Linux advertisment from Novell

Amusing…

Of course there is more than a little grain of truth to it, even though it is marketing. And there is a second “ad” here, and a third. Update: Ok, this is something I don’t quite get. I have done some searching for market share data for Linux. Why not, it is of some interest to know what customers want and are interested in using. Almost all the “data” I have seen puts Linux penetration into the noise. In the ~1% or less region of market share. This same data tends to put Mac OSX at 4% or so. Windows variants largely make up the rest. This is interesting. For a number of reasons. If this is really the case, then why is Microsoft so focused with multiple assaults on Linux, and not OSX, which would be bigger fodder for it? Well, there is the issue that a large amount of Linux is installed on “servers”. Not many folks preloading it on laptops or desktops. Yet. Both Dell and HP, two of the three largest, are looking at this, and at least HP appears to offer theirs ready to go with SuSE. So is this adequate to explain why Microsoft is going after Linux with all guns and clusters blazing? Linux is, after all, according to the available data, a miniscule fraction of the market … It would be hard to explain the strategy of going after a miniscule fraction of a market to stockholders while there are larger markets which are potential targets. That is, unless the survey data we are seeing is painting neither a complete nor an accurate picture of reality. Linux is, according to the Gartner, IDC, and other data gatherers/analyzers, grabbing substantial marketshare, seemingly at the expense of Unix and windows. ISVs are targetting Linux, though some are doing so rather poorly by following Microsoft’s line of equating Linux with Redhat Linux as compared to targetting LSB. But this is in the server realm. And we know that Linux is useless on desktops. and we know that Vista is so much better. Linux is just so far behind as compared to Vista, windows, and OSX. Well, you be the judge.