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openSUSE Survey Results Online

Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri May 04, 2007 11:36 PM
from the liars-damn-liars-and-statisticians dept.
Businesses SuSE Software Linux
apokryphos writes "openSUSE have announced that the results from the openSUSE survey (PDF) are now online. The survey was live for almost 3 months and more than 27,000 users participated, making it one of the largest Linux distribution surveys ever."
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[+] OpenSuSE to Release Linux Distro for Educators 51 comments
christian.einfeldt writes "The next version of openSUSE, due out in the fall, will include an add-on CD optimized for educators. According to the Education section of the openSUSE wiki, the openSUSE community sees the add-on as a way to make it easy for school administrators to create both networked systems and stand-alone desktops for teachers and students. To tailor the add-on CD to the needs of educators, the openSUSE community is asking educators and technologists to submit their software successes, applications used, and 'HOW-TOs' for writing applications and using applications. Dubbed the SLEDucator, the package collection is being included as an add-on, as opposed to a new distro or a fork."
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  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hemogoblin (982564) on Friday May 04 2007, @11:44PM (#18999087)
    I RTFA and even RTF-PDF, but I still don't know the point of this survey. For what purpose was it administered? As far as I can tell, it simply collected the characteristics of people who use openSUSE. Is some organization going to be using these results for something?

  • Luckily (Score:5, Funny)

    by Propaganda13 (312548) on Friday May 04 2007, @11:47PM (#18999097)
    OpenSuse user base doesn't reflect the world. Otherwise, only 2% of the population would be female.
    • If they would talk to me, I would happily agree with those odds, but in the real world, none come down to my moms basement where I live.

  • KDE vs Gnome (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eklitzke (873155) on Friday May 04 2007, @11:48PM (#18999109) Homepage
    I know that Suse has long been a KDE-oriented distribution, but I was still surprised to see such a high percentage of respondents who used it. When I started using Linux several years ago, it seemed that most users were running KDE, but lately with the huge success of Gnome and Gnome-origented distributions, I was expecting to see a higher adoption rate of Gnome (yes, even among Suse users).

    Also, did anyone else think it was weird that among all the questions asked, they neglected to ask what geographic region respondents were from?

    • Re:KDE vs Gnome (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thatshawnguy (1096811) on Friday May 04 2007, @11:52PM (#18999145)

      Also, did anyone else think it was weird that among all the questions asked, they neglected to ask what geographic region respondents were from?
      Because "In my parent's basement" can't be found on a map.

    • Re:KDE vs Gnome (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WindBourne (631190) on Friday May 04 2007, @11:57PM (#18999181) Journal
      Considering that GNOME is the default on suse, it is amazing. It looks like the more that the distros push GNOME, they more that they shoot themselves in the foot. Hopefully, this survey will stop that crap, but I am guessing that Novell will disregard this part.

      • Re:KDE vs Gnome (Score:5, Informative)

        by sjbcfh (611594) on Saturday May 05 2007, @12:23AM (#18999331)
        Considering that GNOME is the default on suse, it is amazing.

        Gnome is the default selection for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, but only in that the radio button for Gnome is preselected, rather than that for KDE. KDE is still the default selection for openSUSE.

      • the more that the distros push GNOME, they more that they shoot themselves in the foot

        Ubuntu's Gnome foot (Gnome logo pun intended) looks pretty good so far.

        I was an avid KDE user, used it exclusively on Redhat, Mandriva then SuSE. When I switched to Ubuntu, I promptly added the Kubuntu metapackage to get my KDE back. But then, after playing with a 1001 configuration preferences in KDE I wanted to revert back some settings, it took me a very long time to find them.

        Eventually I came to the seemingly p

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by phrasebook (740834)
          But then, after playing with a 1001 configuration preferences in KDE I wanted to revert back some settings, it took me a very long time to find them.

          Name them. Go on, I dare you.

          Refer to one of my earlier posts [slashdot.org] if you need some help.
          • The option that always pisses me off is the one that allows you to change from 'single-click activate' to 'double-click activate'. I end up looking through all the various "Look & Feel" panels to no avail. (Yes, I know where the option is, but I have to hunt for it every time.)

