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Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 07:30
by iceman
I was curious. How many people here have used or still use Distrowatch. I use to check it out daily. But I found since I have chosen Debian as my Distro of choice, I don't really care to go to Distrowatch anymore. There are better places for Linux news in general and as far as Distro specific, Debian has all I need.

What about the rest of you?

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 07:58
by Randicus
I tried to vote for Every Few Months, but

Code: Select all

The submitted form was invalid. Try submitting again.
I have had this problem before. :x
I check it out occasionally to see what other distros are up to. Just out of curiosity.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 08:13
by iceman
Yeah, I have it as well. I thought it was a bug that just affected me since I created the poll. Looks like it is more wide spread then that.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 20:07
by emariz
I used to visit Distrowatch often when I first tried GNU/Linux, about five years ago. Then I kept checking it for new distributions and its weekly newsletter, but now I care very little about most other distributions (bar the commercial ones) and think that the quality of the newsletter has declined.

The same happened to me with LXer, a website that aggregates GNU/Linux news. While it still has a few interesting links, nowadays it is filled with pseudo-reviews (screen captures of an installer) and how-to's about a new application to change the wallpaper or the latest beta from Firefox. I could not care less about such stupid "articles".

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 20:16
by vbrummond
Distrowatch top 10 list was what made me decide to try Linux. I looked at their pros/cons and decided on Ubuntu. I should have went with Debian or SUSE if I knew what was good for me. It listed Debian cons as 'rude people' and OpenSUSE cons as 'bloated and slow'. How misleading.

Wait.. Well, I am fairly rude... :o

Anyway I do not visit it any more. ;)

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 23:00
by Randicus
emariz wrote:While it still has a few interesting links, nowadays it is filled with pseudo-reviews (screen captures of an installer) ...
The reviews are interesting. I read one a month or two ago where the first half was a detailed description of the installation; step by step. And of course, each step accompanied with a screenshot. The guy could simply have written that the installation was simple and he just had to follow the instructions. Then perhaps a more in depth critique of the OS's performance? My guess is the reviews are meant for new-comers whose primary concern is ease of installation, not for people looking for information about the OSs.
I find their top 100 rankings suspect. I believe they are based on the number of times links on Distrowatch are opened. If that is the case, the ranking is meaningless. I also believe such ranking has the potential to steer new-comers toward the "top-ranked" distros.
I should note that I did not discover Distrowatch, until after I switch to GNU-Linux.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 23:04
by vbrummond
Ah I should mention insane people think that Mint actually has more users than Ubuntu due to distrowatch rankings... :roll:

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 23:44
by iceman
vbrummond wrote:Ah I should mention insane people think that Mint actually has more users than Ubuntu due to distrowatch rankings... :roll:

Irrelevant. Debian has more users then both put together :mrgreen:

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-16 23:50
by Randicus
Not according to Distrowatch. Mint is no.1, Ubuntu 2 and Debian was 5 or 6 the last time I saw THE RANKING. Obviously Mint is the best.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 00:12
by vbrummond
If Mint really IS number 1, I hate people.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 00:16
by Randicus
Look on the bright side. If Mint really is no.1, then butnut is not. Although, in LQ's latest popularity survey, if we pretend it means anything, butnut was the most popular. Of course, all *untus were included as Ubuntu, but CrunchBang, Saline, etc. were not included with Debian. Who makes these ridiculous surveys anyway?

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 01:05
by iceman
Randicus wrote:Look on the bright side. If Mint really is no.1, then butnut is not. Although, in LQ's latest popularity survey, if we pretend it means anything, butnut was the most popular. Of course, all *untus were included as Ubuntu, but CrunchBang, Saline, etc. were not included with Debian. Who makes these ridiculous surveys anyway?

Then we need to make and push our own surveys.

What is your favorite distro(s)...

1 - Debian stable, testing, Sid
2 - Debian Sid, stable, testing
3 - Debian testing, Sid, stable
4 - Debian Sid, testing, stable
5 - Debian testing, stable, Sid
6 - Debian Stable
7 - Debian Sid
8 - Debian Testing
9 - All of the above, I love Debian
10 - None of the above, I love MS Windows, I hate Linux
11 - None of the above, I love Mac's, I hate Linux
12 - None of the above. I love Macs and MS Windows, I hate Linux.


See it is simple to start surveys and polls. I mean really, this survey gives each person twelve options. That is better then most surveys. That is an amazing number of choices with such variety.

