How popular is Ubuntu these days?

[GreyGeek]

I remember this post and wanted to comment later. I searched Distrowatch and could not find the 'awstats'. Very interesting stats.

I was never able to find the OS stats page from any link on any page of the Distrowatch website. I learned about it from the admin whom I asked to replace me here, Steve Riley. I don't know how he found it, but he's an order or two of magnitude smarter than I am.

[verndog]

I was never able to find the OS stats page from any link on any page of the Distrowatch website. I learned about it from the admin whom I asked to replace me here, Steve Riley. I don't know how he found it, but he's an order or two of magnitude smarter than I am.

I found out its not on Distrowatch, but is run with 'awstats' itself. I downloaded that program and trying to figure it out.
Its not that simple, I'm finding. Interesting program though.

[GreyGeek]

I found out its not on Distrowatch, but is run with 'awstats' itself. I downloaded that program and trying to figure it out.
Its not that simple, I'm finding. Interesting program though.

Good find. I never noticed that link to awstats.org at the far right side of the distrowatch OS detial page. I looked into the repository and found that it is listed there.
The documentation pdf is here.
The installation was easy ehough but the setup seems rather complicated. Anyway, I haven't messed with a website over a decade. Besides, it's above my pay grade.

[jglen490]

So back to "popularity". I would not equate popularity on Distrowatch to the number of actual installations that may exist in some database. Both are statistical, neither uses the same logic for data collection.

In fact, the popularity contest on the right side of the Distrowatch home page is (probably primarily) driven by people responding to "what's my favorite" question. That's not an invalid statistic, but it would be amusing to most serious statisticians. Of course, since Linux distros are not "sold", it's almost impossible to understand from most counting sources how many instances exist for any iteration of a distro. I've downloaded a lot of distros (mostly Kubuntu), some of which never lasted beyond a Live session, and some of which have ended up on numerous physical machines. So at any point in time, it's quite possible that no downloaded distros have been installed anywhere, and it's also quite possible that all downloaded distros exist on numerous physical systems.

There is no way to measure how "popular" a distro is, only how popular some counting mechanism can indicate that popularity.

[woodsmoke]

Hi
Interesting thread.

An old curmudgeon here, not yours truly, opined some time ago in another, similar, thread, that what was really being shown in the "number of views / hits / whatever" of an OS that was used in surveys of "the number of people "in" a forum as "popularity" was not really "popularity", as such, in terms of the number of people on forums "asking questions".

The numbers were really a measure of "the number of problems that the OS has".

So, ipso posto facto and factotum, the user of the OS that did not have problems were not posting and therefore the whole thing was not reflective of the "popularity" of the OS.

So, since Kubuntu, "usually" just works... the forums does not really have a lot of activity and so has a low ranking in terms of "the activity on the forum" but is actually quite "popular" with its users.

Just remembering a comment, of little worth.

woodsmoke

[TWPonKubuntu]

@woodsmoke +1 on the real nature of the OS "popularity" counting. Sounds a lot like the presidential election counting system... inverted and manipulated.

[GreyGeek]

@Woodsmoke, I remember that post and its implications, if my memory isn't a false one.
But, I doubt that MXLinux or Mint or Ubuntu would be as popular as they are IF those rankings represented the number of problems people were having with them. Now, that could be the case if DistroWatch was a forum for posting troubles seeking a solution, but it is not
The PHR represents a complex number of parameters which include, beauty, ease of use, usability, currency, security, and other factors. For Debian (and Ubuntu) based distros the differences are mostly cosmetic. Kubuntu is Ubuntu running the Plasma-desktop, with nothing in between and few modifications. That's why I prefer it. KDE Neon is a more of a bleeding edge type of Kubuntu. I used to run it when it first came out and I was younger and more mentally acute.

I've noticed that Kubuntu has hung around a PHR of 40, +- 5 for several years. Kubuntu's highest ranking was 13, in 2006. On the OS statistics page of DistroWatch it is listed among the Ubuntu counts:

Ubuntu

541,936

13 %

4,564,763

14 %

which is around 32% of the Linux users. (4,564,763/14,400,779)

Distrowatch used to track 300 distros but I see on their "Popularity" page that they now only track 275. Those rankings are no reflection on actual popularity or on the quality of the distro. Many near the bottom are specific to a program (GParted) or language or ethnic group, or to a field of study (CERN, Geography,etc.).

I've played with several distros, like Deepin, Mint and MXLinux, and found them to be well done and in some cases beautiful, but not truly Plasma specific so they don't run to my liking or offer the right mouse context power that Plasma offers. Indeed, many appear to be deliberately dumbed down to appease new Linux users coming from Microsoft's and Apple's walled gardens.

I put Bodhi, which currently ranks around 61, on my wife's 2010 Acer Aspire Notebook (OD521) and it looks good and runs great for her, who knows less than a computer neophyte about her laptop. But, she can run it easily to do what she wants to do (browse and email) and that is all that counts.

[woodsmoke]

Hi TWP and GG
thank you very much for the replies!

GG... as always...your comments really do intrigue me and I RECOMMEND TO ALL READERS THIS COMMENT:

but not truly Plasma specific so they don't run to my liking or offer the right mouse context power that Plasma offers.

right mouse context power... hmmm...hmmm...really hmmmmmmm...

I think that I "probably" get what you mean but if you would offer some context from your own observations I think that others might think more on it.

Hey, again, TWP...thank you!

and GG .. thank you!

woodythanksyoubothsmoke