How Do Open Source Installations Compare by Operating System?

  

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[From the Open Source Census August newsletter.]

In the previous newsletter we looked at the breakdown of Linux Distributions. Many people have since asked us how open source software compares across different operating systems like Linux, Windows, and Mac, so we decided to take a look at the average number of open source packages found by operating system. As expected, Linux (an open source operating system) had the most with an average of 87 instances of open source found per scanned system. FreeBSD (also open source) was a close second at 81, but Mac wasn't far behind with 75. Judging by the large number of Macs seen at open source conferences like OSCON and LinuxWorld, there are probably a lot of Mac users who are open source fans.

Windows, although not open source, still had a respectable amount of installed open source software, with an average of 39 instances per scanned system. The number is probably lower than those for open source operating systems simply because there are already proprietary solutions included with Windows. So, in response to questions about whether open source software is found on Windows systems, the answer is definitely yes!