The Great Linux World Map

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Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 13, 2011 @03:43AM from the continental-drift dept.

N1ckR writes "Mrk has posted a fun Linux world map including 'The Suse Lake,' 'Noob Desert' and the 'Forbidden Land of Gentoo.' He said, 'The Great Linux World Map is a fun endeavor trying to portray the world of the Linux desktop as a sort of a Typus Orbis Terrarum. The map is no way representative in terms of actual market share usage or popularity. It's just a wild envisioning of how I see things, more or less.'"

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Don’t get it by Anrego · 2011-05-13 03:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

All they did is give geographic-ish names to the various distros and randomly place them on a world map. Very little about the placement, and really not much about the names, is specific to the distros, and there are no distro specific features added and as is said in the summary this isn’t showing popularity or any other statistic. Ok, so Fedora is touching Red Hat,. the noobs are in ubuntu.. haha?
Am I just being thick and missing the point/humour here, or is this really just a dud?
1. Re:Don’t get it by 0racle · 2011-05-13 03:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I think it's a dud to generate traffic. By the summary itself, it's not based on anything but wild imagination.
  
  Someone is trying to be xkcd.
  
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2. Re:Don’t get it by YodasEvilTwin · 2011-05-13 03:47 · Score: 2
  
  Nope, it's verifiably stupid. Nothing to see here folks, move along
3. Re:Don’t get it by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-13 04:00 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Someone is trying to be xkcd.
  Exactly. But Randall at least uses data to backup his maps (to decide their relative size and position). These just seem randomly placed.
4. Re:Don’t get it by Hatta · 2011-05-13 04:24 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Yeah, it's not that funny. They didn't even map an ARCHipelago.
  
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Kingdom of Slackware Cold War by Bloodwine77 · 2011-05-13 03:53 · Score: 2

Due to extremely different ideals, I suspect the Kingdom of Slackware and the Great Communist Empire of Ubuntu are engaged in a cold war with their respective fingers on the red buttons.
Funny, but a flamebait by spaceplanesfan · 2011-05-13 03:53 · Score: 2

It once again associates Linux with communism.
1. Re:Funny, but a flamebait by Bloodwine77 · 2011-05-13 04:15 · Score: 2
  
  You may be right. I like the "Rogue State of Mint", because Linux Mint has come out and said that they have no plans on using Unity and will be diverging a bit from the path that Ubuntu is currently taking. The Gnome 2.0 hills dividing them is a nice touch.
2. Re:Funny, but a flamebait by Anrego · 2011-05-13 04:20 · Score: 2
  
  Tell you the truth, I think it kind of is...
  The idea being that everyone gives a little by submitting patches and software they write for their own purposes such that everyone benifits, and everyone gets a full blown OS with a huge collection of software.
  Don't see why the association is a bad thing. It may not work as a government, but seems to work ok as a software model.
!XKCD by numb7rs · 2011-05-13 03:57 · Score: 5, Funny

It's like XKCD, but without the funny.
1. Re:!XKCD by Anonymous Coward · 2011-05-13 04:03 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  So, just like xkcd then.
2. Re:!XKCD by Elbereth · 2011-05-13 04:05 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  XKCD isn't funny, either.
  References to pop culture don't make you funny. Being funny makes you funny.
3. Re:!XKCD by partyguerrilla · 2011-05-13 04:29 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  There are two types of people in the world: 1. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
4. Re:!XKCD by M8e · 2011-05-13 07:06 · Score: 2
  
  Humor is highly subjective.
  It's so high that it might even be jective.
xkcd knockoff? by compulord155 · 2011-05-13 04:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

Anyone else notice that it looks strikingly like xkcd maps from the past? Of course with much less wit, organization and forethought.
Re:Possible source data??? by kvvbassboy · 2011-05-13 04:08 · Score: 2

Not exactly what you are looking for, but shows a neat timeline: Linux distros timeline.
Not Funny, Not Clever, Not Accurate, Not Original by Wannabe+Code+Monkey · 2011-05-13 04:32 · Score: 2

So it's a rip off of many of Randal's maps. Except his are usually clever and funny and in many ways actually representative of what he's mapping. There's just no reason for this map to exist. I'm not saying someone couldn't make a good Linux distro map, this is just not that.
From one comment to this story: "shut up and laugh, and get the stick out of your ass". I would love too laugh... except it's not funny. Why must I be uptight with a stick up my ass just because I don't find this submission to be funny? And why is Ubuntu labeled as "Communist"? I get the whole GPL==communist thing, but other than Red Hat, Ubuntu is about as commercial as it gets. It would make way more sense if a geological feature relating to the GPL, GNU, or even Debian had the "Communist" moniker. Also, I see there's a "Mount chroot"... Why is chroot a mountain? It would have been funny if chroot were a small enclave with fewer and smaller features than its surrounding nation. If anything, sudo should have been a mountain, instead of a cape.

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Re:Where is ... by $RANDOMLUSER · 2011-05-13 04:46 · Score: 2

Better yet, a C++ monster.

Isn't that redundant?

--
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Re:Where is ... by msclrhd · 2011-05-13 06:16 · Score: 2

Don't you mean a C monster :)
And the blue area could have the label "The C".