LinuxMint is now the King of Linux Distros, Finally!

... is what is their methodology for determining this ranking? Do they just look at the hits on their website? That's not exactly an unbiased way to figure out what Linux distros are the most popular. How many users even bother going to this site? I haven't been there in years, and only looked at it recently because of some recent article about this same thing.

A better way would be to look at the hits on websites popular with Linux users, such as this site, Slashdot, etc. Of course, that again would only count users who are active in Linux-related (or tech-related) discussions, and would leave out for instance any corporate users.

If anyone could provide fairly unbiased rankings based on website hits, it'd be Google.

Not disagreeing with you, but if you look at the hit counter and adjust it to smaller time frames, you see the effect getting more pronounced. That means that while people may not be moving (yet), they ARE shopping, and in significant numbers.

Quoting:If anyone could provide fairly unbiased rankings based on website hits, it'd be Google.

That I agree with. And I am pretty sure they have all the details, but Google is not going to release such info. unless they get paid for it.

Actually, I bet most popular sites on the internet have, or can collect, such information but won't release it hoping to get paid for it too.

Fettoosh wrote:Actually, I bet most popular sites on the internet have, or can collect, such information but won't release it hoping to get paid for it too.

The problem is that any "popular" site is going to have biased data, because only some subsets of the population will visit that site. For instance, Facebook is a popular site, but not everyone uses it; there's tons of people who refuse to join FB, including probably many Linux users. msnbc.com is probably a popular news site, but not with non-Americans or with Fox News fans. foxnews.com is probably a popular news site, but not with non-Americans or MSNBC or CNN fans. Even Google's information is biased, since they wouldn't have any results from people who refuse to use Google and instead use Bing. But I picked Google because that's probably a site just about every Linux user uses, and I imagine very few Linux users use Bing for their web searching, so the fact that Google results would be biased against MS fans would be irrelevant for collecting information on Linux users.

Quoting:The problem is that any "popular" site is going to have biased data...

There is quite a bit of science in statistical analysis. I am sure statisticians, for a price, can accommodate for many variations in the data collected.

you can compare search trends: ubuntu vs linux mint: http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu,linux+mint

note that even if you search for ubuntu vs mint, which is going to include lots of false positives for mint, ubuntu comes out as a winner: http://www.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu,mint

greetings, eMBee.

When you have people loyal to either camp, there will be a tendency for each to skew the stats. I don't know that anything to include empirical data will ever settle it. But individually, many of us are watching friends and colleagues abandon Ubuntu on the desktop. I think maybe some comfort can be found in that Ubuntu didn't decline due to external forces. The same man that built it took a 12 pound hammer to its foundation.

@mbaehrlxer: Search trends don't necessarily translate to people actually using those distros. Searches including "ubuntu" can be from people looking up "how to do xxxx on Ubuntu", or "ubuntu sucks", or just about anything. Even Mint users could be using Ubuntu to look up howto information, knowing that Mint is heavily based on Ubuntu.

Quoting:Even Mint users could be using Ubuntu to look up howto information.

all the time.

helios wrote:When you have people loyal to either camp, there will be a tendency for each to skrew the kats.

FTFY.