🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <evrd18.9r.ln@brough>, Colin Brough <cmb@brough.localdomain>
writes
>I know, I know, one of those unanswerable questions...
>
>But I got to wondering, is there any way anyone could find out (or at
>least give a justifiable estimate)? Could an ISP, for instance, tell
>whether you were connecting using Linux? Is there anything in the PPP
>negotiation phase that could tell you? What about approximating by
>looking at some particular application type, for instance e-mail's
>sent - could mailer logs be used to identify OS type? (eg, I use
>sendmail, and looking at the sendmail logs I see that my ISP
>identifies itself as using exim as MTA; does sendmail identify itself
>to exim in return? Do Windows or Mac mail clients? If so, could an
>ISP do something like:
>
>   if (sendmail || other Linux MTA)
>   {
>        LinuxUser++;
>   }
>   else if (MS Outlook || other Windows client)
>   {
>        WindowsUser++;
>   }
>   else
>   {
>        MacUser++;
>   }
>
>...)
>
>I suppose its mainly idle curiosity, but it might be the kind of
>information that could be used for advocacy - "Not only is Linux more
>reliable, technically suitable for this application, but there are
>also XXX thousand people using it in the UK/connecting to our ISP with
>it/etc..."
>
>Any thoughts would be interesting!!
>
>Cheers
>
>Colin
>
>ps Remove 'REMOVE.' from Reply-To field to reply.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Colin Brough                               Colin.Brough@btinternet.com


Sorry, but my modem (like so many other users') doesn't seem to work
under Linux and I can't afford to buy another modem at the moment,
especially as I'm moving soon, so I always connect using Windows '98! In
that case, how could anyone tell I was a Linux user? 
-- 
Paul Brown