Abstract

Operating System Software (OSS) had been rated with different yardsticks. However, this study had used new yardsticks. The yardsticks were estimated total software download and the Internal Software Download Error (ISDE) based on how these OSS visit the SourceForge Online Software Repository (OSR). The six OSS were Windows, Linus, Macintosh, Android, BSD and Solaris OSS. Two-phase sampling estimation method was used while the software download size based on the OSS type was used as the study variable (y) while the software filesize was used as the auxiliary variable(x). It was discovered that 70.51, 8.20, 6.30, 0.77, 0.08 and 0.04% FOSS were downloaded by Windows, Linux, Macintosh, Android, BSD and Solaris, respectively from the sourceforge OSR. Based on the computed percentage of total software download by the six OSS on the repository, Windows, Linux, Macintosh, Android, BSD and Solaris OSS were rated as first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh most used OSS, respectively. The computed Percentage Coefficient of Variation (PCV) was used to examine the ISDE of FOSS on these OSS. Based on the ISDE, Windows, Linux, Macintosh, Android, BSD and Solaris were rated as first, fourth, fifth, seventh, second and third, respectively. It was concluded that Windows was the most used and the most consistently used OSS. It was recommended that Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) developers should invest into the development of FOSS that use Windows while FOSS developers for other OSS should invest more into aggressive online marketing and promotion of such application software after development.