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Ubuntu Makes Public Desktop Metrics (ubuntu.com)
Canonical introduced Ubuntu Hardware/Software Survey in Ubuntu 18.04 and has since been collecting data (it is optional, and users' consent is taken; Ubuntu says 67 percent users opted in to the survey). Now for the first time, it is revealing the stats, shedding light on how Ubuntu users like things around. The takeaways from the result: Installation Duration: The average install of Ubuntu Desktop takes 18 minutes. Some machines out there can install a full desktop in less than 8 minutes!
Installer Options: Another interesting fact is that the newly introduced Minimum Install option is being used by a little over 15% of our users. This is a brand new option but is already attracting a considerable fanbase.
CPU Count: A single CPU is most common, and this is not very surprising. We haven't broken this down to cores but is something we will look in to.
Disk Partitioning Schemes: Most people choose to wipe their disks and reinstall from scratch. The second most common option is a custom partition table.
Display: Full HD (1080p) is the most popular screen resolution, followed by 1366 x 768, a common laptop resolution. HiDPI and 4k are not yet commonplace.
Installer Options: Another interesting fact is that the newly introduced Minimum Install option is being used by a little over 15% of our users. This is a brand new option but is already attracting a considerable fanbase.
CPU Count: A single CPU is most common, and this is not very surprising. We haven't broken this down to cores but is something we will look in to.
Disk Partitioning Schemes: Most people choose to wipe their disks and reinstall from scratch. The second most common option is a custom partition table.
Display: Full HD (1080p) is the most popular screen resolution, followed by 1366 x 768, a common laptop resolution. HiDPI and 4k are not yet commonplace.
Wow, so Ubuntu has more voluntary users than Windows 10.
Number of people using it who have ever touched a boob: 0
You have identified what appears to be a correlation between lack of breastfeeding and an interest in non-mainstream PC operating systems later in life. Correlation does not imply causation, but it does imply that someone ought to research the common cause.
So what might be the common cause of the two? Is it parenting style? Some missing nutrient in infant formula? Some hereditary disability that leads to both failure to lactate and interest in information technology? A brief Google Search session dug up a demonstrated correlation between bottle feeding and autism, and elsewhere there is a correlation between highest-functioning (Asperger-type) autism and IT interest.
Short of certain AAA games that don't exist on any other platform, there really hasn't been a compelling reason to bother with WinDOS in a long time. It's simply no longer the "default necessary option". Those days have been over for awhile now.
You can get over the Stockholm Syndrome now.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
My monitor is about 12 years old. I've thought about buying a new 4k monitor, just because mine is old. This data really surprised me. I figured most people would have 4k monitors by now. (especially with all of the advertising Apple is doing about their Retina displays)
Why is that? Reading some reviews online, a few people said 4k was unusable as a computer monitor because all of the icons became impossibly small. Is that true?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Using SSD (especially USB) as a swap drive/ram drive is ludicrously slow. Dell indeed still sells 3 and 4 generation old machines but you get what you pay for. If you need more RAM, don't buy those.
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Then which current-generation 11.6 inch laptops that take 8 GB or more RAM are good for running Ubuntu?
Win10 takes 18 minutes to check updates, installing those updates requires your bosses approval for a 3 week time off from work, a preacher, a chiropractor, and some green vomit cleaner.
I'd be doing a custom install to have more swap space
Can I ask why? What's the point of extra swap space unless you're running Ubuntu on a potato?
I don't know about the OP, but I like being able to hibernate...
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My first guess is that OP doesn't need to hibernate his PC because normal sleep is good enough to get the user's computer to the next power outlet (if a laptop) or past a brief power outage (if a desktop on a UPS). In fact, Ubuntu disables hibernate by default in PolicyKit for a couple reasons. One is that hardware support is so spotty. Another is that hibernating with a read-write mounted file system that other systems can write in the meantime can cause data corruption. This could be removable media or a shared partition on a dual-boot system.
Besides, I thought the swap space should be separate from hibernation space in case the committed memory at hibernation time exceeds the size of the swap file. This can be the case if (say) you have 8 GB of RAM and 12 GB of swap, but you have 14 GB of committed memory.
Or are they basing it on number of downloads vs number of opt-ins?
There are ways to count installations. Install image downloads aren't one of them given how easy it is to install multiple machines through sneakernet or BitTorrent. A better way involves estimating how many people are running sudo apt update (or the automatic counterpart) to obtain the latest package index from default repositories.
> in that Windows has every Linux feature, plus AAA games.
