While the Linux Foundation's third annual desktop Linux survey doesn't officially end until November 30, almost 20,000 users have already filled out this year's poll and the Foundation has decided to provide an early look at the results.
The survey found that 68.4 percent of Linux desktops are deployed in home office and small business settings with less than a hundred PCs, while medium-sized businesses (101 to 500 PCs) accounted for 9.7 percent and large businesses (1,001 to 5,000 PCs) 6.2 percent. In those businesses running Linux desktops, however, Windows maintained its dominance with around 59.6 percent running Microsoft's OS on more than half of their machines, while some 39.5 percent of respondents claimed to use Linux on more than half of their machines.
In terms of preferred distribution, Ubuntu led the pack in both office and home environments with 54.1% and 55.4% respectively. Other popular choices on the business front include Red Hat and SUSE Linux, while Debian and Gentoo are popular picks among home users. You can check out other preliminary results here.