It is not too surprising that Ubuntu came in first in DesktopLinux.com's 2007 Desktop Linux Market Survey, or that Firefox was the topmost browser by far. More interesting is that for the first time ever in the site's annual surveys, GNOME surpassed KDE among desktop environments (45% over 35%), with Xfce a solid third (8%).
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Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:2006-01-19
This year the German newsticker Heise had the survey on it's frontcover for a while. This might explain the large upsurge of Suse usage (by 8% points from last year).
I don't know, is the standard desktop of OpenSuse KDE or Gnome? If it is Gnome (like for commercial Suse), then maybe this is a part of the higher Gnome numbers.
I think what we also see here is the "standard desktop" effect. Ubuntu, Fedora, Redhat, Suse, OpenSuse(?), Debian (and I think most Debian derivates), they all have Gnome as standard desktop. From the large Distros it seems that only Mandriva has set KDE as standard. Even Kubuntu, although not exactly hidden, is not as widely known as Ubuntu, especially not amongst Linux-newbies (which decide about growth numbers. Dell offers Ubuntu pre-installed.
As we can see with MS Explorer, many users do not put in the energy to try out several choices, but stay with what is pre-set.
Maybe KDE is not hitting the big bells enough. On the other hand, KDE is not a company, so a following of 10% would easily suffice to keep the project alive and healthy, which in the end is all that counts for me 
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Member since:2006-07-17
He may use Fedora but he certainly doesn't use Gnome with it. http://www.osnews.com/story.php/12956/Torvalds-Use-KDE
I recently switched from Gentoo to Kubuntu (fed up of DIY everything) and couldn't be happier with the distribution. I'm eagerly awaiting KDE4. I've been keeping up with svn for a while (mainly for plasma) and so far it has been quite unstable, but it's making steady progress. I think KDE4 might help to swing these statistics back in the other direction.
I used to be gnome user, but I was never happy with it. Constantly customization everything, theming and re-theming even multiple times a day. In the end I just couldn't live with it. Say what you will but I just find Gnome/gtk ugly. Tried KDE and never looked back.
I'm not surprised about Xfce though. The only reason it could come as a surprise is because of the relative few distros that ship it as default (when compared to GNOME/KDE). Xfce is a great environment, and I'd probably still be using it if I could stand gtk.
Member since:
2005-11-12
Who is the major contributor of Gnome ?
Probably RedHat/Fedora
Nicely put superman. It always cracks me up when newbie Ubuntu fanboys go over the edge. Your response had me chuckling. Fedora is pretty decent. There is an article running on osnews where Linus Torvalds states he mostly uses Fedora. I love it that even the founder of Linux uses Redhat/Fedora! I use a combination of XFCE running Gnome panel and applications to get the best of both desktops.
Edited 2007-08-23 00:36