Results from the 2006 Desktop Linux Survey
15,000 voters... still, self-selected. Anyway -->
''... Ubuntu, with 29.2 percent of the vote, has been the hottest community Linux since early 2005. While this Linux has had its problems lately, such as the update fiasco on August 21st and 22nd, users continue to download, install, and love it.
And, why not? It's an excellent distribution. It's not just users who think this; reviewers have also labeled it the Desktop Linux Champ.
A little closer peek at the data, and some comparison with the Distrowatch page hit list, reveals that "classic" Ubuntu with the GNOME interface is the real winner. Kubuntu, with its KDE desktop, and the educational Edubuntu distributions have their fans, but Ubuntu is what a plurality of Linux desktop users appear to be running today.
In a distant second place, with 12.2 percent, we find Ubuntu's ancestor, Debian. Close behind it, there's openSUSE with 10.1 percent of the users. If you included in openSUSE's totals its corporate big brother, Novell's SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) numbers, 2.9 percent, the SUSE-twins would be in second place with 13 percent.
After this, we come to what I think of as the first surprise in our survey. Gentoo took fourth place with a total of 9.6 percent. Gentoo, to me, is a Linux expert's Linux. I know many serious Linux users who work with Gentoo to better understand Linux, but almost no one who uses it as their first choice for day-to-day work.
In fifth place, we find Fedora, Red Hat's community distribution. Fedora, while still somewhat popular with 7 percent of the vote, seems to have lost some of its charm to users in the last year. ...''
http://desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5816278551.html
Does it matter, so long as there is some arbitrary population of users? Is ubuntu up there, with basically the same stuff in it as Fedora, due to PR alone? Should Fedora compete, does it having any meaning with a Free OS?
Hi,
Does it matter?
In the great scheme of things. No. Look at longevity and usefullness. Sure, Ubuntu is trendy now, but look at Gnoppix a few years back and how much D***an good will there is.
Makes sod all difference really.
TTFN
Paul
Andy Green wrote:
Ubuntu:
Yeah it's fine. I simply do not like the GNOME interface. Not anymore at any rate.
After this, we come to what I think of as the first surprise in our survey. Gentoo took fourth place with a total of 9.6 percent. Gentoo, to me, is a Linux expert's Linux. I know many serious Linux users who work with Gentoo to better understand Linux, but almost no one who uses it as their first choice for day-to-day work.
I love Gentoo. It used to be the 'expert's linux', but I don't see that as the case now. The new installer is is pretty good and they do not advocate a stage 1 install anymore either as it doesn't give the performance boost compared to the work involved. That said, my kids laptop's and my Mom's desktop all run Gentoo and they can handle their systems just fine. My youngest is 7, BTW, and she can emerge packages pretty well. I personally find having the packages installed in their default locations (at least according to the manual), makes life easier on me. Plus I've found the performance boost of not having packages compiled for every possibility (within reason) to be worth the time of compiling.
In fifth place, we find Fedora, Red Hat's community distribution. Fedora, while still somewhat popular with 7 percent of the vote, seems to have lost some of its charm to users in the last year. ...''
I don't see that it's lost it's charm, IMHO. I have 13 other servers at home running FC3/4/5 and all my systems here at work (barring my laptop) are all FC other than my SGI systems. I much prefer FC over Debian across the board. Debian package management has always been a PITA, whereas yum and RPM's 'just work'. However, I do see two weaknesses in FC. A lack of a LiveCD ( I use these more and more to promote linux use in my family) and the fact that it's 5 CD's or a DVD to install. Sure Ubuntu has a DVD version, but a good standard install is still only one CD the rest you can apt-get. I've never managed to get a good base install from one FC CD. The fact I need to insert CD 3 for one package is a pet peeve of mine, but one I can live with as long as I have broadband where I can ftp install from a mirror.
All that being said. FC is still the best linux version for general desktop use for people who want the 'latest and greatest'. Ubuntu is always slightly behind on that for stability's sake.
Just my $0.02
Mark Haney wrote:
---snip for brevity---
However, I do see two weaknesses in
FC. A lack of a LiveCD
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006-August/msg00013.ht...