            The main problem, to me, is that KDE doesn't differentiate between per-user and system-wide System Settings, but the labels imply that it does. "Personal" and "Look & Feel" are obviously per-user, and "Computer Administration"

            • The option that always pisses me off is the one that allows you to change from 'single-click activate' to 'double-click activate'. I end up looking through all the various "Look & Feel" panels to no avail. (Yes, I know where the option is, but I have to hunt for it every time.)

              It took me 10 seconds to find, even though I didn't know it was there. How? Open KControl. Type "double" in the search bar. Select the first suggestion.

              Of course, this wouldn't work with the awful, awful configuration dialog that Kubuntu supplies. Deinstall it, it is not worth the bytes on your harddrive. I hear it is a clone from the Mac; if so I pity the Mac people for yet another reason.

              The main problem, to me, is that KDE doesn't differentiate between per-user and system-wide System Settings, but the labels imply that it does. "Personal" and "Look & Feel" are obviously per-user, and "Computer Administration" implies to me that those are system-wide. In reality, it's a mish-mash of the two. This is an important distinction for me, as my wife and I both use the same computer with different profiles.

              That's a good point. Is there a bug report on this on the bug tracker [kde.org]? Of course, you can infer it from the questio

              • " I hear it is a clone from the Mac; if so I pity the Mac people for yet another reason."

                OS X's "System Preferences" dialogue has a search bar that works extremely well: it not only drops down a list of "hits", but highlights the applet(s) containing each term as one moves through them, and will take users to the correct page of the relevant applet when a term is selected. The Kubuntu configuration system you are describing is not therefore a clone of the Mac one, irrespective of what you may have heard.
          • As a presumed KDE user you should be the one naming them and listing why would every single user need to have that particular option. I on the other hand, don't use KDE anymore, I forgot all the options as I don't have to worry about remembering them .
      • Considering that GNOME is the default on suse, it is amazing. It looks like the more that the distros push GNOME, they more that they shoot themselves in the foot. Hopefully, this survey will stop that crap, but I am guessing that Novell will disregard this part.

        Obviously, Novell pushes Gnome because Novell does not have nearly the same level of control of KDE as they do of Gnome, where a number of Gnome poster boys are on payroll. Ahem, and it is no exaggeration that Microsoft is now paying part of those
      • Uh. The reason it is default is because they want to take as many steps away as possible for the SLES and SLED version.

        It is only default. If you wish, you can still install KDE, XFCE, Windowmaker or whatever you like. You can even make your own SUSE based distribution [opensuse.org] for your company, including your own logo's and software (Eat that RedHat and CentOSS)

        Also openSUSE still leaves you the choice as what you want to install.

        So So saying that Novell is pushing GNOME is mere FUD. I would say they worked hard to

        • Re:KDE vs Gnome (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2007, @01:37AM (#18999617)
          There is, as far as I can tell, only one place in the world where GNOME is more popular than KDE, and that is, surprise surprise, on the Ubuntu Forums [ubuntuforums.org]. Everywhere else, KDE appears to lead my a margin of roughly 2:1. In particular, it is a consistent winner of the LinuxQuestions Members Choice awards [linuxquestions.org]. It's also very popular on the desktops of European government [europa.eu], being used on 10.2% of desktops, compared to GNOME's 5.5% (see page 29).

          It always saddens me to see the Big Distros rallying around GNOME and pouring funds into it as I've always viewed Open Source as a meritocracy, whereas the decision to back GNOME development is quite clearly not based on its merits (or at least, not its technical ones), nor even, clearly, on what the end users want. It also strikes me as a terrible waste of resources: GNOME's shaky technical base and general bureaucratic attitude means that even though money is thrown at it, nothing ever seems to get done, with GNOME's busiest days barely matching [cia.vc] KDE's laziest, while the KDE team are completely shaking up the code and architecture of their massive [blogspot.com] code-base on a shoestring. A real shame, but - c'est la vie, I guess!

