Why the Distrowatch chart counts
Submitted by srlinuxx on Wed, 08/22/2007 - 16:12.
I recently postulated that PCLinuxOS was gaining more popularity than Ubuntu based on the feable metric of the Distrowatch "clicks per day" chart. I received lots of feedback insulting my use of this as metric so I felt it worth defending my decision.
The title of the post was "PCLinuxOS gaining more popularity than Ubuntu?" - a question to which I would discuss the answer. The important word is "popularity". Popularity doesn't mean "more people are using PCLOS than Ubuntu" because that doesn't tell the whole story; people talking/reading about it counts.
Explain
Well, if there are 8,000,000 people talking about Java yet only 500,000 using it whereas PHP has 1,000,000 people using it and 100,000 talking about it - which is more popular?
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Distrowatch ranking doesn't really matter.
Distrowatch ranking doesn't really matter. It doesn't reflect popularity or usage. Popularity means how many Linux users know or want to know about a certain distribution while usage mean how many people use that distribution.
Most 'hits' in Distrowatch are from windows users who may or may not switch to Linux and not from people who want to know about a certain distribution. These people simply visit Distrowatch to check what versions of programs the top 20 distributions use, contemplate about switching to Linux for a 5 minutes then come back the next day and do the same.
Another factor is stable releases. A distribution that does stable releases will get more hits than a rolling release distribution. This explains why Ubuntu ranks higher than (for example) Gentoo, although Gentoo is more popular and is installed on many more computers than Ubuntu.
Maybe
Maybe Ubuntu users like me are looking for another distro and access in mass the PCLOS page on distrowacth.
I use kubuntu happy, but I'm looking for ... something better. PCLOS isn't what I looking for.
Maybe MEPIS 7, maybe Dreamlinux, maybe Debian itself.
http://simplix.wordpress.com (italian)
Or maybe not
How hard is it to remember "http://www.pclinuxos.com"? Does someone think, "H'mm, I'll go visit PCLinuxOS' page on Distrowatch because I can't remember its URL," or, "I'll go visit PCLinuxOS' page on Distrowatch because I want to know what version of Amarok it comes with"?
It makes a bit more sense when you remember that Distrowatch links to reviews on each distro's page.
The whole "Distrowatch page hit rankings" debate might make more sense if we knew why people visited pages there. Maybe Ladislav should have a poll.
P.S. Try installing Debian and upgrading to testing. You'll like it. Although, PCLinuxOS is my 2nd most favorite distro after Debian. Very easy to use; great documentation; strong forum support; monthly magazine; fantastic artwork...