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Linux Distribution Popularity Trends Plotted
DeviceGuru writes "In order to get a sense of the popularity of various Linux distributions over the past several years, LinuxTrends entered their names into Google's search insights tool and grabbed images of the resulting graphs. The graphs display some fascinating trends and bode well for the future of Linux, particularly its ability to adapt to changing requirements and opportunities. What's especially noteworthy is that Android is the first Linux spin to take on a life of its own within consumer devices. It's certainly not the first use of Linux as an OS for devices; what's unique, however, is that it's the first branded Linux-based OS to be widely marketed to consumers."
Where's the graph showing Linux's install base compared to the rest of the market? Is it going up, down or staying the same? Sure, Android is going up and that is good for Linux but what about the industry as a whole? Linux can't pin their 'desktop invasion' on the hopes of a mobile OS distro that most users will never fully take advantage of.
Not a very accurate measurement IMHO, although its just "popularity" after all:
From TFA:
Bear in mind that the graphs do not represent distribution sales, downloads, or installed base; rather, the data is based entirely on the number of Google searches containing each distribution’s name per unit time as reported by Google’s search insights tool.
Now we know the reason the iPhone is winning. It has a more pure Unix operating system.
I hope google is successful with android in different devices; Android on a ARM netbook for £100, even Microsoft may not be able to crush that.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I am increasingly convinced that Android and WebOS can't really be counted as Linux, any more than Mac OSX can be counted as Mach+BSD
No sig for the moment.
This is utterly meaningless. These aren't graphs of the popularity of the distros, they're graphs of how often people typed their names into a web browser as search terms.
Find free books.
Maybe this is a regional thing, but who the heck uses Suse? I've been rolling out commercial products using Linux for over a decade, and I never see Suse. Ubuntu, sure. That's mostly for the Windows guys who want to look 'lite. But almost never Suse; the last time I saw it here in Silicon Valley was many years ago.
I do consulting, and so I see a lot of what goes on in the Valley. The standard approach is to use Redhat based distros. Fedora for the cutting edge, CentOS when you need need to get something out without paying, and CentOS/Redhat when the paperpushes want the warm fuzzies of support.
Why is even Android mentioned ITFA? Android is just than: an embedded, highly tailored, and customized Linux kernel for specific, embedded hardware devices. Comparing distributions with the Linux kernel for end-user consumption in the market made to run on a plethora of hardware and architectures, great. Don't throw Android in there. To me, that's like counting apples in with the oranges.
However, I'm glad there was some sort of data interpretation done and didn't end up being a Ubuntu flamewar. I, myself, started on Redhat 4.x and grew to love (and hate) the RPM packaging system, along with Redhat's idiosyncrasies on the distribution level. I won't say it's been easy trying to find a balance between Fedora, CentOS and RedHat, as far as when to and not-to use bleeding edge; gamble for enterprise support and stick with the community.
Sure, we all know that Android is based on Linux, but is that really how its marketed to normal people? Seems to be that its marketed as the "google phone" or an "iphone killer" or "look at all these apps". If Android is doing well its not so much that Linux is getting a boost so much as that the Linux community should learn the lesson that normal people don't care about mandatory access control, line-rate packet processing, deduplication backup storage, or whatever else we're on about -- they want "apps".
Why is Windows so successful? Not because people give a crap about Windows, but because there is a lot of software that people want to use, or need to use, and its on Windows. Why is Android popular? Because Google made it, it's not locked to AT&T, and There are lots of cool/useful programs for it. And there are lots of cool/useful programmes for it because normal people are willing to pay $1.99 for a program for their cell phone. Desktop linux is "marketed" (if you can call it that) to normal people often times on cost. It's "free". So they'd feel ripped off if they had to pay $1.99 for a program. Thus, no one charges small amounts for desktop linux programmes, and without the market there isn't that much incentive to write them.
So, good for Google and their phone thing that I don't really want, but not sure Android has much at all to do with Linux-as-we-know-it succeeding in any meaningful way.
The fanbois got to score their victories anywhere they can. The whole debate on a platforms popularity doesn't mean shit except as a potential job market and to sooth the egos of the insecure.
Would have been nice for the authors to explain the y-axis scales.
since 1999. I've still got Debian on the desktop and Mandriva on the laptop. I do almost no searching because I don't need to.
Google searches aren't directly related to popularity. When I first started using Ubuntu I used to do a lot of searches for "how to something ubuntu".
These days I rarely search for "Ubuntu" anymore. I just use it on a day to day basis, at home and at work.
When I do a search for a Linux distro it's usually about one that I had never heard of, and most probably will never use, I just want to keep tabs on what's happening.
