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Another problem with these stats, not evident here, is that many copies of Linux are running on hardware sold with a Windows license.

And conversely, 80-to-90 percent of the computers in China and India are running pirated copies of Windows on computers that were originally sold with a disposable copy of Linux.

And yet another problem with such stats is that there are many brands of Linux sold or downloaded, and that each copy of a Linux distribution is licensed to be installed as many times as you like.

Multiple installations of a single copy of Linux is common for servers, but I believe the opposite scenario is common when Linux is installed on a single computer. When I'm installing a Linux server, I usually download several different distributions and test all of them. Then I pick one, install it and dispose of the others. I'm sure other Linux users do the same, and those unused downloads tend to inflate Linux statistics.

There is no universally agreed method for measuring OS usage share. But I think the best way to measure desktop OS usage is according to user-agent statistics on a broad range of general interest web server log files.

Linux is excellent for servers and embedded devices. It's the best OS for those purposes. But it's lousy for a desktop environment, especially for the typical home/business computer user.

But it's lousy for a desktop environment, especially for the typical home/business computer user.

That depends. I setup most of the computers used by my relatives, varying from elderly doing simple email and web, to a small business owner, to a serious multimedia artsie type, to a serious teenage gamer, to a production email server and a production web server. I setup Mac, Windows and Linux, depending on their needs.

If someone wants to use Quicken or Taxcut/Turbotax, I set them up with Windows. If someone wants to play the latest games, I set them up with Windows. If someone wants simple email, web and plain text documents, for the lowest cost, I set them up with Linux. If someone wants the finest in multimedia production software or the slickest end user interface, I set them up with Mac. If someone (like myself) wants to develop software for embedded or supercomputer Linux systems, I set them up with Linux. If someone wants an email or web server, I set them up with Linux. If someone needs to interoperate with systems at work running Windows, like my cousin who just passed his bar last week and has a new job at a law firm, they get Windows.

Depends.

Long term trends are not always easy to see, but some show up. Mac is resurging. Linux is taking over the embedded space strongly. Supercomputers are moving from proprietary Unix O.S.'s to Linux. Windows is holding strong in the game, typical home computer, office and business department server spaces.

The next trend, if Google succeeds in its long range plans, could dramatically change things, but I am not sure how.

From Don Dodge's column:

GYMA (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL) will be important players in the next generation of the web, sometimes referred to as Web2.0. It really is a whole new thing. The idea of SaaS (Software as a Service) is to move computing resources off individual PCs and onto the network. To do this you need high bandwidth connections. Nearly everyone has that. But, if you can get data storage near the network access points and a computing infrastructure there as well...Wow! This changes the dynamics significantly.
We could be on the verge of another web innovation cycle reminiscent of 1995. Some entrepreneurs have spent the last two years building products and services in anticipation of this wave. The fun is about to begin.

These Google trucks are running Linux, by the way, not Windows. And the leading commercial database, Oracle, is making a big push to get on Linux. IBM continues to spend big money to get Linux to have features currently found on their mainframe operating systems.

^^^^^^^^^But it's lousy for a desktop environment^^^^^^^^^^

Not true. Linux UI development is pretty competitive even with Macs.

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I don't care what everyone else does. At one time, Madonna had a #1 song, and I still didn't listen to it.