Re: idle question about distro popularity in Japan

["Scott Robbins" <scottro@example.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Q" <jq@example.com>
To: <tlug@example.com>
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 1:17 PM
Subject: [despammed] Re: idle question about distro popularity in Japan


> Scott Robbins (scottro@example.com) wrote:
>
> > At any rate, he thought he'd seen an article saying that a particular
distro
> > of Linux was outselling MS in Japan 5 to 1 and wondered which distro it
was.
> > Does anyone know?
>
> I suspect that he may be mis-remembering a time a couple or three
> years ago when TurboLinux was outselling something (don't
> remember if it was MacOS or Windows) but this figure only
> included copies bought in stores.  It did not
> included anything that shipped pre-installed on a new
> computer.  I think it may have also been not long after
> a TurboLinux release.    Scott Stone may remember the
> exact details of that.

Right--see mine (and Simon's) later post, where I used a somewhat different
subject line.

> However, I've never heard of a
> claim that any Linux was outselling MacOS or Windows
> by 5x.  I would suspect such a thing of being a carefully
> defined statistic.

As you point out above, it had to do with retail versions bought in stores.
So that statistic would actually make sense.  One would think that the
majority of computer buyers are going to use what came on the machine that
they bought and not going to buy another copy of Win98 (which was the O/S in
question, IIRC)


Thanks
Scott Robbins