According to the Q2 2007 Jon Peddie Workstation Report, AMD is still struggling with a minority market share, Dell is still on top, and Hewlett-Packard is still the number two workstation manufacturer. Buried in the details, though, is something more interesting: Dell is also the number one Linux workstation manufacturer.

According to Jon Peddie senior analyst Alex Herrerra, it's difficult to track workstation operating system use because the OS installed by the client doesn't always match what was shipped by the manufacturer. "But our data is pretty solid, showing that Linux has grown to about 15% over time and in the past 2 years pretty much held there," he said.

So about 15% of the workstation market is comprised of Linux machines -- far more than the barely traceable number of Linux desktop computers. Oddly, all workstation manufacturers seem to have grown in chorus. "No one workstation vendor seems to have benefited dramatically more or less with the growth of Linux, though (anecdotally) white boxes would presumably have a much higher penetration of Linux. Among Tier 1 vendors, the share of Linux doesn't vary much from vendor to vendor, though interestingly, Dell appears to sell more workstations with Linux than other vendors (more like 20% Linux)."

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