How many people use Debian?

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john_h · #1 Post by **john_h** » 2006-10-18 10:10

Does anyone have any idea what the total number of active Debian installations is? And how that divides up between (say) servers, business desktops and home desktops?

sleepyEDB · #2 Post by **sleepyEDB** » 2006-10-18 14:53

I did a google search for 'debian usage statistics', and found a lot of graphs/stats for how much the various download mirrors are used; but as we all know, the number of downloads is a far cry from the number of currently active installs.

sleepy

kenny · #3 Post by **kenny** » 2006-10-20 18:32

i hope once etch becomes stable debian will get more users, the project deserves a large fanbase

cunawarit · #4 Post by **cunawarit** » 2006-10-23 13:17

kenny wrote:i hope once etch becomes stable debian will get more users, the project deserves a large fanbase

In a way Debian is the most popular Linux distro if you count all the derivatives...

tinker · #5 Post by **tinker** » 2006-10-23 14:36

kenny wrote:i hope once etch becomes stable debian will get more users, the project deserves a large fanbase

Just so you know, there are probably millions of servers on the Internet using Debian and in large organisations, including many ISP's. It's just that until recently, many people who weren't experienced found they had difficulty setting it up to run as a desktop or laptop system.

One way to help is to make a contribution to Debian. Have a look at the Debian.org website:
http://www.debian.org/devel/join/

AlefBet · #6 Post by **AlefBet** » 2006-10-26 17:02

Is there any statistic anywhere? It is growing, but how fast? That would be interesting to know.

rfruth · #7 Post by **rfruth** » 2006-11-04 20:05

I'm about to switch from Ubuntu to Debian, want to see what all the commotion is about

thamarok · #8 Post by **thamarok** » 2006-11-04 21:03

Debian is not that popular. It is because it is not a ready2run distro, which with I mean it would install easily and hardware would get recognized easily..

About it's derivatives, Ubuntu is the most popular linux according to distrowatch.org and Xandros is commercial and sucks more than Debian itself

EDIT: Hehe, this is a little funny, the Top 10 distros in distrowatch.org are in the following order:
1. Ubuntu
2. Mandriva Linux
3. SUSE LINUX
4. Fedora Core
5. Debian GNU/Linux
6. Knoppix
7. MEPIS Linux
8. Gentoo Linux
9. Slackware Linux
10. Xandros Desktop

1st Ubuntu, 5th Debian, 10th Xandros.
Showing that as I said, Ubuntu is the most popular, Debian is between Ubuntu and Xandros and Xandros, is the loser.

DeanLinkous · #9 Post by **DeanLinkous** » 2006-11-04 21:49

Debian is pretty much ready2run. It has a new GUI installer if that is what you need to believe it is easy to install. Even now you can use a preseed file and have (almost) the whole install automated. Hardware detection is superb and getting better. Most distros are fairly equal in this regard. A different distros may choose to configure hardware whereas debian does not but that is because debian leaves that choice up to the user. I personally cannot stand when all of my 10 partitions are auto added to fstab and shortcuts placed on my desktop.

In other words, ready2run is in the eye of the beholder.

Distrowatch does not define the most popular distro. It simply defines who can manage to get people to click on links and generate a page hit for the distros page on distrowatch. If the users of a distro do not care about popularity it will be reflected on distrowatch rankings, or should I say it will not be reflected in those rankings on distrowatch.

meon · #10 Post by **meon** » 2006-11-04 22:26

It is impossible to know how many people use Debian.
Important for me as a Debian user is how strong the community is. How much help can I get when I need it?
I visit this forum because it answers the problems I occasionally encounter.

thamarok · #11 Post by **thamarok** » 2006-11-04 22:33

DeanLinkous wrote:Debian is pretty much ready2run. It has a new GUI installer if that is what you need to believe it is easy to install. Even now you can use a preseed file and have (almost) the whole install automated. Hardware detection is superb and getting better. Most distros are fairly equal in this regard. A different distros may choose to configure hardware whereas debian does not but that is because debian leaves that choice up to the user. I personally cannot stand when all of my 10 partitions are auto added to fstab and shortcuts placed on my desktop.

