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Linux Distribution Popularity Trends Plotted

Posted by Soulskill on from the year-of-linux-on-the-toaster dept.

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."

9 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Is Android really a Linux Distro? by Abreu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  2. Re:Where's The Graph ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This article has absolutely nothing to do with install base, relative to the rest of the market or otherwise. It's solely google trends, and thus completely meaningless.

  3. Does Android really count? by bsDaemon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Where's The Graph ... by mangu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they associate linux = android = phone, it might hurt linux on the desktop.

    I'm not so sure about that. People always want some extra feature.

    If they install that awesome app in their phone they'll start wondering, "if the phone is like this, imagine the desktop".

  5. Re:Not very accurate measurement IMHO by machinelou · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The data might reflect something like "public interest." Any gentoo user knows that to find information related to gentoo, they should go to gentoo.org or #gentoo or the gentoo-wiki. Similar parallels can probably be drawn for debian and ubuntu. So, the data probably do not reflect the number of people using those distros but people seeking more information about them who probably not already users.

  6. Where's the justification? by jonaskoelker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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 :-)

    1. Re:Where's the justification? by LingNoi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It won't become a mainstream OS until it's widely available in brick stores, and I mean like in every store. Consider this, Apple has their own branded stores worldwide, do TV ad campaigns and they only have a pathetic 5% on stat counter. The fact that Linux has 0.7% with absolutely no advertising is amazing in itself.

    2. Re:Where's the justification? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If that were true, then why didn't Linux pick up more in the late '90s and early 2000s? At least in the US there were many brick-and-mortar stores that sold Linux distributions. Pretty much all the larger stores that would sell computers, like Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, and Office Max, were selling Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, et al. I haven't been to any of those places in recent years, aside from Best Buy, so I don't know if the others still offer Linux distributions on their shelves. I know Best Buy doesn't, so maybe the others followed as well? It could be that they didn't sell well, or at all, especially since I remember there would sometimes be multiple versions of the same distribution on the shelf for sometimes a year or more. Could have been any number of things as well, like those who already familiar with Linux knew they could just download most of them for free instead of paying actual money. It's hard to say what's keeping Linux adoption down, but until these last few years, it wasn't that it was unavailable in most major stores.

  7. I don't think Slackware should be 2nd tier by rrossman2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.