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Software Linux

Desktop Linux Usage Statistics 296

Posted by timothy from the change-is-in-the-air dept.
Ahkorishaan writes "Desktoplinux.com has put up their December 2004 survey results. Debian has fallen from their top rank as preferred Linux distro, and newcomers Thunderbird and Firefox have an impressive showing in their respective genres."
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Desktop Linux Usage Statistics More

Desktop Linux Usage Statistics

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  • Debian falls. Well duh. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:32PM (#12472250)
    That's because desktop linux is making gains in the real world. Desktop linux: "It's not just in your parent's basement anymore."

  • The problem with linux... (Score:5, Funny)

    by timecop ( 16217 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:34PM (#12472266) Homepage
    When you use linux, you participate in a communist scheme designed to prevent
    software professionals from being compensated for their work. So switch back to
    windows xp you scumbags.

    • Re:The problem with linux... (Score:5, Funny)

      by PocketPick ( 798123 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @09:09PM (#12472533)
      Ahh, gut, Comrade. Gates, Yah, vee is good thinker, but you see: You do not capitalise on de useful of idiots like da OSS veel. Ve vill crush you!

      Gut! Gut!
    • I always thought Desktop Linux was a communist plot to get you to spend all of your time tweaking your desktop settings (Because You Can!), rather than doing actual work.

      Now we just have to find out who's plot making Windows users reboot all the time was.

    • Re:The problem with linux... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Technician ( 215283 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @12:04AM (#12473611)
      you participate in a communist scheme designed to prevent software professionals from being compensated for their work

      Are you kidding? The software professionals get compensated regardless of what OS I choose. It's simply cheaper for me to buy a box and pay the professionals for the software that I don't use than to buy a box without paying the software professionals.

      Now if only the professionals will produce software that won't run exploits as root, then I may consider using it. Why is IE and Outlook Express integrated to the manditory OS anyway?

      Can you say Target?

      • Re:The problem with linux... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gunnk ( 463227 ) <{gunnk} {at} {mail.fpg.unc.edu}> on Monday May 09, 2005 @08:10AM (#12475941) Homepage
        Why are OE and IE integrated?

        Back in 90's Microsoft became very concerned that Netscape's web browser could end up being the PLATFORM for which software would be written. If you wrote your software to run in a browswer window the underlying OS was no longer important. Microsoft needed to push Netscape over a cliff.

        To do so, Microsoft introduced IE which they began shipping free of charge with every copy of Windows (and just about every other piece of software). Netscape felt they were abusing their monopoly position by doing this and therefore sued. The courts agreed and decreed: "Microsoft may not bundle IE with Windows".

        Well Microsoft has never been one to let a legal ruling stop them. They went back to the developers mandated that IE be INTEGRATED with Windows Explorer. By making it a PORTION OF THE OS, they were no longer bundling. Suddenly they were legal again, but could keep behaving the same way.

        So, there is no good technical reason for integrating your file system browser with your web browser (and plenty of reason not do), but there is every reason to do so from a "crush the competition" perspective.
    • If it were a communist plot for world dommination im fairly sure i would of heard about it?

  • Good News for Mozilla (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ranson ( 824789 ) * on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:36PM (#12472277) Homepage Journal
    It's great to see quality products from Mozilla having not only critical acclaim but also (hopefully) emperical usage data demonstrating how quickly these products are being adapted into online users' every day routines. I see good things for 2005 and beyond.

  • One important detail... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ThatGeek ( 874983 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:36PM (#12472279) Homepage
    The survey was done on the web site's own readers. Unless we can assume that the readers represent the Linux community as a whole, this survey is largely useless.

    • Re:One important detail... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BoldAndBusted ( 679561 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:49PM (#12472379) Homepage
      Yeah, this is really a *poll*, not a survey, and, as evidenced by the Yoper stats, is very easily corrupted and skewed. And it isn't a poll of all Linux users (I didn't get an e-mail asking for participation...), it is a poll of this websites users. Sorry, worse than valueless, it is not what it purports to be. Love to have more statistically powerful data along the same lines, tho!
    • It might not be indicative of the community in general, but if the readership demographics haven't changed much, there might some trends in there that can be extrapolated and compared on a larger scale.

