Neither is necessarily true...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| rijelkentaurus Jul 21, 2009 9:17 AM EDT |
Quoting: There’s no question that Ubuntu dominates the desktop-Linux world. With commanding market share and a huge user community, it’s by far the most well supported and documented open-source platform in the desktop world. On servers, however, the situation is different– Paid subscriptions on the server, perhaps, installs are rather impossible to tell for sure. And while Ubuntu may have louder fans and communities, that does not make it the most popular, and it certainly does not have a "commanding market share" with "no question". |
| caitlyn Jul 21, 2009 1:05 PM EDT |
I have to agree. The Fedora Project posted some figures on downloads a few months back to claim it was actually more popular than Ubuntu. I'm not sure that is an accurate measure but it does raise questions about some of the claims made by the Ubuntu community and Canonical. DistroWatch has page hit rankings but I don't think that's accurate either. Bottom line: Ubuntu is very popular. How it ranks versus other popular distros is almost impossible to measure. |
| softwarejanitor Jul 21, 2009 1:11 PM EDT |
@caitlyn However I also know a lot of people who use Fedora for servers rather than desktops, while I know relatively few who use Ubuntu (including the server version) as a server. So I am not sure that downloads prove that Fedora is more popular with desktop users than Ubuntu. For example, where I work we use Fedora instead of the commercial Red Hat for our development and QA servers. I've suggested we should probably use CentOS (and maybe for production too), but management won't go for that. Ah well. And yes, there is just no doubting that Ubuntu is extremely popular and that Linux usage even between distros is very difficult to even guestimate. |
| krisum Jul 21, 2009 11:54 PM EDT |
A phenomenon of recent years, though, is that most linux issues I try to search with google mostly end up in ubuntu forums threads -- if that can be taken to be an indication of anything. |
| rijelkentaurus Jul 22, 2009 1:59 PM EDT |
Lots of Ubuntu problems that need solved? :) |
| krisum Jul 22, 2009 2:23 PM EDT |
No, I mean general linux problems (i.e. seen in other distros but not searched with distro specific keywords). |
| softwarejanitor Jul 22, 2009 2:36 PM EDT |
@krisum I've noticed the same thing as well. I expect that there are multiple factors why... The sheer size of the Ubuntu community can't be overlooked of course, but there are probably other reasons. Ubuntu's support forums are wide open for anyone to view, which I don't believe is true of at least some of the commercial distros where they may be trying to make money off of support. Ubuntu also seems to be the choice of more neophyte users which may need more help than some other distros and they've managed to build a community which seems to be more open than average to helping these people out. One criticism I've heard about "linux users" in the past is a condescending attitude towards newbies. And unfortunately in too many cases there has been some justification for that. I've seen noobs get flamed because they didn't RTFM or other things just because they didn't know better. Ubuntu's forums seem a little more "kindler and gentler" than average. I wouldn't even be surprised if there aren't technical reasons... possibly the way Ubuntu's forums are set up make them more crawlable by search engine spiders or the sheer volume of stuff there as well as links to it make Ubuntu posts rank higher on the search engine algorithms. |
| herzeleid Jul 22, 2009 3:02 PM EDT |
The story - and the thread - are mis-named. Probably some confusion somewhere along the line - but I humbly suggest that a more intellectually honest title would have been "Where are the 3rd party applications?" There is enterprise support available for ubuntu from canonical or from HP, which of course has nothing to do with his gripe about the slowness of some 3rd party software vendors to offer ubuntu versions of their wares. But why not a provocative headline, so long as we have an opportunity to slam ubuntu, eh? |
| softwarejanitor Jul 22, 2009 5:51 PM EDT |
@herzeleid Yeah... I've never understood why some people seem to ooze such hatred for Ubuntu. I can understand there may be valid criticisms on a technical level, but some of it seems to be just attacking it because it is popular (I've seen the same thing done to Red Hat at various times) or jealousy by supporters of other distros (or even Windows fans). |
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