Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 17:27:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Tim Vanderhoek <hoek@hwcn.org> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: dyson@FreeBSD.ORG, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>, jlemon@americantv.com, jkb@best.com, andreas@klemm.gtn.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linux vs. the rest of the world, poor OS comparison on web page Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96.971015170303.21061B-100000@james.freenet.hamilton.on.ca> In-Reply-To: <19971015124358.26418@lemis.com>
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On Wed, 15 Oct 1997, Greg Lehey wrote: > Must be. I got a reply, which I will share when I have time to > investigate it. As justification, he pointed to > http://leangen.uninett.no:29659/, which shows 52334 users and 22401 > machines registered. He has already moderated his claim to 5,000,000 > users. Let's see, according to jkh, there are 13505 registered > FreeBSD system. Assuing a linear interpolation, this means that there > must be 3,000,000 FreeBSD users. Not bad, eh? Ahh, but the registration thingy wasn't introduced until fairly late in the game. Since we're now at 3.0, and it was introduced at 2.0, that would mean it's only been existant for 1/3 of the time of FreeBSD's existance. We'd have to multiply the 3 million number by 3 to get 3/3, covering 100% of FreeBSD's lifetime. That gives us 9 000 000 users. However, the registration process wasn't introduced until long after 2.0 and we're not at 3.0. We need to account for this. Since there were 7 releasses after and including 2.0 until 2.2, which means that between 2.3 and 3.0 we should get another 24.5 releases. Since FreeBSD accumlated 3 000 000 over 7 releases, (we don't take the 9 000 000 number here, since that refers to FreeBSD's users over it's lifetime -> 3.0), we have to add 24.5 * 3 000 000 more users. This means that we have 9 000 000 + 73 500 000 users, for a total of 82 500 000. Because FreeBSD is easier than Linux to install on a non-Internet computer, we need to account for the additional percentage of users who couldn't register due to lack of net connectivity that we have _over and above_ the percentage that Linux has. I'll arbitrarily estimate the % of Linux non-Internet users at 20% (this comes from 30% of the populace having net access and 60% of the populace having a computer, so 30% * 60% = 18%, then round down to so the Linux folks can't accuse us of being unfair to them). Since FreeBSD is a conservative 50% easier to install on a non-Internet machine than Linux (thanks to our single boot floppy and jkh's wonderful sysinstall), we take the 20% and double it to get FreeBSD's percentage of non-Internet users. This gives 40%. Subtract 20% to get what we have over and above Linux. Since these weren't accounted for (remember our 3000000 number is extrapolated from 13500 systems in the same ratio as 6000000 from 2200 Linux machines). This means we have 82500000 * 1.2 = 99000000. This is basically equal to 100 000 000 users. When we finally round to take into account the significant digits in our input numbers, we are left with only 0 users, however. :-( -- Outnumbered? Maybe. Outspoken? Never! tIM...HOEk
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