So an extremely user-friendly, tremendously low-bar entry-level direct-to-consumer device, built primarily for easy web productivity, is outstripping a system known for its tremendous ability to intimidate the computer illiterate, in the terrain of just... surfing the web?

Simply stunning.

Wait, what about Android? Even though it runs the Linux kernel, it doesn't count as "Linux"? I guess the lesson here is that only GNU counts as Linux. Something seems confused in the terminology.

You could add in the ~1.6% that android accounts for and it would then beat the iPad.

There is no confusion. Otherwise, iOS would be grouped with OSX and all the Windows would be one long bar.

I wonder how many Linux users permanently spoof their UA to get around pointless browser sniffing? (Then again, I guess a lot of Linux users don't frequent sites with such bad coding practices.)

How is this even remotely surprising? The iPad is a popular consumer device. Only the religious Linux fanboys think that the Linux desktop has a significant market share.

We usually do a wget (http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/) like RMS. Surfing IS for iPad users. :)

He must really hate ajax.

I'm more impressed by the high XP numbers! That's some impressive staying power!

But it's the year of linux on the desktop!