      Case in point: Amongst that community, vanilla debian has fallen from its top spot, but if debian is lumped in together with the various deb-based distros, it takes its top spot back. It certainly seems to jive with the attitude that a lot of people here on Slashdot have about debian.

      I don't mean to dispara

      • The parent has the point right on. The survey is not meant to be indicative of the Linux community as a whole. In fact, they openly say that they only want their viewers to participate, and the survey's about finding more information about their readership.

        Given that though, it still provides a look at some interesting trends, for example the strong showing of Mozilla.org products.

    • statistics
      n.
      1. (used with a sing. verb) The mathematics of the collection, organization, and interpretation of numerical data, especially the analysis of population characteristics by inference from sampling.


      The statistics are for desktop linux usage, the web site is aptly named desktoplinux.com. I don't see any major biased in the survey or viewership and the sample size is sufficiently large. I see no reason why this survey would be considered useless.

      • Re:One important detail... (Score:5, Informative)

        by provolt ( 54870 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @10:23PM (#12472987)
        Its completely useless because it's a self-selected survey, rather than a random sampling. Self-selected survey's are basically junk if you want any good data.

        The results of this tell us nothing more than if it were nothing more than a large, well-written slashdot poll. Mostly because it is nothing more than a large, well-writen slashdot poll.

      • Perhaps what you fail to realize is that ANY statistic becomes MORE useful as it increases in randomness. It would be impossible to find (and survey) a completely random sample of the linux-using population.

        Moreover, just because a website is benignly named speaks nothing of the validity of the study. These statistics cannot and should not be used for real empirical study of the linux population, as it contains a number of very MAJOR flaws in statistical sampling, the most egregious of which is: SELF-SEL

    • Re:One important detail... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ajs ( 35943 ) <{ajs} {at} {ajs.com}> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @11:28PM (#12473403) Homepage Journal
      "Unless we can assume that the readers represent the Linux community as a whole, this survey is largely useless."

      Well, there's a few other reasons as well. The one that jumps out at me is the fact that they compare desktop systems to window managers. A few of the WMs that they list are, in fact, quite capable of running as the WM for KDE, Gnome, or both.

      Then, of course, there's the fact that they split up the Debian distributions, but insist on calling Fedora, "Red Hat" which is too bad, because I'm curious how many old "Red Hat Linux" desktops there are vs RHEL Desktop vs Fedora.

      *shrug* Just more bad data.

  • very un-scientific (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:37PM (#12472282)
    This "study" really, is very unscientific and somewhat disturbing to a statistian like me. Do people believe in these numbers? Sometimes, it reminds me of pundits (especially in the computer world), who might know so little to even know that they do not know anything.

    Overall, it does not look so bad for Linux. I wish you all a great week ahead.

    • Better than most! (Score:3, Informative)

      by bluGill ( 862 )

      While your criticisms are correct, this survey is much better than most. They freely admit how it was done, and that it isn't perfect. Most surveys don't go into nearly as much details, and practically state that they are useful and represent the broader people as a whole.

      The numbers also seem reasonable when considering what I know of linux users in general. So I'm willing to believe them for my purposes, which are unscientific. If I needed real results I would hire a qualified independent survey

      • this survey is much better than most. They freely admit how it was done, and that it isn't perfect. Most surveys don't go into nearly as much details, and practically state that they are useful and represent the broader people as a whole.

        "Better" in this context means that they're more honest about their stats - not that their stats are more objectively accurate.

        So I'm willing to believe them for my purposes, which are unscientific. If I needed real results (...)

        That's an important point to be mad

    • Re:very un-scientific (Score:5, Funny)

      by Xarius ( 691264 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:55PM (#12472431) Homepage
      This "study" really, is very unscientific and somewhat disturbing to a statistian like me.


      I don't see what coming from statistia has to do with it. Unless, of course, you mean statistician?

