{"id":14254,"date":"2010-08-05T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T11:54:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-08-05T13:54:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-05T11:54:00","slug":"linux-big-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/14254-linux-big-in-sa.html","title":{"rendered":"Linux big in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We all know that Windows is the dominant operating system, around the world. But how popular is Linux?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gs.statcounter.com\/#os-ww-monthly-200907-201007\" target=\"_blank\">According to analysts StatCounter<\/a>, Linux is still minuscule in comparison with the Windows family of operating systems but there are some numbers worth looking at.<\/p>\n<p>According to StatCounter Linux use, globally, makes up 0.77% of the market. Tiny even compared with Mac OS X&#8217;s 5.53% at the end of June this year. Windows XP, on the other hand, dominates with 5.57% of the market, followed by Windows Vista at 18.46% and the rapidly rising Windows 7 with just over 17.85%. Since the start of 2010 Windows 7 has increased its share of the market by 10 percentage points.<\/p>\n<p><strong>African shift<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Looking at the Africa-specific numbers a few things become clear. The first is that Vista never really gained much traction in this market &#8211; it peaked at just over 10% market share &#8211; and has already been surpassed by Windows 7. Windows 7 had a 14.28% market share at the end of July.<\/p>\n<p>The second is that Apple&#8217;s Mac OS X has far less traction in the African market than elsewhere, with just 1.18% market share.<\/p>\n<p>The third thing is that Linux use in Africa in general is just half of what it is in the global market (0.43%). And presumably most of the use is driven by South Africa.<\/p>\n<p><strong>South African Linux<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Drilling further down, to OS usage in South Africa, two things stand out. One is that Windows 7 has already overtaken Windows Vista in the local market. The other is that Linux use in South Africa is well above the global average of 0.8%. At 1.16% Linux use, South African Linux users make up more of the OS market than almost anywhere else in the world. At 1.16% it is not far behind the whole of Europe with 1.25% market share.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly Finland has a hefty 2.68% market share. Perhaps unsurprising considering it is the birthplace of Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.<\/p>\n<div class=\"table-responsive\"><table class=\"table\" border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"5\" width=\"100%\" bgcolor=\"#dddeff\" bordercolor=\"#ffffff\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th>Operating system market share<\/th>\n<th>Global<\/th>\n<th>Africa<\/th>\n<th>South Africa<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"center\">Windows 7<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">17.85%<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">14.28%<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">19.69%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"center\">Mac OS X<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">5.53%<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">1.18%<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">4.23%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td align=\"center\">Linux<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">0.77%<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">0.43%<\/td>\n<td align=\"center\">1.16%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/256472-Linux-popular-in-South-Africa\">Popularity of Linux in South Africa<\/a><\/strong> &lt;&lt; comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Windows may still be the dominant operating system but in South Africa Linux has a good showing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}