> my wife writes her essay on product and promotion relationship > on a freely chosen subject and she chose Linux. Specifically, > she would like to select one version of a distribution and collect > sales or download statistics during its lifetime. Is it possible > to find such info about e.g. Red Hat Linux 9? It's old enough, > it has reached EOL officially. Or about a later community distribution, > such a Fedora Core 3, which is also EOL. I'd expect that sales information for FC3 would be almost entirely useless since it was not a "commercial" product. For RHL9, my gues is probably 10% of usage was bought or downloaded from RedHat itself and the rest was copied or on mirrors. There are some surveys that might give you some information. E.g.: http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2127420238.html The uptake of Linux reminds of a scene in Frank Herbert's "Dune". At one point they are debating just how many Fremen are on Arrakis. The problem is that they're all in the deep desert, not likely to participate in any census, and seem to be multiplying out of sight. That their numbers were grossly underestimated by the powers-in-charge was no surprise. :D -- * The Digital Hermit http://www.digitalhermit.com * Unix and Linux Solutions kwan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
