This post is part of a series where I try to make outlandish predictions for 2008. `Read the introduction for more details.`_

7. A single Linux distro, probably Ubuntu, will have more users than Mac OS X

As regular readers will know, I have previously been working on better statistical methods for counting the number of active Linux desktops, i.e. getting the order of magnitude correct then working on reducing the range of answers to a more reasonable spread. While, 30 million Linux users (including dual-booters) is the same order of magnitude as 70 million Linux users, there is in fact a large absolute difference. Getting the range down to less than 50% of the absolute number of users will be a small but useful step forward.

The Linux counter had a go at this kind of thing in 2005 and came up with 29 million users. However, they did not give a precise definition of 'user'.

Small preview for the interested, I don't mean web statistics. Also the idea is not to write yet another phone-home script that ends up on no-one's machine. I mean real statistics with a defensible and repeatable methodology. Zed Shaw's Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All sums up my feelings quite nicely on this topic.

The only problem so far has been a lack of my time, people who work for Linux distributions have been amazingly helpful in answering my emails and trawling their server logs. Hopefully in 2008, I will pick up this project again and write everything up properly. If no one else does this first, then I might try to offer it to a Linux magazine or something as well as talking about it here, it would not make any money but might increase this blog's profile for a day or two.

However, all initial indications are that by the summer of 2007, there were more Linux desktop users in the world than the 22 million OS X users that Apple claims to have. How many Linux desktop users there are in total is the great answered question and will depend largely on your assumptions, such as what you call a 'desktop' and how you treat machines behind NAT, another reason why I was working on a range rather than a precise number. The really hard part is counting non-Western, non-English speaking users using distributions that we do not. Normally everyone completely ignores these people.

Stuart Langridge, in the last Lugradio podcast, predicted that in 2008, a major news source would announce that there are more Linux users than Mac users. I think that is too easy.

So I am going to raise the stakes and predict that by the turn of New Year 2009, one distro alone, probably Ubuntu, will alone have more users than Mac OS X.

When you consider how many Windows machines there are in the world, having more Linux desktop users than OS X users is akin to saying that our needle in the haystack is bigger than your needle in the haystack. However, for tailoring, needles are a lot more useful than hay.

Of course this assumes that the top five or ten distributions will continue to get an increasingly larger share of the Linux desktop cake as some of the more esoteric distributions fall away and the main distros copy Ubuntu in having good community relations (i.e don't annoy your users and provide ways to innovate inside the system).

One way I could fail this prediction is that the total number of Linux Desktop users could rise but every one them creates yet another distribution on top of the hundreds/thousands we already have. However, I do not think that will happen. The open source world has got so large that maintaining useful relationships with upstream projects and triaging all the updates is such a lot of work that it is beyond even the most committed group of friends, these kind of hobbyists will move onto more interesting matters or join a big distro's volunteers and work on it there.

So therefore I also expect more medium-sized distributions to coalesce underneath the bug-tracking/package layer. Why maintain packages from scratch yourself when you can get the big-boys to do it for you and just piggy-back on top of their repositories?

8. More pre-installed Linux desktops than Macs

Still needles fighting over haystacks, however if we want to approach things from a different angle, let's say that with the ASUS Eee PC, the OLPC, the Everex low-end Desktops and others such as Dell, by the end of 2008, more pre-installed Linux PCs will be sold each month than Apple Macs.

By Macs, I mean real general-purpose personal computers, not iPhones, iPods, iTVs or whatever other fashionable gadget that Apple will sell in the tens of millions and Apple will no doubt make more money than ever at that.

So Phill Sacre in his blog dug up this link. Assuming I am reading this correctly, Apple sold an impressive 7 million Macs in the last four quarters recorded. This sounds about right, if every Apple devotee buys a new Mac every 3 years on average, then we get back to 22 million users.

Pre-installed Linux has long-tail. I bought my laptop from a little UK company that sells Linux computers, and many pre-installed Linux computers are from small local firms that are not that famous. There will also be governmental roll-outs of Linux desktops in various cities around the world. However, let's take two of the newest and most notable models of Linux pre- installed PCs that everyone is talking about.

The Asus EEE PC is a small ultra-portable laptop running Linux, the default window manager is IceWM but the 'advanced mode' is KDE. In November, Asus sold 20,000, by December, 350,000. The EEE PC is now far harder to get than a Wii. In that first article I linked to, Asus is quoted saying that it expects to sell 5 million of the little cuties in 2008.

Even cuter is the OLPC XO, it is a small laptop aimed at developing world children, it runs Fedora Linux with a custom GTK and Python-based desktop environment called Sugar. The manufacturer Quanta, is currently shipping the first million and expects to ship between 5 and 10 million overall in 2008, selling them direct to the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand and Uruguay.

If just one of these laptops does as well as they forecast, then pre- installed Desktop Linux has easily outsold Apple, and I get to laugh at my old mate Phill and he gets to buy the first pint.

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