Anthony J Placilla wrote:
Mark Haney wrote:
---snip for brevity---
However, I do see two weaknesses in
FC. A lack of a LiveCD
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006-August/msg00013.ht...
Okay, granted, I missed that one, but it's taken /how long/ to get one? Maybe I should have said 'A lack of a liveCD up till now'. Regardless that doesn't change the fact that the LiveCD's have been the absolute best way to introduce Linux to a wider audience. I've never wanted to use Ubuntu for my family, but their LiveCD was one of the better ones and it was almost the only real choice besides Knoppix, which is really a Swiss Army knife, not for general use.
On 8/30/06, Mark Haney mhaney@ercbroadband.org wrote:
Andy Green wrote:
Ubuntu:
Yeah it's fine. I simply do not like the GNOME interface. Not anymore at any rate.
After this, we come to what I think of as the first surprise in our survey. Gentoo took fourth place with a total of 9.6 percent. Gentoo, to me, is a Linux expert's Linux. I know many serious Linux users who work with Gentoo to better understand Linux, but almost no one who uses it as their first choice for day-to-day work.
I love Gentoo. It used to be the 'expert's linux', but I don't see that as the case now. The new installer is is pretty good and they do not advocate a stage 1 install anymore either as it doesn't give the performance boost compared to the work involved. That said, my kids laptop's and my Mom's desktop all run Gentoo and they can handle their systems just fine. My youngest is 7, BTW, and she can emerge packages pretty well. I personally find having the packages installed in their default locations (at least according to the manual), makes life easier on me. Plus I've found the performance boost of not having packages compiled for every possibility (within reason) to be worth the time of compiling.
In fifth place, we find Fedora, Red Hat's community distribution. Fedora, while still somewhat popular with 7 percent of the vote, seems to have lost some of its charm to users in the last year. ...''
I don't see that it's lost it's charm, IMHO. I have 13 other servers at home running FC3/4/5 and all my systems here at work (barring my laptop) are all FC other than my SGI systems. I much prefer FC over Debian across the board. Debian package management has always been a PITA, whereas yum and RPM's 'just work'. However, I do see two weaknesses in FC. A lack of a LiveCD ( I use these more and more to promote linux use in my family) and the fact that it's 5 CD's or a DVD to install. Sure Ubuntu has a DVD version, but a good standard install is still only one CD the rest you can apt-get. I've never managed to get a good base install from one FC CD. The fact I need to insert CD 3 for one package is a pet peeve of mine, but one I can live with as long as I have broadband where I can ftp install from a mirror.
All that being said. FC is still the best linux version for general desktop use for people who want the 'latest and greatest'. Ubuntu is always slightly behind on that for stability's sake.
Just my $0.02
Interesting to see this now. I've recently tried out Ubuntu, and liked it well enough to put it on another machine. The three of the other six machines are FC. . I just upgraded two from FC 1 to FC 5, and lost sound on both, and I have no time now to mess around with it -- after all, FC 6 is breathing down the neck of what I've got.
Anyway, I'm on the fence. As I get used to the where Ubuntu puts things, I may continue switching. I may even drop the Red Hat subscription. It's an expensive proposition that amounts to getting emails about updates rather than having to remember to run yum every week. It's nice to have them keep upgrading stuff, but the software still goes out of date -- what verson of java? what version of python?
As far as FC, I know all that Red Hat says about the bleeding edge, but I have to work at some other things besides upgrades. Tonight I'm going to watch a movie. I'm not going to fix sound on an old Micron.
FC changes too fast, and RH costs too much.
There's my 2 cnts, too.
--
Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est.
Mark Haney Sr. Systems Administrator ERC Broadband (828) 350-2415
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Negative wrote:
Anyway, I'm on the fence. As I get used to the where Ubuntu puts things, I may continue switching.
And what you mention above is the exact reason I like Gentoo. Even Ubuntu puts stuff in oddball locations. I've yet to find a Gentoo app that put itself in a location that was not the default for the app as if you were compiling it from source (I mean, because you are.) Granted you can change that behaviour in your make.conf file in Gentoo, but what's the point in that exactly?
