Those statistics (gained from analysing the computers that access one set of servers) are not that great as they will include all the work computers where one person decides on a huge number of computers.
Funny, because if that's the case then companies obviously don't see any future in Linux as a desktop OS either.
Or it proves that M$ marketing means that it became a monopoly, so almost all apps are designed for M4 and M$ alone. Think about just how many internet browser standards IE doesn't stick to.
I run Adobe CS Suite, Cinema 4D, Vue d'Esprit and some other professional software and really nice games like Company of Heroes or the future World in Conflict with blazing speed and you have to stick to slow and unreliable emulation software or products that are largely inferior. If that makes you happy, great, I care more about the quality of the applications that I’m running and their speed and not the quality of the OS.
Sounds like you like programs that necessitate M$. Doesn't make it a better OS which you yourself admit. The fact that linux doesn't fall over all the time, nor get hacked down to the core so often, makes it a far better choice for me, and most computer users who use their computer for word processing, spreadsheets, email and browsing. Add to this the fact that some games are quicker through WINE than M$ and you have a winning OS (not to mention the huge financial savings).
What Linux users need to do is to stop with childish Microsoft bashing with nicknames like M$ and Mickey Mouse Soft like you do and focus on themselves first and stop coming up with dumb excuses that people don’t switch to Linux because they don’t like change.
But that is the main reason, people are afraid to leave the monopoly. My Mrs was very sceptical, until we changed and she realised she could do everything just the same. She would never have switched on her own, but now prefers linux to M$. Most people are scared of the teccy image of linux.
If that’s the case, then explain to me why more and more people continue to switch to Mac, which has actually become more popular than Linux over the last few years.
Because Mac is a one box solution. It's still based on unix, so is not a million miles from Linux. Quite a few Mac users dual boot. Note that all these people are drifting away from M$ though. What does that tell you? Maybe that endless bad updates, security holes and horrendous times trying to configure networks has driven people out of the monopoly? How does one truly find out how popular Ubuntu is? I still have M$ XP on my box. That could, in theory, make me an XP user, but it hasn't been booted for 3 months, and used properly for over 12 months. I don't like an OS that deletes all the network card drivers on its own leaving me a long arduous task to get them back (seeing as I can't connect to the internet without them).
I only started to look into linux for one reason: M$ was crap. It took ages to try and set up the wireless network, and then it failed so often it became pointless. I installed ubuntu and the network setup took an entire 5 minutes (most of which was looking for the key). M$ was buggy as hell, and no joy at all.
I'll stick to reliable, stable and secure thanks.