Jack Ungerleider wrote: > > > > On Wed, 31 Jan 2007, Steve Siegfried wrote: > > > >> OS rankings published by OneStat.com on 14Aug2006: > >> > >> > The 10 most popular operating systems in the world on the web are: > >> > > >> > 1. Windows XP 86.80% > >> > 2. Windows 2000 6.09% > >> > 3. Windows 98 2.68% > >> > 4. Macintosh 2.32% > >> > 5. Windows ME 1.09% > >> > 6. Linux 0.36% > >> > 7. Windows NT 0.24% > >> > 8. Macintosh Power PC 0.15% > >> > >> ... > >> > >> > Methodology: A global usage share of xx percent > >> > for OS Y means that xx percent of the visitors > >> > of Internet users arrived at sites that are > >> > using one of OneStat.com's services by using the > >> > particular number of OS Y. All numbers mentioned > >> > in the research are averages and all measurements > >> > are normalised to the GMT timezone. Research is > >> > based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided > >> > into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day. > > > > > > Is it possible that Linux machines don't identify as such? I don't know > > why a machine would give it's OS to a web site! It seems like a bad idea, > > so maybe Linux users avoid it. > > > > Linux definitely has more market share on the server, as you suggested. > > > > It would part of the HTTP_USER_AGENT value, which is a standard CGI > environment variable. Its included as part of the HTTP REQUEST data. Do a > Google search on "browser identification" there are several sites on the > web that will feed the information back to you. > I concur, it's probably done by looking a web browser HTTP_USER_AGENT strings. However, if you look at who _serves_ the pages instead of who _reads_ 'em, it's quite a different story: > Top Developers > > Developer December 2006 Percent January 2007 Percent %_Change > Apache 63819607 60.64 64312083 60.17 -0.47 > Microsoft 32277976 30.67 32898421 30.78 0.11 > Sun 1763847 1.68 1749026 1.64 -0.04 > Zeus 635673 0.60 551767 0.52 -0.08 Source: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html Note that the Security Space "Research Reports" section reports slightly different statistics: > January 1st, 2007 > > Across All Domains > > Market Share Change (Total servers: 21,566,239) > > SERVER DEC. COUNT DEC % NOV COUNT NOV % CHANGE > Apache 15,785,782 73.20% 15,645,600 73.28% -0.08% > Microsoft 4,383,008 20.32% 4,369,859 20.47% -0.15% > Zeus 122,967 0.57% 132,276 0.62% -0.05% > WebSTAR 97,982 0.45% 86,885 0.41% +0.04% > Netscape 71,532 0.33% 70,557 0.33% +0.00% > WebSite 10,579 0.05% 10,833 0.05% +0.00% > Other 1,094,389 5.07% 1,034,155 4.84% +0.23% Source: http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200612/index.html Methodology in both of these surveys seems to be web-crawlers and/or HEAD requests. So, Apache has roughly 60-70% of the market, at least twice that of Microsoft. How much of the Apache market runs what platform is tougher to find out (read: I'm still looking). BTW: http://www.securityspace.com has some interesting surveys, including one on mail servers showing sendmail with 32% of the market, Microsoft with 21% and the rest spread among other mail servers. -S