Mageia in Distrowatch Top Ten Distributions

[ferri]

Mageia is 7 today.
Jump over CentOS.

[Max]

Today we are number 6!
I've been watching as we slowly crept up on Arch, and then with the RC announcement we jump way past them.
Less than 200 hpd behind Debian!

[wobo]

Neither Debian nor Arch are near any expected incident (news, changes, release, etc.) so their click count is generated during normal situation. As for Mageia added traffic should be expected near a release date coming up.
On the more relevant list for 12-months Mageia is at #8, right after Arch and CentOS. Now, if the DW ranking would matter at all, I'd regard this #8 a real success, showing the interest all over this first year with a full release in the market.

[Max]

It doesn't matter at all, this is true.
But it is a certain indication of the interest in the distro. And when you take into account that that average is done over the past six months, and suddenly the day after we announce our RC we jump 15 hpd ahead of Arch.... I'm no mathematician. But even to me that means that we generated a lot of interest.

[wobo]

It doesn't matter at all, this is true.
... and suddenly the day after we announce our RC we jump 15 hpd ahead of Arch.

Yes, that's what I meant. This extra push of a release is something such distributions like Debian and Arch do not have (at least very seldomly), so I rather watch the long term instead which balances out the occasional peaks.

OTOH this jump shows the importance of such things like releases wrt marketing.

[House]

But it is a certain indication of the interest in the distro.
[snip]
to me that means that we generated a lot of interest.

No.

Distrowatch rankings are trivially easy to "spoof" and are therefore indicative of absolutely nothing (except maybe the zeal of distro fanbois).

See for yourself:


Metrics that are harder to spoof (search traffic, web traffic, backlinks, and forum traffic) all agree with each other,
and show that "interest" in Arch outstrips "interest" in Mageia by roughly a factor of five.

(Mind you, I'm not saying that Arch is "better," merely that HPD @ Distrowatch says nothing about interest or activity.)

[macxi]

HI,

In this month - in DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking - on May 16, 2012

Mageia is already in the third place (evaluation of the last 30 days)

Good news in a great moment, near the launch of Mageia 2, next week

[macxi]

Hi,

A screenshot of DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking today, 01 june 2012:

Mageia surpasses Ubuntu for the first time and now is in second position (evaluation of the last 30 days).

Congratulations Mageia Team

-------------

[wilcal]

The Mageia Team may have a
tiger by the tail on this one.

[yankee495]

I seen Mageia was second a few days ago. This really means that a certain # of people where there running Mageia, right? It does not tell if they uninstalled it or was running live and never installed it.

None the less it is a great accomplishment to take #2. Mandrake was #1 for several years, for a reason...and you are looking at it. Mageia.

I'm very impressed with Mageia 2 and have full faith that it will continue to grow. If they don't I don't know what I will do. I have trouble with compiz but I think it is KDE related or my ATI drivers. I really just show it off now and then but I would like for it to work right. I've gotten my Mageia running so good with the help from this forum and the Mageia team I hate to go messing it up, but I do plan to try different drivers after I check to see what my desktop is running.

We can add one to the list as I have a friend waiting on me to help him install Mageia because he knows very little about partitions and such. I helped him install Mandriva 2011 but told him he should go with Mageia because it is moving more toward the user distro.

I used to install Gnome and KDE but his time just KDE. I would play with Gnome but always used KDE.

Good luck Mageia!

[Max]

I seen Mageia was second a few days ago. This really means that a certain # of people where there running Mageia, right? It does not tell if they uninstalled it or was running live and never installed it.

No.
All it means is that a certain number of people hit the Mageia site. There really is no way to tell how many people installed Mageia.

Except maybe running nmap -O on the whole world....

[darkduck]

Mageia is #4 now! It leaves Debian and OpenSuSE behind! Wow!!!

My own look at Mageia 2 KDE: http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2012/06/m ... lance.html

[macxi]

Hi,
The PCWorld website published an article about the rise of Mageia on DistroWatch and said: "Mageia must be doing something right"

* PCWorld - Mageia: A Linux Distro on the Rise - By Katherine Noyes - Jul 3, 2012

In Wiki - see news about Mageia 2 and Mageia 3/Cauldron

[PiElle]

Very nice review.
Thanks.

