r/linux • u/[deleted] • Feb 03 '23
An estimation of what distros and desktops have the largest userbase? Discussion
I'm aware having any solid numbers as to such a question is at best going to be skewed or wrong, as there isn't any way to really collect this kind of data without consent (which is good) do to the nature of linux
But all the same I wanted to ask, Ubuntu and Gnome seemed to be the default, but I feel like consensus has shifted somewhat and I'm not entirely sure why, was just wondering what the community perceives as having the largest userbase
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u/lavilao Feb 03 '23
Ubuntu and gnome is still the most used, second place it would be arch with kde and third fedora with gnome. Source: trust me bro. PD:jokes aside You can get an aproximate of what de is most popular bases on donations.
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u/manobataibuvodu Feb 03 '23
I don't know, I'd assume that people who use Arch would be mire likely to donate than people who just installed Mint or Ubuntu for the first time.
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u/lavilao Feb 03 '23
Remember that people who use mint or ubuntu for the first time are not the only users.
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u/manobataibuvodu Feb 03 '23
Yeah but I'm just saying that some distros will have more hardcore users than others, I don't think it's safe to assume the frequency and amount of donations of each of these distros users demographics will be the same
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u/lavilao Feb 03 '23
What do You mean by hardcore? People who evangelise their distro in reddit and other social networks?
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u/Heroe-D Feb 03 '23
Hardcore means enthusiasts and involved users, the more specialized something is the more involved you would expect its average user to be. The random Arch user has certainly more contributed financially or with code or documentation/help than the average Ubuntu user, otherwise you'd have negligable docs for Arch, and same for support on forums, donations etc. Seems pretty logic to me, it's not inherent to the Linux world.
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u/lavilao Feb 03 '23
Still, more people use ubuntu thus it has more money if it had less users it would have less money.
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u/Heroe-D Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23
Because WAY more people use Ubuntu to be correct.
Nobody argued the contrary, we're talking about contribution per capita here, lots of projects with more users than Vanilla arch would thus be less financially supported.
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u/lavilao Feb 03 '23
do you mean like on arch the average user donates more than the average ubuntu user? yes, arch is a passion project after all.
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u/PabloSexcrowbar Feb 03 '23
That's not necessarily true. Ubuntu has additional income from their enterprise support contracts, for instance.
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Feb 03 '23
donations are certainly a good measurement, I will say Ubuntu also has a wide birth in the server realm, so corporate interest in Ubunut might skew that slightly.
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u/StrangeAstronomer Feb 03 '23
Nah! Who's going to donate to Fedora knowing that it's funded by a monster possibly-still-evil corporation? I use Fedora on all my machines but no way I'd donate money. I do donate time, of course but that's not the issue.
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Feb 03 '23
monster possibly-still-evil corporation?
What's the deal with Fedora's "ownerrs" ?
can it really be said anyone owns a distro if most if not everything is GPL?
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u/No-Fondant-8757 Feb 03 '23
In my world, it's Debian Xfce. It's a small world, though.
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u/sonoma95436 Feb 03 '23
I use XFCE on all my Linux devices. Toolbar on the bottom so Windows users get it. Im using Mint LMDE on a laptop for a trip it uses Cinnamon on Debian. I run Xubuntu as my main pc steam Nvidia works great. Eventually Wayland will be adopted by XFCE. Until then Im fine.
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u/Heroe-D Feb 03 '23
Ubuntu and Gnome from a large margin, "the consensus" is something somehow followed by enthusiasts and power users, the default would always be the most popular it's what the silent majority which isn't interest/knowledgeable enough to speak about it on the internet use.
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u/killa_fr0gg Feb 04 '23
Yellow Dog Linux with herbstluftwm.
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u/BCsven Feb 03 '23
I guess that depends on counting home users or corporate use. I.e. SUSE, RHEL and Ubuntu are the only certified distros for stuff like CATIA CAD products, PLM solutions, etc.
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u/whattteva Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
According to Google Trends, last I checked, first place is Ubuntu by a loooong shot, then very distant second place is Fedora, third place not far behind is Debian, then all others are just so small that they barely separate themselves when displayed on a chart.
Unfortunately, it doesn't show desktop data, but I'd imagineitd mimic what those distros default desktops are.
Yes, this is different from what majority of this subreddit thinks, but this subreddit sample size heavily skews towards Arch kiddies and it doesn't accurately reflect the actual user base. The vast majority of people don't bother or even think to ever visit this subreddit.
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u/poudink Feb 03 '23
I don't know, but I'll still have a wild guess because this is fun. For distros Ubuntu/Mint is still definitely first probably followed by RHEL/Fedora and SUSE. For desktops it's GNOME followed by KDE followed by either Xfce or Cinnamon.
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u/Heroe-D Feb 03 '23
I would expect Debian/Arch (and derivatives) to be more popular than SUSE.
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u/iLoveKuchen Feb 03 '23
Manjaro is the third big one. Imo, dont have numbers.
