Why Haven't We Heard About Linux's Growing Market Share?

Desktops starting with Dell have begun being sold with Linux pre-installed, almost all of the new UMPC Eee-like notebooks that are selling in extremely large numbers these days are coming with Linux pre-installed, Everex is pushing Linux desktops through Wal-Mart, and lots of new computers are getting SLED certified or some other form of Linux certification. Add to that the increased popularity of all things Linux, the increasing ease of use of Linux as a desktop operating system and it has me wondering why there hasn't been a spike in Linux's market share?

Linux couldn't even beat out Windows 98 until sometime between August 20th and August 30th of last year according to W3Counter. According to that same site, since the 10th of May last year until the 29th of February this year Linux has only seen a .76% increase in its market share, which still only brings it up to a market share of 2.01%.

Comparatively 2.01% is still pretty good considering that's almost double what Windows 98 is right now and excluding XP which still holds the top spot, Linux's best competitor, Windows Vista, is only sitting at 6.48%. It still frustrates me that with all the advances in the Linux world as far as making things useable goes and with all the new computers being sold with Linux on them, it frustrates me that Linux still can't beat Windows 2000.

I can totally understand Linux not being able to beat OS X, Vista, or XP, but it should certainly be able to beat out a version of Windows that's so old its usability is probably less than that of the newer distros of Linux. Maybe with this next push of Linux notebooks including the upcoming offerings of Asus, Acer's Eee competitor, the CloudBook which still hadn't been released since these most recent figures, and the HP2133 Linux might gain the 1.29% market share it needs to beat Windows 2000's 3.29% market share.

[Picture Credit: Ars.Technica]