[macxi]

Hi,

Baza said: Mageia: The third in Distrowatch Ranking

A screenshot of DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking today, july 12, 2012:

Mageia now is in second position (evaluation of the last 30 days).
and in third position (evaluation of the last 3 months and 6 months).

Congratulations Mageia Team
-------------

[demilord]

I noticed it went to 3.. It is awesome how the baby is growing!.. I really enjoy using mageia

[macxi]

The Distrowatch site warns that DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking "simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more". But it's good to see Mageia is emerging among the users of this site so popular.

Texto of Distrowatch website:

The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.

A screenshot of DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking, today: August 24, 2012:

[macxi]

Hi,

I pasted below, a text of the site ZDNet, commenting on the five most popular distros, including the Mageia. The author says that "these conclusions are not from a formal survey".

Site ZDNet: The 5 most popular Linux distributions (By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source | August 26, 2012 )

Summary: It's hard to say what the most popular Linux distributions are. There are no good surveys. But, these are the ones that have been getting the most buzz in recent months.

2: Mageia: And, number two is, "who?" I can hear some of you asking. Mageia is a September 2010 fork of Mandriva Linux, a commercial Linux distribution, which was once quite popular in its own right. In 2006, Mandriva suffered management and financial problems. Since then, while the firm has continued to have problems, Mageia -- freed of Mandrivia's business woes -- has continued on to become a wildly popular Linux distribution.

And why is Mageia so popular? I think it's because it's a straightforward easy-to-use Linux distribution. Unlike Ubuntu's Unity user interface, Mageia uses the Linux pro friendly KDE 4.8 desktop. In short, it's just a darn good KDE distribution -- which, by the way -- according to LinuxQuestions' last survey, is now the single most popular desktop interface of all.

[House]

No. Really.

[doktor5000]

Well, but compare the raw numbers. *buntu is aiming for 200 million users. Mageia can be happy if we reach one million in the next few years.
Now compare those numbers against say Distrowatch or the search results you posted. 500 times more users ...

[macxi]

In fact, Ubuntu is very popular.

But, I remenber that last year Mageia was not included in the lists of the most popular (see: As 2012 Dawns, Mint Leads the List of Top Linux Distros - Dec 28, 2011)

And now, Mageia is among the 10 most popular in DistroWatch and has been commented internationally in Internet:

Recent examples:

Site ZDnet: The 5 most popular Linux distributions - August 26, 2012 (in this text, the author says that Linux most popular is Android)

Polish Site -> In english: Comparison of the most popular desktop Linux distribution designed for beginners - Aug. 21, 2012

In this year, to see Mageia be highlighted among the most popular distro is, for me, the confirmation of the good work that all Mageia Teams are doing, and that Mageia are in the right way.

[wobo]

In this year, to see Mageia be highlighted among the most popular distro is, for me, the confirmation of the good work that all Mageia Teams are doing, and that Mageia are in the right way.

To me it doesn't tell anything. Why?

1. If a user is looking for a new distribution he mostly listens to friends, people in his environment, articles in the Linux media, etc. So, with a user base 200 times larger than Mageia's user base it is no wonder that Ubuntu is much more popular worldwide. Same goes for some other distributions. DW rank is totally meaningless in this context.

2. If a user has heard about a distribution, where does he go for more info? To the distribution's website. So, a much better picture would be a comparison of hit statistics of the distributions' websites, download sites, etc. Which we do not have.

Now your examples:
3. ZDnet seems to compare apples with peaches - Android is not the most popular Linux on PCs/Notebooks, only on tablets and smartphones. That's why I would not put much weight on their ranking. Like I never relied on any ZiffDavis publication for the last 15 years.

4. The Polish site tells about the ranking in Polland, a comparatively small part of the world. If you look into German media you would think that there is no such distro named "Mageia" (with 2 or 3 exceptions). Such local media give only the regional picture, they are useless in a worldwide comparison.

