a volunteer-based (so no big company paying tons of money for TV ads or anything) joint Dell and Ubuntu advertising campaign would be effective. The name Dell, which almost everyone knows, would make it clear that “Linux is not just for geeks” and the price would make people seriously think about trying Linux. Plus, Dell might be able to arrange some sort of “buy a PC with Linux, and if you don’t like it, we will replace it with a Windows PC for just $50″ (or whatever Windows costs to Dell.)

With an advertising effort like this, Linux might be able to make people who are moving away from Microsoft thing twice before moving to the Mac.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft are starting to create a web of products that are all designed to work really well with each other. Perhaps the clearest example of this is Apple’s iLife software package. It includes a number of applications like a photo organizer and a movie maker. Another example, though, is Windows, Windows Home Server, Windows Media Center, and the Zune. In fact, you could really put almost every product Apple makes into one “web.” As I said before, all the products in each web are designed to be perfectly integrated into each other. There may be some cross-compatibility, but the products  are “best” together.

What these “webs” mean is that you can buy into the “Apple experience” or the “Microsoft experience.” The question in my mind was, what is the “open-source experience.” The problem, if you call it a problem, is that there is no one company or group to create an Apple or Microsoft-like set of products. It just doesn’t work that way. That’s OK. These super integrated product sets are the wrong way of doing things, anyway.

As an example, lets take two of Apple’s products: Mail and iCal. In a perfect world, there are a number of things Mail and iCal, or any E-Mail program and any calender program, should be able to do together. For example, you might get an e-mail that had a date for some event and want to add that event to your calender. Apple’s solution (which they may have already done - I just don’t know) would be to make it so that if you use Mail you can send event details to iCal. If you did this on the Linux side, though, what e-mail client and what calender program would you choose? That is where the right way comes in.

Instead of making program X and program Y talk to each other, why not create an open protocol for any application of type X to talk to any other application of type Y. If these sorts of protocols were adopted, it would solve the problem of the best applications, presumably from different companies, not working as well together as all the applications from one company. All you would have to do is find the best application for your needs and you would know that it will work with all your other applications. This should be the “open-source experience.”

Apple and Microsoft are both in a situation where they are essentially forced, due to past mistakes or a lack of foresight, to spend a significant amount of time making behind-the-scenes changes. In this time, Linux could potentially get a real leg up on other OSs.

First, what happened with Microsoft and Apple? In Microsoft’s case, the main mistake was making Vista so resource intensive. When the Eee PC suddenly appeared as a major threat to Windows, Microsoft was not prepared. As a result, Microsoft has had to repeatedly extend the life of Windows XP, a product they would obviously rather retire. This mistake, making Vista so resource intensive, will presumably force them to make major changes in Windows 7 to bring down the resource requirements.

On Apple’s side, OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) has just been announced. Rather than introducing new features, though, Apple has decided to essentially do a maintenance release. I was very surprised by this decision, but apparently that is the plan.

So what will Linux be doing well Apple and Microsoft are essentially standing still? The short answer, I hope, is: running. There are two reasons why Linux will not have to take time off for a “maintenence release.” First, Linux has not made mistakes such as dramatically increasing resource requierments. Second, even if some people (even an entire distribution) decide to work on only behind-the-scenes stuff, new features will continue to flow in from projects that are moving ahead. No one project or person can stop Linux innovation. Because of this, I am hopeful that Linux will be able to push ahead of Microsoft and Apple as they stand there correcting past mistakes. Anyone thinking of the tortoise and the hare?