3 ms·

At the risk of feeding the frenzy that is calling out each article title as link bait: Linux Mint is the "top distro" _on Distrowatch_, which is much worse tha

by joshma 15y ago

At the risk of feeding the frenzy that is calling out each article title as link bait: Linux Mint is the "top distro" _on Distrowatch_, which is much worse than sampling from, say, Google, which might have a more representative sample. Visitors of Distrowatch are significantly more likely to be not just tech-savvy but also interested enough to draw distinctions between different flavors of Linux. I see myself as being pretty "tech-savvy", yet I never cared enough to look into distros outside of Ubuntu 11.04. Especially given the fact that a Facebook survey suggested 90%(!) of users are still using Ubuntu, seems like the article even discredits itself.

gks 15y ago
I think they called out the situation pretty well. It's users hitting one website, and it's views not downloads or active users. That said, there's certainly a lot of increase in mindshare with Linux Mint lately. The biggest reason I have seen is due to Ubuntu's Unity "situation." My guess is that people are moving in large enough numbers that it's starting to show up in places like Distrowatch. This isn't a bad thing. From my experience "top distro" is a cycle that just so happens to have derivatives being thrown in for good measure. In the time that I've been using Linux on a desktop there have been a lot of advancements. I personally went from Red Hat (3 i think), to Mandrake Linux, to Debian, to Gentoo, and after several years of using OS X, I have Arch Linux in a VM that I use for development. Things are going to change. The old top distro is going to be over thrown by another until something better or more useful comes along. Honestly, with the commercial aspect to Ubuntu I never thought so many of the die hard Linux users would use it to begin with. I figured we'd see those people kicking and screaming to their graves before they used it. But a few of those people did switch and now they're switching to something else because Ubuntu has taken a turn for the worse (in their opinion). We'll see how it plays out in the long run, but I think the simple fact that we're seeing so many stories on it here is only fueling the fire. People are looking at it because it's being linked all over the place.

by joshma 15y ago

gks 15y ago

I think they called out the situation pretty well. It's users hitting one website, and it's views not downloads or active users. That said, there's certainly a lot of increase in mindshare with Linux Mint lately. The biggest reason I have seen is due to Ubuntu's Unity "situation." My guess is that people are moving in large enough numbers that it's starting to show up in places like Distrowatch. This isn't a bad thing. From my experience "top distro" is a cycle that just so happens to have derivatives being thrown in for good measure. In the time that I've been using Linux on a desktop there have been a lot of advancements. I personally went from Red Hat (3 i think), to Mandrake Linux, to Debian, to Gentoo, and after several years of using OS X, I have Arch Linux in a VM that I use for development. Things are going to change. The old top distro is going to be over thrown by another until something better or more useful comes along. Honestly, with the commercial aspect to Ubuntu I never thought so many of the die hard Linux users would use it to begin with. I figured we'd see those people kicking and screaming to their graves before they used it. But a few of those people did switch and now they're switching to something else because Ubuntu has taken a turn for the worse (in their opinion). We'll see how it plays out in the long run, but I think the simple fact that we're seeing so many stories on it here is only fueling the fire. People are looking at it because it's being linked all over the place.