Yuan Meng: Why is the share of Linux Desktop Users falling by month?

Today, Windows 7 is about to be officially released, which has a significant impact on the global operating system landscape. This is an objective fact. We must stay awake.

According to Global statistics released by W3counter, Linux Desktop user shares in the seven, eight, and nine months of this year are 2.02%, 1.97%, and 1.84% respectively, showing a monthly decline. In the same period, the user shares of Vista, Mac OS, and Windows 7 increased significantly in addition to XP. What is the cause? First, we need to understand the statistical principle (or mechanism) of W3counter ). The website constantly monitors 27.891 fixed websites around the world. On the last day of each month, it extracts the latest 15,000 page views from each monitored website for automatic analysis, draw relevant statistical conclusions. Most of the monitored user groups are distributed in North America and Europe. For example, the United States accounts for 28.74%, Germany accounts for 4.72%, and Britain accounts for 4.48%. It can be seen that the statistical results are not comprehensive, but they are quite representative.

As you know, the number of PC computers in the world is increasing every month. The slight changes in the user shares of various operating systems are certainly related to this increase. As we can hardly imagine, the decline in Linux user shares reflects the fact that the number of Linux operating systems preinstalled on new PC computers in the world is rather rare. In fact, the proportion of new PC computers pre-installed with Linux in the world must be less than the original share. Simply put, Linux users are "diluted" and their concentration is declining. What does this fact mean? This shows that the pre-installed Operating System of PC computers is still a fundamental problem related to the overall situation and a major problem that determines the future trend of the global IT industry.

In fact, Microsoft is very powerful. Its OEM version of Windows 7 has already been released, and almost all PC computer vendors around the world are willing to pre-install Windows 7. Why? Let's make it clear that companies are pursuing profits. Windows 7 can bring huge profits to PC manufacturers, while Linux cannot (or is difficult ). This is the key to the problem.

During the National Day, I thought about this issue at the edge of Kanas. I am sure that the main problem facing Linux today is not a technical factor, but an economic model. The ecosystem (economy) Protection Circle built by Microsoft for Windows is exceptionally robust and far from our imagination. Why are customers willing to pay for Windows? Free is not necessarily the best choice for users. It is difficult to clarify the principles. As a result, I don't want to play with Microsoft any more. However, I am not convinced. The business experience of U disk is a proof. Consider the U disk as an accessory of a computer, and preload the Linux disk to the U disk, so that it is tightly attached to XP, just like a parasite. Of course, this idea of Linux development is not considered by the Linux national team, but only the development strategy of the Linux grassroots team. The grass-roots nurture the life of the desert, not afraid of freezing the sky, can still survive. Grass-roots do not need special care. when they die, they are nothing more than grass.

Note: I went back to Beijing last night. In October 29 this year, the Ubuntu 9.10 family was about to be released. At present, Ubuntu lab has a lot of work to do, for example, to add some hard devices (to cope with enterprise cloud computing ). Some may say that you are a utopia idealist. I said, no. Wubuntu is not a utopia.