Seven Percent

[Andy Green]

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?

[Paul F. Johnson]

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
-- 
"Logic, my dear Zoe, is merely the ability to be wrong with authority" -
Dr Who

[Mark Haney]

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

-- 
Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est.

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
[phone]

[Tony Placilla]

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...



-- 
Tony Placilla, RHCT, GSEC
anthony_placilla(a)suth.com


GPG-Key-ID: 1024D/C78F8B64              http://pgp.mit.edu
Key fingerprint = A8D5 7AFF CE88 4179 C792  D9A9 F197 2A15 C78F 8B64

[Mark Haney]

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...
>     
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.

-- 
Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est.

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
[phone]

[Negative]

On 8/30/06, Mark Haney <mhaney(a)ercbroadband.org&gt; 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
>  [phone]
>
>  --
>  fedora-list mailing list
>  fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>

[Mark Haney]

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
>      [phone]
>
>      --
>      fedora-list mailing list
>      fedora-list(a)redhat.com <mailto:[e-mail]>
>      To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>
>  

-- 
Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est.

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
[phone]

[Antonio Olivares]

--- Negative <negativebinomial(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 8/30/06, Mark Haney <mhaney(a)ercbroadband.org&gt;
>  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
>  > [phone]
>  >
>  > --
>  > fedora-list mailing list
>  > fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  > To unsubscribe:
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
>  >
>  > -- 
>  fedora-list mailing list
>  fedora-list(a)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

[George Arseneault]

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.

[Amadeus W.M.]

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?

[Todd Zullinger]

-----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.

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[Mark Haney]

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.


-- 
Ceterum censeo, Carthago delenda est.

Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
[phone]

[Todd Zullinger]

-----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

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[Paul Smith]

It would be interesting to know how much large are the communities of
each distribution. Can the figures be found somewhere?

Paul

[Anne Wilson]

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

[Andy Green]

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/focu...
https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/rpm-devel/2006-August/001362.html

[Anne Wilson]

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

[Paul Smith]

On 9/1/06, Anne Wilson <cannewilson(a)tiscali.co.uk&gt; 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

[Andy Green]

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

[Grumpy]

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

[Andy Green]

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? 
>  http://distrowatch.com/ 
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

[Les Mikesell]

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
   lesmikesell(a)gmail.com

[James Wilkinson]

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.
-- 
E-mail:     james@ | *No-one* liked the Joshua N'Clement block. The people who
aprilcottage.co.uk | lived there thought everyone should be taken out and then
                   | the block should be blown up, and the people who lived
                   | near the block just wanted it blown up.
                   |     -- Terry Pratchett

[Les Mikesell]

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.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell(a)gmail.com

[Tom Horsley]

>  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.

[John Wendel]

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

[Grumpy]

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