Linux seems stuck in a perpetual holding pattern, unable to eat away at Microsoft's server market share. What "market share"? The number of units sold? Annual revenue? The author seems to use the latter measurement. That could simply mean that Microsoft products are more expensive, or have to be replaced more often, or both.
Market share does not accurately reflect the size of the installed base. That's the measurement I'm more interested in.
"Market share does not accurately reflect the size of the installed base. That's the measurement I'm more interested in."
Linux gained marketshare in a variety of places, such as TiVo boxes all being run under Linux. Getting commercial consumer products to go Linux was a clever way around the MS domination of the desktop...since most consumer products *don't* have what anyone would label as a "desktop."
What "market share"? The number of units sold? Annual revenue? The author seems to use the latter measurement. That could simply mean that Microsoft products are more expensive, or have to be replaced more often, or both. Market share does not accurately reflect the size of the installed base. That's the measurement I'm more interested in.
The only accurate measurement of OS market share is hardware volume. Most companies tend to buy their servers and desktops with the OS already installed. The number of organizations that either buy bare metal or pave an already installed OS with another is statistically insignificant by comparison. And the numbers bear out what you would expect: Old-school Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, etc) is losing ground to Linux -- but Windows continues to gain server market share. This mirrors my own real-world experience, too.
Windows and Linux are such different platforms (ie. they're used in such different roles) that it's practically impossible to compare them head-to-head. Windows excels at groupware (email, collaboration, etc), file-sharing, and print services. IIS actually leads the Fortune 1000 as a
web server platform with 54% market share. But Linux is being used a lot as a database server and web server (particularly on the Web). Sot they are going after different markets. That's why they don't compete head-to-head and tend to take market share from different places.