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Fedora Metrics Help Whole Linux Community
lisah writes "When Fedora released Fedora Core 6 late last year, the team decided to track the number of users with unique IP addresses who connected to yum in search of updates for a new installation of FC6. According to the data they collected, FC6 crossed the one-million user mark in just 74 days. Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack says that while it's great to use metrics to better understand what users want, the real value lies in its ability to encourage hardware vendors to more offer more Linux-oriented goods and services. Spevack told Linux.com: '[W]e always say we wish hardware vendors had more [Linux-capable] drivers. Well, if you can go to them and say, "Hey, there's millions of people using this," then maybe they will listen. In the real world, you need data to prove your case. Well, here it is.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Actually, the Fedora folks address that very point. Quoting from the Fedora Project wiki, and it's page on Statistics:
"Accuracy of metrics
We believe it is reasonable to equate a "new IP address checking in" with "a new installation of FC6", with the following caveats:
1. Users who have dynamic IP addresses will likely be counted multiple times, which inflates the number by some amount.
2. Users who are behind NAT, corporate proxies, or who rsync updates to a local mirror before updating will not be counted at all.
The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations makes it quite clear that group (2) is significantly larger than group (1). As such, we believe that the true numbers in the field are higher than the numbers on this page."
I just installed FC6 on a machine yesterday, and they made it impossible to do anything without connecting to their server. I'm keeping the machine off the network, but apparently there's no way to install packages from the DVD without first downloading the update lists from their mirrors.
.repo files to point to the DVD instead of the internet, but it still crashes with mysterious errors about media uris. I finally gave up and installed Ubuntu instead. So no, this doesn't help the whole Linux community. We'd be furious is Microsoft imposed this sort of requirement on new installations.
The Add/Remove gui (and yum) crashes if DNS isn't available. After some research, I was able to hack the yum
Given the numbers coming out, I'd think that it sure can't hurt for these guys to post the number they are.
e ctor=Briefings
Here(2nd page ) Mark Shuttleworth mentioned Ubuntu having 8 million active users:
http://redherring.com/PrintArticle.aspx?a=20497&s
Now what are the hardware vendors waiting for? Permission from Microsoft?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm the guy who actually maintains that Statistics page on the Fedora wiki.
The real "story" here is a couple of things:
THING 1 -- We're making the best effort that we can at showing the world how many installations of Fedora Core 6 we know about.
THING 2 -- We're being upfront about the assumptions and caveats that go along with that number. Quoting:
"Accuracy of metrics
We believe it is reasonable to equate a "new IP address checking in" with "a new installation of FC6", with the following caveats:
1. Users who have dynamic IP addresses will likely be counted multiple times, which inflates the number by some amount.
2. Users who are behind NAT, corporate proxies, or who rsync updates to a local mirror before updating will not be counted at all.
The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations makes it quite clear that group (2) is significantly larger than group (1). As such, we believe that the true numbers in the field are higher than the numbers on this page."
THING 3 -- We're also being upfront about how that number is generated.
I'm not trying to spin the data in any way. I'm just putting it up there, and trying to do so as objectively as possible. Anyone can draw their own conclusions, or compare it to data from other distributions, if you can find similar reporting.
The numbers will be inflated, but also deflated by places like the one where I work that have multiple FC6 hosts behind the same router.
However, that's not how they're collecting the data: While you need only one CD to do multiple installs, it is my understanding that each machine has to run YUM itself. They've also thought of what you mentioned. Now, the article does go on to say So, if YUM/the tracking software can differentiate between a fresh install and a regular update, then the number of connections better correlates to new users.
So just fire up a live CD with a recent kernel and try it out. You don't have to upgrade if it doesn't work. Hardware drivers are in the kernel, so just testing the right kernel on your system will tell you whether it works (mostly).
FC3 uses kernel 2.6.9
FC6 uses kernel 2.6.18
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
you need to learn to use Slackware, it is the best distro for old hardware...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Personally, I rsync from a mirror and have a local repository, so I have a whole bunch of machines that dont get counted. Stuff like that will result in the numbers being a bit off.
"so I'm too afraid to switch from Core 3 to 6."
If you upgrade that rarely, I'd suggest you take a look at CentOS. CentOS 4 will be a far smaller leap (RHEL4 is close to FC3/FC4), and you'd be on a maintained platform again.
As the "Fedora Project Leader", the Fedora buck stops with me, so to speak.
And I promise you that I will NEVER require anyone to "register" Fedora in order to download updates, or stuff like that.
Neither I, nor the Fedora Board, which is Fedora's governing body, will allow some sort of "required registration" in order to get the full Fedora experience.
Download. Install. Update. If that's the extent of a person's interaction with Fedora, fine by me. We hope, of course, that there will be a fourth step, that being: Contribute
I just did a retro-fit upgrade and an install on two machines and neither went to the "yum" repository mirrors to do an update till after they finished their first reboot where I had to activate the update manually (and get the gpg keys installed).
- I remember that "install" at some point gave me an option to install against latest package in the "yum" repositories, which I do not do for speed.
- I remember the "upgrade" and "install" screens from Anaconda being different. The "upgrade" never asked me to update against the "yum" repositories.
"pup", which is the graphical tool analog to "yum", handles rotating through the mirrors properly as far as I remember where it just fails over to the next if the current one can't be reached. I've had my Internet die while trying to do this, I don't recall it ever crashing on me and this is doing many installs and upgrades across every version of Fedora.
I don't blame you for switching to something else given these problems. I'm just stumped how you got these problems.
From the article:
"We believe it is reasonable to equate a "new IP address checking in" with "a new installation of FC6", with the following caveats:
1. Users who have dynamic IP addresses will likely be counted multiple times, which inflates the number by some amount.
2. Users who are behind NAT, corporate proxies, or who rsync updates to a local mirror before updating will not be counted at all.
The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations makes it quite clear that group (2) is significantly larger than group (1). As such, we believe that the true numbers in the field are higher than the numbers on this page. "
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.