On Sunday 17 September 2006 04:34, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: > On Sun, Sep 17, 2006 at 01:50:51AM +0000, Gustavo Franco wrote: > > FYI, we had more than 1.2 million web servers (yeah, just web servers) > > running Debian[0] in 2005. > > > > If you add Debian web servers not publishing this information, others > > servers (2 * 1.2, at least?), desktops, embedded and others (3 * 1.2 > > ?) we've much more than 7.2 million installations running now. Just a > > guess of course, but i think the exact number is around 10 million. > > > > [0] = > > http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/12/05/strong_growth_for_debian.htm > >l > > I'd say that is *highly* optimistic. The article says "more than 1.2 > million active sites." There is a huge difference between active sites > and web servers. There are ISPs who manage to server hundreds of web > sites from one web server. There are also ISPs like SpeakEasy who host > thousands upon thousands of websites from a web cluster (running Debian) > which appears like three or four logical hosts to the outside world. > > Anyhow, if you are conservative and say 10 sites per web server, then > you are looking at more like 120,000 actual boxes running Debian to > server up public web pages. > > Regards, > > -Roberto
Although popcon has already been discussed, and valid reasons given for the fact it wouldn't give an accurate total, I think it's worth pointing out that it would give us a fairly good lower bound on the number of people running Debian. The only situation I can think of that would skew the figures is if Debian was installed in virtual machines although in that situation I would say each install counts as a separate machine. We then need to estimate the number of machines that don't run popcon. Hopefully that's a task that lends itself to a better estimation (although it's still hard). Graham -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
