Make the Debian CDs Better by Installing popcon

JayBonci writes "Not popcorn, popcon! (Short for popularity-contest) According to a recent message posted to debian-devel-announce, popcon numbers are being used to determine how things get arranged on the 13 CDs of the upcoming Debian stable release. Participation so far has been good, but the project could use more numbers from a broader user base. Please take a moment to install the package 'popularity-contest,' and help us make the distro better by allowing it to send us anonymous package usage statistics. You can see the results at Popularity Contest page."

Comments

This is a really good idea

[dealsites]

As a Linux newbie (currently don't have Linux installed, but have used it and plan to install it soon), it would be nice to know which are the most popular packages. Most people would like to have an idea of what the more experienced users use, and thus would like to try it themselves. In addition to knowing the most popular packages, it would probably be a quicker install be having the best ones at the beginning of the installation process instead of having to swap CDs too many times.

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Re:This is a really good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The most used stuff=the stuff that's installed by default.

else check freshmeat's popularity ranking

Re:This is a really good idea

[ameoba]

The thing about the Debian install process is that you don't need all 13 CDs. After you do the base install, you scan the CDs that you feel like using and they get added to your local list of available packages (be it none, 1,2 or all 13). The first 2 CDs cover most of the stuff that you need to get the system working; by the time you get to the last disc, we're talking about some pretty obscure stuff that only has 3 users (2 of them are the devs and the 3rd is the guy making the package).

This is already a pretty reasonable distibution of files on the first 2 discs (the installer, OTOH still needs a lot of work; the new installer is a bit nicer than the old one but it doesn't really work all the time & there's some inconsistancies in it (like when you're partitioning drives, the drive labels in fdisk aren't the same as the names you see when you're assigning mountpoints to drives (which isn't even able to recognize swap devices as such & call them swap by default))) but it could always be perfected a bit. I have to wonder why they can't extract this from the logs on the mirrors tho...

Re:This is a really good idea

[BiggerIsBetter]

Uh, I have never used Tex. And it's installed (and updated) by default by every version of Debian I've tried.

Re:This is a really good idea

[gujo-odori]

I use KDE and vi, and think Gnome was a lot better back in the days when Enlightenment was the usual window manager (never liked Sawfish), but why was this modded Flamebait?

Now, I don't much care for Gnome and if I thought it was important to change his mind (it's not; I think it's important that he use whatever works best for him) I could rattle off a bunch of reasons why (IMO) KDE is better. However, the fact that I disagree with him doesn't make his opinion flamebait.

Oh, wait, sorry. I forgot where I was. "Flamebait" and "troll" both mean "Something I personally disagree with."

Never mind :-)

13 CD's!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just make 2 DVD's?

Re:13 CD's!?

[tloh]

There are many boxes, particularly older hardware, which does not have a DVD-ROM drive.

Re:13 CD's!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 240 gigs of local storage, and yet I don't have a DVD drive, so I would appreciate it if they don't drop the cd based distributions.

Re:If this were TIVO

[El]

Voluntarily giving up your privacy with fully informed consent is much different then sneaking in spyware without telling you about it. Those that are paranoid about privacy simply won't install it.

Re:This is *NOT* a really good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen the results of this when it was used in the Hurd CDs. There were absolutely retarded things like the battle.net client on CD #1, but not something simple like XFree86.

Popularity isn't something that works terribly well for this sort of thing, especially not on the first install CD.

popularity contest package

[MrWim]

The package popularity-contest is 42nd on the list with 18 less installs than the top packages, so how did these 18 people submit thier scores to the popularity contest?

Re:popularity contest package

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they didn't install the ready-made package version of it. Perhaps they manually built it from source or copied the executable from another machine.

Security...

[dysprosia]

Since it's using e-mail (don't know about encryption or methods of encoding), wouldn't it be rather simple to pervert the statistics in order to promote some software? A mass-mailing would be obvious, but if it's done properly it may look convincing...

Re:I don't trust it.

[bogolisk]

Check the package's priority

• emacsen-common's priority: optional
• nvi's priority: important

<joke>

$ dpkg -s kde
Package: kde
Priority: not-recommended
Section: bloatware
Installed-Size: 1666666666666666666

</joke>

Re:Let the flames start

[Atzanteol]

lynx (281) beats mozilla (378) :????

Not terribly surprising. I install it on all my machines (even the headless ones) for testing purposes. But only Mozilla only on my 'desktop' box.

Will Debian actually release a new STABLE?

[MickLinux]

I was waiting for a new Stable version after Woody, I guess, 2 years ago. Eventually, I sortof gave up.

This article seems to imply that such a release is actually going to happen.

Is it?

Re:If this were TIVO

[GarfBond]

Except, the obvious difference being is that your participation is being solicited and completely voluntary at this point. With TiVo, you're not really getting an option to opt out, even if they are pretty clear about what they're doing.

I vote no!

[UrGeek]

Bad idea. Doing the most popular thang is far and different from doing the right thang in many case. As Robert Plant put it, "I am not a prisoner of your hit parade". DESIGN NOT POLLING!

Re:If this were TIVO

[Imperator]

Yes, you are a troll. This is an optional package that people can choose to install. It's open source, and the use of the data is also completely in the open. It's not an invasion of privacy when someone wants to give you data and explicitly gives it to you.

Architectures: "Unknown" Holds #2

[cmholm]

I'm one of the small number of folks running Debian on an old Powermac, so I'm glad for the log scale on the architectures plot to help pull "my" group out of the noise. It bothers me that a very large fraction come up as architecture "unknown". I don't see a "--mind-your-own-damn-business" flag in the manpage, so what's with that?

Um...

[msimm]

Yes. You see commercial organizations do it all the time, some of it bugs us (spyware/adware/webbugs/cross-site cookies), but a lot of it doesn't (Neilson ratings/consumer surveys/warrenty questionaires). I think we all know that to design a good product you need to listen to your consumer base.

In fact this has been one of the big pieces that has been missing with Linux distro's. We throw as many applications into them as we can, having no accurate idea whats being used and whats just in the way. This is sort of a break-through when you think about it and I applaud the Debian's refeshingly long-sightedness.

Add to that that this is a open source project (under the GPL and written in perl) and you end up with a true rarity, an honest (and auditable) marketing tool. Don't like it? Don't install it.

This looks to me like a usefull tool in the fight for increased usability. OS hackers may not be able to do the tele polls and the in-mall customer questionaires, but they sure as hell can figure out how to get that information. And we sort of owe it to then to tell them a little something about the products they spend so much time (and care) working on for us.

Just my $.02.

I feel like

[Tsiangkun]

if microsoft said they were bundling a software tracking system to their products people would flip out. I think people would be right to get upset at someone else telling you what you are going to be sharing. This is a Linux dtstribution saying -->HERE-- is a program that might let us track popular software installations. . . Install it if you want to. That 'if you want to' part is what makes this acceptable to me. --Tsiangkun