Slashdot Mirror
The Linux Counter Relaunches
psychonaut writes "Long-term readers of Slashdot may be familiar with The Linux Counter, which attempts to measure (through surveys and statistics) the number of people using GNU/Linux operating systems. The project started in 1993 and shot to fame six years later, largely as a result of three Slashdot articles (two of which brought the Counter to its knees). After four years of stagnation, project founder Harald Tveit Alvestrand has handed over the reins to a new maintainer, Alexander Mieland. Over the past few months, Mieland has completely redeveloped the project, with a modernized design and support facilities (including a bug tracker, mailing list, RSS feed, and Twitter account). The New Linux Counter is now up and running, with all the data for active users from the old counter. The old site will continue to operate for a time but will soon be shut down and requests redirected to the new site."
I have an account and log in once a year, when I get my reminder email. Usually, I have quite a lot to update: decommissioned machines, upgraded machines, new machines and that's only for my personal machines. They have a script which uses sendmail to update your information. That's unacceptable in a desktop setting. What they should have is a simple, but relatively robust update system like freedns.afraid.org uses. If on top of that they can package their updating script and convince major distros to carry it as an opt-in for default installations, it could get some accurate stats.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Opps
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The project started in 1993 and shot to fame six years later, largely as a result of three Slashdot articles (two of which brought the Counter to its knees)
Here's to keeping the tradition alive!
Anybody want my mod points?
...as long as it works, who cares how many people use it?
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
> two of which brought the Counter to its knees
Yeah, make that three.
Maybe not such a great marketing move. I wonder how Microsoft would react to much higher than expected numbers of Linux boxes. In the distant past, Linux was waved off on the desktop side as a hobbyist or novelty platform, but I've seen many of my friends and colleagues switch over to a Linux distro in the past few years for their primary OS.
Of the three computers I have (not including gaming consoles and my phone running linux), all of them are either single, double, or triple boot optioned with a linux distro as one of the options.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Well ... 500,000 Android activations a day, that should "count" for something ... or is that Gnu/Android ?
"This new project will be re-written in a total modern way."
I can hear the counter devs talking now, you see we are going to use this really cool OOP hierarchy and this great ORM for mysql. The server is only going to consume 100MB of ram for each request it will be awesome.
Got Code?
Oops
You must be new here
which is totally what she said
It has a Twitter account! Instant success!
Can I light a sig ?
2011 will be the year of Linux on the desktop!
I've been on this tracker since 1996, and personally MS-free since 2001. I think its a worthwhile project and reply to the occasional update reminders. A reskin is news?
But it counts all Linux systems, not only those which use GNU. I had an email chat with RMS when this all came out, trying to get some clarification. It was a bit confusing, but he said *BSD is not GNU/*BSD even though they use the GCC compiler extensively. What seems to make Linux "GNU" is its' use of GNUtils. RMS did not claim glibc was enough.
But I have many lightweight systems without GNUtils (often using busybox) and usually with a cut down libc. At the other end of the scale, when I have to use a GUI, I prefer KDE over gnome (and fvwm over both). None of these use much GNU software.
IMHO, RMS is full of it here, and trying to ride Linux' popularity. OTOH, I am quite willing to believe the GPL _is_ absolutely critical to all Linux' development -- it attracted many more developers than the BSDL, most likely those who were concerned about commercial exploitation -- those who wouldn't be proud Apple took their code and hid it in OS/X.
People don't know about this counter thing, why not make it a game for GNU/Linux and have it for download, and then count every download? How about using the counter as a game portal as well, and have an option in the game to have you counted? For servers maybe there should be another option, count download of some different types of server software (maybe count Apache for Linux Server)? Use some unique machine identifier data not to count the same machine twice.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Almost a month ago, too. Given recent events, my trust in SSL certs is already shaken enough.
!linkID = @mysql_connect(localhost, lico, ***);
PHP-Version: 5.2.4-2ubuntu5.17
A properly configured production webserver does not leak this sort of info under load.
"The project started in 1993 and shot to fame six years later, largely as a result of three Slashdot articles (two of which brought the Counter to its knees)"
It's down.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
What does this number mean if everyone knows it's way off?
You're never going to get numbers for all the TVs, BDplayers, cameras, phones, Linksys routers, and the thousands of other consumer devices that are running LInux under the covers.
Okay, this counter is ... all about Linux , I get that. But its NOT news worthy. The site is designed pretty crappily as well as the error handling on server load. On top of that, the news summary says 'a modern redesign' of the website.... which still looks like about 2002 era, with some ajax thrown in. That is not modernization of an older concept.
Nothing's better than see a guy fail so hard after writing things like "...not the whole machine, we are not on windoze! :-P " on his announcement page.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Seriously? You're asking "What has happened?". You're slashdotted! And you made the mistake of ASKING US TO SPAM YOU WITH ANSWERS!!
Oh boy, double fail!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Yay... our online user counter explodes, thanks to slashdot.org! :-) :-)
The server actually is extremly slow, but mostly the page still comes up. If not, then send you complaints to slashdot.org... haha.
Alexander Mieland
http://linuxcounter.net
and statistics is all this will provide.
It is a neat thing and we all know how inaccurate it is. When even distributions are not sure how many users they have how could a good count exist.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
- You're plotting total counts so you need to remove the prefix "Growth of" from titles and y-axis. Reserve "Growth of" for when you actually plot the derivative (users / day).
- There are two parallel curves on the plots, but only one has a legend. Oh one is the shadow of the other? Don't do that.
- Use piecewise straight lines to connect the data points. Your interpolating curves show invented trends.
No one gives a shit what Fox thinks.
This seems to rely on the fact that the user would have a working mail transfer agent setup on their system. This is a rarity, however. I happen to have mailx configured with sendmail to use an SMTP smart host, however most people probably do not.
....ugly as the old site.
There's no place like
really a silly counter. I started in '98. I have had many computers since that first one so exactly what are the counting?
Because we need people to care about it for it to work? With OSS, what goes around comes around.
Twinstiq, game news
No one here gives a shit what Fox thinks.
FTFY
so that the list can be stolen/sold to patent holders, which can then try to extort money from all registered linux users? So that non-registered installation can be considered "illegal"?
No thanks - and yes I am somewhat paranoid about this. Memories of Novell patent deals and recent google/Android linux-related "licensing" from various patent holders.