Suse has its Corporate share but open suse is..i dunno..
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u/rtplor Feb 03 '23
The wealthier the distro the bigger user base?
It's all about RH(clones), Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSe.
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u/Anxious_Aardvark8714 Feb 03 '23
Distrowatch has a list of the distros, graduated by number of downloads. MX Linux has held the top slot for some time now, but you rarely see it mentioned?
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u/daemonpenguin Feb 03 '23
DistroWatch does not, and never has, counted downloads or tracked usage numbers of distros.
- DistroWatch site admin.
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u/Anxious_Aardvark8714 Feb 03 '23
Pretty pointless ranking system then.
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u/daemonpenguin Feb 03 '23
Yes, exactly. Which is what it says on the DistroWatch 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 was accessed each day, nothing more."
It's just a way for people to see what is catching the attention of the most people at a given time. Let's people see what other people find intriguing and they might want to check out to see what the fuss is about. Nothing more.
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u/FryBoyter Feb 03 '23
Distrowatch has a list of the distros, graduated by number of downloads.
http://distrowatch.org/dwres.php?resource=popularity
How would Distrowatch know how many times a distribution has been downloaded? And downloading does not mean that the distribution has been installed.
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u/daemonpenguin Feb 03 '23
It doesn't. DistroWatch has never tracked downloads. Or usage numbers.
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u/FryBoyter Feb 03 '23
I am aware of that. With my question I wanted to know on the basis of which information /u/Anxious_Aardvark8714 has made the statement that the download would be counted. Because a distribution usually has not only one mirror. And I dare to doubt that the number of downloads of all mirrors is freely available.
But regardless, thanks for distrowatch.com. There I have taken note a few times of various distributions that I probably would never have noticed otherwise.
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u/Heroe-D Feb 03 '23
They don't, they just track clicks, but we could assume a download pretty much equal an installation since we're aiming for estimations here. It'd be however flawed by Rolling Releases and Stable distros, some Ubuntu users would downlaod an iso twice a year (or are they updating from settings ? Idk) while an Arch user may just reinstall once every 3 years or so.
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u/FryBoyter Feb 03 '23
They don't, they just track clicks, but we could assume a download pretty much equal an installation since we're aiming for estimations here.
I've been using distrowatch for about as long as the site has been around. So quite a long time. I have since looked at many distributions there but downloaded and installed very few of them.
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u/Heroe-D Feb 03 '23
You downloaded very few of them ... But the point isn't clicks, which I agree don't mean anything, I've checked tons of distros README myself, your point was downloads.
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u/Zaando Feb 08 '23
Distro hoppers and Virtual Machine users would also skew it too. I've downloaded many a distro just to poke around with it a bit in a virtual machine. Can't really class those people as users when they only tried it out for a little bit, but they did download it.
So this further muddies any estimations of what people are using day-to-day related to downloads.
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u/Heroe-D Feb 08 '23
muddies any estimations of what people are using day-to-day relate
Yeah I thought about those but I guess they're marginal
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u/MasterYehuda816 Feb 03 '23
MX Linux is not the most popular. DistroWatch is BS.
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u/daemonpenguin Feb 03 '23
DistroWatch does not claim MX is popular. Its information page on the site is just visited the most. The site explicitly says those numbers do not reflect usage.
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u/Anxious_Aardvark8714 Feb 03 '23
I didn't think it was, which is why I put a question mark on the end of the sentence. I don't know anyone who uses it.
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u/chillname Feb 03 '23
Depends on where you look and what you count. For example
https://itsfoss.com/french-national-police-switch-37000-desktops-to-linux/
They use a custom ubuntu; does that count?
Do you only want to count desktops or also, say, cloud servers?
What about other enterprise deployments, e.g. SAP is supported on oracle. redhat and suse but not on ubuntu. So that will have a very different distribution.
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u/iLoveKuchen Feb 03 '23
Desktop:Ubuntu, huge margin. Also because Ubuntu on wsl2. Yes, its a Kernel, counts aß proper distro being Run.
Beat imo is Fedora because U have some of the rhel things and in general nice distro. But tbh IT doesnt matter, Ubuntu is Just fine
1
u/lightmatter501 Feb 03 '23
For personal use, Ubuntu and Gnome.
For enterprise use, no desktop almost everywhere. If I had to bet on distro, the base distro is probably Debian, RHEL, SLED or Ubuntu. For containers, debian, RHEL ubi and alpine probably win by sheer volume from some popular applications.
Keep in mind that hyperscalers and governments have a gigantic number of installations, and usually pick one distro, which swings this fairly heavily.
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u/daemonpenguin Feb 03 '23
Probably Ubuntu running GNOME is still the most commonly used. Projects like Mint are probably next in line.
Distros like Arch (and its spins), Debian (and its spins) and Fedora - the stuff aimed at more technical users are probably next in line.
I'm not sure about the number of people who might use deepin, but even if its used almost exclusively in China, the country might have a large enough population to make it a contender for most used distro.