In reality, just give them a variety of the same choices, add a couple MS Windows remarks, Mac remarks and of course that if they choose anything else other then the Debian answers, then they are really trolls who Hate Linux. There you go. Insta-Survey.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 02:01
by hhh
Randicus wrote:Not according to Distrowatch. Mint is no.1, Ubuntu 2 and Debian was 5 or 6 the last time I saw THE RANKING. Obviously Mint is the best.
Sarcasm or not, it needs to be stated that those are simply page hit rankings, as their headline states. The topic is frequently discussed...
Distrowatch wrote:The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.
From... http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 04:37
by Randicus
But what is the purpose of keeping such a tally? The "ranking" measures the number of information searches for each distro on that site. Getting some information, down-loading an ISO and trying a system, and using a system are three very different things. The "ranking" is pointless, but is actually taken seriously by some people.

We are better than the other Linux sites, because we have a gimmick. We have a ranking. :roll:

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 04:54
by iceman
Randicus wrote:But what is the purpose of keeping such a tally? The "ranking" measures the number of information searches for each distro on that site. Getting some information, down-loading an ISO and trying a system, and using a system are three very different things. The "ranking" is pointless, but is actually taken seriously by some people.

We are better than the other Linux sites, because we have a gimmick. We have a ranking. :roll:

Yeah, it is pretty pointless. But at least it organizes distros for newbies. There are so many out there that the new person coming over from MS Windows is completely lost. At least there is something, some place for them to start such as Distrowatch and their top 100.

One would hope as they progress and learn more about Linux that they decrease their reliance on Distrowatch since, as already mentioned, it is inaccurate.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 05:06
by MALsPa
The Page Hit Rankings are a joke. What I like about the site is DistroWatch Weekly (and the comments section), news about distro releases, and that the site is a good place to get a little info about various distros. For example: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 05:27
by dasein
Distrowatch serves a useful purpose, I think.

It helps bring a little order to the chaos, helping folks who are newly interested in Linux to reduce the number of candidate distros to a manageable level.

The HPD stats are not (and never have been) representative of anything, and DW freely admits that. And it is possible to "game" the HPD stats, although I confess I neither know nor care exactly how one does it. But it's been done before, and it will no doubt be done again.

I don't actually visit DW much anymore, though I still subscribe to their RSS feed, just as a way of knowing what's new and exciting in LinuxLand.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 06:11
by iceman
MALsPa wrote:The Page Hit Rankings are a joke. What I like about the site is DistroWatch Weekly (and the comments section), news about distro releases, and that the site is a good place to get a little info about various distros. For example: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian
I also like this page there, though I disagree with about half of it. But it does mention Debian, so that part I like 8) Also, as I said before, it is a starting point for newbies.

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

However LinuxMint, Ubuntu, PClinuxOS, Centos, Mageia, in my opinion, are NOT major Distributions and I would argue about the top ten status, for reasons already mentioned here.

Debian (of course,) Fedora, Opensuse, Slackware, Arch Linux ARE major Distributions. Also I would add Gentoo into the mix. I want to add LFS but it isn't really a major Distribution, but it should be mentioned with them I think.

FreeBSD is not Linux, of course, but is the number one major BSD distribution.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 06:24
by Randicus
How can Mint and Ubuntu not be major distributions when they probably are the most popular? Your reasoning eludes me.

Distrowatch is one source of information for those wishing to migrate, but not the only one. I wish I could remember which site I used before making the switch. It is much too long ago for me too remember, but it was a good one. All I remember is that I began with a site called (something)...linux.com or .org.

Re: Distrowatch

Posted: 2012-04-17 06:27
by iceman
Randicus wrote:How can Mint and Ubuntu not be major distributions when they probably are the most popular? Your reasoning eludes me.

Distrowatch is one source of information for those wishing to migrate, but not the only one. I wish I could remember which site I used before making the switch. It is much too long ago for me too remember, but it was a good one. All I remember is that I began with a site called (something)...linux.com or .org.

Just because something is popular doesn't make it a major distribution or the best one out there. Debian, for example, is a major distribution. It has been around for a very long time, it has a huge community. It is stable and easy enough to use, even for newbies. Then it has testing and Sid for more advanced users. And to top it off, Debian has branched off into many other distributions, including LinuxMint and Ubuntu. Without Debian, LinuxMint and Ubuntu wouldn't exist. Which makes Debian the major distribution. Same goes for Fedora (Red Hat,) Arch, Suse, etc. I would add Mandriva in the mix, but times are a changing. I suppose Mandrake (before it became Mandriva,) is worth an honorable mention though, but even that one came from Red Hat. Ugh, now that I mentioned the whole Mandrake and Red Hat thing, I should probably mention the Suse did branch off from Slackware early on but now holds its own.

The three oldest distribution's that have been around from the start are, Red Hat, Debian and Slackware.