As far as FC, I know all that Red Hat says about the bleeding edge, but I have to work at some other things besides upgrades. Tonight I'm going to watch a movie. I'm not going to fix sound on an old Micron.
Thing is, stuff like that happens in almost every OS upgrade. Some maybe more than others, but it's still a fact of life.
FC changes too fast, and RH costs too much.
There's my 2 cnts, too.
-- Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est. Mark Haney Sr. Systems Administrator ERC Broadband (828) 350-2415 -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com <mailto:fedora-list@redhat.com> To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
--- Negative negativebinomial@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/30/06, Mark Haney mhaney@ercbroadband.org wrote:
Andy Green wrote:
Ubuntu:
Yeah it's fine. I simply do not like the GNOME
interface. Not anymore
at any rate.
After this, we come to what I think of as the
first surprise in our
survey. Gentoo took fourth place with a total of
9.6 percent. Gentoo,
to me, is a Linux expert's Linux. I know many
serious Linux users who
work with Gentoo to better understand Linux, but
almost no one who
uses it as their first choice for day-to-day
work.
I love Gentoo. It used to be the 'expert's
linux', but I don't see that
as the case now. The new installer is is pretty
good and they do not
advocate a stage 1 install anymore either as it
doesn't give the
performance boost compared to the work involved.
That said, my kids
laptop's and my Mom's desktop all run Gentoo and
they can handle their
systems just fine. My youngest is 7, BTW, and she
can emerge packages
pretty well. I personally find having the
packages installed in their
default locations (at least according to the
manual), makes life easier
on me. Plus I've found the performance boost of
not having packages
compiled for every possibility (within reason) to
be worth the time of
compiling.
In fifth place, we find Fedora, Red Hat's
community distribution.
Fedora, while still somewhat popular with 7
percent of the vote, seems
to have lost some of its charm to users in the
last year.
...''
I don't see that it's lost it's charm, IMHO. I
have 13 other servers at
home running FC3/4/5 and all my systems here at
work (barring my laptop)
are all FC other than my SGI systems. I much
prefer FC over Debian
across the board. Debian package management has
always been a PITA,
whereas yum and RPM's 'just work'. However, I do
see two weaknesses in
FC. A lack of a LiveCD ( I use these more and
more to promote linux use
in my family) and the fact that it's 5 CD's or a
DVD to install. Sure
Ubuntu has a DVD version, but a good standard
install is still only one
CD the rest you can apt-get. I've never managed
to get a good base
install from one FC CD. The fact I need to insert
CD 3 for one package
is a pet peeve of mine, but one I can live with as
long as I have
broadband where I can ftp install from a mirror.
All that being said. FC is still the best linux
version for general
desktop use for people who want the 'latest and
greatest'. Ubuntu is
always slightly behind on that for stability's
sake.
Just my $0.02
Interesting to see this now. I've recently tried out Ubuntu, and liked it well enough to put it on another machine. The three of the other six machines are FC. . I just upgraded two from FC 1 to FC 5, and lost sound on both, and I have no time now to mess around with it -- after all, FC 6 is breathing down the neck of what I've got.
Anyway, I'm on the fence. As I get used to the where Ubuntu puts things, I may continue switching. I may even drop the Red Hat subscription. It's an expensive proposition that amounts to getting emails about updates rather than having to remember to run yum every week. It's nice to have them keep upgrading stuff, but the software still goes out of date -- what verson of java? what version of python?
As far as FC, I know all that Red Hat says about the bleeding edge, but I have to work at some other things besides upgrades. Tonight I'm going to watch a movie. I'm not going to fix sound on an old Micron.
FC changes too fast, and RH costs too much.
There's my 2 cnts, too.
--
Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est.
Mark Haney Sr. Systems Administrator ERC Broadband (828) 350-2415
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe:
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
--
fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe:
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
Fedora People are working very hard to make this live cd. As a matter of fact, distrowatch has announced the availability of some live cd's
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03666#0
Regards,
Antonio
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
FYI on the sound problem... I had the same thing happen to me. Found the answer in the FAQ part of the Arts Handbook.
