Linux Desktop Market Share Trends

Here are data from various sources about Linux's market share on the desktop over time, as of Sept 2008.

hitslink.com

Hitslink.com has a report of market share over time based on "160 million visitors per month" to a pool of web sites. It says: Date Windows Mac Linux iPhone Oct 2007 92.49% 6.58% 0.50% 0.07% Nov 2007 92.42% 6.80% 0.57% 0.09% Dec 2007 91.79% 7.31% 0.63% 0.12% Jan 2008 91.50% 7.57% 0.64% 0.13% Feb 2008 91.58% 7.46% 0.65% 0.14% Mar 2008 91.57% 7.48% 0.61% 0.15% Apr 2008 91.64% 7.38% 0.63% 0.15% May 2008 91.13% 7.83% 0.68% 0.16% Jun 2008 90.89% 7.94% 0.80% 0.16% Jul 2008 91.02% 7.76% 0.82% 0.19% Aug 2008 90.66% 7.86% 0.93% 0.30%

w3counter.com

w3counter.com/globalstats.php gives market share data based on "45 million unique visits (per month)" from a pool of 14,000 web sites. It says: Date Linux May 2007 1.26% Jun 2007 1.30% Jul 2007 1.32% Aug 2007 1.34% Sep 2007 1.37% Oct 2007 1.75% Nov 2007 1.74% Dec 2007 1.77% Jan 2008 1.84% Feb 2008 2.01% Mar 2008 2.02% Apr 2008 1.89% May 2008 1.95% Jun 2008 1.95% Jul 2008 1.91% Aug 2008 2.00%

xitimonitor.com

Xitimonitor.com gives market share based on "French language sites". It says: Date Linux Jan 2007 0.73% Feb 2007 0.71% Mar 2007 0.72% Apr 2007 0.78% May 2007 0.79% Jun 2007 0.78% Jul 2007 0.77% Aug 2007 0.81% Sep 2007 n/a Oct 2007 n/a Nov 2007 0.88% Dec 2007 0.88% Jan 2008 0.93% Feb 2008 1.07% Mar 2008 0.95% Apr 2008 0.98%

ranking.pl

ranking.pl reports market share in Poland, and split their results between Polish and foreign visitors. Polish visitors are about half as likely as foreign visitors to use Linux. Here are results for foreign visitors over time: Date Linux Q4 2006 0.6% Q1 2007 0.7% Q2 2007 0.7% Q3 2007 0.8% Q4 2007 0.9% Q1 2008 0.9% Q2 2008 0.8% Q3 2008 0.9%