Ubuntu has won the distro wars; now onto the desktop wars

Read More : Ubuntu is THE ‘Linux Home Desktop’ distro; now onto the desktop wars Limulus

IMHO that is a fatally flawed analysis. You really don't intend to proove ubuntu won on the basis of search engine data would you?

The higher volume of searches can mean anything:

Case1: They might represent the popularity of the OS in which case, according to the second graph vista is far more popular than linux from 2007 onwards.

Case2: It might be that people were searching for solutions to problems as the OS usage increasesed....which I beleive is the cause for the jump in vista's popularity after 2007.

Nothing against any OS, but higher search volume=more queries from users= incomplete help files=buggy/unstable/non-userfriendly operating system

thats what i said...but it might not mean inadequate help as vista has an excellent help system. It might mean that there might be issues with the OS that the users are not able to fix and turn towards the web for solutions.

Actually I agree with you guys I posted just to share the author's [link provided] views..

Considering my experience with these Linux Distros, i would say that more searches indirectly relates to higher usage.

People search because even though its non-userfriendly, they know for sure that they can find the solution for whatever online.

Ubuntu clearly meets the hipe created.

For some OS's, thats not the case.

Case 3: Searching for Vista ahemm........

Ubuntu is a popular desktop no doubt about that. Infact the distrowatch.com data shows that the Ubuntu page received the maximum number of hits in 2007 followed by PclinuxOS and others.
However there are so many followers in every distribution that it is difficult to point a clear cut winner.

hmm...those searches are significantly more on torrent sites than on google

I think search results are flawed metric... For example, I believe, PCLinuxOS gets a false high rank on distrowatch due to people probably searching "Linux OS for my PC" and hitting PCLinuxOS !

We need to look at a proper survey to figure out which is the leading desktop Linux distro - but I am willing to bet it's Ubuntu

The Popularity of Ubuntu is due to the free distribution of CDs.

The popularity on search engine means, people are searching for more applications, game etc for Ubuntu.

you hit the nail on the head Yep that's why I thought why that fugly / nonsense OS is so much popular

What Ubuntu has better than other Linux distros is its package dependency management system. Fedora could have been on top if they hadn't chosen that lousy yum. It was supposed to solve dependency problems, but it didn't. I still have all sorts of problems with apt-get, but it is better than nothing I suppose. I hear gentoo has a good system, but I have zero interest in an OS whose enthusiasts believe that you should compile everything for yourself (I know that you can use gentoo without that, but it just seems stupid overall to operate in that environment).
On the flip side, it seems that more and more dependencies seem to be existing as a result of the "easy" access to libraries, which is just bad since sometimes packages are not available in newer versions of OSes and certain 32 bit binaries on 64 bit systems then lack libraries... (don't say use chroot, that just sucks).

You must be doing some wierd shite with it, I've been using Ubuntu since Feisty and regularly installing and uninstalling software via both synaptic and aptitude (hardly use apt-get - maybe it is the culprit) no problems here. I used to be on openSUSE but recently the package downloads/updates take ages, where apt is much quicker while checking/installing updates...

OK. I'll give you one scenario, though to be fair, that is more of a Linux issue than a package manager one. It has to do with how libraries are provided. Now, I downloaded and installed a particular library with apt-get: libgd2 to be specific. And I verified that it was present in /usr/lib/. Yet, my app refused to start, with an error message saying that libgd2 was missing...
The problem? Well, l was running a 64 bit OS, but a 32 bit app - so the app tried to load a 32 bit libgd2, but that wasn't present.... only a few 32 bit libraries are present. Well, no great shakes, I could just get apt to download the 32 bit version, right?
Well actually, no. There is no way to do that. There is no --force-architecture switch (there is something like that in dpkg) and even then that is not the recommended solution (apparently the recommended solution involves some crap with chroot).
This is only the latest problem I've had with apt. Try installing a package to a non-standard but user-accessible directory (i.e the home directory) without root privileges and see if you can figure out how to get that to work. This can be a pain when you have the source for an app, which allows you to specify the location of the library in a make file, and you can download the library, but apt does not allow you to install it to your home directory. I had to download the source for the library and compile... and guess what... it required another library... (do you see where this is going?)

ah 64-bit goodness! i only just installed hardy 64-bit a few days ago at home, so i guess i am yet to come across library issues, and ya, its not an apt issue.

i've seen a library called "ia32-libs" i wonder what that provides. i wonder if settings LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include /usr/lib would help with the GD2 issue...

i really gotta read up on 64-bit issues now... coz i might be getting hardy 64-bit on soon-to-arrive Q6600/8GB based office PC soon and need to dev on/for 32 bit platforms...