[macxi]

Wobo,

I agree that the opinion of friends is important, and that the search criteria of Distrowatch has no very safe. But in my opinion, the Distrowatch site is very popular, professional and very respected in the world of free software. I think the audience that accesses a site like Distrowatch, is a qualified audience.

If Mageia stand out among so many other distros, demonstrates to me that, somehow, more people accessing the Distrowatch are using Mageia. Even that does not represent the reality of the market. And if it happens at Distrowatch site, other sites have disclose this event, making assessments of Mageia (until a few bad sites). And these reviews have been very good. This is important to more people to know the Mageia. So I think the Mageia on the right track.

I agree with you, it would be interesting to have statistics about usage Mageia site. It would help to have important indicators. I think there are several tools for this (like Google Analytics). Who knows if there was a tool to indicate the number of downloads (or updates) in the mirrors of Mageia in the wolrd, would give an good information about this.

[filip]

Who knows if there was a tool to indicate the number of downloads (or updates) in the mirrors of Mageia in the wolrd, would give an good information about this.

Romain is already working on that among many other things of course. Any help is very appreciated.

[baud]

If Mageia stand out among so many other distros, demonstrates to me that, somehow, more people accessing the Distrowatch are using Mageia.

Well, as I tried to tell in a previous comment, I try and follow other statistics as shown at : http://mageiacauldron.tuxfamily.org/Blo ... Statistics (I've not yet updated the graphic but the table for social networks is up-to-date).

I do not want to refrain your enthousiasm, but as ladislav puts it : http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20071112#stats statistics require interpretation (furthemore, I noted down this specific thread : http://cookerspot.tuxfamily.org/wikka.p ... roWatchBot I'm not saying someone has a bot - I hope not - nor that if you like to click regularly on mageia news you should not do it, just do what you want).

To come back to your quote, let me analyze it logically (as in mathematics) :
- "If Mageia stand out among so many other distros" : well, only on PHR not among distros in general, which may represent (or not) "standing out", ok 1st on PHR, so ?
- "demonstrates to me that" : can you show the actual data used (should be reproducible in any scientific experience, to be analyzed beforehand and sorted out to avoid unrepresentative data)
- "more people accessing the Distrowatch are using Mageia" : how do you come to this conclusion ? someone clicking on distrowatch _is using_ mageia ? hmm, I do not follow the reasoning behind this, may be trivial to you, not to me :/ which shortcut did you take to come to this conclusion, which data is available to you to determine such a strong correlation between "clicking on distrowatch" and "using mageia" ?

As pointed above, I try not to be harsh, only factual and reasonable (though I'm a bit happy that distrowatch too reflects that Mageia is liked, whatever this may means or how it's computed). That's how statistics work imho : interpretation, based on actual data, with correlation between verified sources, eventually with a follow-up in time and correlations strongly identified to events, well do not mind, that may be my scientific mind

So, a better indication (to me) may be social networks : speak of mageia, tell you use it, how you use it, that's more important to me (and will enhance google rank /o\). Don't misunderstand me, the numbers I've put on the page http://mageiacauldron.tuxfamily.org/Blo ... Statistics are to be interpreted, too :

- social networks do not appear anymore at the homepage http://mageia.org (this has an influence)
- identi.ca is stagnating, not because it's not used IMHO, but because their server were defective on somewhat a long period of time (and libre tools are not suficiently put forward in libre software communities, but that's another discussion )

So, to make a long story short:
- do not worry being happy at PHR on distrowatch
- use your critical mind to keep in mind speaking about it according to http://www.mageia.org/en/about/values/ is important (people spent time to craft these values, they can be taken into account)
- correlate data or announces with facts: how many installs did you do, how many people you know IRL use it, collaborate with other communities (we are working for the same goal), go to install-parties whenever you can as you'll meet real people with real needs (I said I would make it short, so I stop there)
In one word : contribute as you can to libre software, eventually through mageia, that's a good start