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."

Comments

A few suggestions for the new maintainer

[jawtheshark]

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.

Re:Pointless...

[robbrit]

I care. Also those manufacturers of complex hardware like Nvidia might care, so that they can justify putting the resources aside to develop Linux drivers.