--------------------------------- Get your own web address for just $1.99/1st yr. We'll help. Yahoo! Small Business.
On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 14:53:12 +0100, Andy Green wrote:
Results from the 2006 Desktop Linux Survey
15,000 voters... still, self-selected. Anyway -->
''... Ubuntu, with 29.2 percent of the vote, has been the hottest community Linux since early 2005. While this Linux has had its problems lately, such as the update fiasco on August 21st and 22nd, users continue to download, install, and love it.
And, why not? It's an excellent distribution. It's not just users who think this; reviewers have also labeled it the Desktop Linux Champ.
I'll never understand what Ubuntu has that other distributions don't. I've never seen a head to head comparison between Ubuntu, and FC, say. Yes, there's critics and users reviews but they don't compare Ubuntu to anything else. Overall it's their subjective "it felt good" or "I liked that feature", but that doesn't do it for me. I'd like to see what's unique in Ubuntu, that I might have a use for. Is Ubuntu more stable? Is it faster? Does it have better hardware detection? Does it have a different update policy?
Mind you, I'm not criticizing Ubuntu or any other distribution. I'm not against rankings either, afterall I'd like to use the best distribution. It's the objectivity of these reviews (and rankings) that I'm questioning. If we are to judge by the number of users, then Windows must be the best operating system ever, isn't it?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Amadeus W. M. wrote:
I'll never understand what Ubuntu has that other distributions don't. I've never seen a head to head comparison between Ubuntu, and FC, say. Yes, there's critics and users reviews but they don't compare Ubuntu to anything else. Overall it's their subjective "it felt good" or "I liked that feature", but that doesn't do it for me. I'd like to see what's unique in Ubuntu, that I might have a use for. Is Ubuntu more stable? Is it faster? Does it have better hardware detection? Does it have a different update policy?
Interestingly, I installed Ubuntu 6.06 on my laptop to see if it'd handle suspend better than FC5. I found it didn't right out of the box but a very quick google led me to a page on their wiki that explained the steps needed. I had it working in a few minutes. They also supported my ipw3945 card without needing to enable outside repos or install the driver from source. +2 for Ubuntu in the hardware detection category on my laptop.
I've yet to manage to duplicate the success with suspend in Ubuntu on FC5 and that's rather irritating. I know now that it's not a simple matter of the hardware not supporting it. It's a matter of twiddling the right switches. And those switches aren't well marked in FC. :(
FWIW, I tried the same thing with SUSE 10.1 and it failed the suspend test but it did enable the ipw3945 driver easier than FC. Next up is Gentoo. :)
- -- Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp ====================================================================== If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Todd Zullinger wrote:
FWIW, I tried the same thing with SUSE 10.1 and it failed the suspend test but it did enable the ipw3945 driver easier than FC. Next up is Gentoo. :)
The Good Thing (tm) about Gentoo is it's Wiki. I've never used Fedora's (mainly because I"ve never needed to), but Gentoo's is even better than Ubuntu's as far as content and useful information. As for suspend on Gentoo, if it's hard on FC, it's probably going to be about the same with Gentoo. The docs for setting it up are better, I think, but it's still a laborious process. I finally got it working on my laptop, but have abandoned using it since suspend on 64-bit is still shaky when running a GUI.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Mark Haney wrote:
Todd Zullinger wrote:
FWIW, I tried the same thing with SUSE 10.1 and it failed the suspend test but it did enable the ipw3945 driver easier than FC. Next up is Gentoo. :)
The Good Thing (tm) about Gentoo is it's Wiki. I've never used Fedora's (mainly because I"ve never needed to), but Gentoo's is even better than Ubuntu's as far as content and useful information.
Yes, it does come up often when I google for things. I've never used it directly to solve a Gentoo problem but it's been helpful to me already. Thanks for providing a useful comparison.
