A classical trivia question: how many copies of Penguin there are out there?
 

Well, it's a DIFFICULT question.
If I had ask for Windows or Mac OS X, apart from industrial secret, it's not so an hell to answer: you count selled copies.
But Linux distribution model make it a non trivial question: you can download the kernel and make your distribution, you can modify an existing one, so many distroes are out there to consolidate data, and if you burn a copy of your Penguin for aunt Chessy, no NSA agent will knock at your door.
But, wanna we try the same and extimate? :)
Kisses,

Nat

More every day. That's enough information for me.. :)

LOL :)
Well, b0uncer, be an angel, a friend of mine is doing a school research.... don't you believe it quite a shame to assign a research it resembles a telequiz? ;)

Not really a shame, this research project will get someone to look at all the different flavours, and hopefully look deeper into their differences, i wish i had projects like that when i was at college.

I dont think you can put an accurate count on it, because you'd have to count every distro ever, since some may still be in service. A good guestimate, and citing the most popular ones would be your best bet

or you can just be lazy and use the linux counter numbers http://counter.li.org/

Good URL! :)
But, don't you believe that number is underestimate?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Here :
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Linux is about 3.5% of the total number of connections in August, 2006.
If you know the number of windows XP computer (75.2%), you can estimate the number of linux computers with this rule :
linux computers = windows computers * 3.5 / 75.2

Roughly, there are 20 Windows computers for one linux computer. Weird, isn't it?

Without a doubt. For instance, linuxquestions.org itself has more registered users than the Linux Counter site.