Is MX More Popular Than We Think?

[Arnox]

I looked at a couple blog posts enumerating the amount of downloads MX gets per week. Honestly, although it's not Ubuntu numbers probably, it still seems to be an awful lot. Are we underestimating just how many people use MX?

[Eadwine Rose]

There is a distrowatch topic on this with about 60 pages. Might be a good start.

[Arnox]

There is a distrowatch topic on this with about 60 pages. Might be a good start.

I'm assuming this is the thread you're referring to? If so, that's a lot more about Distrowatch reviews than anything. Most of the posts in there are also 3+ years old. I still think MX is indeed more popular than we think.

[Adrian]

How popular do "we" think it is?

[m_pav]

The only metric we have available to us is from the primary Sourceforge Servers on the number of downloads per month. There are MX mirrors around the globe that mirror the main servers content and many use their local mirrors to obtain their copies of MX Linux, plus we have PTP sharing which is private data only available to the hosting machine.

More on why we can never know the number of users;

• The first being Browser fingerprints are not unique to MX Linux. A browser running on MX Linux can appear identical to one on Debian, Ubuntu, or even Windows if customized. Most MX Linux users use Firefox, which suppresses fingerprinting (e.g., privacy.resistFingerprinting). The user agent string often only shows "Linux x86_64" and does not specify "MX Linux."

• Snapshots and respins abound due to the simplicity with which they are made and distributed.

• A single download might be used to install from 1 to 100 or more machines and it may never become an installed product.

The long ans short of it is, we simply do not know and neither can we ever know.

[Arnox]

How popular do "we" think it is?

We as in the MX community in general.

I, of course, don't know what everyone thinks for this and am making generalizations, but I was personally getting the impression that the MX community think MX Linux is some really niche distribution in reality.

The download count SourceForge gives us right now seems even more impressive too considering the downloads should be at the low end due simply to the fact that we are months away to the release of Debian 13.x.

[DukeComposed]

The download count SourceForge gives us right now seems even more impressive too considering the downloads should be at the low end due simply to the fact that we are months away to the release of Debian 13.x.

This statement ignores the fact that general support for Windows 10 is ending in five months. Hardware minimum requirements for migrating make this a bigger deal than previous Microsoft software end-of-life deadlines. Most Windows users looking to migrate to another OS won't know the Debian release schedule and are very unlikely to do that homework before making the switch. In short, people installing MX for the first time right now don't know about Trixie or why its forthcoming availability will affect the current release of MX.

[asqwerth]

We'll never know.

Some people who download mx to try may not stay with it. Others may continue to use it but never bother with the forum (or mention it on other sites) because they find it easy to maintain.

And the download numbers will certainly be 'niche' level when you compare with the major distros.

Not really an issue I think a lot about.

[Arnox]

The download count SourceForge gives us right now seems even more impressive too considering the downloads should be at the low end due simply to the fact that we are months away to the release of Debian 13.x.

This statement ignores the fact that general support for Windows 10 is ending in five months. Hardware minimum requirements for migrating make this a bigger deal than previous Microsoft software end-of-life deadlines. Most Windows users looking to migrate to another OS won't know the Debian release schedule and are very unlikely to do that homework before making the switch. In short, people installing MX for the first time right now don't know about Trixie or why its forthcoming availability will affect the current release of MX.

Even with that, who says people looking to migrate off Windows 10 are going to pick MX as their first choice or even their second choice? I mean, I HOPE it's their first choice. lol But regardless, my point is simply that how much that affects the downloads is not known whatsoever. Could be a lot. Could be very little. But we do know certain things for sure such as Debian 13 coming out. And even if we did say that downloads for MX are boosted a lot by migrating Windows 10 users, it's still impressive to me at least that we have so many people that have both heard of us and are willing to give MX a chance.

We'll never know.

Some people who download mx to try may not stay with it. Others may continue to use it but never bother with the forum because they find it easy to maintain.

And the download numbers will certainly be 'niche' level when you compare with the major distros.

Not really an issue I think a lot about.

Does any of this really matter? Well, perhaps not, though like any MX fan, I want this distro to be recognized because a lot of time, talent, and effort went into, and still goes into it, and this distro has strengths in whole that many distros only have in part or not at all.

[Adrian]

1. it's not that important, we don't get paid by the number of people who use MX, if anything it takes more time to support different needs and requests. Donations are plenty as is for what we need: servers, domain names, etc, but we are all volunteers and anyway the community would not afford to pay the salary of any of us.
2. If it's important is if increase in popularity attracts more contributors, but if MX is popular then maybe it's a pity that it doesn't really show in the number of contributors.
3. it's subjective, what is "niche" what is "popular"? We see hundreds of thousands of downloads per release, but Ubuntu and the rest probably beat us by an order of magnitude. So yes, in that respect we are niche.

Rest assured though, you don't really need to promote MX, we don't suffer from lack of fame, most of us we do what we do because we enjoy it and more fame would not serve us any better, it would probably attract more trolls.