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How does distrowatch gets the "page hits" for all the distros's websites? or are those "page hits" initiated from within distrowatch? (surprised to see Mint at

How does distrowatch gets the "page hits" for all the distros's websites? or are those "page hits" initiated from within distrowatch? (surprised to see Mint at the top)

unixhero 10y ago
Tried Mint lately? It's been mighty fine distribution the last years.
- mappu 10y ago
  It seems to have a poor reputation for security, though.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    It does, I don't think that affects it much, though, because it's still so much less likely to catch a virus on Mint than it is on Windows, that it's still an upgrade for people switching over from Windows, which is sort of Mint's target user-base anyways. They've also done some work on security with their latest release, mainly making kernel-updates more accessible...
    - mavhc 10y ago
      Do they support upgrading yet though? If I wanted to reinstall my OS every year I'd go back to using Windows 95
      - Sylos 10y ago
        You can manually edit the APT-sources to point to the new release and then let it perform a dist-upgrade, which is, as far as I understand it, the same as Ubuntu or Fedora do automatically. The Linux Mint devs just don't think that's a good way of handling upgrades, so they don't have a button for it. You can read their reasoning here in section E : https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2 https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
        mavhc 10y ago
        Except unlike the other OSes, they don't test it. That's why I went back to Ubuntu
      - type0 10y ago
        Well, they support it for better or worse, you can upgrade from version 17 to 18 since they don't use systemd, on Ubuntu if you go from 14.04 to 16.04 you should do clean install.
Tomte 10y ago
I think they are counting how often the distro subpage on Distrowatch is accessed.
cnr 10y ago
They are counting "one hit per IP address per day" on distribution subpages. Here is explained "DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking": https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  Therefor it depends how well specific distro page of theirs rank in Google? If linux mint ranks 5th and Ubuntu 30th, because ubuntu is so popular, of course it gets more hits. And maybe some little known distro ranks 1st because it has no competition. I think their popularity table is flawed, but I still love their website. You can browse distros that are based on specific distros etc.
Sylos 10y ago
Mint gets recommended a lot for people wanting to switch over from Windows. I'd say even more recommendations than Ubuntu, because of the more Windows-like interface. Also just in general, Ubuntu is more well-known outside of the Linux-microcosm, so people don't need to look it up as much, and the more advanced distros like Debian, Fedora, openSUSE probably don't get looked up as much, because if you want to switch to one of those, you usually already know why you want to use them.

How does distrowatch gets the "page hits" for all the distros's websites? or are those "page hits" initiated from within distrowatch? (surprised to see Mint at the top)

unixhero 10y ago

Tried Mint lately? It's been mighty fine distribution the last years.

mappu 10y ago
It seems to have a poor reputation for security, though.
- Sylos 10y ago
  It does, I don't think that affects it much, though, because it's still so much less likely to catch a virus on Mint than it is on Windows, that it's still an upgrade for people switching over from Windows, which is sort of Mint's target user-base anyways. They've also done some work on security with their latest release, mainly making kernel-updates more accessible...
  - mavhc 10y ago
    Do they support upgrading yet though? If I wanted to reinstall my OS every year I'd go back to using Windows 95
    - Sylos 10y ago
      You can manually edit the APT-sources to point to the new release and then let it perform a dist-upgrade, which is, as far as I understand it, the same as Ubuntu or Fedora do automatically. The Linux Mint devs just don't think that's a good way of handling upgrades, so they don't have a button for it. You can read their reasoning here in section E : https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2 https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2
      - mavhc 10y ago
        Except unlike the other OSes, they don't test it. That's why I went back to Ubuntu
    - type0 10y ago
      Well, they support it for better or worse, you can upgrade from version 17 to 18 since they don't use systemd, on Ubuntu if you go from 14.04 to 16.04 you should do clean install.

Tomte 10y ago

I think they are counting how often the distro subpage on Distrowatch is accessed.

cnr 10y ago

They are counting "one hit per IP address per day" on distribution subpages. Here is explained "DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking": https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

angry-hacker 10y ago
Therefor it depends how well specific distro page of theirs rank in Google? If linux mint ranks 5th and Ubuntu 30th, because ubuntu is so popular, of course it gets more hits. And maybe some little known distro ranks 1st because it has no competition. I think their popularity table is flawed, but I still love their website. You can browse distros that are based on specific distros etc.

Sylos 10y ago

Mint gets recommended a lot for people wanting to switch over from Windows. I'd say even more recommendations than Ubuntu, because of the more Windows-like interface. Also just in general, Ubuntu is more well-known outside of the Linux-microcosm, so people don't need to look it up as much, and the more advanced distros like Debian, Fedora, openSUSE probably don't get looked up as much, because if you want to switch to one of those, you usually already know why you want to use them.