    • Re:very un-scientific (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @09:31PM (#12472658) Journal

      This "study" really, is very unscientific and somewhat disturbing to a statistian like me.

      I don't disagree. To its credit, however:

      • The article never claims to be a "study". It claims to be a survey, which is essentially what it is even if it's not well conducted.
      • The article is completely up-front about stating that the results should be taken with a grain of salt. The concerns are stated very clearly in the second paragraph of the article before any actual data is given, and are quite strongly repeated again, at the end. The text goes as far as asking readers for feedback about the survey's accuracy in the forum.

      I think the greater danger is when data, such as this, gets picked up by the media in ways that are completely out of context. Most responsible people who I know are very cautious about stating limitations with data that they're presenting. That aside, I've repeatedly witnessed the very same people being cited out of context by overzealous and lazy media who want an attention-grabbing headline, and pick out whatever words or data that matches the story they've decided to tell.

      If anyone's to blame for anything here, it would be the slashdot editors for presenting it as if it had some kind of authority. Even then, though, following the link from slashdot to the actual survey makes it pretty obvious... which is something that a lot of journalists in the real world won't even bother to provide.

  • Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:37PM (#12472283)
    given the degree of GUI integration that SuSE provides. It's by far the closest thing to Windows in that sense, and the funny thing is that it's still not really even close to Windows. That is the only way that Linux has a chance of improving marketshare beyond it's current levels, is to increase the trend of providing GUI integration and support. There shouldn't be *anything* that you *have* to do use the command line to do other than very advanced sysadmin tasks.

    That said, does anyone know to what extent YaST is being used beyond SuSE?

  • Skewed results (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lakeland ( 218447 ) <lakeland@acm.org> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:37PM (#12472287) Homepage
    With so few entries, it looks like a single post to the (debian, yoper, sylpheed, whatever) mailing list would significantly skew the results in this test.


    Our readers were quick to report a fishy smell, and a trip over to Yoper's homepage today turned up evidence of a well-intended but survey-busting tendency to encourage Yoper users to boost Yoper's standing in online polls.


    We complain about Microsoft only surveying their customers and then claiming people think windows is as secure as linux but here we have (potentially) the same problem. Is yoper really the most popular distro, or just the most manipulative?

    • Here's a post regarding this:

      Our interest is in accurately representing the Desktop Linux OSes used by DesktopLinux.com readers. In the future, we will include a request similar to the following at the top of each survey, and in the surveys' announcements: "Please do not promote or advertise this survey to mailing lists, nor encourage your friends or co-workers to participate. The survey is meant to help us learn about our readership, not to help you advance your organization or open source software cause.

    • And I can't believe that they did not break out Fedora core as well.

      Oh, I forgot the results were skewed.

  • Mandrake (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:40PM (#12472307) Homepage
    Its interesting that Mandrake is just as big as the other big 4 (5?) distros, but it sees little mention on /. Is this because it is a "new to linux" linux and because of this is too basic and dumbed-down for most of the /. crowd? In any case, they've got a lot of ambition, and seem to have a stable business model.

    • Re:Mandrake (Score:3, Insightful)

      by brxndxn ( 461473 )
      I blame the elitist Gentoo-using cyberbullies that try and say Mandrake is noob linux. Then, you have new nerds trying out Gentoo and getting frustrated on the initial 6-hour install process.

      I had my fun with Gentoo.. but I like to have an up and running system in 20 minutes. And, I DID install Gentoo completely - I was just forced to recompile my kernel 3 times until I finally got it right.

      Mandrake = fun for the whole family.

      • Re:Mandrake (Score:3, Insightful)

        by keesh ( 202812 )
        If you can't manage something simple like a kernel compile, Gentoo probably isn't the right distribution for you. You'll note that the Gentoo developers (on the whole) claim that it's a specific purpose distribution, and it's only a small number of obnoxious loudmouthed asshat users who go around saying that Gentoo is for anyone.
      • two words ...

        disk ... image...

