Wietse Venema put forth on 2/23/2010 10:39 AM: > Not all the world > is Linux. In fact there are 10 times as many Macs.
Wietse Venema put forth on 2/16/2010 10:01 AM: > This is a technical mailing list. When you claim that something is > bad, you need to support that claim with actual evidence. Otherwise, > you are just spreading rumors. Linux = operating system MAC = computer (usually runs MAC OSX but not always) Given worldwide Linux use on desktops, laptops, and servers, and given that the vast majority of Macintosh PCs and servers are sold into the US market only, I have trouble believing there are 10x more OSX installations worldwide than Linux. In fact, I would venture to guess it's the other way round, but with an even higher ratio. I have no hard figures to support this, but I'm guessing you don't either. Come to think of it, if one were to merely count the number of supercomputer cluster nodes running Linux the resulting sum would probably be more than all Macs sold throughout history. A single Cray XT4/5 Linux cluster at ORNL alone has 45,208 Linux compute nodes. This sum doesn't include the hundreds of login and filesystem nodes all running Linux. Add to this total every Linux cluster node at US government labs of various sorts, and the number of nodes running Linux is into the tens of millions. Now do the same for every nation's governement lab clusters. Now do the same for universities. We're probably now well over 20 million Linux nodes just for scientific compute clusters. Now lets add all the nodes run for Google search, a few hundred thousand worldwide, and Gmail, and Google apps. Now add in the millions of web servers of all kinds around the world running a LAMP stack or Lighttpd for image or video serving. How about all the VPS hosting offered by ISPs and colocation facilities? Most of those run Linux. Need we count Linux on the desktop in China and India? Russia? I'm pretty sure MAC OSX is fighting an uphill battle with Linux when it comes to the numbers game, and losing badly. If Apple were to release OSX as a standalone product, the trend might change a bit, though not enough for OSX to take the numbers lead. Linux offers to much choice and control, and it's free. These qualities are difficult for its competition to overcome especially amongst populations who are not yet victims of vendor lock in. ;) -- Stan
