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2007 Desktop Linux Survey results revealed

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[Updated Aug. 23] -- Analysis -- According to DesktopLinux.com's just completed survey, the number of Desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the past year, and Ubuntu remains their Linux distribution of choice. Since... See more » [Updated Aug. 23] -- Analysis -- According to DesktopLinux.com's just completed survey, the number of Desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the past year, and Ubuntu remains their Linux distribution of choice. Since DesktopLinux.com's recently completed survey is a self-selected group, we can't claim scientific proof that the number of desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the past year. Still, this year's survey produced 38,500 votes versus 14,535 votes over the same number of days in a similar survey one year ago. Part of the increase undoubtedly was because this year's survey received front page coverage on both Digg and the German news site, Heise Online. That said, we've also seen an increased interest in Desktop Linux, based on our own website statistics. We've seen significant increases during the last year both in terms of unique visitors and site page hits. You don't need to believe our numbers or surveys, though. Dell and Lenovo didn't invest in pre-loading Linux desktops to win points with the cool Linux kids. Both companies did it because they want to make money with the Linux desktop. Dell, in fact, has expanded its Ubuntu Linux offerings both in the U.S. with its 1420 laptop line, in Europe, and in the Chinese office desktop market. Today, Linux desktops are a business, not just a hobby. So, what are desktop Linux users of 2007 using? Desktop distributions The leading Linux distribution is the Ubuntu family -- 30 percent of our survey respondents are using Ubuntu or one of its sister distributions: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Edubuntu. While there are other distributions that owe a great deal to Ubuntu -- Linspire, Freespire, MEPIS, Linux Mint, and Pioneer all come quickly to mind -- we decided not to count them for Ubuntu this year, since some, like Freespire, have just made the switch, while others, such as MEPIS, are switching back to Debian, and Pioneer is going in its own direction. Which Linux distros do you use on your home or office desktop system(s)? (Click to enlarge) Next in popularity, after the ever-popular Ubuntu family, comes the SUSE Linux family with 21 percent. In our survey, we found mostly openSUSE users (19.7 percent) with a scattering of SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) users (1.3 percent). This isn't too surprising, since our preliminary analysis of our survey data showed that the majority of our respondents were individual rather than corporate users. It's also noteworthy that the SUSE Linuxes have taken a major step forward. In 2006's survey, the SUSE family came in a distant second place with only 13 percent of the user base. In terms of year-over-year growth, openSUSE and SLED were the real winners, in fact, with a jump of 8 percentage points. The Ubuntu family, by comparison, built on its lead by only 1.2 percent. In third place this year we have "other Debian," which includes Debian and all of its relatives besides Ubuntu: Debian, Freespire, Linspire, Linux Mint, MEPIS, and Xandros. While this group, at 14.2 percent, may have dropped behind SUSE this year, if you add in Ubuntu -- the most popular Debian-based distribution of them all -- Debian once again dominates the desktop Linux landscape, accounting for near half -- 44.6 percent -- of this year's distribution votes. The Red Hat/Fedora family -- which this year includes CentOS -- came in at the fourth spot with 9 percent. This represents a small loss from last year when Fedora had 7 percent, while Red Hat added in a mere 2.2 percent, for a total, including smaller Red Hat/Fedora-based distributions of less than 10 percent. Finally, in our "top five," we have Gentoo, which also declined -- from 9.6 percent to 7 percent. After that we come to a group of smaller, independent distributions. Of these also-ran distributions Mandriva showed the best. Perhaps the most surprising result of our survey was that PCLinuxOS showed so poorly. On DistroWatch, PCLinuxOS has been at the top of the site's page hit ranking for the last 30 days. Frankly, we're not sure why this popular, easy-to-use community distribution didn't do See less »

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2007 Desktop Linux Survey results revealed

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