codingexperiments.com— Like everything else, what goes up must come down. This must apply to Linux distributions too, right? So, what’s happening with Linux? Which distributions are growing?
Jul 1, 2008View in Crawl 4
Umm... so you're saying that Chocolate Mint Ice Cream should merge with Chocolate Ice Cream because there are too many flavors of ice cream? The argument itself is silly. If we want to take the Ice Cream analogy one step further... Windows is Vanilla -- plain, boring, ubiquitous, etc... Mac OSX is Rocky Road -- a premium (overpriced) blend that assaults the senses. The advantage of Linux is that you can choose whatever distro/flavor suits you best. I doubt that by merging them all, they would ever overtake Windows and even if they did, they would lose in the bargain what makes Linux interesting & different.
Someone did. Its called SUSE. (jk) Actually, its better that so many exist. There is no one distro that covers all possible scenarios. DSL breathes new life into *very* old hardware. Slackware tends to be ultra robust and uses a BSD style init. Redhat is also ultra-stable, uses SYSV init, and offers the commercial tech support required by many business customers. Ubuntu gives ease of installation, commercial drivers, and a broad user base to new and experienced users alike. There are also distros that cater to foreign languages -- Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, etc.Also note, software patches, NLS, bug fixes, and apps from one distro often find their way into other distros. Code written by Redhat developers can be found in virtually ALL modern Linux distros.
Quote: "Because almost all Ubuntu I know (and my friends share the same opinion so i'm not alone) ... consistantly [sic] annoy the hell out of people with the 'I use Ubuntu/Linux so I'm better than you' attitude."sed "s/Ubuntu/[any other Linux distro]/g" and your sentence would probably still be true. To be honest, it probably holds true for *any* operating system. For better or worse, people (well, geeks anyway) seem to get pretty territorial over their pet O/S.
Obviously using search stats doesn't give insight into the numbers of actual users of the distributions. The poster of these stats knows that and anyone reading them that can think past a junior high level will know that. That still doesn't make this information less interesting.What it does show is how "common" people are searching for linux information / distros. Obviously certain distros seem to be more popular with new users (ubuntu) than others (slackware).I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't agree that ubuntu is starting to become a common name that hardcore windows users are becoming more familiar with as the face of linux.... something that never really happened with other distributions.To me these numbers show that a majority of possible new linux users are researching at the very least or trying out ubuntu. Some of those users that end up liking ubuntu will either stick with it or try out some of the other distributions.
Yeah, I'm interested to know where you heard that it's rigged. It is interesting that it's SOOO high on distro watch. Distro watch is probably the only place I've seen any information on it, I've never read any articles about "how PCLinuxOS is making Linux better" or whatever.
The funniest part is that you missed that I was making fun of you for not understanding what the word "counts" means.Pro Tip - Things that "count" are actually used by more then 5 people.
svenskoJul 2, 2008
Yes, when I saw the lack of Arch and Gentoo I just [x]ed without reading.
eldoo77Jul 2, 2008
Umm... so you're saying that Chocolate Mint Ice Cream should merge with Chocolate Ice Cream because there are too many flavors of ice cream? The argument itself is silly. If we want to take the Ice Cream analogy one step further... Windows is Vanilla -- plain, boring, ubiquitous, etc... Mac OSX is Rocky Road -- a premium (overpriced) blend that assaults the senses. The advantage of Linux is that you can choose whatever distro/flavor suits you best. I doubt that by merging them all, they would ever overtake Windows and even if they did, they would lose in the bargain what makes Linux interesting & different.
libkarl2Jul 2, 2008
Someone did. Its called SUSE. (jk) Actually, its better that so many exist. There is no one distro that covers all possible scenarios. DSL breathes new life into *very* old hardware. Slackware tends to be ultra robust and uses a BSD style init. Redhat is also ultra-stable, uses SYSV init, and offers the commercial tech support required by many business customers. Ubuntu gives ease of installation, commercial drivers, and a broad user base to new and experienced users alike. There are also distros that cater to foreign languages -- Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, etc.Also note, software patches, NLS, bug fixes, and apps from one distro often find their way into other distros. Code written by Redhat developers can be found in virtually ALL modern Linux distros.
tnoyJul 2, 2008
CentOS FTW.
elementopJul 2, 2008
Quote: "Because almost all Ubuntu I know (and my friends share the same opinion so i'm not alone) ... consistantly [sic] annoy the hell out of people with the 'I use Ubuntu/Linux so I'm better than you' attitude."sed "s/Ubuntu/[any other Linux distro]/g" and your sentence would probably still be true. To be honest, it probably holds true for *any* operating system. For better or worse, people (well, geeks anyway) seem to get pretty territorial over their pet O/S.
libkarl2Jul 2, 2008
I wonder what the *actual* correlation coefficient is for installed base = f(google searches). Probably 0.003274.
quimbydoggJul 3, 2008
Obviously using search stats doesn't give insight into the numbers of actual users of the distributions. The poster of these stats knows that and anyone reading them that can think past a junior high level will know that. That still doesn't make this information less interesting.What it does show is how "common" people are searching for linux information / distros. Obviously certain distros seem to be more popular with new users (ubuntu) than others (slackware).I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn't agree that ubuntu is starting to become a common name that hardcore windows users are becoming more familiar with as the face of linux.... something that never really happened with other distributions.To me these numbers show that a majority of possible new linux users are researching at the very least or trying out ubuntu. Some of those users that end up liking ubuntu will either stick with it or try out some of the other distributions.
killerahJul 3, 2008
Yeah, I'm interested to know where you heard that it's rigged. It is interesting that it's SOOO high on distro watch. Distro watch is probably the only place I've seen any information on it, I've never read any articles about "how PCLinuxOS is making Linux better" or whatever.
Closed AccountJul 8, 2008
The funniest part is that you missed that I was making fun of you for not understanding what the word "counts" means.Pro Tip - Things that "count" are actually used by more then 5 people.