        If you have similar boxes in the house (e.g. x86 athlon or p4) you can just install your base system, tarball up the filesystem to a DVD then untar it on fresh systems.

        From scratch to working you're taking ~5-10 mins at most after you make the image.

        I do that for my laptop once in a while and works well.

        Tom
      • For as long as I remember, Mandrake has been stereotyped as "noob Linux." This was long before most people had ever heard of Gentoo. Red Hat, Debian, Slackware... Those used to be the "real" Linux distros. And Mandrake was easy for new people to use.

        So you can brush the chip off of your shoulder. The Gentoo "cyberbullies" (whoever they are) didn't create the stereotype, and didn't invent elitism. They've been around since Gentoo was a gleam in Daniel Robbins' eye.

    • Re:Mandrake (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:57PM (#12472446)
      Where does this impression of Mandrake being the 'new to linux' linux stem from?

      Sure, I recommend Mandrake to windows-converting friends, but that's basically because it has very good hardware detection and a first-timer-friendly installer (in non-expert mode), and (now) x86_64 support.

      I've been a long-time linux user (I have the redhat 5.0 box set), and I originally migrated from RH because Mandrake had i586/i686 compilation, plus (nice bonus) KDE support. (Remember MDK was originally a RH fork) - ahead of the game even back then!

      I've stayed because they've kept up the bleeding edge hardware support, with loads of 3rd party drivers in the stock kernels, plus have a large contrib repository (plus plf!). For me, they are a pretty good trade off between stability and cool-new-stuff.

      I don't know how people come to the 'dumbed down' impression, though - MDK don't castrate Gnome and KDE like redhat do, and you aren't forced to use the pretty GUI tools to do sysadmin, and they have lots of 'secure-by-default' setup.

      Perhaps you should actually try it for a while...

  • Linux on the desktop ain't gonna happen until... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Any old user can access the CD-ROM drive, and a masters degree in comp-sci isn't required to get a fucking printer to work. My wife is taking her shiny new Linux computer into the shop tomorrow to have Win-XP installed on it instead so she can actually print some stuff. Oh well. Subtract one Linux desktop user from that total.

    • Re:Linux on the desktop ain't gonna happen until.. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      She would get a better deal by marrying someone who is Linux literate. Either that or figure out how to conceive a child and let him/her set up the printer.
    • I have no trouble reading from or writing to my DVD-R/W.

      SuSE auto-detected and installed my Kyocera printer, which is more than I can say for when I'd previously installed Windows on the exact same hardware.

    • Re:Linux on the desktop ain't gonna happen until.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @12:11AM (#12473655)
      I hate the argument that Linux isn't ready yet....... or until...... this or that.

      Linux is never going to be perfect folks! Stop eluding yourself thinking that it has to be perfect to be accepted. Or that in 2 or 3 years it will be "just right" and Joe Average will slobber all over it.

      The more users that get converted now, the more folks will sit up and take notice. The more that take notice, the more that flock to linux. The more that flock to linux, the more the developers take notice and eventually be forced to make software for that market.

      But it will never happen with "in two or three year's time" attitude. I heard this attitude 2 or 3 years ago. And also 2 or 3 years before that. Ad infinitum. (Actually only 1998-ish.)

      There will always be a learning curve.

      With all the spyware/malware problems with Windows - now is the time to strike. Don't think Microsoft is resting on their laurels - maybe (probably) they won't fix the problem - but as the software they bought recently (last year?) and redubbed MS AntiSpyware it shows they will come up with a solution that's good enough for most users as to excuse them not to switch (Let's face it: people are lazy when it comes to change.)

      Requiring a Comp.Sci. Degree for Linux just because you couldn't get the printer to run? Save the 200 or so dollar XP installation and buy a compatible computer!

      You have to be kidding me with ease of use.

      Windows users practically need a degree to get rid of all the spyware/bloat/malware on their computers now, let alone hack the mystical registry when a program doesn't play nice when removed.

