Checking the latest OS statistics from http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp, I’m happy to notice that Linux and Mac have been gaining a decent foothold in the OS market with Linux and Mac together making about 9%
| 2008 |
WinXP |
W2000 |
Win98 |
Vista |
W2003 |
Linux |
Mac |
| August |
73.9% |
2.4% |
0.2% |
12.5% |
1.9% |
3.9% |
4.9% |
| 2007 |
WinXP |
W2000 |
Win98 |
Vista |
W2003 |
Linux |
Mac |
| November |
73.8% |
5.1% |
1.0% |
6.3% |
2.0% |
3.3% |
3.9% |
| 2006 |
WinXP |
W2000 |
Win98 |
WinNT |
W2003 |
Linux |
Mac |
| November |
74.9% |
8.0% |
1.0% |
0.3% |
1.9% |
3.5% |
3.6% |
| 2005 |
WinXP |
W2000 |
Win98 |
WinNT |
W2003 |
Linux |
Mac |
| November |
71.0% |
14.6% |
2.7% |
0.4% |
1.7% |
3.3% |
3.3% |
| 2004 |
WinXP |
W2000 |
Win98 |
WinNT |
Win95 |
Linux |
Mac |
| November |
59.1% |
23.7% |
5.6% |
1.2% |
0.1% |
3.1% |
2.7% |
But what about Mauritius?
I wonder whether the NCB is holding any stats and if not, it would be interesting to gather these; I don’t expect windows to be below 95% but real stats would help. We are a third world country without too much money and as such we should try to encourage people to use free software since it is simply not ok to just pirate (in other words steal) what you need and don’t have.
I’ve stopped being a Linux advocate for some time now, not because I use a Mac now but simply because I think that not everyone is ok to use Linux – in other words, I no longer have time to troubleshoot basic problems which the users could have solved by googling. But I can’t help snickering when people complain about virusses and can’t help but say: “told you so!” 
After “Browser Wars Episode I: The phantom menace” which saw Microsoft IE defeat Netscape Navigator in epic fashion, we are being served with the second installment, “Browser Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones Chrome”.
Indeed, Google’s unexpected release of Chrome is causing massive ripples in the browser world:
- Is chrome really faster that firefox – I think I’ve already seen at least 5 benchmark tests in 2 days discussing in terms of milliseconds (this is really crazy) which of the three (IE, Firefox or Chrome) is fastest?
- What of the partnership between Google and Mozilla?
- Google surprise release of a browser and its daring advertising campaign: releasing a comic book to market Chrome!
- Chome’s marvelous technical innovations. All geeks are frying in excitement about the browser being completely open source and numerous technical innovations: each tab existing as a separate process (crash control), instant bookmarking, …
Living in Mauritius, a faster browser would definitly help since our Internet connection is so poor. However, will a difference of a few milliseconds make a big difference when pages often take ten of seconds to load remains to be seen.
Anyway as Yoda would say: Be waiting for chrome’s release on mac or linux to give it a decent try, I will.
