this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This article is strange... The author uses "being able to open Microsoft Office documents" as a common example of what an OS that claims to be easy to use should be able to do. Then says...
No default installation of Microsoft Windows EVER opened Microsoft Office documents. If this was a simple oversight in the write-up it'd be fine, but the point is hammered over and over again.
I don't have an opinion about Ubuntu including or not including more software in the default installation (my guess is it became too big to fit on a DVD?) but this article failed to make it's point to me by making a comparison to Windows that isn't true.
Also...
Is this supposed to be a cocky joke? I can't tell. What metric of "most popular" is the author using?
This author really needs to take a step back to reality.
The average person who’s already technically knowledgeable enough to download Ubuntu and burn a DVD or make a USB stick is already aware of the App Store on Mac and whatever the Windows App Store is called.
Which is why Macs only come pre installed with the App Store and finder
Officially it's called the "Microsoft Store" but I don't think anyone really calls it that (Same with the "Windows Explorer" until they renamed it to "File Explorer" as everyone has been calling it)
I reckon a nifty idea instead of preinstalling software is to have a file extension finder that suggests software based on the file extension. Sure, there are some file types that have multiple uses, but many proprietary solutions use distinct extensions, making it quite straightforward to organize the recommendations.
You don't even need to look at the extension to identify most file formats, as there are unique magic numbers stored at the beginning of most (binary) formats. Only when a single binary format is reused to appear as two different formats to the user, e.g. zip and cbz are extensions relevant. This is how the
filecommand and most (?) Linux file explorers identify files, and why file extensions are traditionally largely irrelevant on Linux/Unix.This means your idea of suggesting software based on the file type is even more practicable than you described.
I'd love having that tbh. Doesn't even need to be fancy, could just as well suggest packages in the terminal. It would be massively helpful.
Number of active users.
those numbers are nonexistent for most distribution, since forcing telemetry isn't really a cool move in the free software world
The number of IPs hitting their software repos can be a decent way of estimating active users. Also, ISO downloads and so on.
There’s also the check connectivity to Internet ping that network manager does. Arch Linux defaults to Arch’s servers, etc.
Local repo mirrors are pretty standard in the enterprise world are they not?
Any company invested enough to host a local mirror will not give a blank install of Ubuntu to their employees though.
You can argue that other distros are popular as well, but when it comes to the "I've heard of this Linux thing, let's try it out" crowd Ubuntu is the goto option, no doubt about it. And the impact on this crowd is exactly what is discussed in the article.
Hundreds of thousands of people using eg. Debian plus a software profile plus a sources.list file with an intranet address don't count as using Debian?
I'm not arguing about the contents of the article, I'm discussing specifically the relevance of generating usage statistics based on IP hits and ISO downloads.
For the purpose of the article: no they don't.
If you want to discuss telemetry or how to measure popularity of Linux Distros, please submit and link me an appropriate post, I'll be happy to discuss it there. But it simply adds nothing to the discussion here.
And how do you know that number? Let alone the numbers of other distributions?
Yeah that's a pretty funny error, seems to forget that MS office is a very expensive bit of software and doesn't come included with windows.
It does in recent times. My laptop came pre installed with win 11 and office home 2021(i think).
All i had to do was click activate to link the key to my email account. It showed up as a notification on first login.
Even if not activated it still would open files with that warning.
Ubuntu claimed be the most popular Linux distro on their website, backed by hot air. People who didn't know any better took that at face value, including the author of this shoddy article, perhaps.
They do have statistics about how many systems send upgrade pings. There are some caveats to that, but I believe the difference with other distros is significant enough for that not to matter.
What other desktop Linux would be more popular? Fedora? Arch?
Ubuntu chooses to log upgrade pings to create such statistics. Contrary to Ubuntu, others respect your privacy, and don't log upgrade pings. Hypothetically, if Ubuntu is the only distro that logs upgrade pings even though everyone uses Linux Mint in practice as an example, they can't claim to be the most popular distro as for a matter of fact, that reality has more people that use Linux Mint than Ubuntu.
Linux Mint is even more troublesome, because I believe it uses Ubuntu's repos as well - meaning that they'd be counted in Ubuntu's logs?
That said, with the exception of probably Distrowatch pageviews (which of course have very little relation to actual usage), AFAIK all proxy metrics we have do point to Ubuntu's dominance, as well as anecdotal evidence such as the distros you see people using at e.g. FOSDEM. I'd be interested to see any data that might show otherwise though, but until then, my working hypothesis is that Ubuntu is still the most popular desktop Linux.