      Read this:

      http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Rants/spyware.html [netcom.com]

      And then decide if you really want Windows.
      • Let me say - I meant buy a compatible printer, not computer. Sorry about that.
      • But will Linux be any safer with Joe Average User running it? One of the reasons it is so secure is because mainly IT types run it. Average users will still run executables in their E-Mail, will still fall for phishing schemes, will still use root exclusively and all the other bad hygene you see on your average windows installation. The average user doesn't want to have to remember and type his user ID and password every time he turns his computer on. The average user won't notice the unusual network and s
      • Great post! It really is a chicken-or-the-egg situation. Users will come when there are developers. And developers will come when there are users. We need to forget these silly arguments about what's the best time for XYZ to happen, and just make it happen! No alternative OS is perfect, but plenty of them are perfectly usable at this point.

  • People leaving the sinking ship. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:50PM (#12472384)
    KDE gained double userbase while GNOME drastically reduced. Wow. Looks like GNOME is really in deep shit now.

    • Re:People leaving the sinking ship. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fux0r ( 867489 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @01:17AM (#12473964)
      They've been in deep shit for a long time. Mostly since the developers decided that they are smarter than their users. Does anyone like spatial nautilus? what about that red-headed-bastard-stepchild called gnome-control-center? Sorry for the rant, but I used to use gnome and have really grown to dislike it. I guess I shouldn't bitch though, I wouldn't have started to use the gem that is KDE if not for the recent stupidity of Gnome.

      • I like spatial nautilus (and other GNOME features) (Score:4, Insightful)

        by arthas ( 654815 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @05:00AM (#12474781)

        I used to think that graphical filemanagers all suck. I didn't like Windows Explorer, pre-spatial Nautilus, gmc or Konqueror. I used only command line for file management. The first time I tried spatial browsing was on MacOS System 7.5 running on Basilisk II Mac 68k emulator (this was a few years back) and after 15 minutes or so I found that it was something I actually enjoyed using. I thought: "This Finder thingy is insanely great. Why can't GNOME or KDE people do something like this?" And then, soon after GNOME 2.6 was released, I bought a new computer and installed Slackware 10 on it. Using spatial Nautilus and the entire GNOME 2.6 environment was absolutely wonderful! It was the best user experience I had ever had (I have used Windows, OpenLook, CDE, GNOME 1.x, KDE, FVWM, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, OS/2 Warp and Indigo Magic (on SGI O2 workstation running Irix)). Now I use GNOME 2.10 on Ubuntu and FreeBSD. I do most of my personal file management tasks using spatial Nautilus. I actually use command line only for file management related to system administration (bash + vi rule in those tasks). I have to wonder why I like GNOME 2.10 and spatial Nautilus so much?

        One reason for this is that spatial nautilus is extremely simple and fast to use. For me using spatial file managers is very intuitive and natural. A good analysis on spatial filemanagers is found at: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars [arstechnica.com]

        Other parts of GNOME 2.10 are also very nice. I really like the way GNOME 2.10 handles filetypes and connecting them to certain applications. It is so intuitive and effortless to use that it puts the abomination known as Windows Filetypes dialog to shame!

        GNOME dialogs are also awesome. The new open and save dialogs are finally usable (again: simple, fast, effortless, efficient). They are vastly superior to the pre Gtk 2.4 dialogs. As for other dialogs, they are also extremely nice and logical. Finally we have gotten over annoying "Yes/No or OK/Cancel -dialogs should be enough for anyone". Using verbs in dialogs (when it makes sense, that is) is a huge improvement!

        In my opinion GNOME has become a lot better desktop environment than anything Microsoft has ever had. I used to hate gnome in the 1.x days because it was just like Windows 9x. If I wanted to use Windows-like environment I would probably use Windows.

    • GNOME didn't loose that much. It more seemed like all the old WM users where finally starting to accepts a desktop environment and was choosing KDE.

  • Around here... (Score:2, Informative)

    by hoka ( 880785 )
    I've been personally seeing a lot of Gentoo boxes (specialized servers), but most people I know stick to Debian or Red Hat. I toyed a bit with Mandrake and wasn't very impressed with it, though it did look a bit purtier by default than the other distro's I tried. Interesting to see a good amount of XFCE showings though, I always thought very few people used that, and given that I don't see it default on any distro I am frankly very suprised.

