Saturday, March 7, 2026

Penetration of Linux Desktop and Statistics

 Monday, January 8, 2024
Penetration of Linux Desktop and Statistics

Reproduction but contents are not valid but higher.

Nobody is sure how many are exactly using Linux worldwide but guesstimate is 1% of the computer users.

This is excluding Linux servers which is in the majority in all the spheres including Science.

This statement is related to desktop users.

I am urging all the people using Linux desktop to register at the www.distrowatch.com.

Global census is mandatory to see what the exact penetration is.

The fact of the matter is millions of users are out there but getting them registered in one site is humanly impossible but if a cross section of them register a reasonable guess work estimate can be arrived at.

I use several machines and a laptop with Linux on board with number of distributions (some for testing and some for my work) but I registered once with my regular machine.

My wife uses another Linux machine which is not registered and my daughter uses both Microsoft and Linux. 
Our household is not a typical one but I would rather reflect (not that it matters a lot statistically) an average family where husband or wife uses Linux and the other half uses Microsoft.

Current statistics is very interesting.

In a 20 million population of Ceylon only 133 machines are  registered currently (178 out of 224 countries).

In a 1.2 billion population 2340 Indian are registered from India (208 out of 224 countries).

Monaco with 1113 comes 5th out of 224 one of the richest private cities in the world.

Vatican city comes 6th with 26 Linux machines
.

I won't talk about any any Buddhist international Institutions in Ceylon.

I know of one Buddhist monk (who comes from Sweden) who is involved in getting the Pali  (Buddha's Language of use) Unicode into Linux.

That's all.

What about Singapore?

119th with 150 machines.

No   Country

Pers      Current    Mach      P/Mpop     Mpop

103

US United States Of America       15555    133           21367     51.2            303 millions

Tanzania, North Korea, Myanmar, Ethiopia and Nigeria come last 5 (five) and Japan, Bangladesh and Pakistan behind them.

This is revealing.

That is a big puzzle for me where Indian institutes boast that they produce lot of technocrats including Linux for  India and for the West.

That argument evaporate into thin air statistically.

Somebody from India should do a study on this.

I will talk about Ceylon why we are way behind in this race.

I will start with a real story.

Way back in 1984 when I came back from England with Two computers one
Atari and the other Compact 128, I happened to visit the college where I studied celebrating its 100th year in existence.

The principal was futuristic and asked me what we should do and I promptly  said we will establish
a computer unit and I told him I will get a few computers from England.

With the help of some of
our old college guys in UK I manged to get the first 3 computers myself. Then the ambassador of UK was from our college and coordinating the thing was just a matter of few phone calls.

This was done without any government help
.

Some years later I visited the college and the principal was different and I met him and told him, I would like to see the computer unit.

I did not tell him that the early conceptual idea of starting the computer unit was mine and I physically brought the first three computers.

I just wanted see how those old computers were used and what new ones they  have added (
this was before windows 95).

I was sent from  pillar to post.

First to Vice Principal, then to another teacher and another and nobody was of any help and
I could not get the room opened where the computers were locked in
.

In my mind I had decided I will not visit it again
This is the type of teachers we have here and we did not have a computer course till 2 years ago.

That speaks volumes of the Education Ministers, too. 
Anyway I joined a private hospital in Colombo where I worked with 6 programmers and we got Unix from Singapore and used it there in dumb or black and white terminals and got the network running for the first time in Ceylon.

Then within six months I joined the university and was very much involved with computers (a new hospital was built with Japanese aid) till I stepped down to  devote full time to Linux.

Why we are behind in Linux?

1. We use pirated copies even in Universities.

2.
We teach them in Sinhala or Tamil and they cannot read a book on computers in English.

3. We have not trained teachers in English and IT (computer science) for over 30 years.

4.
If somebody has a good idea all the other teachers come and destroy  that somebody (person) first and then the idea.

5. Our administrators including principals takes bribes to admit students with the help of some powerful politicians.

6. Politicians use teachers for political work and sometimes even malpractices at polling stations.

7. Only corrupt teachers get promoted and stay in one station till life.

8. Most evident corrupt practice is to not to teach during school hours but  to do private tuition after hours.

9. Even our professors are paid half what is paid in India.

10. Next round is to destroy the higher education and install private universities.

That is why we have only 133 guys using Linux Boxes in the entire country.

I am not at all surprised.

Very simple explanation.

We have got our priorities wrong.

Now few words about E-commerce in Ceylon.

We have Electricity Board, Water Board and Telecom fully digitalized and
none of them can give an accurate bill or balance sheet on the last day of the month.

I have personal experience that computer programmers fiddle with the data and produce inaccurate reports.

There is some sort of racket going on with money matters and the higher authorities neither have vigilance, know how and the necessary apparatus to make investigations.

The programmers themselves do what the teachers do kill the person first
and the idea of check and balances that needs to be installed next.

