MX Linux Forum

JayM wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2019 9:20 pmA better metric would be the cumulative number of downloads from all the mirrors. This would give an idea of the number of people who have at least tried MX or plan to do so, not taking into account those who get it via torrent.

how much help they give for free despite being busy with software development, website, forum, documentation etc.

skidoo wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2019 9:45 pm "Most users ever online was xxyyzz" may not be apples-to-apples comparison.
forumA might be configured to use a 24hr (or 48, or 72!) session cookie timeout, vs forumB @15minute timeout.
Also, a forum's sysadmin may (I've seen this done in the context of sites being put up for sale) inflate the count by manually editing the database.

dreamer wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2019 8:21 pm If we want more meaningful popularity numbers let's look at forum activity.
I don't have numbers for the latter, but Linux Mint forum states:

Most users ever online was 2029 on Mon Apr 08, 2019 9:27 am

The same number for MX Linux is:

Most users ever online was 717 on Tue Oct 30, 2018 5:46 pm

skidoo wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2019 9:45 pm

A better metric would be

expire the repo keyring key, then sit back and watch how many come a runnin' to download the new key?

Hmm...


just sayin'

In December 2018 alone LM received $40k+ from users. On top of that LM has sponsorships (you have to disable adblocker to see them) which LM wouldn't have if businesses didn't use the distro. So we are probably looking at $200k annual income.

malspa wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2019 11:23 pm I'm kinda glad that MX is about to hit #1 in the rankings, but it's mostly just entertainment to me. Recently, I took a look at the DW rankings for each year since they've been doing it. Puts things into perspective -- they come and they go. Maybe MX will have a long run at #1 like Mint did. By the way, sometimes I wonder if Ubuntu and the Ubuntu flavors shouldn't have their hits per day totalled together.

https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resou ... buntusplit
Why is Ubuntu split into multiple entries while Fedora and Linux Mint are each treated as one distro? This lowers its page hit ranking.

We treat Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Kylin, etc as separate distributions for several reasons.

Most community editions of Ubuntu usually begin life as their own, separate distributions and later join the list of official Ubuntu community editions. Quite often we add new projects to our database prior to them becoming official community editions.

While the community editions (usually) release at the same time as Ubuntu, each community project has its own developers, its own governing body and its own design goals. The community editions have their own websites and sometimes maintain parts of their own infrastructure. They are, for most practical purposes, independent entities. The names of the community editions are similar to Ubuntu and they share some infrastructure, but they are otherwise separate from Ubuntu. Our database organization reflects that.

We generally determine what is a separate distribution vs a community spin based on whether a project has its own website. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, etc each have their own website and are therefore regarded as separate projects. By contrast, Linux Mint's editions (Main, Debian Edition, KDE spin) all share one website. Likewise Fedora Workstation, Fedora KDE and Fedora Xfce all share one website. We organize our information to reflect how distributions organize themselves.

Grouping Ubuntu editions together, ie going out of our way to treat Ubuntu differently from the way we treat all other distributions, just artificially inflates Ubuntu's ranking. The way the stats are organized now are, if nothing else, internally consistent. We have tried combining Ubuntu community stats before, but it understandably annoyed people as it inflates Ubuntu's ranking and hides the independent community editions from the PHR table.

It may be worth noting we often receive this query about Ubuntu and its many community spins. The reasoning being that Ubuntu community editions all share similar names and most of the same package repositories so perhaps they should be treated as one project. To date, we have not received the same question asking why we split all the different Arch-based distributions into separate entries. Like Ubuntu, the Arch-based projects usually use the same repositories, have "Arch" in their name, and use the same media update cycle. We have approximately the same number of projects named "Arch*" in our database as "*buntu", yet no one questions treating the Arch-based spins as different projects. People acknowledge Arch-based projects have different websites and developers and are therefore different distributions. We treat Ubuntu-based projects, with their own websites and developers, the same way we treat Arch-based spins.