  • Not a very serious study (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cyrax256 ( 845338 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @08:59PM (#12472461) Homepage
    I think that the article in general is a bit too skewed. You could forgive them the fact that they don't really have a system to check double submits in the survey, or things like that, but some phrases like: "Third, and verging on dangerous over-generalization, open source software is a fast-moving and competitive market. Sharing code really can stimulate business growth." Are quite far from what the article wants to tell: what are the most popular applications in the linux environment. These are the kind of things that make linux users look like zealots, and take away credibility to these surveys. Next time these guys (or anyone who wants to do a similar survey) should stick to what the survey says.

  • Awful survey (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MikeDawg ( 721537 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @09:00PM (#12472476) Homepage Journal

    I think that 3,080 in the linux community is probably not the greatest amount to come up with statistics regarding linux usage. I just don't find a survey of 3,000 computer users online to be useful.

    What they need is a graph to show the incredible (~25% drop; 4,151 to 3,080) of people taking part in this stupid poll.

  • I find it more than a little strange that the following information gels into one picture.

    • After SuSE's purchase by Novell, it's been generally reported that people are leaving SuSE and anectdotally moving to Debian.
    • RedHat's mixed with a possible loss in customer base through the recent move to the "Core" distros. But the continuing American love affair with RedHat would tend to counter this. Yet RedHat is a distant third and behind Mandrake and SuSE.
    • Debian can drop almost 50% in one year? That's too many points in one year to be accepted as is. Being on the Debian mailing list I find very few mentions of people dropping or moving.
    • Considering that AFAIK the only distro that seriously supports WindowMaker in the upper curst of the list is Debian, I'm not surprised that WindowMaker has tanked since no one else ships it. Too bad, great desktop.
    • KDE would grow based on the exclusivity on SuSE. But it's also gaining a lot of ground. Not too surprising really.

      • It's an interesting report, but the statistical significance of the whole thing might be a little suspect.

    • While Novell's purchase means SuSE isn't "European" anymore, in terms of corporate acceptance I'd expect SuSE to be doing better.

      We dropped RedHat for Fedora in my University's CIS school (and also for our mail server). I agree RedHat is no longer for the masses.

      Mandrake shipped WindowMaker. I suspect most Linux distros ship WindowMaker.

    • Re:Interesting, but not statistically accurate? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Debian can drop almost 50% in one year? That's too many points in one year to be accepted as is. Being on the Debian mailing list I find very few mentions of people dropping or moving."

      I don't think people are dropping it but alot of new comers to the linux community are not using Debian. Debian is more popular with the older Linux crowd so sure it probably has the same number of people using it but other distro's are getting the new users. At least thats how it looks for all the people I know. Only li

    • Re:Interesting, but not statistically accurate? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @11:17PM (#12473328)
      that's not the anectdotal stuff I've been hearing & seeing: people getting disgusted with RedHat moving to SuSE and a few going to FreeBSD for server, and alot of developers taking up mac OSX for fun. No one I know runs Debian anymore.

    • Debian can drop almost 50% in one year? That's too many points in one year to be accepted as is. Being on the Debian mailing list I find very few mentions of people dropping or moving.

      Well for some anecdotal evidence, after using Debian since 1996 I switched to Ubuntu a month ago. Otherwise I'm happy with Ubuntu, except that a security update to kde fucked up the kdelibs-data or was it knetworkconf package, and it still hasn't been fixed.

  • Says one site (Score:3, Informative)

    by PhuckFonix ( 788199 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @09:04PM (#12472502) Homepage Journal
    Well, users visiting that site may be inherent of their distribution/Linux personality. Anyways, this site covers a larger swath of Linux users anyways (~ 140 000 people versus ~ 4 000): http://counter.li.org/reports/machines.php [li.org] Heh, get counted! http://counter.li.org/ [li.org]

  • wtf? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mshiltonj ( 220311 ) <mshiltonjNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @09:17PM (#12472584) Homepage Journal
    no fedora? or does fedoa == red hat on the survey?

