Many Linux users are geeks, and vice versa, and geeks can build their own systems or at least install an OS, so why should we buy systems with Linux pre-installed? Why is it so important if the OS is free? Let’s talk about a little thing called “market share.”

It seems like almost every day someone in the tech press or someone commenting in a technical forum will claim that Linux adoption on the desktop (including laptops) is insignificant. The number that is thrown around is 1%.

August has arrived. Time for a browser market share update. There is quite a bit of news this month, which, depending on your view, can be modified in virtually any direction you prefer. Microsoft likes the version in which IE has gained market share and pushed back Firefox and Chrome.

Data by web metrics firm Net Applications shows that while both Windows and Mac OS lost usage share in May, Linux made a small gain.

Alright - enough speculation and assumptions, lets look at some cold hard numbers. Two recent games that had successful Linux ports would be 2DBoys World of Goo and Frictional Games enumbra Series. 2DBoy reported that since they released their Linux port of the game 10% of their total game sales have been for the Linux platform.

Using flawed and partly Microsoft-funded numbers, the advocates of proprietary software beg to suggest that GNU/Linux is declining (which it's not)

What would you say if you heard that OpenOffice.org had an impressive 22% share of the market? It does, in Poland and the Czech Republic. ... The method used was to examine fonts installed on systems to identify various office suites.

Android will trail only Symbian in mobile phone market share by 2013, according to IDC. Android phones such as the pictured Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, which is now heading for NTT DoCoMo, will grow 150.4 percent to 68.0 million units by 2013, but other Linux-based phones will struggle, says IDC.