As for suspend on Gentoo, if it's hard on FC, it's probably going to be about the same with Gentoo. The docs for setting it up are better, I think, but it's still a laborious process.
I don't mind laborious so much, especially if what things I might need to tweak are documented. Fedora's suspend is meant to "just work" and for a growing number of systems that's probably true. Mine doesn't and I've yet to find a good reference on how to proceed when it doesn't (not counting tons of "try this kernel param and that one" guessing). At least now I know that the hardware works just fine with linux I will try harder to find a solution that works in Fedora.
I finally got it working on my laptop, but have abandoned using it since suspend on 64-bit is still shaky when running a GUI.
A friend with Gentoo was trying to add some of the minor suspend scripts he had from his Dell on mine in Fedora but they didn't work out. But from that I have a start on how I'll try to get it working when I get around to trying Gentoo on here.
Thanks,
- -- Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp ====================================================================== To tax and to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to men. -- Edmund Burke
It would be interesting to know how much large are the communities of each distribution. Can the figures be found somewhere?
Paul
On Friday 01 September 2006 11:14, Paul Smith wrote:
It would be interesting to know how much large are the communities of each distribution. Can the figures be found somewhere?
Equally interesting would be where the sample was taken from - IOW what target audience is likely to have replied - and how big the sample was. I suspect that the sampling setup would have a great effect on the results, which is why statistics are rarely useful.
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
On Friday 01 September 2006 11:14, Paul Smith wrote:
It would be interesting to know how much large are the communities of each distribution. Can the figures be found somewhere?
Equally interesting would be where the sample was taken from - IOW what target audience is likely to have replied - and how big the sample was. I suspect that the sampling setup would have a great effect on the results, which is why statistics are rarely useful.
Statistics are often very useful, that's why people keep making them up. Rarely though do they mean what they are spun to mean.
However anecdotally places like Digg are full of viral Ubuntu mindshare zombies. Of course in a larger sense it's all good if it gets the Linux word out and reduces the ability to FUD it since people had experience of it. But I can't help feeling some of the newbie growth of Ubuntu is partially driven by where we are in the Microsoft product cycle and there's some easy come easy go built into it.
Les is clearly right about some folks looking for the stability and novelty sweetspot (seems we both use CentOS and Fedora so it is in our minds at least), but is that really where all the Ubuntu ravers have sprung from?
If you zoom out, Debian and Fedora have about a million times as much weight of code in common (KDE is KDE, Gnome is Gnome) as they do at odds. Even rpm and dpkg are doing much the same thing in a different format. So in a real sense if new people are getting turned on to Ubuntu it's a much of a win for FOSS as if they get turned on to Fedora.
The more I understand[1] about Fedora and the relationship of Redhat to it, the more of a curious creature it is even by standards of a Linux distro. We all benefit from what is really the awesome professionalism of the engineering from Redhat, easy to take it for granted since the vast bulk of stuff works smoothly. But to balance it as users we are cast somewhat as dependent children, since RHAT have the -- perhaps it is inevitable from the structure and funding -- the role of parent. To be fair, we are a thousand times less the dependent children as a Microsoft or Apple user, and RHAT have a fairly light hand, we have reason to be grateful for it, but still. I suppose Shuttleworth is probably fated to fulfill the same moneybags role and therefore place the users under the same bittersweet shadow.
-Andy
[1] I understood a lot more after the recent corporate rpm vitriol
http://lwn.net/Articles/196523 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.advisory-board/348/focus=3... https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/rpm-devel/2006-August/001362.html
On Friday 01 September 2006 14:26, Andy Green wrote:
Statistics are often very useful, that's why people keep making them up. Rarely though do they mean what they are spun to mean.
True - just don't take them at face value :-)
However anecdotally places like Digg are full of viral Ubuntu mindshare zombies. Of course in a larger sense it's all good if it gets the Linux word out and reduces the ability to FUD it since people had experience of it. But I can't help feeling some of the newbie growth of Ubuntu is partially driven by where we are in the Microsoft product cycle and there's some easy come easy go built into it.
