OS wars (was: Quo vadis, GPC?)

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 31 Jul 2010 05:12:14 pm Frank Heckenbach wrote:
> Prof. Harley Flanders wrote:
> > As to O/S, the following statistics should interest everyone:
> >
> >
> >     OS Platform Statistics
> >
> > Windows XP is the most popular operating system. The Windows family
> > counts for almost 90%:
> >
> > 2010 	Win7 	Vista 	Win2003 WinXP 	W2000 	Linux 	Mac
> > June 	19.8% 	11.7% 	1.3% 	54.6% 	0.4% 	4.8% 	6.8%
> > May 	18.9% 	12.4% 	1.3% 	55.3% 	0.4% 	4.5% 	6.7%
> > April 	16.7% 	13.2% 	1.3% 	56.1% 	0.5% 	4.5% 	7.1%
> > March 	14.7% 	13.7% 	1.4% 	57.8% 	0.5% 	4.5% 	6.9%
> > February 	13.0% 	14.4% 	1.4% 	58.4% 	0.6% 	4.6% 	7.1%
> > January 	11.3% 	15.4% 	1.4% 	59.4% 	0.6% 	4.6% 	6.8%
> >
> >
> > Source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
>
> Except that browsers are not exactly the same thing as programming
> languages.

Exactly.

I work for a Linux consulting company. Apart from the guy who insists on 
using Lynx as his browser, everyone I know sets their browser 
user-agent to pretend to be Internet Explorer on Windows XP. I suspect 
we're probably counted as part of the 54.6%, and I'm pretty sure we 
aren't the only ones.

But be that as it may, what's important is not the percentage of OS 
users all up, but the percentage of OS users that are interested in a 
Pascal compiler.

[...]
> Hodges, Robert CTR USAF AFMC 520 SMXS/MXDEC wrote:
> > Walk outside into the real world (which you eventually will, like
> > it or not), however, and UNIX/MacOS/Linux systems virtually
> > disappear.
> >
> > Only 1 out of 10 people want/need to use it.

If you think that 1 in 10 is so vanishingly small that it doesn't 
matter, that it isn't part of the "real world", I invite you to 
consider 1 in 10 of the people you know disappearing without trace.

Or consider that Pizarro destroyed the Inca Empire with an army less 
than 0.00125% their size (192 men against 16 million); or that the 
population of the USA is less than 5% of that of the world. That's the 
real world.



-- 
Steven D'Aprano