Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 2 Downloads Top 2 million in 24 Hours
linuxci writes "Firefox 2.0 has had over two million downloads in 24 hours with a peak rate of over 30 downloads a second. This means Firefox is well on track to beat IE7's three million in four days. Of course stats don't equal users but it's interesting to see that the demand for Firefox is currently outstripping IE."
Specifically, the fuss about the US Gov demanding IE be removed from Windows? It seems to have disappeared from public memory, just like Bird Flu.
Everyone should know by now that extensions often take a few weeks to get updated. The extension mechanism can be annoying when there's a major update but it's like that so that extension authors are encouraged to test their extensions with new versions.
Most people actually use Firefox without extensions and by default it's a lot more featureful than IE6 and about as featureful as IE7 some people say too much was put in 2.0. You can't please everybody so instead of putting everything under the sun like Seamonkey (the Mozilla suite) or Opera they've decided on the options that are of most use to the most people and allowed others to add the extra features.
Also worth noting is that bugfix support for 1.5 will continue for a while so you can keep using it to wait for all your extensions to be compatible with the new version.
Also, there's choice in the market if Firefox is not for you. I personally prefer Firefox to Opera, but Opera is a good browser and it's worth trying it may suit your needs better.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Who are the people who are most likely to download a new browser right after its release ? The guys who read IT news everyday with great interest...Call them Geeks, Devellopers, or typical Slashdot's reader it doesn t matter...
The point is : do theses guys use IE as their main browser ? No.
Are they using Firefox as their main browser ? The majority of them does.
Therefore they are more likely to get Firefox 2.0 than IE7 (although many of them will get both in case they stumble upon a IE-only website). So its absolutly normal that the initial rush is in favor of Firefox...In the same way that Firefox's RC were more used than IE7's RC. Actually if Firefox had a lower download rush i would have quite worried for them.
That was 8 years ago and people were desperate to get off of 95.
No, they weren't. Indeed, the take-up of Windows 98 could only be described - generously - as "sluggish".
Slashdot, at the time, was overjoyed at how poorly received Windows 98 was, considering it another sign of Microsoft's downfall and using it as another example of how Linux on everyone's desktop was only 12 months away...
Alright, they're up to 2,000,003.
Or as a serious guyss, 2,050,000. I mean, come on guys. How many people really downloaded RC3? Or use Ubuntu? When we're talking about downloads in the millions, we're talking about what normal people are doing. The stats of nerds don't significantly contribute.
There is no auto-update from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0 yet. And there is no Windows Update for IE7 yet. Those figures are all but meaningless. The numbers show that early adopters are equaly likely to download FF2 and IE7 (or maybe download both).
Ok,
I won't comment on how you use your browser. But here's a question, is there ANY browser that would be able to handle the stress tests you used?
If there is another browser that can handle "hundreds" of open sessions, and still work well for you, then perhaps that is a better fit for your purposes.
Otherwise you're pushing your browser to the extremes, then pointing out its faults, however nothing else can handle it either.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-