Actually it's more BSD and Mach with a little MkLinux thrown in than a pure UNIX.
And when I do uname -sr on my iPhone it says "Darwin".
I believe that the increasing popularity of Android is extremely important for Linux. Instead of being "an alternative to X", where X is either Windows or OSX, Android is just, well, Android. It has a clear identity of its own and is not so often depicted as the competitor or the alternative. In this sense Android has the same strong identity as Linux in LAMP installations: it performs excellently the function it is intended for, rather than "playing catch-up" with something else and this is key to its importante, fame and success.
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
I wasn't aware that Android ran on Linux.
This is wonderful. It is a second example, after the Mac, of people who are totally NOT tech enthusiasts using *nix, using it easily and liking it.
Where's the graph showing Linux's install base compared to the rest of the market?
Yeah, I was wondering about that, and the whole "This bodes well for Linux" bit.
I mean, all the curves are going down. Ubuntu went up at (what appears to be) all the other distros' expense, but they're going down now. Mint may be going up, but not very steadily.
I know, Android is going up. But that's not really Linux---at least, as I understand it, not in the sense that N900 is Linux. Can you run frozen-bubble//wesnoth/sgt-puzzles/quake/openoffice on Android? (I can on my N900)
So, in what sense does it bode well for Linux? Can anyone who reads that out of the data presented in the article explain it to me? If so, thank you very much :-)
I know it's not as popular as it once was, but after all it's the grandfather of the group. Back when I first started playing around with linux in around 95/96 the only book(s) you could really find included a copy of Slackware. I purchased two books, one with RedHat and one with Slackware. I know one of the two had a kernel in around 1.2.13 or so, and the other 1.1.something. But that was back in the days where getting X to work was part skill and part magic, among many other things that weren't nearly as easy as what you can do today. Again, just based on age and the fact it was one of the biggest Distros in years passed and helped (in my mind) pave the way for a lot of the newer distro's, I don't believe it should be in a 2nd tier but in the 1st tier myself.
they can most definitely be counted as Linux, just not GNU/Linux.
I agree to some extent with what you've said but at what level do we consider something a Linux distro? We are all familiar with the many FSF applications and libraries and other OSS parts and pieces which make up a 'standard' Linux distro but are these others really different when they layer a different OSS system on top of the Linux kernel? Does the kernel make the distro or does the GNU layer above make it a Linux distro?
What would we call an OSS project like Android or WebOS which use the Linux Kernel and some other API layer above it instead of GNU/Linux? Goo/Linux, Web/Linux, Palm/Linux, ? I guess calling "Linux" GNU/Linux helps in this case because you know what it means to have a GNU/Linux distro as opposed to the xxx/Linux distros from Google, HP, and others.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Ubuntu took off from heavy advertising. Advertising and marketing works, and the initial "get as many free disks as you want " shipit deal helped there as well.
Now, what they failed to do is capitalize on this advertising. They should immediately (as soon as they saw they had a hit on their hands) have gone to selling their own machines. Relying on dell. some *mart, some online mom and pop store, etc is not the same.
They don't need every hardware config under the sun, just maybe six machines total, don't go crazy there. This needs to be like an Apple effort, just using open source, integrated hardware and software in nice packages.
They need a netbook (go for ARM, make the breakthrough), a full laptop with optical drive, an entry level cheapish desktop, a higher end workstation/gaming type desktop, expensive but all top shelf components, don't be scared, just do it, a SOHO tower server perhaps that comes with NAS, then a rackmount enterprise server.
They use the LTS releases as the target OS for those machines. The main hired on devs use those machines all the time, so they really grok how to make them fly and get rock solid.
Now, the support is two tier, you own a bonafide branded Ubuntu machine, you get first tier support. Everyone else gets second tier (which is what Ubuntu has now, pure anarchy with hardware, good luck if it works or not, go wade through the forums pages deep with "help me plz").
first tier, separate forum, and the devs, or other offical hired on dudes, DO read the forums there and respond. And quickly. You take the people's money, you answer their questions and fix problems as fast as possible.
First tier branded machines get the REAL "just works" treatment. The rest is like now, good luck with your hardware, might work, might not, go haunt the second tier forums, see what needs to be done there. If you want the every six month bleeding edge releases, oh well, good luck. sure you can run it..but don't expect the same support as they give people who have paid for the hardware and software. Hardware they sell should stay supported for two LTS cycles. That's more than enough now a days for people to milk their hardware out. Chances are, if the hardware and software was really a good match, it would work longer than that, but officially, make it two cycles.
And they should be able to keep cost competitive in this, as they have the resources for economies of scale and some good Q&A before making hardware selection for the branded machines. If local mom and pops can assemble and sell generic machines, so can a big company like Canonical.
