Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Had a play with Google trends just now, and saw a strange thing. Linux has been slowly declining over the last few years , but Ubuntu is growing.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=linux...ate=all&sort=0

Could it be that people see Ubuntu synonymous with Linux?

My fave distro Open SuSE seems to be on the decline:(
Interesting to see Maemo making a dent in the last months.:)

Looks like you debs are winning.

Mike C

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Ubuntu: "art of being human"

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

LOL my Wife uses Ubuntu on an IBM X41 laptop, and is none the wiser.

Has Firefox, has eMail, can do internet banking, and online shopping. Not interested in anything else.

Mike C

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

I'd take trends with a fair pinch of salt. I see a lot of odd declines and growths that don't seem to match the real world, and this is one of them (I've done it myself in the past).

Think of all the activity with netbooks over recent times, for example, and all the coverage that got Linux for a while..

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Good fun though eh! killing time while I'm waiting for N900

Mike C

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

It could be as simple as Ubuntu becoming the preferred UI and crowding out competitors. So its growth and Linux' apparent shrinking could be converging toward toward a point where they are like Windows and DOS. :D

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

I think you are seeing a reaction to the splintering of Linux. Most people don't want to research which variation on Linux meets their particular needs. They are content to go with the first distribution they find that seems to meet most people's needs. At the moment that is Ubuntu. It's easy to find, it's easy to use, it's website is easy to navigate, and it's an easy name to remember. The fact that they are expanding into alternate interfaces (Kubuntu) and devices (Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Ubuntu MID Edition) just makes the decision easier.

Texrat's analogy is a good one. In the early days of PCs most users never knew there was any DOS besides MS-DOS. Eventually it became not just the de facto leader but the only DOS most people would use.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Texrat

I think that was my point, at some point people wont ask for linux, its just Ubuntu.

Mike C

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

That's a good sign that Linux is working well under the hood.

When you have problems with Linux, that's when people talk about it a lot :-)

After all, people with PCs running Windows don't know what Windows is until they have a problem and someone tells them it's because they are running Windows ;-)

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

A couple of things could be going on:
* To your point, Ubuntu and Linux could be used interchangeably.
* Since this trend is about search, could be that people already know where to go and don't have to search for either of those terms.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Similar statements were made concerning Red Hat 10 years ago. Look where we are now.

Number of increases whole time hence a downwards trend could very well mean stability.

You didn't include Ubuntu in your link but after including it, it shows not an increase after 2007Q2. Instead its stable, fluctuating both up as well as down.

As for Suse, A shows a possible explanation. The decline from A to F is 2,5 years. This decline is sharper than from 2,5 years before A to A.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

If you just look at the trend for maemo, you see something very funny. The biggest "city" doing searches for "maemo" is a place called "Nokia, Finland". This is followed by cities like "Espoo" and "Helsinki".

Hmm.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Interesting. I'd forgotten they tracked hits (right column about half way down). There's also a spreadsheet-like comparison of distros over time. For some reason Ubuntu is up over 20% in the last month versus the last three months.

http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity

Looking around, I think I was too kind when I described Linux as splintered. Ground into a fine powder might be more appropriate.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Indeed. Enterprise customers with support contract won't use Google.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

But Red Hat is in close to that position in the enterprise. If you're doing an analysis of Linux distros with paid support, they're at the top of most lists.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Yeah. I understand that one far too well. I just had a mail pop up in my inbox:

From: customer.services
Subject: Your order is on its way

.. I nearly wet myself with excitement, only to open the mail and find out it's from the supermarket we order online delivery from telling us they'll be delivering tomorrow.

I cried. :p

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

IMHO search trends are interesting but the meaning is open for discussion. The use of Linux platforms is increasing. For some devices that use Linux the device brand would be the dominant search term. I doubt for example that most TomTom users even know their device runs Linux. Android as a brand also overshadows the Linux within.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

And I doubt many Panasonic flat-screen owners realize they're Linux users. Maybe they'll be able to stumble over that remote-control option which shows the GPL license, if they're lucky. There are other TV vendors using Linux too. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority turn out to do so.

BTW, one of these days I'm going to try to put and SD card formatted as ext2 into a Panasonic TV (the one for slideshows), to see if it recognizes it. Their kernel is compiled with CONFIG_EXT2_FS=y :)

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Ahh, I see you longing for the times when you could buy your Model T in any colour as long as it was black.
Well, those times are gone and one size doesn't fit all.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

I found the GPL on my plasma TV on the first day. It was a pleasant surprise. :)

Interesting idea. Next, try to boot from SD card. ;)

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Not completely, since they try to lock it down as much as possible (it's hard to justify a difference of hundreds of dollars between models when the real difference is not even a different firmware but just a setting in the firmware).
Still, some interesting things can be done.

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

its not that fun finding a pip button on the remote, only to discover that the model tv it was bundled with do not have the feature...

Re: Unbuntu growing, linux declining
 

Panasonic have been a long-time user of linux. I recall seeing the in-flight VOD system reboot when I was last travelling with United Airlines and the penguin logo came up, it looked like a modified debian with 2.4 kernel.

Most people don't realise their TomTom devices are linux either.