Linux and Windows interest on the wane; Mac interest trending higher
If you measure interest in operating systems based on search, Linux hit its peak in 2004 and has been on a downward slide ever since, according to Google Trends. The same is true of Windows, though the trend (as seen below) is less pronounced. The Mac? Well, let's just say that people can't seem to get enough.
But what happens if we measure interest based on press mentions? While all three operating systems seem to have increased their "mindshare" over the past four years, Windows has outpaced Linux and Mac OS, and by quite a margin:
(Credit:
Google Trends)
What this does not measure, of course, is whether this interest is positive or negative. Much of Windows' news coverage has centered on Vista delays and its underwhelming of expectations. Not exactly what Microsoft wants people saying about it.
Regardless, these are imperfect measures of importance. The standard bearers for each OS - Red Hat (Linux), Apple (Mac), and Microsoft (Windows) - continue to blow out their numbers. Apparently any interest is good interest, at least as far as sales go.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Your preference for shiny Mac stuff is noted Matt, however it's worth pointing out how narrow the gap is between Mac and Linux.
That latter does zero consumer advertising unlike the former.
1. The graph doesn't show any added interest in Macs besides the historic 4-5% market share they've always had.
2. I believe that people want an OS to run other applications and the bulkier the OSs get, the less people like them. could understand if a new game or piece of business software requires better hardware. However, it's extremely difficult to understand why getting Vista or even leopard for example requires a huge hardware upgrade in of themselves.
Interest in the word 'Linux' appears to be waning, but try the same experiment with words such as 'Ubuntu' and you'll see a boom. So, you should add all searches about all the various Linux distributions as well as the word 'Linux' itself to get a more balanced picture against Windows or Apple
--mark d.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=mac+%7C+OSX+%7C+%28os+X%29%2C+ubuntu+%7C+kubuntu+%7C+linux+%7C+fedora+%7C+suse+%7C+debian+%7C+gentoo+%7C+centos+%7C+%28red+hat%29+%7C+opensuse+%7C+%28opensuse%29&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Of course, this doesn't take into account the number of people searching for either wet weather coats or dapper headwear and it certainly doesn't take into account the 120 odd other linux distros :)
Thanks to all the comments (up above) for putting things into perspective here.
- by dkweston December 31, 2007 10:14 PM PST
- I'm not overly interested in trends or polls. I am interested in an operating system that simply work.
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(8 Comments)On my own computers, I've used every version of Windows dating back to 3.1. Each version seems more bloated and troublesome than it's predecessor. And, MS seems to want users to jump through more hoops.
I work for a newspaper and publishing has traditionally been a stronghold for Mac's. There's one in my office and I hardly ever touch it.
Although Ubunto seems to get most of the attention at the moment, there are literally hundreds of other Linux distros out there. To lump them all together under the generic term Linux seems a little unfair to me but all of the distros offer almost endless options to make your machine work exactly the way you want it to work. It's proven to be more secure, less prone to hack attacks, less prone to crashes. Hardware requirements are generally more modest than Vista or Leopard.
No need to go on. People will use what they want and that's just fine. Polls or trends aside, until the big boys can show me something better, easier and more secure, I'll stick with Linux. And the distro I'm using at the moment is Linux Mint. .