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by lattyware (934246)
            I'm sorry, but GNOME is important. I have friends, they will run a GNOME distro, but not a KDE one. KDE is harder, and ugly as hell. Note that I run KDE myself, because the software and configurability is better, but to most end users GNOME is way more attractive and easier to use. GNOME will be the desktop of choice for the linux masses if the day ever comes, KDE will remain the power-users desktop, as far as I can see.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by hclyff (925743)

                I think the difference between KDE and Gnome can be explained sufficiently well by two screenshots, taken from random places on the web.

                Copying a CD with KDE [plainblack.com]

                Copying a CD with Gnome [launchpad.net]

                I don't see much explanatory value in talk about "power users". That I am an expert on speech recognisers does not make me want to manipulate zillions of settings when I'm burning a CD. I have better things to do. KDE is not the desktop of choice for "power users", but for people with too much time on their hands.

                Nice generalizations you have there. What do you do when you know your CD is scratched and won't copy using the default settings? What do you do when you have to leave in 5 minutes and need to quickly copy a CD directly from one drive to another (on-the-fly)? If your answer is 'I wouldn't know how to do these anyway', you can hardly call yourself a power user. And in either case, you can always ignore the extra settings.

                Come to think of it, that's exactly the psychological profile of the average Slashdot reader!

                Yes, because IT people are generally known to have lots of free time.

          • Re:KDE vs Gnome (Score:5, Insightful)

            by dalutong (260603) <<djtansey> <at> <gmail.com>> on Saturday May 05 2007, @04:16AM (#19000135)
            You talk about the open source value of meritocracy. I agree that it is an important value. But it is a value for "consumers" to consider, not Novell (the parent company of SuSE and Ximian.) If people were supposed to only support the development of the better software, then there would only be one choice out there. So I don't think it undermines the value of having a meritocracy to have companies fund alternative environments.

            Just as an aside, you say that the "Big Distros" rally behind GNOME. That's just false. Until relatively recently, Red Hat was the only Big Distro to come with GNOME as default. They have to consider their interests in doing such: they have been using GNOME for a long time and probably care more about familiarity and consistency than about which environment is better.

            You also mention the Ubuntu forums. Ubuntu uses GNOME as a default and is the most popular linux distribution out there. Couldn't that be evidence that people like GNOME? Or are the statistics only worthwhile when they support your desktop environment?

            I started using GNOME way back when there was still a substantive debate regarding which was truly free software. Miguel de Icaza was, at least in my young eyes at the time, one of Free Software's champions. I remember Antitrust's scene where you can see GNOME on the computer. All of those associations, basic familiarity, and the fact that my concept of the desktop matured while using GNOME have caused me to stick with it.

            I won't disparage KDE; I simply don't know enough to do so. I just don't see the value in arguing that GNOME shouldn't be supported.

            • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward
              First of all, thanks for the level-headed and fair post: reading my own, I think now that it was rather flame-baity, and I'm glad you responded civilly :)

              You talk about the open source value of meritocracy. I agree that it is an important value. But it is a value for "consumers" to consider, not Novell (the parent company of SuSE and Ximian.) If people were supposed to only support the development of the better software, then there would only be one choice out there. So I don't think it undermines the val

          • Oh yeah -- and of course KDE is getting more commits, etc, than GNOME. They are between major version numbers; GNOME isn't.
    • I've long thought that distros generally prefer GNOME (probably for license and looks-better-out-of-the-box reasons) but users have different criteria about desktop environment choices (looks better after tweaking, does everything you want, fast, and otherwise remains very much out of your way, etc). It is interesting that distros and users should have wants driving them to opposite choices, though, and probably goes to show that Linux has already spread far, far beyond the demographic of geeks that take pa
  • The survey data isn't really telling us anything we don't know already about linux users. Linux users are technophiles who still cannot accomplish everything without having to resort to a command line. This means that linux ain't ready for the Windoze using masses. Almost all of you are men, which makes me feel left out again. Many of the applications that linux is deployed in, even in the home, are still not the primary workstation type-uses - router, firewall, web server, print server. You download

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by sqrt(2) (786011)
      Have you tried Ubuntu? It's probably the most refreshing experience with Linux I've ever had, everything really is done just as well if not better than with Windows. That's not to say that it doesn't have it's hiccups every now and then, but honestly so does Windows. I'm probably more capable of fixing problems on Windows, but the support from the experienced Ubuntu user base is amazing, and fast.

