Mandriva's CEO got interviewed for the Mandriva club. "Right now, the new 'in thing' is Ubuntu. Of course, the situation is a bit different in this case: one person, with a quasi infinite check book is behind the operation. So they can give the system away and spend whatever is needed. Is this the right way for the open source eco-system? I find it hard to believe. One possible worse case scenario is that Ubuntu's plan is to use money to put all other community-based distros out of business and then start monetizing the installed base. If this were the case, they are doing the easy part: increasing their market share by giving away the product. We have found that the second part is a tad more difficult."
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Member since:2006-01-17
Member since:2005-07-24
Yeah. That's why I said that it, too, is flawed. ;-)
I don't think that a metric exists that really gives a reliable picture of Linux desktop use. And I guess that's what people mean when they say that Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro.
Certainly, it gets more publicity than any other... for now, anyway.
I have used Ubuntu, and I must say that I was impressed by it. They have made some really good usability decisions. In fact, it is the *only* Debian based distro that I have ever been happy with.
I do have some concerns about the "Ubuntu phenomenon", however.
The first being its lack of any visible^Wviable means of long term support. Outside of having a rich benefactor, Canonical has no business model. I have read interviews of employees who say that while Canonical will be a service company, it has no real business model and is not profitable, and furthermore they don't care.
This does not sound like the best positioning for the future.
A second thing that bothers me about Ubuntu is that while other projects have benevolent dictators, those benevolent dictators hold office due to the respect that they command.
Ubuntu's benevolent dictator ("for life", no less) is more or less guaranteed to keep the position because he's the one with the money. As it stands, Ubuntu would die without his money.
Ubuntu is a good distro. But I'm not sure that I'd want to see it be *the* most popular Linux distro.
Member since:2005-08-18
"Netcraft is also flawed as a measure of OS popularity. But I'd put more faith in it than I would in distrowatch hits for heaven's sake."
Netcraft measures servers, not desktop installations.
As flawed as distrowatch may, or may not, be Netcraft is a much worse metric for this.
Member since:2006-01-01
Netcraft measures servers, not desktop installations.
As flawed as distrowatch may, or may not, be Netcraft is a much worse metric for this
The distrowatch page hit counter doesn't measure desktop installations either, it only measures page hits. There are a lot of experienced GNU/Linux users who don't need to consult Distrowatch daily to decide which distro they should choose for their GNU/Linux servers and desktops.
Member since:2005-07-24
Still, it seems odd that "The Most Popular Linux Distro", which is based on Debian, a strong server OS, and which includes Apache, couldn't garner at least 2% on the Netcraft chart.
Anyway, I find it very unclear what distrowatch is measuring. Page hits from newbies wondering which Linux distro to try? Linux fans checking what all the hype is about? People looking for help in fixing their broken Ubuntu boxes? Who knows? My objection is to the idea that Ubuntu/Mandriva/etc distrowatch hits are somehow proportional to Ubuntu/Mandriva/etc users.
My feeling is that the Distrowatch counter is mainly a hype-o-meter.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2005-07-24
> He is criticizing the Ubuntu project because nowadays Ubuntu is by far the most popular linux distribution and getting more and more attention by linux users, including Mandriva users.
Will this myth ever die?! Ubuntu gets the most hits on distrowatch.org. Why people put such credence in that useless statistic, I have never understood. In all fairness, when Mandriva was at the top of that useless metric, it was called the most popular distro, too.
Netcraft is also flawed as a measure of OS popularity. But I'd put more faith in it than I would in distrowatch hits for heaven's sake.
Have a look at:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/12/05/strong_growth_for_debi...
And no, Ubuntu is not included in the Debian results, as Ubuntu's config of apache clearly identifies itself as Ubuntu. It simply does not run on enough sites to appear in the results.
I'm more or less neutral on Ubuntu vs Mandriva. My distro of choice is RHEL/CentOS. But I do believe in calling a spade a spade.