Distrowatch

[demosthenese]

My take on the 'major' thing is this.

If Ubuntu and Mint disappeared tomorrow, then the good ship Debian would sail on as if nothing had happened. If Debian disappeared in a puff of smoke, there would be major holes in Ubuntu and Mint.

Debian is major distro because of its wealth of package maintainers, without whose work the derivative distros could not exist.

[iceman]

My take on the 'major' thing is this.

If Ubuntu and Mint disappeared tomorrow, then the good ship Debian would sail on as if nothing had happened. If Debian disappeared in a puff of smoke, there would be major holes in Ubuntu and Mint.

Debian is major distro because of its wealth of package maintainers, without whose work the derivative distros could not exist.

Words of wisdom


Poll results so far.
Yes, all the time 11% [ 4 ]
No, not anymore 17% [ 6 ]
Once a week 14% [ 5 ]
Once a month 8% [ 3 ]
Once every few months, give or take. 25% [ 9 ]
Only for Distrowatch Weekly. 3% [ 1 ]
Never did. 19% [ 7 ]
What is Distrowatch... 3% [ 1 ]

[emoric]

I actually do tend to check Distrowatch every other day or so. I'm always curious to see what is new and what not. I'm always trying new distributions in Virtual Box but none of them give me reason to leave my current Debian install.

[62chevy]

Do you still check out Distrowatch?

Yes, all the time 7 15%

No, not anymore 7 15%

Once a week 6 13%

Once a month 4 9%

Once every few months, give or take. 12 26%

Only for Distrowatch Weekly. 1 2%

Never did. 8 17%

What is Distrowatch... 1 2%


Total votes : 46





I only go if someone gives a link to an article. I use linuxquestions to find out what others think about a distro.

[debianized]

I check it all of the time and have for years. I don't install or play with much found there these days though, for numerous reasons.

[dasein]

I realize that this thread has been dead for a couple of weeks now, but in case someone stumbles on it in the future...

Several people commented in the thread about just how easy it is to "game" Distrowatch HPD stats. Well, sure enough, there's a small one-man Debian-derivative distro that had its first and only release a few days ago (May 2012), and that has been in the Distrowatch database for all of one week. Said distro is currently at the #2 position at DW for the last 7 days, ahead of everything except Mint. Clearly, there is no way that a distro with < 300 forum members (and < 50 "backlinks" on the Web) is receiving 2,500 genuine DW hits per day, every day. There is unquestionably a massive and organized Distrowatch-spoof campaign underway.



The bottom line: Distrowatch "popularity" says nothing about the actual popularity of a distro. And it never will.

(Aside: I wish fanbois would think about the "message" that this kind of behavior conveys about a distro. I was actually thinking that it looked like a nice newbie-friendly alternative to Debian. But I can't recommend in good conscience any distro whose community is made up of PCLOS-style fanbois.)

[MALsPa]

I think that in this case the page hit ranking (over the 7-day span) might really reflect a huge amount of interest in this new distro. Based on Stable, uses GNOME 2, and the dev (Doherty) is well-known from Linux Mint. Maybe there's no foul play involved here.

[dasein]

Interested in buying some land?

[62chevy]

Interested in buying some land?

This is one of the reason I pay little attention to DW. Give it a couple of weeks and see then. Time heals all wrongs or so I've been told.

[Randicus]

Time heals all wrongs or so I've been told.

I thought time allows bitterness to grow and anger to spread its roots deeper. Maybe I am just cynical.

[62chevy]

Time heals all wrongs or so I've been told.

I thought time allows bitterness to grow and anger to spread its roots deeper. Maybe I am just cynical.

I didn't say I believed it.

[dasein]

This is one of the reason I pay little attention to DW.

Because I'm a deeply cynical old man? (Hey, any reason is a good reason, I guess. Just never heard that one before.)

Edit Before my sarcasm gets misinterpreted...

I frequently use DW as a news and reference site. Ladislav and Jesse provide a valuable service in the Linux community. It's just that the easily-spoofed 'popularity' contest isn't one of them.