    • Re:It's bigger but it's not new (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kebes (861706) on Saturday May 05 2007, @12:21AM (#18999311) Journal

      who still cannot accomplish everything without having to resort to a command line
      Hold on a second... where are you drawing that conclusion from? Is it because 64% of respondents answered "Yes" to the question "Do you use non-graphical tools when installing or administering your Linux operating system?" ??

      I don't think that's the correct conclusion to draw. The 64% merely shows that alot of Linux users prefer the commandline, because it is quite powerful and efficient. If anything, the fact that 36% of users are able to install software and administer their box without ever touching the commandline is evidence that you don't need to touch the commandline in a modern Linux distro. (Unless you think that 36% of openSUSE users never install software or make changes to their system?)

      I agree that many Linux users are technophiles and love the commandline (I know I do), but in a modern Linux distro, there are graphical tools to do just about everything. So can we stop propagating the myth that only UNIX-gurus can run Linux?
      • >64% merely shows that alot of Linux users prefer the commandline, because it is quite powerful and efficient.

        Note that it can be because the commandline is efficient or because the GUI tools provided by the distribution sucks: a long time ago, Mandrake's upgrade tool was quite good in the commandline version, but the corresponding GUI shell sucked big time, which made me loose quite some time because while the GUI was easy to find, its commandline counterpart was "hidden"..
      • > Hold on a second... where are you drawing that conclusion from?

        Well me personally I would take it from experience. It has come a long way but there are still a lot of things that require you to have some knowledge of the command line to get it working at all.

        It is quite annoying and it will turn off the non-tech savvy user.

        Saying there is graphical options to do things as well doesn't always mean it is easier. For example I have openSuse and I had to change network settings. Did I use the icon in the s
      • For me it is the right tool at the right time. Some times I edit files directly with vi. Other times I use the YaST GUI.. It is as if you ask a carpenter what he uses, a hammer or a screwdriver.

        They are not realy OR/OR questions, they should be AND/AND questions.

        Oh and using YaST can be done form the CLI as well. ;-)
    • """
      The survey data isn't really telling us anything we don't know already about linux users. Linux users are technophiles who still cannot accomplish everything without having to resort to a command line. This means that linux ain't ready for the Windoze using masses.
      """

      I'd honestly like to know how you got from A to B on this one i.e. Just b/c the techie's /prefer/ the command line does _not_ mean a GUI doesn't exist or is crap. It just means that they don't typically use it. So what?

      """
      Almost all of you
    • Do you have a problem with or phobia of men? I ask because I don't understand why the gender of others would cause you to feel left out.

    • Almost all of you are men, which makes me feel left out again.

      It should make you feel special.

      Or better, you should try not to think too much of the relation between yourself and some piece of non-scientific, badly laid out statistics.

  • Not using the command line (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gnu-sucks (561404) on Friday May 04 2007, @11:59PM (#18999187) Homepage Journal
    What really surprised me (besides the large number of female users... haha) is that 36% of the users survayed DO NOT use "non-graphical tools (e.g. YaST text mode, console) when installing or administering your Linux operating system"

    Either desktop linux tools have changed a lot in the past few years, or these people aren't digging that far into their systems.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by thrawn_aj (1073100)

      these people aren't digging that far into their systems.

      Hmm, perhaps they are, oh I don't know, busy folks who have barely enough time to USE their machines towards the purpose for which they bought it :P?

      [sarcasm]

      You know what? I'm a physicist, and I am seriously offended at people who show no curiosity whatsoever about the quantum mechanical theory of the semiconductor (which after all, is the basis of the whole shebang) when they use their computers every day.

      [/sarcasm] Oh wait, that's rather stupid isn't it?

      I have just as much contempt for this flav

      • Re:Not using the command line (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jgrahn (181062) on Saturday May 05 2007, @02:15AM (#18999745)

        I have used the Linux commandline in numerous stages of my life (as also DOS and even VMS) and I wasn't impressed. Memorizing arcane commands to do simple things (vi as a text editor is an extreme example of its absurdity) is on par with memorizing Clebsch-Gordon coefficients :P.

