Ever wonder how many people use Mac or Linux compared to Windows?

These are the most popular OS's. The percentages are what percent of users use them. By these figures, 97% of all computer users use Windows.


1. Windows XP 86.80%
2. Windows 2000 6.09%
3. Windows 98 2.68%
4. Macintosh 2.32%
5. Windows ME 1.09%
6. Linux 0.36%
7. Windows NT 0.24%
8. Macintosh Power PC 0.15%


http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=262

Well, at least more people use 98 than ME *shudders at the thought of using ME again* I'm not surprised at all.

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I think that ME was released just so they could release something. It makes me wonder what the numbers are going to look like by the end of october, though. Microsoft will be ending support on Windows 98, ME, and XP service pack 1 in October.

I know a guy who switched to Linux and loves it. Hopes to never go back. He likes to say that a software package he bought said it required Windows 98 or better...so he switched to Linux. --Steve--

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Like any OS, Linux has it's advantages. It also has plenty of disadvantages. I'd still love to see a merging...the outstanding graphics and sound of Mac, the strength of composition, compatibility, and calculation of Windows, and the current safety of Linux (until and if it starts becoming popular, making it more of a legit target for hackers.)

I don't doubt that ME was put out just to get a new one on the market. And I'm not surprised that they are ending support.

__________________
"We cannot make, nor alter, nor even imitate so much as one blade of grass that He has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily as words of man."
"We cannot serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God is that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God has made." -Thomas Paine

Of course the Macintosh OS is between the two to some degree. Technically it's a Unix core but unix and linux are pretty close. And like linux a fair bit of the Mac OS universe is open sources - even substantial parts of the OS itself. And the Mac OS has had a strong GUI layer, older than Windows in it's overall development. While originally developed by a research arm of Xerox the Mac OS was the first real implimentation of the mouse and picture screen basics of the Graphical User Interface. Quicktime is the core of Apple's GUI technology and it's multimedia strengths lends itself to many "built-in" advantages to the Macintosh GUI. On the other hand the unix core has many detailed structures and paradgms, like permissions, which readily tend to make the Mac a relatively safe and secure operating system. It's not impossible to break, nor inherently immune to the problems Windows users take for granted, but it's not just an accident that Macs don't suffer much from Viruses.

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This is absolutely true. The reason is because it ISN'T as popular. Naturally, it has nothing at all to do with the operating system, but rather that the <explitive> that create viruses go after the most popular software and operating systems far more than they do with the less popular. They want to cause as much trouble as possible, so it makes little sense in trying to crash a few hundred thousand systems when they can potentially crash millions. The same is also true of software like browsers, and is the reason that there have been so many more attacks on Internet Explorer than on FireFox...simply put, more people use IE, it isn't that FF is any safer. However, now that FF is becoming much more popular, there has been a corresponding increase in attacks. I doubt that Mac will gain a great deal of popularity, but if it ever does, there will be a corresponding increase in virus attacks on that platform. For now, though, it should be relatively safe.

Yes and no. Part of it has to do with the vulnerabilities inherent in the operating system. The Windows kernel (the core of the operating system) is very insecure, and allows any user to perform any action on the system. Vista may be more secure, but I'd have to see it.

Mac OS-X is unix at its core. Both the unix kernel and the Linux kernel were designed from the ground up to be secure. Oh, I won't claim that they're absolutely secure, but they do take a lot more work to get around the built-in nature of the operating system. That's one reason that there are far more Linux and unix servers than Windows servers (regardless of flavor) on the Internet. Windows itself is just inherently more vulnerable to attack.

Not that this is any reflection on Windows, but rather the fact that it is being used to do things it was never designed to do. It was originally intended to be a single-user operating system. It also has its root is MS-DOS, also a single-user operating system. There have been improvements, but they are mostly work-arounds that have been cobbled on to Windows over many years. Which, by the way, is why Microsoft has to issue so many system updates: there is not a single person alive--Bill Gates included--who completely knows all of the ins and outs of Windows.

As a result, updates that fix one vulnerability frequently cause, or at least highlight, others.

Both Linux and unix were designed from the ground up to be multi-user operating systems, and the both reflect that fact in their security.

But you're right in saying that part of the problem is the fact that there are simply more Windows systems out there, and so they're a more productive target.

It's also interesting to note that attacks on internet servers are generally of the Denial of Service type, which really isn't an attack on the operating system itself, but rather its inability to handle incredibly large numbers of requests for connections at one time. This is common to any operating system.

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It goes further, too. For instance, in the last couple years, there has been a 400% increase in attacks on the Mac OS. Of course, the Mac OS has always had extremely obvious security holes, but nobody much exploited them until more recently. At first glance, it would seem to defy logic, since in that same time, the number of Mac users has dwendled, and continues to drop, while the number using Windows has steadily increased. BUT (there always has to be one of those, huh?), in the same time that there have been a huge increase in attacks on the vulnerabilities of Mac, the number of attacks on Windows has also increased, so that there are still more attacks (and this includes viruses) on Windows than on Mac. Naturally, neither OS is "safe", they both have huge security holes that can be exploited. A friend of mine who for years was a hacker (now working for an intelligence agency) has long said that he'd much rather hack a Mac than a PC, because it is so much easier and quicker.

One of the big problems is that long before any OS hits the market, whether OS 9, OSX, XP, or whatever, many vulnerabilities are already known by hackers. Having worked with upper echelons of Mac support, and with the Beta program for Microsoft, the two companies handle it differently, though. MS tends to immediately let everyone know about new security holes in an OS, and to work fast and hard on patches. Apple tends to deny that any such holes exist, and eventually simply produce an OS "update" (this is one of the differences between OS 7.1, 7.5, 7.6, and 7.7, for instance.)

Basically, the difference in the two platforms has little to do with security, since they are pretty equal there, but rather that the Mac OS is much more graphically oriented. This means that for high powered graphics, like those used in Hollywood, and also with music composition, Mac can't be beat. For everything else, Windows is superior. If the two companies would stop dilly-dallying and merge, like they promised back in the 90's when MS first offered to bail Apple out, the user would be the ultimate winner.