Every new LTS release, new hardware comes out, and it "just works", everything, wireless, all of it.
*Most* people don't give a rat's ass about upgrading their OS and machines every six months, look how many people and businesses are still running XP and some older hardware. They want "just works" and "finally, I got this freekin SOB computer figured out and can use it now" over bleeding edge every other week something new is added/updated, and something old that worked, stops working. That gets way annoying to the other 99% of the humans out there who aren't serious devs/hobbiests. Real annoying.
You want linux mainstream on the desktop, or you want to keep it for hardcore nerds only, choose one.
Might have been interesting to also show how popular the distributions are
on the installed base/server level - much like the http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.201007/apacheos.html
OS/Linux Distributions using Apache Survey has been doing for many years. Interesting facts from there:
My TV is Linux powered.
I saw some guy using SUSE.
I know, Android is going up. But that's not really Linux
Which is why, despite criticism from some haters, I continue to use the term "GNU/Linux" to describe Ubuntu, Fedora, Maemo/MeeGo, and other "traditional" environments on top of the Linux kernel. These use a software stack with GNU components in it (glibc, Bash, Coreutils), unlike Android, OpenWrt, and the like, which use something else. I've written about my views on "GNU/Linux".
These days I rarely search for "Ubuntu" anymore.
Of course your searches for the name of your operating system decline as you use. At first, you search for it a lot while trying to set it up and get hardware to work. For example, you'll probably search for ubuntu $modelno a couple times to try to find halfway working drivers for your video card, WLAN adapter, webcam, etc., and you might search for ubuntu $gamename to learn how to work around how PulseAudio screwed up sound in a bunch of Linux games, but once setup is done, setup-related searches are done at least until you upgrade to a new 6-month release of Ubuntu.
Any gentoo user knows that to find information related to gentoo, they should go to gentoo.org or #gentoo or the gentoo-wiki.
So in this case, it depends on whether a Google search with site:gentoo.org counts as a search for Gentoo.
Perhaps [Android OS] should not be counted as GNU/Linux
I agree 100 percent, as seen in this article. But a lot of haters on forums will jump on anyone who uses the term GNU/Linux, saying something like "it's called Linux, you GNU-tard hippie". Android uses Linux; MeeGo uses GNU/Linux.
So are the increased trends in searches for android due to Google's Android OS?
Or do these statistics just show a sudden increase in popularity of Mr. Data, the Android from Star Trek?
Or a resurgence of popularity in regards to artificial bipeds and robotics in general?
since 1999. I've still got Debian on the desktop and Mandriva on the laptop. I do almost no searching because I don't need to.
And how many people who have been using Windows since 1999 do searches on Google for Windows?
Fuck the colors of the curve and fuck the guy that made them. Could he not find less color-blind friendly colors ? I know it is difficult to pick colors when there is too may curves, but common there are 5 here. black (0,0,0), red (255,0,0), blue(0,0,255), green(0,255,0), grey(128,128,128). That's five colors that are easy to distinguished by everybody.
Seriously, I can not see the difference between curve 1 and 5 and between curve 2 and 4. I know my eyes suck but that does not mean people should use difficult to see colors.
Call the WAHHHHHbulance!
This graph is a reflection on search trends, not usage. All this shows is that users search for Ubuntu topics at an increasing rate, and other distros not so much. This would make sense as Ubuntu is the most newb friendly. Chances are, IMHO, if you know what you are doing you aren't going to be using Ubuntu, and aren't going to have to Google for how do I do X w/ Ubuntu.
This is a linux distro report based on real usage - not search trends. You can even drill down to specific distro versions.
I would beg you to remember that only the kernel is "Linux". So a custom kernel is hardly an orange.
;-)
And I'm not going to stop telling happy Android users that they are using Linux. And you shouldn't, either!
expandfairuse.org
Can a kernel developed in a branched tree, with past contributions to the mainline neglected and deleted, doing things which wouldn't be accepted upstream, essentially forked as it stands now, be "most definitely" counted as Linux?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Linuxish but not Linux IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Then that's what Android is now.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Windows 7 crept past 1% before it was released.
Am I the only person here that wonders if *gasp* Linux is the problem?
I just read through a thread here the other day where people were complaining about sound mixing problems. Didn't Windows have that problem solved in 98?
This of course is heresy to many of you but it is almost 2011 and Linux can' t hold 1% of the desktop. Maybe it is time to listen to the heretics, because after all, what is there to lose?
Most geeks I know are aware of Linux and don't run it. If they would pay extra for Windows then you obviously have a bigger problem than marketing.