When I was in the private sector there were over 100 computer mistakes  I manually detected daily including wrong blood groups and wrong blood transfusions out of over 1000 (over 10% error which is not acceptable when working with computers) reports  and my target was to make zero defect (Quality Control).

This malady has now infiltrated the private sector too.

That is why when I do shopping check every computer entry which I ask every intelligent customer should do.

My final analysis is that we a mathematically stupid nation run by mathematically stupid Central Bank who runs the affairs in a very ordinary manner without check and balances and let the country taken to ransom by speculators, hedgers and IMF  and is equally very good at  printing various colored notes with politicians face on them and cost of printing is far in excess of the face value of the currency note.

If we wean off these malpractices we would be able pay economic professors 3 to 4 times the current pay so that they are also not involved in corrupt practices. 

Linux Reproduction for Posterity

Saturday, July 30, 2011
Monday, October 5, 2020
Linux Reproduction for Posterity
Updating My Laptop with some editing
I must tell you after preparing the 15 partitions booting four Linux images it took little over 2 and a half hours. 
 
Pinguy Linux took little longer and 20 minutes extra since I had to install Dropbox and I was connected to the Internet.
 
Half and hour is all that is required to install Linux.

1.Knoppix DVD was the quickest.
2. Then Vinux
3, Then Sabayon
4. Pinguy took one hour and one can cut it down to half an hour if you do not tick updates from Internet and third party software like Flash and Mpeg.
To be honest I had made a mistake in the night by inadvertently using its home partition (wrong numbering of partitions) for Sabayon and I had to redo all including repartitioning to correct order and numbering sequence for me to remember by heart and I finished in less than two hours.
This would go as the quickest update under one day (24 hours) while doing lot of other things including taking my son out for meal who has high degree of visual handicap and sat with him with Vinux after returning home
He of course picked up the finer points in no time and by the time I returned having attended  to Internet cables I had pulled out accidentally while configuring the laptop.
In fact, that took longer than the installation since I had to check all the cables and make sure my download work continued (it broke twice yesterday) and listen to BBC cricket on radio while doing all this.
 
Since PCLinux 64 bits version is not there I am going to install Debian and leave two partition free for it for future day.

Beauty is that the GRUB file/s of each distributions is / are now compatible it does not matter in what order I install them.

That also saved lot of time.

In other words it is going to inhabit 6 distributions with all the utilities I used in various combinations.

I have not installed ArtistX or AVLinux since I have no time for graphic work now but I have their images in my collection if any of my friends need them to be installed.

Laptop is a showpiece but my real workhorses are old I.B.Ms which run almost 24 hours everyday downloading various images I test on daily basis but that exercise is going to end very soon.

I was waiting for the PCLinux2011 64 bits Version but it was never coming and decided to upgrade my laptop with a bigger hard disk which are becoming cheaper by the day.

The steps are 

1. Remove the battery.

2. Remove the Hard disk.

3. Fixed the new Hard Disk and place the old one on a portable mini USB bay/tray enclosure.

4. Use Gparted to partition the new hard disk (15 partition restriction applies  for SATA Hard Drives).

5. Install Knoppix 10 the anniversary edition. 
No problem.

6. Install Pinguy. 
No problem with GRUB and detects Knoppix but painfully slow when updating on line.

7. Install Dropbox in about 5 minutes.

8. Install Sabayon 6 with no problem and it detects both Knoppix and Pinguy. 
 
No problem with XBMC media center and mouse does not freeze.

9. Boot up Pinguy and let Dropbox synchronizes and me go to sleep and it is 6 am in the morning.

10. Test the USB Hard Disk and boots up OK but slow and my data in old hard is intact. 
 
All these without paying any ransom to Microsoft and now I have 7 operating systems 4 on the old disk 3 on the new one with another  7 partitions left for install.
 
Two for Linux Image Storage in NTFS partition and three for Debian Sinhala another three for PCLinux 64 bits when it comes and I still have another partition for testing new Linux distribution and a FAT partition for posterity but sometimes destructive for some Linux distributions with my oversight might make me to reinstall all in one night of hectic work and the whole Saturday for me to  go into sleep mode and have a couple of dreams for Maha Brahma.
 
Please note that installing was done in the night only because out Telecom's download is painfully slow for on line updates (takes ages if done during day time) in day time and all Ceylonese including doctors on duty sleeping except poor Interns who have poor diagnostic skills.
 
Please do not get sick at night because we do not have ambulances to take you to a hospital and the ambulance drivers also prefer a good night sleep. 
 
Then you might wonder me keeping up all night. 
 
Well I had to keep all night up when I was on call abroad often working for three others and patient prefer coming to me at night since I used to solve problems those GPs took ages to give an appointment let alone solve.

Those nightly habits are a bonus when one deals with computing in Linux, not that Linux gives problems but often due to human errors like installing a root partition on some other distribution's home partition due to wrong numbering of the partition table.