The latest numbers from the survey company IDC show that Windows edged up slightly, gaining 2 percent from last year's quarter to lead the field with 67.1 percent of servers sold. Linux accounted for 22.8 percent, down from 23.1 percent last year. Proprietary Unix servers lost 1.2 percent to finish off the list at 7.6 percent of the market. Of course, these server sales only count new machines and not existing hardware that had a new operating system installed on it, or bare hardware that was sold without an operating system and later had one installed—both scenarios that would tend to favor Linux and give it a larger share than is indicated. However, the figures are a useful metric to see which operating systems are gaining and which are losing share over time.
|