In recent months, the lie that GNU/Linux is marginal on the desktop, about 1%, has been repeated so often that many have come to believe that it is true. Network Application, the source of the data, now posts a message that pages are “currently under review”.
Perhaps the publication of M$’s own figures, many times larger than Network Applications, and the obvious falsehood of Apple’s share have caused Network Applications to rethink their manner of presenting the data. Perhaps they are going to cease claiming an unbiased sample or they may select their sources in a less biased manner. We can only hope and wait.
The problem with telling a lie is that you have to keep on telling the lie and you have to remember all the lies you told or you will be caught out.
Honestly, I do not know that NetApplications has been lying but it is sure that that GNU/Linux has far more than 1% of the desktop globally. I suspect the problem is a US-mainly sample and a heavy leaning to certain business sites. I hope this delay in presenting results for June 2009 means they will revise their methodology to give a more meaningful result. That would be a good thing in the middle of this Year of GNU/Linux.
NetApplications does sell access to regional data. It is possible they wiell make that data available by default to give a less biased picture.
UPDATE The site has “Site Note: Browser and O/S June stats under review We are investigating some significant variations in browser and operating system statistics. The reports will not be available until we complete our review.”
Let us hope they fix things to shut down some of the nonsense being treated as truth on the web. Netcraft.com reports they are running IIS and some links give a configuration error message.
UPDATE Here it is August 1 and Net Applications has announced weighting by country/web users. I guess that is an improvement. The effect appears to move MacOS down into the world of reality, and not changing GNU/Linux much. That makes sense if you believe GNU/Linux has the same exposure globally. We think that is nonsense. BRIC countries certainly use GNU/Linux more than others. Unfortunately Net Applications now shows that other OS over 90% again. I am sure M$’s fans will be crowing…
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