Talk:Usage share of operating systems

Linux share: Caitlyn Martin's blog piece

Is this [1] a credible secondary source? It seems to me to be an exercise in wishful thinking. It seems to be clutching at straws. As a Linux enthusiast myself I've tried to follow her argument but it doesn't stack up IMHO. She says "The best estimate for present sales is around 8%", but she doesn't cite a source for this estimate, and in any case, present sales is a very different thing from the total installed base, bought over several years, that makes up usage share.

I can quite accept that the web client stats under-measure Linux a bit, mainly because Linux users are relatively security and privacy conscious and thus more likely to disable javascript, install adblock etc., all things which reduce counting on the third-party stats sites. It's interesting that Wikimedia's figures, based on server log files and thus immune to this hazard, show a somewhat higher figure (1.57%) than most of the others.--Harumphy (talk) 14:00, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, but still not 8%. I tried to work that 8% figure in somewhere too, but the jump from 'installed user-base' to 'current sales' seemed too sharp for a short addition to existing text. The only way would be to devote a whole couple of sentences to it somewhere, and I'm not sure if she is notable enough for that. O'Reilly is a good source, but I'm not sure of her status to be speaking for them. --Nigelj (talk) 15:10, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

The only cited source there is quote from Steve Ballmer where he says that internal Microsoft research showed Linux and MacOS shares comparable. We already have this source covered. The blog doesn't seem notable enough to include in the article.Wikiolap (talk) 20:03, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Should we remove the Wikimedia web client statistics?

The article currently states: "All of these sources monitor a substantial number of web sites. Statistics that relate to a single web site are excluded." To a large extent, this is not true for Wikimedia, of which Wikipedia alone is by far their most trafficked web site (although one that most English-language Web users have visited).

Also note that the Wikimedia report is based on the total number of HTTP requests rather than the number of unique clients (as determined using cookies). We need to consider the merits of the two approaches and which is more accurate. The Wikimedia report could easily be biased toward those operating systems used by those who access Wikipedia more often (although the others could be influenced by how much of each browser's user base regularly clears cookies). On these two principles, should we exclude the Wikimedia statistics? PleaseStand ^(talk) 00:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikimedia's stats cover 60-odd sites within the Wikimedia family.[2] While this is much less 'substantial' than many of the other sources, it's much greater than 'one', the avoidance of which (specifically w3schools) was the original purpose of that sentence. (From time to time we get people trying to add w3schools' stats to the table, or suggesting that we should on this discussion page. Often they seem to be unaware that that site's stats are for its own site only, and that that site is aimed at web developers - a highly atypical readership with a much more diverse set of web clients than the general web-using population.) Also, the Wikipedias are very high-traffic sites. The English one disproportionately so, granted, but there are similar regional/linguistic skews in many of the other stats sources too. So I wouldn't exclude Wikimedia stats on the grounds that they monitor an insubstantial number of sites.

AFAIK there's no evidence to suggest that certain operating systems are used by those who access WP more often. Just as there's no evidence that certain OS's are used more by those who clear cookies, block scripts, use adblock etc. I imagine many of us have our suspicions in this regard, but no actual evidence. And if we had such evidence, the magnitude of the biases they introduce may be no larger than many of the other biases we already know about and to which all the sources are prone. So I don't think there's a case for excluding Wikimedia stats here, either. Harumphy (talk) 11:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Northern Ontario Jacob12190 (talk) 11:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Web client table tweaks - January 2011

I propose to make a couple of minor tweaks to the table when the December figures come out in the new year, unless there are objections here first:

1. For the Clicky desktop/mobile 'in lieu' split, take the mean of the Net Market Share and Statcounter figures instead of just using Statcounter. (This will probably have the effect of reducing Clicky's mobile share from around 4.1% to around 3.6%.) The footnote will explain what has been done.
2. Android is rising rapidly and within a few months may overtake what we currently call 'mainstream' Linux. I propose to change the "mainstream" sub-heading to "desktop distros.". Harumphy (talk) 14:56, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

2) Oppose. There are several other mobile Linux distributions such as Maemo currently included within Mainstream Linux.1exec1 (talk) 00:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've done #1 but not #2 in today's update.Harumphy (talk) 11:09, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Should we remove AT Internet Institute from web client stats?

We're seeing constant changes in the data, month by month (summary of each month here). With lack of frequent updates by ATII, we're ending up with less accurate results... 195.23.92.1 (talk) 18:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)