Distrowatch

Gabriel_Blake · Guru Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 362

I know I know... Distrowatch isn't a representative source when it comes to popularity of distros. But come on... Gentoo on place 35-40 ?! That looks pathetic... It really bugs me. Doesn't it bug you ?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 6:47 pm Post subject:

Gabriel_Blake,

Not really. Distrowatch is irrelevant to Gentoo.

If gentoo were in the top 5 we would have more beginners than we could cope with trying to install Gentoo and giving up.
That would give Gentoo a bad name.

The reality is that users attracted to Gentoo make their choice on the technical merits of the distro - they know what they want.

For the avoidance of doubt - this is my own opinion as an individual and not a statement on behalf of Gentoo
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PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

In the loose category of source-based distros, Gentoo is at the top

hadrons123 · Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 1:17 am Post subject:

I didn't use gentoo earlier becoz of the bad reviews given by some review sites, which scared me off. I took the plunge one day and right now, I feel a lot comfortable and my mind is at peace with Gentoo than anything else. Yes distrowatch bothers me a bit but I guess the usage metrics for Gentoo must the higher than some of the binary distros out there in the rankings.
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1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Page hit ranking.

I'm pretty sure that means the main page. I have the documentation page bookmarked, the handbook bookmarked, the forum bookmarked. Haven't been to the main page in over a year I think. For stuff I don't have bookmarked, I google "gentoo <subject.>"

Gotta pay attention to the metrics they use. Statistics is the study of how empirical data can be used to support misleading or completely false assertions.

FWIW I think by the time somebody tries Gentoo they already know that they have to search on what sort of distro they want, then go monitor the forum for the sort of community it has, or read the manual, or just try it out. I think most people don't just decide to install something that takes so much work without having a reason, and probably a healthy skepticism about statistics.

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

Ranking distro popularity by the number of users who are vain enough to actually visit a specific page on the site in question daily?

You may as well rate them by how many wallpapers they ship on their livecd, it'll be just as valid.

John R. Graham · Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 6:44 pm Post subject:

Now, the number of pages per day served by their support forums would be a much more interesting metric. I'm thinking Gentoo might actually be legitimately on top by that ranking, even not counting off the wall. :wink:

- John
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Gabriel_Blake · Guru Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 362

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Really? Peer pressure?

They're saying they can do it in one click, but do they understand what the click does?

Ubuntu is for people who don't want to think about it or know how it works.

BTW Ubuntu is my OTHER distro of choice, so I'm not bashing. Some boxes I just want to work without a fuss, and others I want control over every detail, or learn how it all works. Why is there a problem?

FWIW I see a lot of the same usernames on both Gentoo and Ubuntu forums. You don't have to be one or the other, or even limit it to two.

Jaglover · Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 11:29 pm Post subject:

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3530

I wonder if all of the NSA revelations will give Gentoo a boost. There's still the "trusting the compiler" (backdoor) issue, but at least the trojaned binary issue is gone.
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jdhore · Retired Dev Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 106

Part of the reason why Gentoo is so low is because Gentoo doesn't have releases. When Ubuntu or Debian or Linux Mint make a release, they jump up a decent number of spots in the Distrowatch ranking, but Gentoo is rolling-release and only occasionally puts out Live DVD's so it almost never gets that new release bump.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

It seems to me the best (but still an imperfect) measure for repo vitality is how many repository hits they get for a refresh.

I doubt many people set up their own repository. If you check this across the public mirrors then you might get something sort-of valid.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2013 6:13 pm Post subject:

1clue,

For binary distros, I think thats right.
For Gentoo, if you haver several systems, http-replicator[1] and your own rsync mirror are well worth while and fairly easy to set up, so I would expect private repros to be fairly common among source based distro users.

[1]http-replicator is a cache, rather than a complete mirror. The first system to fetch a source tarball causes it to be cached. Other requests for the same file are served from the cache.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Jaglover · Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2013 9:32 pm Post subject:

.. and my portage is on NFS. Any machine on my LAN can sync and rest can update/upgrade without causing any hits on Gentoo mirrors.
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John R. Graham · Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2013 9:42 pm Post subject:

Similar setup here. Master server syncs via a cron job and all other machines sync to it. But /usr/portage/distfiles is NFS-mounted on all machines to the master server's copy.

- John
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:05 pm Post subject:

I could use an NFS share for the portage tree too but I don't like the idea of NFS across three network segments with different security requirements.
Hence http-replicator. It still saves me internet bandwidth.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Yamakuzure · Posted: Sat Sep 21, 2013 10:19 am Post subject:

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

So while it does seem that it's easier to cache Gentoo than it would be for Debian for example, it's still a better measure than web page hits. Each one of those caches still hits the real repos once. And how many Gentoo boxes are typically involved in a single cache? Certainly something like IBM is going to have u bunch, but those guys would also have an internal mirror for Debian too, if they use it a bunch. I used to work there -- in fact, when Redhat went IPO -- and they had network nazis watching for wasted bandwidth all the time.

Frankly I've never had more than two Gentoo images running at the same time. Not really worth the cache, and my Internet is nicely quick. I wonder how many people maintain multiple Gentoo boxes without a caching system. Probably more running caches on Gentoo than there would be people running private mirrors on other distros, based on the more involved nature of Gentoo.

schorsch_76 · Guru Joined: 19 Jun 2012 Posts: 452

I often thought, that i would enable some sort of popcon, like debian, on my boxes. Of course on a opt-in manner.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 22, 2013 10:59 am Post subject:

1clue,

Well, I have 4 VMs in a HP Microserver, three installs on my main desktop, (ok, they share /usr/portage and /usr/portage/distfiles and 3 Raspberry Pis running Gentoo, that looks like 11 installs in all.

Its not quite that many, the Pis and desktop installs share things. The VMs are on different network segments, so security considerations dictate that they are self contained.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

hasufell · Retired Dev Joined: 29 Oct 2011 Posts: 429

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Slack is 19.