Unfotunately the case to the contrary can be more readily demonstrated.

Clearly, if all GNU/Linux clients were treated the same way that Google is treated, they would show up. Netapplications apparently accepts clients from business domains or office hours etc. to give the bias they do. Perhaps all the sites they sample are business-oriented. Who knows? Only NetApplications and they are not telling:
“76% participate in pay per click programs to drive traffic to their sites.
43% are commerce sites
18% are corporate sites
10% are content sites
29% classify themselves as other (includes gov, org, search engine marketers etc..) “

Oh, they would have to ship something, if only to establish a sort of plausible denial that they were fostering piracy of Windows, Mr. Pogson.

All your handwaving aside, if there were such vast numbers of Linux computers being sold and used in Brazil, they would show up in the net stats and the plain fact is that they do not show up there. All you show are fly specs and pepper flakes in terms of usage, quarrelling with their interpretation.

They would not need to ship any OS in that case, so it’s not true. Further, humans in Brazil are no more computer geeks than in USA so they are not going to change the OS on machines they buy.

If you ask partners of M$ what the share is in Brazil that’s what you get. If you ask others the answer is quite different. The same sampling technique that NetApplications uses to pump up that other OS shows California heavily using FLOSS because 10K Google employees do… One should not rely on that to show M$ doing well in Brazil.

e.g. W3counter shows 1.75% GNU/Linux in Brazil. That’s not the same as NetApplications’ USA number of 1%.

e.g. GuidoPC in Brazil reports 5% GNU/Linux. That’s not the same as NetApplications’ 1% number either.

NetApplications have also revised their number from ~1% to 1.43% for USA in the recent year. Either we should accept their numbers are nonsensical or GNU/Linux has grown 50% per annum for two years.

ie. July 2012 – 1.43%
August 2010 – 0.63%

My analysis of regional numbers for USA from NetApplications is that that entire shift is due to 10K employees of Google showing NetApplications terrible bias to use by business which of course is the most locked-in to M$.

Further, since the retailers in USA are locked-in to M$ it is surprising that anyone in USA uses GNU/Linux except computer geeks yet the US military, many educational organizations, governmental departments and businesses use GNU/Linux in USA, but NetApplications does not count them.

NetApplications USA – Sunnyvale in Aug 2010 = 0.62%
NetApplication USA – Sunnyvale in Aug 2012 = 0.67%

For home users I would say you are correct at this stage.

Business usage not exactly true. Why computers inside businesses are assigned roles. The compatibility depends on what you have purchased right.

Clarence Moon the known status is Linux is able to take over 80 percent of machines in most businesses lower cost and increase productivity.

The key thing is the number of points that Linux is not suitable is reducing Clarence Moon.

iLia interesting enough if you watch times on web numbers you see the web survey numbers drop off in an areas working hours. So web survey numbers count home users ahead of business users.

Also mobile phone numbers are a real solid count. carriers know exactly how many items connect to their network and what they are. Why each 3g modem that is embedded in a phone has a unique id. Now a person does not have to do anything other than turn the device on to be counted in the Mobile phone counting game.

Most linux on mobile phone is now Android. Prior to Android there were 12 different Linux OS’s on mobile phones that were bsd user-spaces and basically not related to the GNU/Desktop in anyway.

iLia our numbers on how much Linux/Windows/Mac desktop out there are completely bogus. How do you uniquely count a Linux a Windows or a Mac machine on the Internet. You cannot.

It would seem that the retailers have to do this in order to meet the demands of the users who want to install a pirated version of Windows on a new machine. If you look at the usage statistics for Brazil, for example, you can easily see that Windows and Linux have use percentages the same as in the USA.

Have you eaten too much Magic Corn? Read this file yourself and pay attention to “Linux of PC installed base”, it is too often below 1%. And why there are so many arrows pointing down? Maybe too much organizations are migrating from Linux?

With many governments actively promoting GNU/Linux and large migrations no longer newsworthy it happens so often, GNU/Linux has long ago left 1% share. Even M$ knows that. Note that years ago M$ saw 20% of organizations switching to GNU/Linux. Outside North America retailers are not shy to sell GNU/Linux on PCs.

So it is. I just overlooked it.

But please explain this from your previous comment.

Linux is a clone of a 1970′s product, UNIX, and is itself much more stale than anything that Microsoft has to offer.

Stable? Maybe the word stale will be more appropriate here?

The word used is stale and not stable