Can i recompile windows kernel? ... you got the idea...
Can i replace the window manager?
Can i remove closed source programs? Even, can i really disable MS tracking? Will never again those options show up again as enabled?
Can i just trust MS to update all my software, like in linux with their package manager?
Can i choose what installs i do want to install? will windows really obey to that?
Can i setup complex network setups (hint: MS used linux to setup the network in their azure)?
Can I run play games many games with vulkan (hint: all new feral ports are using vulkan, while the windows version is still in direct3D)?
Can i run big servers, with lot of services with little performance lost?
Can i
By the way, we do have AAA games in linux... not as many as windows, but we do have then and they work fine...
Yes, windows can run many linux apps, but performance sometimes shitty... if i want to run a docker linux, why would i do it inside a windows? even linux instances/vm are cheaper and faster in linux... So If linux do everything that windows do, faster, cheaper, cleaner and with more freedom, why would i switch over to windows, just because some AAA games? with 1300 linux games i have in my steam account, i really do not care about those games
Higuita
Hey, the right tool to the right job!
If your job require windows, that is OK... now most people do not really need windows anymore, but most still use it because they really do not know how to switch or want to learn new tools... and yes, some tools are better than other, you will miss some features but you can also learn new ones... but you should know that, you use several CAD/3D software, you already know that one tool is good for one task, but bad for another.
But it is possible to do 3D work in linux, many people already do it and with 3D printers, that field should improve even more. From a quick search freecad, Qcad, maya, blender, brl-cad, k-3d, Archimedes. I did work with people that used Maya and Blender on linux and they made amazing jobs
Finally, you can also require your software makers a linux version... in the past all of then would ignore then, but slowly they start to listen... and with opengl, vulkan, .NET, C#, QT all working on all systems, it is easier to add the support.
Higuita
I recently had to reinstall Ubuntu on several machines because of corruption on ext4 partitions due to a power failure. In all cases, it booted to a screen indicating that fsck had to be run manually and then the machine wouldn't boot after running fsck or it would boot but critical apps would crash on startup. I learned my lesson and now ext4 is completely dead to me. When I rebuilt the machines, I used xfs instead since I've been running that on all of my other machines for almost 15 years and have never had stability issues regardless of how many times the machines unexpectedly lost power. Pro tip: if your machine uses UEFI and you want to install Ubuntu with a root partition of xfs, Ubuntu will allow you to do that but it won't boot after installation - you need to create a separate partition for /boot which uses one of the ext variants and then an xfs partition for /.
In other words, there is no compelling reason to use Linux. I'm simply using your logic, in that Windows has every Linux feature, plus AAA games.
Come again?
Features windows doesn't have: btrfs, zfs, custom kernels, minimal text-only installs, ability to run from a USB stick or CD without a bastardized container install.
Features Linux doesn't have: price tag above $0, shitty activation requirements tied to a single machine, built-in spyware, unavoidable "upgrades" which often break the OS, and some games.
Yeah, sure, they're just about equal ...
Using SSD (especially USB) as a swap drive/ram drive is ludicrously slow.
How the hell is this marked informative? SSDs are way faster than spinning rust for swap. USB flash drives can be shit for it if you get a crappy one, but there are several thumb drives out there which have full on SSD controllers in them which makes them suitable as an alternative for an internal SSD (and, hence, also perform very well as swap drives).
I'd love to see what metrics you're using to conclude they're "ludicrously slow".
>KDE is barely open source. That's a major problem.
?!?! ... so yes, you might have time-travel !!
are you from 1997?
KDE is open source, in fact almost everything is GPL or GPL compatible... even QT today is GPL
Higuita
The activation requirements can be very dangerous too, if it decides that your install is somehow not legit (which can occur due to false positives) it can cause a denial of service and shut the machine down. Linux doesn't self-destruct like that.
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Exactly, copy protection schemes only ever hurt the paying customers...
I used to buy Amiga games which had those stupid code wheels or required codes from the manual etc... Invariably i would lose the manual/codewheel, lose the original floppies or they would become corrupted etc. Usually i ended up acquiring a cracked copy of the game i had bought so i could continue playing it, eventually i just skipped the redundant purchasing part and went straight to acquiring the cracked copy.
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Yes, SSDs are faster than spinning rust but you'll still notice your DDR4 RAM swapping to a device 20 times as slow. Using USB has a lot of overhead, it's an option but not at all advisable. If you're looking for a swap drive at least use the PCIe slot (which laptops have in place of PCMCIA these days)
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