Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

2-Year Study Shows Mac Users Downloading More Open Source Software

Posted by timothy on from the wait-what-kind-of-lies? dept.

AmyVernon writes "We combed through about two years' worth of data on SourceForge, looking at the platforms of the users who downloaded projects, and millions more Mac users are downloading open source projects now than were in February 2010. In the same time, Windows downloads have increased by a much smaller percentage and Linux downloads have actually declined." I wonder how much of this last part can be chalked up to the ever-better download infrastructure that the various Linux distros have. (Note: SourceForge and Slashdot are both part of Geeknet.)

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Package managers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'll tell you why downloads for Linux have declined - better and more complete package manager systems give users less incentive to go to places like SourceForge for programs, because they can use built-in tools like Ubuntu's Software Center.

  2. Linux user here. by IANAAC · · Score: 5, Informative
    I can't remember the last time I had to go to sourceforge for anything. Everything I have needed is usually already in my distribution's repositories, or another easily addable third party repository.

    Macs (or Windows, for that matter) don't have any sort of repository, do they?

  3. Different User Groups, Different Needs by andersh · · Score: 5, Informative

    While Linux offers a lot more [out of the box], the average Apple user doesn't need a repository. They can however easily add one! The App Store helped a lot in my opinion. Using Fink and Macports is not mainstream, but it sure works me!

    1. Re:Different User Groups, Different Needs by gOemb · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just because you mentioned Fink and Macports, I would like to mention Homebrew [http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/]. It just amazed me how easy it can actually be. This is *the* package manager for OSX and the only one where everything I wanted worked very well just like that (zsh, tmux, new ruby versions...).