Les is clearly right about some folks looking for the stability and novelty sweetspot (seems we both use CentOS and Fedora so it is in our minds at least), but is that really where all the Ubuntu ravers have sprung from?
I missed following up the beginning of this, but if it, for instance, is based on the number of downloads, there are several problems. First, over what period was it measured? I have done one download, almost certainly earlier than the survey, and installed it on four machines, none of which, I presume, would count.
The other obvious point is that more downloads take place just after a release. Which distros released during the few weeks previous to the survey? I'm sure there are other equally valid questions.
In the end, the only thing that matters to us is whether there is sufficient user base for the distro to continue to serve us, and whether we are happy that it does what we want it to do. I have no problem with the idea that there are many people who want a 'just works' distro and would find FC not to their liking. It takes all sorts..... :-)
Anne
On 9/1/06, Anne Wilson cannewilson@tiscali.co.uk wrote:
Statistics are often very useful, that's why people keep making them up. Rarely though do they mean what they are spun to mean.
True - just don't take them at face value :-)
However anecdotally places like Digg are full of viral Ubuntu mindshare zombies. Of course in a larger sense it's all good if it gets the Linux word out and reduces the ability to FUD it since people had experience of it. But I can't help feeling some of the newbie growth of Ubuntu is partially driven by where we are in the Microsoft product cycle and there's some easy come easy go built into it.
Les is clearly right about some folks looking for the stability and novelty sweetspot (seems we both use CentOS and Fedora so it is in our minds at least), but is that really where all the Ubuntu ravers have sprung from?
I missed following up the beginning of this, but if it, for instance, is based on the number of downloads, there are several problems. First, over what period was it measured? I have done one download, almost certainly earlier than the survey, and installed it on four machines, none of which, I presume, would count.
The other obvious point is that more downloads take place just after a release. Which distros released during the few weeks previous to the survey? I'm sure there are other equally valid questions.
In the end, the only thing that matters to us is whether there is sufficient user base for the distro to continue to serve us, and whether we are happy that it does what we want it to do. I have no problem with the idea that there are many people who want a 'just works' distro and would find FC not to their liking. It takes all sorts..... :-)
I tend to think that the "market" share of a distribution is not an accurate indicator of its value, as otherwise one would have to conclude that MS Windows is by far the best operating system.
Paul
Paul Smith wrote:
I tend to think that the "market" share of a distribution is not an accurate indicator of its value, as otherwise one would have to conclude that MS Windows is by far the best operating system.
Well that doesn't hold together at the extreme, and OS used by one person will not attract anybody else to work on it without direct compensation.
An OS used by zero people would fare even worse ;-) Clearly living in splendid isolation compromising nothing is not going to be an easy way forward.
-Andy
On Friday 01 September 2006 03:14 am, Paul Smith wrote:
It would be interesting to know how much large are the communities of each distribution. Can the figures be found somewhere?
