Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Desktop Linux Usage Statistics

Posted by timothy on 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."

11 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  2. Mandrake by dj245 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    1. Re:Mandrake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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...

  3. Re:Debian falls. Well duh. by turbidostato · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Distrowatch counts downloads,"

    Not even this. They count visits to the "home" page within distrowatch for a given distro.

    So take a new distribution with good marketing and you will have your #1 disregarding ENTERILY its user base numbers.

  4. Interesting, but not statistically accurate? by tacocat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Interesting, but not statistically accurate? by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  5. Re:Well umm.. by sn00ker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Certainly for Firefox/Thunderbird, it's rather a tenuous link given their wide platform support. But with stuff like mutt and pine, the link is very clear - the userbase is almost exclusively OSS-OS.
    It's note-worthy that these surveys never investigate the penetration of BSD (not OS-X!) to the desktop. I'm using FreeBSD on the desktop, having given up on Linux as too much effort (wasted a day trying to get Linux installed on a box with ICH5 SATA, and then spent an hour downloading a FreeBSD ISO and installing it without any dramas), and I'd be interested in seeing how the BSDs rate against the various Linux distros. Does anyone know of any surveys that look into this?

    --
    "God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
  6. wtf? by mshiltonj · · Score: 3, Interesting

    no fedora? or does fedoa == red hat on the survey?

    --
    Software Wars
  7. KDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. Why all the whining? by jvd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
  9. Re:People leaving the sinking ship. by fux0r · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.