In other words, ready2run is in the eye of the beholder.

Distrowatch does not define the most popular distro. It simply defines who can manage to get people to click on links and generate a page hit for the distros page on distrowatch. If the users of a distro do not care about popularity it will be reflected on distrowatch rankings, or should I say it will not be reflected in those rankings on distrowatch.

I used expertgui and it still didn't find my ethernet card and I had manually to install the driver. Also, with my reply I only said my own experience and opinion. For others easier, for others a little harder.

And the rankings in DistroWatch seem to be quite real. Ubuntu is very widely used and many people here in this forum are using Ubuntu. And people say Debian is hard to install because of the Sarge installer which was really hard to install on my machines; they should test Debian Potato!

rfruth · #12 Post by **rfruth** » 2006-11-05 00:14

I spoke (typed?) too soon about switching from Ubuntu to Debian, I downloaded the i386 ISO (Sarge), booted the CD & it said network card not detected (its a mainstream Intel NIC) so tried to select it from the list but still no go, long story short I'm back to Ubuntu

DeanLinkous · #13 Post by **DeanLinkous** » 2006-11-05 03:05

Maybe debian blacklisted it for good reason. Maybe it is a buggy module. Who knows? The same thing could occur on any distro. Therefore I stick to my guns that all distros are very similar as far as hardware detection. I mean debian uses discover, but you can also install kudzu which is redhats hardware detection.

There are some distros that are more SIMPLE to install...I will give you that. But nothing is hard about debian. If someone learns a little they wont have any problem with any distro.

I didn't contradict your opinion I simply added mine and added that ready2run is in the eye of the beholder.

To say debian is not that popular....too funny. I wonder why they have been around forvever. I wonder why there have so many mailing lists. I wonder....

Debian is popular. A lot more popular than most of these fanboy distros. But most debian users could care less about popularity and rankings.

Distrowatch rankings are real. They measure hits per day. Doesn't mean they accurately reflect number of users. Heck, I use about five different distros on a fairly regular basis so I am a user of which distro? I have spoke to Ladislav of distrowatch on occasion and he takes it as a interesting statistic but not any conclusive proof of anything. Here is where the hits come from - http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats. ... pages.html

thamarok · #14 Post by **thamarok** » 2006-11-05 09:00

rfruth wrote:I spoke (typed?) too soon about switching from Ubuntu to Debian, I downloaded the i386 ISO (Sarge), booted the CD & it said network card not detected (its a mainstream Intel NIC) so tried to select it from the list but still no go, long story short I'm back to Ubuntu

You said you tried Sarge. Try Etch it has newer modules and newer driver support so I think it will get recognized.

ghostdawg · #15 Post by **ghostdawg** » 2006-11-05 10:01

thamarok wrote:
rfruth wrote:I spoke (typed?) too soon about switching from Ubuntu to Debian, I downloaded the i386 ISO (Sarge), booted the CD & it said network card not detected (its a mainstream Intel NIC) so tried to select it from the list but still no go, long story short I'm back to Ubuntu
You said you tried Sarge. Try Etch it has newer modules and newer driver support so I think it will get recognized.

I've had 3com nic problems with earlier versions of Fedora(fc2 or 3). For some reason it wouldn't work with my common nic, 3c59x. I think I will try FC6 to see what happens.

I think Debian is one of the most popular server distros around next to Redhat.

As far as distrowatch goes, Debian always in the top 10, along with Slackware, RH/Fedora & SuSe, these have been around a long time also.

john_h · #16 Post by **john_h** » 2006-11-05 14:11

I found this on the Netcraft site, which suggests there were around 1.2 million server installations for Debian as at December 2005 (and Debian was the fastest-growing distro at that point, too).

As for Ubuntu/Debian detection of hardware: I suspect a lot of the time this is just luck of the draw. One reason why I use Debian rather than Ubuntu is that, at the time I installed Debian, Ubuntu didn't pick up my network card out of the box, whereas Debian did. (Ubuntu is now a lot more successful at dealing with my PC's hardware, but it had its chance and it blew it

).