http://distrowatch.com/ scroll down to Page Hit Ranking as of today Rank Distribution H.P.D* 1 Ubuntu 2736< 2 openSUSE 1918< 3 Fedora 1384> 4 MEPIS 1035> 5 Mandriva 916= 6 Damn Small 856= 7 PCLinuxOS 801> 8 Debian 771= 9 KNOPPIX 662< 10 Gentoo 621> 11 Slackware 605> 12 FreeBSD 500= 13 CentOS 465> 14 Kubuntu 464= 15 SLAX 411> 16 Zenwalk 375> 17 Puppy 370= 18 Vector 360< 19 Xandros 337= 20 KANOTIX 335< 21 Xubuntu 326> 22 Arch 285= 23 PC-BSD 277= 24 Sabayon 254= 25 Kororaa 236= 26 GeeXboX 199= 27 Frugalware 199= 28 Nexenta 196= 29 Red Hat 191= 30 Linspire 189= 31 DesktopBSD 178= 32 Foresight 171= 33 Ark 169= 34 GParted 167= 35 VideoLinux 165> 36 Elive 165= 37 Freespire 161> 38 KateOS 149= 39 Solaris 146= 40 VLOS 145> 41 Symphony OS 143> 42 BackTrack 128= 43 dyne:bolic 127= 44 Novell 126= 45 FoX Desktop 125= 46 StartCom 120= 47 aLinux 120= 48 Scientific 116= 49 OpenBSD 113= 50 SME Server 107< 51 SystemRescue 106< 52 Devil 105< 53 LG3D 102= 54 Yoper 101= 55 Linux XP 100< 56 64 Studio 99= 57 Wolvix 95= 58 Gentoox 94= 59 IPCop 92= 60 Edubuntu 92= 61 BLAG 90> 62 Frenzy 88= 63 Turbolinux 87= 64 Musix 87= 65 Berry 87= 66 NetBSD 86> 67 GoblinX 85= 68 easys 85< 69 FreeNAS 84> 70 Underground 83= 71 Trixbox 83< 72 LFS 82= 73 Yellow Dog 80= 74 DragonFly 80= 75 BeleniX 77< 76 Lunar 74= 77 Feather 73= 78 m0n0wall 72= 79 EnGarde 72= 80 Ultima 71= 81 rPath 71= 82 CRUX 69= 83 ClarkConnect 68= 84 AUSTRUMI 68> 85 MoviX 67= 86 Dreamlinux 67= 87 White Box 66< 88 Vine 66> 89 QiLinux 66< 90 Helix 66= 91 Nonux 63= 92 BIG LINUX 62= 93 SmoothWall 61= 94 LiveCD Router 61= 95 Kurumin 61< 96 ASPLinux 60= 97 Mediainlinux 58= 98 tinysofa 57< 99 Pentoo 57= 100 Morphix
Paul
Grumpy_Penguin wrote:
On Friday 01 September 2006 03:14 am, Paul Smith wrote:
It would be interesting to know how much large are the communities of each distribution. Can the figures be found somewhere?
These are just page hit counts. I don't go to distrowatch to find out about Fedora, I use the mailing list and probably that's the same for you. It doesn't really tell you anything about "how large are the communities".
For better or worse FOSS users are invisible until they have a problem or take some action like voting, due to the free distribution action.
-Andy
On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 11:23 -0400, Amadeus W. M. wrote:
And, why not? It's an excellent distribution. It's not just users who think this; reviewers have also labeled it the Desktop Linux Champ.
I'll never understand what Ubuntu has that other distributions don't. I've never seen a head to head comparison between Ubuntu, and FC, say. Yes, there's critics and users reviews but they don't compare Ubuntu to anything else. Overall it's their subjective "it felt good" or "I liked that feature", but that doesn't do it for me. I'd like to see what's unique in Ubuntu, that I might have a use for. Is Ubuntu more stable? Is it faster? Does it have better hardware detection? Does it have a different update policy?
I think what most people hope for in a distribution is that 'middle-of-the-road' balance between new features and stability so you aren't too far behind current desktop applications where things are evolving rapidly but you also aren't likely to be the first person to have to deal with a bug no one else has seen yet. That is what makes for a great user experience but doesn't come across very well in reviews focusing on the extremes of stability or features. My example of this in the fedora world is that it is what you see near the end of a version cycle except that bugs in the installer don't get fixed until the next release is cut.
Ubuntu has at least put some effort into trying to hit that balance where the fedora/RHEL split forces you to choose an extreme - or stay a rev behind on the fedora side. There is also another layer of this balance that I'd like to see addressed. That is, that once you have a kernel with working device drivers installed on a particular machine there should be no reason to ever change it again - ever. However, you do want to stay up to date with changes in applications, and if you install on a new machine you may want access to new device drivers. It would be great if some distribution focused on keeping the OS portion stable while providing current updates to applications. To go back to the fedora/RH split, if you want a well tested kernel, you get a years-old version of evolution and firefox. If you want current destop apps, you get an experimental kernel and a fair chance of crashes. It wouldn't have to be that way, but it is too soon to know if Ubuntu will get that part right.
Les Mikesell wrote:
That is, that once you have a kernel with working device drivers installed on a particular machine there should be no reason to ever change it again - ever.
Kernel security vulnerabilities? New features? Improved performance?