[iceman]

This is one of the reason I pay little attention to DW.

Because I'm a deeply cynical old man? (Hey, any reason is a good reason, I guess. Just never heard that one before.)

Edit Before my sarcasm gets misinterpreted...

I frequently use DW as a news and reference site. Ladislav and Jesse provide a valuable service in the Linux community. It's just that the easily-spoofed 'popularity' contest isn't one of them.

You know. That is fair. It is so easy to get caught up in the top 100 battle, and the popularity argument, that we sometimes forget Distrowatch does have much more to it.

List of packages Distrowatch follows,
http://distrowatch.com/packages.php

Summary of upcoming releases,
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue ... 7#upcoming

Distrowatch Weekly, opinions about it aside,
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php

List of Major Distributions, again opinions aside,
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

Related Links,
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=links

Package Management Cheatsheet,
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resour ... management

And of course it does have the largest list of Linux Distributions that I know of,
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

It is also translated into many other languages. As I said before I really don't go there anymore, I have gone past it. But it does serve a purpose, as long as people ignore the misleading hit ranking for distro's.

[buntunub]

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?

I feel pretty much the same as you. I have happily settled in Debian as my primary distro so have little reason to check that website out any longer. The DWW has some interesting reviews from time to time and I do read those when something pique's my fancy.

[caulfield]

Distrowatch is good for several thinks:

A year ago i discovered Ubuntu. I didn't know there were any other distros out there. I didn't know what Fedora, openSUSE, Debian etc. was all about. Then someone pointed out DW, i started reading, clicking on links, burning and trying out several distros. My favorite (after Ubuntu then) used to be openSUSE, i had 11.4 installed the whole summer last year. 12.1 was a complete disaster for me. so more hopping and reading, and once i got properly introduced to Debian and it's philosophy, i'm sticking with it.

So DW is good for technically inferior people like me, to pull our heads out of our asses and explore the possibilities

[dark_stang]

...entice Ubuntu and Mint users to switch to Debian...

Yeah just what we need....

I don't understand this comment. Are you saying you'd rather have a tiny homogeneous userbase rather than a large heterogeneous one? Sounds boring. I would guess that a lot of people are on Debian, myself included, thanks to Ubuntu.

I used to go to Distrowatch when I wanted to try something new out. It introduced me far too many failures, so I stopped using it as a resource for my decisions.

As for the "Major" distributions debate, I would say it's based on number of current installations. I would guess that Debian and RedHat/CentOS dominate the server market above all other distributions. At least they do at my current employer (very small company) and previous employer (fortune 50 company). Ubuntu probably has more end user installations though.

[nadir]

...entice Ubuntu and Mint users to switch to Debian...

Yeah just what we need....

I don't understand this comment. Are you saying you'd rather have a tiny homogeneous userbase rather than a large heterogeneous one? Sounds boring. I would guess that a lot of people are on Debian, myself included, thanks to Ubuntu.

If i would have written it i would have wanted to say that i doubt the "thanks" always has got a place in the sentence. It wasn't much of a bless when all the LMDE people arrived here, to give an example.
I prefer a small heterogeneous userbase over a large homogeneous one, btw. But i ain't got the feeling Debian lacks users (it is neither tiny heterogen nor tiny homogen. It ain't tiny at all).

[Randicus]

...entice Ubuntu and Mint users to switch to Debian...

Yeah just what we need....

I don't understand this comment.

It was a reference to buntutards, not all Ubuntu and Mint users. Attracting users is not a problem, but attracting the wrong people is undesirable for the forum. Attracting Ubuntu and mint users like vbrummond is good, but not attracting the typical users; who post questions about wireless internet without looking through the forum first, where the answer has been given many times; abhor reading any of the documentation on Debian's web-site; complain that their new system does not have beautiful founts like butnut; complain about Debian's packages being ancient; et cetera.

I hope that clarifies the comment.