        You are wrong, or at least wired differently from me and other command-line people.

        It's not about memorizing arcane commands. It's about being able and willing to research the tools while using them. "How can I use the find command to list all files larger than a gigabyte? *browses the man page* Oh, that's how. *back to work*" If you still know how two weeks later; fine. If not, you simply read the man page again.

        And seriously, how is a GUI better? Take the MS Word preferences which I battled yesterday. A tiny window filled with twelve tabbed screens which jump around at random, each containing more than a dozen settings and frequently sub-dialogues. And no useful reference documentation which explains what these bloody settings actually do.

        Above all, why it's become fashionable to run these tasks in your own personal RAM (*points to brain*) when the mindless computing machine in front of you can handle them quite easily is a mystery to me.

        It's not fashion; many of us seriously believe the command-line way is superior for most tasks. I truly cannot see how not doing that way somehow offloads work from your brain to the computer. My experience is exactly the opposite -- pointless memorizing, futile searching and mindless repetive tasks is something I associate with non-commandlines (i.e. using Windows and GUI applications).

        • It'd be akin to me firmly disputing that a DOS word processor is far superior to any sort of modern word processor.
          Of course, for that comparison to be valid, "a DOS word processor" would have to be immensely more powerful and useful in various situations than the modern one.

          The analogy could only be better if it was about cars...

  • they need to conduct the same survey across ALL the distros at the same time. Perhaps set it up again, but get the others to link to it. It would be interesting to see how they all stack up.

  • Conclusion (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nick_taken (1090721) on Saturday May 05 2007, @12:01AM (#18999199)
    Everyone got an email
  • I've used it on and off. I actually bought the retail packages for the 5.x and 7.x releases and always went back to debian. I also gave 10.x series a shot, and for me it's been yast that has sucked compared to apt. Maybe I'm just not patient enough, but yast is slow. As far as I'm concerned, debian based releases are just far easier to maintain. SuSE on the other hand does seem to support more hardware out of the box, (for the most part) and the UI is a tad better from the system/hardware point of view.
  • Is anyone else wondering how they managed to get 21,171 e-mail address responses when they had only 21,165 respondents to the survey?

    Seems like some restaurant math to me.

  • I want a Vista Survey that way (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 05 2007, @05:55AM (#19000479)
    15. Where do you usually get Microsoft[R] Windows Vista[TM]?

    Steal it from computer or software shop 7%
    Download from thepiratebay homepage 70%
    "Free CD" from friends (hey, they said it's free) 10%
    I actually bought it. 3%
    Other (please specify) 10%

    • I had hoped that after all these years, the % of females who use Linux would have improved. Granted, this is only SUSE, but 539 out of 27000 isn't very good odds.

      But we could have one hell of a bukakke session!
      Well maybe if people like you stopped making such gross remarks about women, more women would join the community.
      • Who said it was the ladies that were getting the jizz on their faces?

      • I had hoped that after all these years, the % of females who use Linux would have improved. Granted, this is only SUSE, but 539 out of 27000 isn't very good odds.

        But we could have one hell of a bukakke session!

        Well maybe if people like you stopped making such gross remarks about women, more women would join the community.

        Or at least women with no sense of humor. The point of that joke was obviously directed at the male users, not women. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been funny.

    • If you got out of your trolling tantrum you'd realise the survey was about the _distribution_ and not political opinions on political decisions. The survey was to get information about the usage of openSUSE, opinions from the users, and hard-data from those taking it. It succeeded, and just because you don't find the information interesting, it's not to say that it's not very important.
    • t's always interesting to check PDF properties

      A perverse habit that I share. My guess is that only people familiar with desktop publishing would get what they're looking at, but it's worth pointing out that while PDFs can contain interesting information, the information is never as interesting (or incriminating) as what we'd typically get from folks who "publish" Word documents, employees of Microsoft included.

      this survey was printed from Mozilla on an Apple box. I just wonder why Novell could not spend 0.

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