However, you do want to stay up to date with changes in applications, and if you install on a new machine you may want access to new device drivers.
Or, yes, new hardware.
James.
On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 17:31 +0100, James Wilkinson wrote:
That is, that once you have a kernel with working device drivers installed on a particular machine there should be no reason to ever change it again - ever.
Kernel security vulnerabilities?
Those shouldn't be there, but if they must be fixed it still rarely takes behavior-changing new device drivers to fix them.
New features?
The feature set for a unix-like OS was pretty much complete more than a decade ago.
Improved performance?
From the VM-experment of the week? I mostly just see more memory
use and worse performance from on older hardware.
However, you do want to stay up to date with changes in applications, and if you install on a new machine you may want access to new device drivers.
Or, yes, new hardware.
That's the time you know you need a new kernel.
I'll never understand what Ubuntu has that other distributions don't.
I haven't run Ubuntu, but just glancing at the web page after this thread started, I see one thing that makes it seem very appealing: It appears to be only one distribution. No confusing "enterprise", "workstation", "desktop", "consumer", "commercial" qualifiers on 16,721 different flavors of the product with different confusing levels of support. Redhat is bad enough along these lines, but SUSE is just insane with all their SLED and SLES, and desktop and enterprise and open versions (and the CD media having different content than the DVD media which is different in the shrink wrap box than it is on the ISO downloads and they are all different than the network install - my suspicion is the folks at SUSE have no idea what is in all their releases :-).
With Ubuntu there appears to be just one distribution, and you can buy commercial support or not, but it is all the same.
No suspicions that the free users are just beta testing the commercial system, or the commercial users have access to secret goodies. Any updates fix bugs for both at the same time.
No confusing decisions to make about which distribution is the one you need. I can see why it would be attractive.
Tom Horsley wrote:
I'll never understand what Ubuntu has that other distributions don't.
[snip]
With Ubuntu there appears to be just one distribution, and you can buy commercial support or not, but it is all the same.
No suspicions that the free users are just beta testing the commercial system, or the commercial users have access to secret goodies. Any updates fix bugs for both at the same time.
No confusing decisions to make about which distribution is the one you need. I can see why it would be attractive.
Actually there are 4 'buntus, Ubuntu (Gnome desktop), Kubuntu (KDE), Xubuntu (XFCE), and Eubuntu (I don't know what this is). I've tried U, K, and X and they're all superficially very nice. For "Aunt Tilly" who wants to read email and browse the web they're all you need. And my laptop wireless worked without tweaking!
But be prepared for a learning curve if you're indoctrinated in "the RedHat way" of system administration. And the package tools (synaptic and adept) look really slick, until you actually try to use them.
I'm sure that both distros can learn something from the other.
Regards,
John
On Thursday 31 August 2006 03:06 pm, Tom Horsley wrote:
I'll never understand what Ubuntu has that other distributions don't.
I haven't run Ubuntu, but just glancing at the web page after this thread started, I see one thing that makes it seem very appealing: It appears to be only one distribution. No confusing "enterprise", "workstation", "desktop", "consumer", "commercial" qualifiers on 16,721 different flavors of the product with different confusing levels of support. Redhat is bad enough along these lines, but SUSE is just insane with all their SLED and SLES, and desktop and enterprise and open versions (and the CD media having different content than the DVD media which is different in the shrink wrap box than it is on the ISO downloads and they are all different than the network install - my suspicion is the folks at SUSE have no idea what is in all their releases :-).
With Ubuntu there appears to be just one distribution, and you can buy commercial support or not, but it is all the same.
No suspicions that the free users are just beta testing the commercial system, or the commercial users have access to secret goodies. Any updates fix bugs for both at the same time.
No confusing decisions to make about which distribution is the one you need. I can see why it would be attractive.
I'm running the x86--64 version of Ubuntu it is a nice distro ...except the lack of a root password worries me using sudo just seems unsafe not to mention the compiling of a program from source is evidently much different if you tar -xzvf <filename>.tar.bz then try a ./configure itr fscks up
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