I always keep an eye on stats (browsers and such), and I just noticed some changes today with the latest hitslink stats.

Last month, NT4 had 0.68%, Linux had 0.68% too, and all of Win9x combined had 0.76%.

This month, NT4 sits at 0.69%, Win9x (95/98/ME combined) went down by 10% again to settle at 0.69%, tying place with NT4, and Linux went up to 0.8% (17% increase), placing it above the other two.

Linux is growing pretty fast. If it continues at this pace, it should overpass Win2k in 6 months to a year (Win2k should be around 1.5% or less by then), and eventually Mac OS Classic too.

Meanwhile, Vista goes up by about a percent or so per month, and XP down by one too (Vista is eating away at XP's market share very quickly)
The same seems to happen to MacIntel and Mac OS classic (users of the new replacing users of the old).

Quick update! And this month, with pretty pictures

Market share, Vista/XP/Win2k:

The total stays at a steady 90% (give or take 0.5%). Win2k is dropping very fast (hard to see on that curve though, you'll see it far better in the next graph). And XP is quickly being replaced by Vista (XP and Vista should tie at ~45% in a couple years)

Market share, Win2k, NT, Win9x and Linux:

Linux surpassed Win9x and NT, still rising, Win2k dropping very fast. At the current speeds, Linux will overtake Win2k in under a year.

Same thing, but more representative of Win9x versions usage (not grouped), but more cluttered:


And a "zoomed up" version of the bottom 1% to see the Win9x & Linux trends better:

Linux is on a steady rise, and Win9x usage still dropping very fast.

At the current speeds (% of market share change over the 19 months graphed):
-Linux should be up to 1% in about 6 months to a year
-Win2k is going to go down to 1% or less within a year
-combined Win9x market share down to basically nothing at all within a year (down there with Web TV)

At least there are some 9x users who are stepping up from a dated and obsolete OS. Though updating to a better Windows wouldn't hurt

Yet another update.

XP's market share dropped below 70% (still being replaced by Vista quickly).

Win9x market share still dropping real fast (~10% of their user base per month), and Linux growing even faster. Another month like this, and Linux will have TWICE the market share of Win9x!

I've noticed that Windows 2000 has really been dropping in usage as of late.

More power to Linux!

Yeah, Win2k has lost almost half its user base in a year. They're down to 1.x%, and are going to be sub-1% in less than a year.

Combined Win9x dropped down to 0.54% last month, and it'll be under a half percent this month. In like 6 months from now, it just might be below 0.1%.

Linux is on a quick rise percentage-wise, but overall the absolute numbers are still fairly small (sub-1%). It's easy to gain a large percentage when you have such a small user base. The new Intel Macs gained as 2.5x as much users in the last year as Linux has in the past 17 years combined... So it's still not a very big increase when you look at the big picture. I think a lot of people are trying Linux, then going back to Windows...

XP is soon going to be down to ~65%, and Vista should be up to ~20% within a couple months.

I'll update the pics next month (they haven't changed a whole lot this month, same overall big picture, small changes in percentages). I just noticed I screwed up the dates on the last pic... Oh well.

Updated graph!


Linux took a BIG nosedive (a lot of people must be giving up on it, I can see why ). It's still 40% higher than Win9x's though (not that 40% more than a very small number means much). We'll see if it goes back up next month.

Win9x market share is exactly at 1/2% and people are still abandoning that sinking ship real fast.

The iPhone now has a bigger market share than Win98 or ME or 95. Another couple months like that and it'll tie with Win9x combined.

Vista going to hit 20% next month, XP slowly getting closer to 65%.

Also, Firefox market share is still on the rise (hit 20% twice in October), Chrome's market share finally settled at 0.7% or so just like Opera (IE8 beta is already close to beating them -- says a lot!)

could it be that the Linux nosedive has something to do with the rise of netbooks?
I could come up with this explanation: People bought a netbook, noticed "oh crap, it doesnt look like Windows" and installed their (legit?) copy of XP on it (or Vista for the curious ones) or even returned the machines simply "because it doesn't look and feel like Windows".

I thought about that one too. But the number of netbooks out there is likely quite low when you look at the big picture i.e. the millions of existing desktops & laptops (so low that I have yet to see one). I doubt it could really affect numbers that much. I dunno. It'll be interesting to see if the number bounces back up next month or continues to drop.

I decided to change the scale this month, the top of the chart (max) is now 1.5%.

Combined Win9x market share dropped below 0.5% and just might be below the iPhone's next month (it's already higher than any specific Win9x "flavor", just not all of them combined yet).

Linux has mostly gone back up to its previous position, and has about 75% more users than all Win9x combined. It had dropped significantly last month, but it's back up over the NT4 market share again.

I've been excluding NT4 from the pic for clarity, and since it's mostly an horizontal line at ~0.7%, but next month, we'll get a newcomer to this picture: Win2k. It would have been here if I didn't reduce the max to 1.5% (it's at 1.58% right now).

Also, XP hit below 2/3rds, and vista broke the 20% mark. Eventually we'll see Win7 (betas or RTM) on there too...

At the current rates, all Win9x combined will be down to 0.01% total (rounded up) by 2010 (only 13 months away). By then, Win2k should be around 0.25%, and Linux over 1%. XP around 50%, Vista around 30%. But eventually Win7 will be out, and it'll start replacing XP & Vista boxes...

What about us GoogleBots?

I always spoof it because it lets me enter far more pages.

GL