Macs at least have a decent library of games to choose from and also MS office and Adobe suites as well. What does Linux have to offer when it comes to games? Tux Racer? Some 90's knock-offs and Quake 3 mods? Linux hasn't gone anywhere because its followers all want a GNU WORLD ORDER where proprietary developers don't exist. Sorry but proprietary developers are the ones that add value to a platform. People want to play Popcap games, The Sims and Wow without screwing with Wine. Linux has been hamstrung by the belief that all software should be open source. It's a freaking stupid outlook that just leaves you with weekend warriors that make hobby games like Tux Racer. Or you get an office suite that is maintained by a company that is more interested in selling database software.
You want the latest driver for a printer? Well you need a full system upgrade then.
You want version x.xx of a program? Well for the program we are only packaging it for system version y.yy. You need a system upgrade.
Oh whoops looks like the new system upgrade broke your wireless card. Hopefully that will be fixed with the next update.
This is what happens when you don't have a stable abi. Now please tell me how I am wrong and make excuses for Linux as it sits at 1% for another 10 years. Excuses and denial seem to be working well.
Please also include an anecdote about how Linux works for your [relative]. We haven't seen enough of those in this thread.
They are aware of the issue and have basically said tough shit to English speaking countries.
Of course it would be trivial to change the name to something less offensive but they are offended by the idea of changing the name.
A proprietary software company would never use a name that was a derogatory term in the largest software market. Like it or not having to sell a product comes with accountability. With a volunteer project like GIMP it doesn't matter if you have 10k or 100 million users.
I live in an English speaking county, i.e. England, and have discussed The GIMP with quite a few people. Some of them have had disabilities. The name has never once come up as a topic of interest. The only place I have ever seen it mentioned is on the internet.
Hey, look everyone, a Microsoft astroturfer, posting his carefully choosen sequences of meaningless words, trying to create an impression that his corporate masters are winning something.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
See http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1761840&cid=33330428
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
They also have a successful desktop OS.
Or perhaps I am a realist that has grown tired of treating Linux like a religion.
Shouldn't you accuse me of astroturfing for Adobe?
Or maybe simply I don't think an image editing program should have a derogatory name?
Most english speaking CTOs would not be comfortable rolling out a program called The Gimp. Perhaps they all have Adobe stock?
which was released in 2007. There is also the separate issue of binary compatibility between distro versions.
There is no 10 year stable API anywhere in the system. Even kernel tree drivers get broken.
Google "wireless broke by kernel update" to see this wonderful system at work.
As for upgrades distros routinely ditch 2 year old releases when it comes to updated packages. Ubuntu even does this with their "LTS" versions. Want the latest version of a browser that includes security improvements? Well that requires packages x,y and z which require a full system update!
Printer broke after update:
The problem described here can also occur for non-HP USB printers, in general when the printer is accessed via libusb. This does not only happen when the printer is accessed through the "hp" CUPS backend of HPLIP but also via the "usb" backend of CUPS when the "usblp" kernel module is blacklisted or via manufacturer-supplied libusb-based CUPS backends. In any case do a full system-update to get the updated libusb. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hplip/+bug/595650
Anecdotal evidence that doesn't change the fact that:
1. The Gimp is a derogatory term
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gimp
2. Multiple users have requested that the name be changed
http://marc.info/?l=gimp-user&m=115965440614876
What would be lost if the name was changed? Is it really that great of a name?
Funny how your sig is a snide comment about religion and yet you act like a zealot when it comes to dissenting views.
He is questioning Creationism? He must be with the devil.
He is questioning Linux? He must be with Microsoft.
I don't think an image editing program should have a derogatory name
Then write one. Or rebrand-fork.
Most english speaking CTOs would not be comfortable rolling out a program called The Gimp
Then fuck them. Or rebrand-fork.
what's unique, however, is that it's the first branded Linux-based OS to be widely marketed to consumers
Yeah, and Android is so unique that Motorola doesn't even need to mention Linux once on the page the summary links to...
Um, where does RedHat (RHEL) fit in there? Every company I've worked for in the last few years uses either RedHat, and more up and coming, CentOS (RHEL - RH proprietary stuff).
And SuSE is commercial, too, so you can't try to keep out RedHat.
mark
Adobe just harvests the windfall from Microsoft marketing. By themselves they can't even win against Steve Jobs in a yelling match.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Linux Distribution Popularity Trends Plotted:
Current status:
Ubuntu: =============|
Others: |
Projection:
Ubuntu: =============|
Others: |
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Linux (evey distro, maybe except gentoo/arch/lfs) became easier and easier to configure and use with time, so where in 2005 you had to go through a lot of searches to get you new fancy webcam to work on Linux, now it just works out of the box. Less searches explains falling "trend" lines.
Data points without context are not information - they're noise.