Over the years I've used a variety of Linux Distros: Mandrake, Red Hat, FreeBSD, Fedora, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. Distrowatch keeps track of everything we need to know about the distros, and recently there has been an enormous push in desktop Linux thanks to Dell putting Ubuntu on desktops and Compiz-Fusion bringing snazzy eye candy to even low end machines. Distrowatch gives some pretty decent stats on the main Distros but for a while I've wanted to know how Google sees their popularity; mainly by how many pages mention specific distros.
Using some python, a spreadsheet, and a little scraping, I was able to get my answer. To see how Google would rank different distros I'm using the number of results Google returns when searching for the Distro's name as my numbers. I'm going to write a HOWTO on the technical aspects of what I did sometime this week, but here are the basic steps
- In a Google Spreadsheet I made a sheet that held the names of the top distros on Distrowatch.
- Another sheet holds the full list from distro watch (366 on record at the time of this writing)
- I set up a dapp to take these names, and return the number of results Google would have if you searched them
- A python script pulls the distros out of the spreadsheet, queries the dapp, and puts the results back into another sheet
| Distro | Page Hist |
| Ubuntu | 96,800,000 |
| FreeBSD | 36,700,000 |
| Fedora | 35,800,000 |
| openSuse | 29,500,000 |
| Debian Linux | 28,100,000 |
| KNOPPIX | 12,500,000 |
| Mandriva Linux | 5,720,000 |
| Gentoo Linux | 4,430,000 |
| PCLinuxOS | 3,170,000 |
| Slackware Linux | 3,010,000 |
| MEPIS Linux | 1,640,000 |
Stay tuned for the code behind it! Subscribe to the feed to get more updates.
10 comments:
What if a distro peaked some time ago and then trailed off in popularity?
There is no time axis.
- Paddy.
Right, its just a snapshot for right now. I'm actually quite surprised FreeBSD is second in returned results. I would have thought fedora, suse, or debian would at least beat it.
FreeBSD isn't Linux.
Fine, Ubuntu is more popular. Are you happy now? Just remember, Windows is a lot more popular than any Linux distro. Does that mean it is a better OS? No, of course not. So, does the fact that Ubuntu is a more popular distro equate to it being the best Linux distro? If not, then why is this so important to you?
Here is a Google Trends graph for the top 5.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Ubuntu%2CFreeBSD%2CFedora%2CopenSuse%2CDebian+Linux
Whow, that's quite an advantage Ubuntu has (due to the community I guess)....But also FreeBSD has quite some votes....
Nice research!
I have to say it: FreeBSD is not a Linux distribution.
FreeBSD isn't a linux distro.
I'm so glad FreeBSD has been downgraded to a "Linux distro," considering it uses a Berkeley kernel and BSD-licensed userspace... But then again it wouldn't be the first time the GNU community ripped off BSD code and claimed to have written it themselves.
First, I have to reiterate what others are saying, "FreeBSD is not Linux".
Second, for Christian: you maybe a troll, but I have to state this so others -- maybe noobies -- don't take your foolish words for real. Nobody wants to steal nothing. It seems Linux users simply tend to view *BSD as brothers or cousins, so they're not left outside. If this would ever be unacceptable for BSD folks, I suppose they could act and get the name references out of the site.
Last, but not least, FreeBSD is not GNU -- and this is important. There's a whole lot of philosophy in these 6 letters: GNU and BSD. Two ways of seeing freedom. For this reason they should never be mixed.
A Linux user, who never writes GNU/Linux, but happens to recognize what GNU ideas may represent to our world...
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