Red Hat General Manager Max McLaren has told IT Brief that the company has the fastest growing operating system in the world.

“We are the fastest growing operating system in the world today,” he said during a recent company update.

When asked to back up his claim with official figures, McLaren said that “exact numbers are always difficult to keep pace with, but if you look at IDC we’re probably about 15-20% of the server operating market.”

He continued, “Microsoft is by far the biggest and Unix is bigger than us. But ever since I’ve been at Redhat, which is the last five years, we’ve been outpacing the growth of Unix in particular because we’re taking most of that Unix business to Linux, but also outpacing the growth of Microsoft.”

McLaren said that the growth of Red Hat was a factor in Microsoft’s decision to buy Novell but “it hasn’t worked”.

“The irony is that Linux is growing faster than the market and we’re the predominant player in the Linux market, so by definition we’re growing faster than those other server operating markets,” he said.