How much of the world's software is written for PC?

As opposed to Mac, Linux, Unix, etc.

That’s impossible to answer exactly, in a quantitative way. Mac’s are the 2nd closest competitor to PC’s, and they have about a 3% market share. Considering Linux and the rest have even less, you can assume that the vast majority of software is written for PC’s, roughly 95 percent. I’m assuming the amount of software written is related to market share though.

In terms of numbers installed, embedded microcontrollers far outnumber PC’s or Macs.

These are the processors found in everything from toasters and microwave ovens, through automobiles, to the Space Shuttle. They are often very simple by modern standards, based on something like the 8-bit 8051 or Microchip PIC processors. However, there are billions of units out there, and every single one of them runs “software”. This is usually written in assembly language or a very simple implementation of C. In many cases, there is no recognizable “Operating System” since the application is unique.

If you count “per installation”, the vast majority of software runs on embedded systems, and would be almost unrecognizable to most PC or Mac applications programmers.

Of course, if you are only talking about consumer desktop and laptop applications, you can limit yourself largely to the standard Microsoft / Linux / Apple debate.

However, if your talking about unique lines of code, I’m guessing PC’s still come out ahead against embedded stuff.

Even though 95% of the market is using PC’s, it doesnt mean 95% of code is PC. I would estimate that PC’s might have 20 - 30 times the number unique lines of code that macs do. and maybe 5 times as much as Linux. Probably about even with *nix.

aeropl wrote

Well…

According to IDC, in 2003 here’s how new server installations went:
Linux 22.4%
Microsoft 55%
Many argue that in fact Linux was much higher, since it isn’t licensed, and therefore not tightly tracked.
source: http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/linux/2003/1020linux2.html

In number of web servers currently on the Internet, the numbers for November 2003 go:
Apache (likely (but not necessarily) Linux): 64.6%
Microsoft 23.5%
SunOne 3.5%
source: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_survey.html

Hey, let’s not forget all the code that is written for mainframes and other big servers that do most of the number crunching in the business world. According to this research paper there were between 150 and 175 billion lines of COBOL in production worldwide in 2002 with the number expected to increase.

This page also has some interesting data, and compares the number of COBOL programmers to the number of JAVA programmers worldwide. It says that 30 billion transactions are executed daily on COBOL, which is supposedly more than on the whole WorldWideWeb.

So if you ask me, I would say there is more code written for mainframes (CICS, COBOL, etc.) than any other chip architecture or OS.

My first post failed so Mycroft beat me to it. There’s tons of ‘invisible’ commercial code running on IBM or *nix servers.
Where I work (a software house) non of our products is tied to MS based PCs (at the moment at least). Most customers run *nix servers and client machines can be anything. But you don’t see our software on the shelves at PC World.

If you really want to count, you have to decide what to count. Does each individual utility count as a separate program even though it’s considered part of the operating system? That is, does each of the GNU apps count as an individual program on a Linux system? Does Gnome or KDE count on Linux since they’re separate and optional, but the Windows windowing system doesn’t because it’s built in?

Does custom software count even if it’s only implemented on a handful of machines? Does every custom admin script whipped up in Perl or Python count? Does a web application count even though it’s only installed on one machine? If a J2EE web app uses a Linux web server, Windows middleware for business logic and a mainframe data store, how does it count?

My PDA and cellphone each has dozens of different apps running for address books, calendars, games, etc. Do they count separately, or do only the ones I installed individually count as separate from the original OS?

The OP’s question is much too broad. If you can limit your interest to commerically-available software or some other generalization then it might be answerable.

It’s also sometimes ambiguous what platform a program is written for. For instance: I’ve written a variety of programs for use in my research. I wrote, compiled, and ran them on a Mac, using gcc, a typically Unix compiler. But I could copy the source code to any computer with an ANSI C compiler, without making any changes at all to the source code, and compile and run it on that computer just as easily as on my Mac. So is that software written for a Mac? If I did move it to a PC and compile it there, would it then also count as software written for a PC, even though I didn’t do any more “writing”? What about a software company producing some program, which they intend to sell for PC, Mac, and Linux… They’re likely to have the bulk of the code in common, with only a few incidentals (probably involving the interface) which vary for the different platforms. Do you just count the platform-specific interfaces, or the whole thing?

ARRRRGGGGHHHH!

Linux runs on PCs. Unix runs on PCs. Mac OS run on Apple machines. Windows runs on PCs.

As phrased, Linux counts as running on PCs - then you turn around and seperate it out like it doesn’t run on PCs.

Linux also runs on embedded systems, on PDAs, on telephones, on mainframes, on Apple PPC systems, and on a shit load of other systems.

Please note PC does not equal Windows.

Just to complicate things further, remember that some software can be compiled to run on other platforms, with little or no change. For example, because MacOS X is based on BSD Unix, it is fairly trivial to compile most mainframe UNIX programs and Linux programs to run on it. The newest version of MacOS X, 10.3 (Panther), even has the X11 windowing system built-in, so GUI-based UNIX/Linux software is even more readily available.

Besides, sheer number of titles/applications doesn’t mean much – what does it mean to say “Windows has more programs for it” when that includes stuff like Redneck Rampage and E-Z CD Label Creator?