  • KDE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2005 @09:18PM (#12472590)
    Nobody hasn't mentioned yet that KDE in a year went from 44% to 61%. Every other destkop environment/windows manager lost users in favor of KDE, except XFCE. That's the most interesting result of this poll IMHO, since it is.. well, unexpected.
    • Is it really that unexpected, when you take into account the droves of people flocking away from Gnome because of the spatial browsing that so many people took a dislike to? (not knocking Gnome or the spatial browsing concept, merely putting forth a suggestion).
    • Given the growth of distros that ship with KDE as the default (or only, a la Knoppix) wm, is this really terribly significant?
      It'd be significant if Gnome-based distros had grown dramatically but KDE grew more, but since the biggest growth is in KDE-based distros it's nothing more than an as-expected trend.

  • Ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by poofyhairguy82 ( 635386 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @09:19PM (#12472593) Journal
    I have to ask, where is Ubuntu? The article says the Debian spinoffs are not counted in Debian's totals and seeing as how Ubuntu the top distro on distrowatch it seems unlikely that is has such a small percentage of the desktop market as to not matter. I mean, it doesn't even have an option for Ubuntu in the poll. Distos like Peanut and Elx (which are fine distros by the way, but are less popular than Ubuntu) are on there for cripes sake... Debian's lost position could be due to the fact that Debian desktop users have gone to Ubuntu en mass, but this survey has no way to even try to figure that out.

    Oh well, maybe it was good that they didn' include Ubuntu. We have enough nerd advertising as it is, it just bugs me that this survey totally misses one of the fastest growing distros in recent memory....take any results that miss such a large distro with a grain of salt...

    • 2004 survey...

    • Re:Ubuntu? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Halvy ( 748070 )
      Ubunto is.. very VERY coool :)

      i think it didn't 'make it' into the graph (poll) because it is SO new. the survey DID mention ubuntu however-- as part of the reason deb #'s went down.

      a reason it didnt' make the survey could be that; this survey was done around last december.. and i think ubuntu has only been released recently (at least i never heard of it until sometime last year.)

      Ubuntu is definitely making head way, because i had a local computer company try and give me a copy of it!! they had a stack

  • There was no such upset or confusion in the realm of windowing environments. KDE -- last year's leader -- has increased its dominance, growing from 44 percent to 61 percent of respondants


    when I started using KDE part time.
  • had the info of the distribution.
    you could collect via some website
    it would be less skewed i guess.

    Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Konqueror/3.3;+Linux)+( KH TML,+like+Gecko)+(insert Distro)

  • Despite its apparent fall from first-place grace, there's a silver lining to the Debian cloud, considering that it has increasingly become the basis of a host of other popular distributions including KNOPPIX, Libranet, Linspire, MEPIS, Ubuntu, and Xandros, to mention a few. In fact, if we were to combine all the Debian-derived distro's in our survey into a single entry, the Debian-based group would end up right back at the top of the pack. (Specifically, the group would receive 14.8 + 4.6 + 3.2 + 1.5 = 24.

  • Why all the whining? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jvd ( 874741 ) <albert.valentin@ ... Dl.com minus bsd> on Monday May 09, 2005 @12:24AM (#12473733)
    What's the matter here? I'm seeing a lot of Slashdotters arguing whether this statistics are worthless because it represents the users of that particular website. But it's almost certain that when the statistics exceed the 10 thousand surveyed users it pretty much represent a whole community (That's why they are statistics!) And it represents it more, since it's a desktop Linux website, it doesn't represent a particular window environment. I don't understand why all the whining. People get mad when what they use "isn't winning". NEWSFLASH: Shut the fuck up, take a Xanax and relax pal, this is not a race, and it is merely a survey. Be happy, the overall growth that they show is good; it means more people have adopted Linux in their desktop.

  • Is really nobody my fav email client anymore.

    Grr, and Windowmaker dropped too:_)

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