Happy New Year & Browser and OS stats for 2012

January 2, 2013 2 Comments

I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year on behalf of the entire LQ team. 2012 has been another great year for LQ and we have quite a few exciting developments in store for 2013, including a major code update that we originally had planned for late 2012.

Unfortunately, 2012 has been another quiet year from a blogging perspective, but I do regularly post to the LQ twitter account. Posting more lengthy commentary here is something I’ll try to be more cognizant of this year.

As has become tradition, here are the browser and OS statistics for the main LQ site for all of 2012 (2011 stats for comparison).

Browsers
Firefox 46.47%
Chrome 33.27%
Internet Explorer 11.66%
Safari 4.02%
Opera 2.64%
Android Browser 0.69%

Firefox usage at LQ continues to decline and now represents less than half of all pageviews, while Chrome usage continues to increase and now represents more than a third of all pageviews. Note that Konqueror completely fell out of the top 10, representing just 0.09% of all pageviews.

Operating Systems
Windows 53.56%
Linux 35.54%
Macintosh 8.26%
Android .95%
iOS .64%

Windows and Macintosh usage increased for the second straight year, while Linux usage is once again down slightly. Android usage almost hit one full percent.

I’d also like to take this time to thank each and every LQ member. You are what make the site great; without you, we simply wouldn’t exist. I’d like to once again thank the LQ mod team, whose continued dedication ensures that things run as smoothly as they do. Don’t forget to vote in the 2012 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards, which recently opened.

–jeremy

Filed under LinuxQuestions.org

LinuxQuestions.org Turns Twelve

June 26, 2012 Leave a comment

I’m extremely proud to announce that exactly twelve years ago yesterday I made my very first post at LinuxQuestions.org. As has become tradition, here’s a quick post looking back on the past year and ahead to the next. 4,693,050 posts and 469,470 registered members (659,324 members have actually registered, but we have a very active pruning policy for members who have never posted) does not even begin to tell the story. The community that has grown and flourished at LQ is both astounding and humbling. I’d like to once again thank each and every LQ member for their participation, dedication and feedback. I’d also like to thank the dedicated mod team, whose level-headed decisions have been a cornerstone of the site’s success.

To say that feedback has been absolutely critical to our success is an understatement. It would be impossible to enumerate the features we’ve added or changes we’ve made as a direct result of member feedback. With that in mind, I’d like to use this thread to collect as much feedback as possible about LQ. What are we doing well and where can we improve? What should we be doing differently? As part of our birthday celebration, we’ll be giving away Contributing Member updates, LQ Merchandise and even a gratis pass to OSCON 2012 in Portland. Stay tuned for more details.

You may be wondering what’s next for LQ. I’m happy to say that after twelve years, our mission remains as unequivocally unchanged now as it was when I started the site; to be the absolute best resource we can be for the Linux and Open Source community. We have a large code upgrade coming to LQ in the near future, which will bring it in line with the other Questions Network site, AndroidQuestions.org. The new code will bring many long awaiting features, including a much improved search. It will also allow us to iterate faster and add functionality that will improve usability for members and mods alike. After we’re sure the new release is stable, we’ll look at whether or not it makes sense to add any new sections to the site. We’ll also explore the possibility of adding new sites to The Questions Network. Feedback on both, including possible topics for the additional site(s), is very much encouraged.

–jeremy

Filed under LinuxQuestions.org

Android Version and Device Stats for LQ Native App – Is Fragmentation an Issue?

February 14, 2012 1 Comment

Now that the native LQ android app has a few thousand installs (and since members really seem to enjoy LQ-related statistics posts), I’ve decided to post the platform version and device statistics for the app.

Platform Version
Android 2.3.3+ 48.1%
Android 2.2 24.4%
Android 2.1 7.1%
Android 3.1 2.1%
Android 4.0.3 1.9%
Android 3.2 1.5%
Android 4.0 1.5%
Device
Samsung Galaxy S2 8.0%
HTC Desire HD 6.0%
Motorola Droid X 5.4%
Samsung Galaxy S (GT-I9000) 4.6%
HTC Thunderbolt 2.5%
HTC G2 2.5%
Samsung Nexus S 2.5%
Asus EeePad Transformer TF101 2.4%
HTC Desire 2.4%
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.2%

So, is Android fragmentation a problem? Well, I think this is an issue with multiple facets that get conflated into a single issue.

First you have the version aspect. I have to admit I’m surprised by just how many Android handsets are running 2.2 and *gulp* 2.1 (which was released over two years ago; a veritable eon in mobile terms). Gingerbread 2.3 and Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 are huge improvements over previous versions of Android. While I think it’s a shame that so many users are stuck on older versions, I think this part is one that vendors and Google are working on and one that will improve significantly moving forward. Android was revving quickly in the earlier days and some of the hardware just couldn’t run future versions. Couple that with that fact that many vendors were new to Android and new to an ecosystem of this nature, and you had an initial learning curve that I think was destine to result in a suboptimal experience for end users. Fast forward to today and the press releases and public statements from vendors about which phones would be upgraded to ICS, along with time lines in many cases, and I think it’s clear this will become less and less of a problem.

Next you have the device aspect. This one is a bit trickier. The number one device here, the Samsung Galaxy S2 (which I incidentally own and really like), only represents 8% of all devices. The Android handset market is extremely varied. Not only that, it’s varied in many aspects; from screen size and quality, to device capabilities, to carrier restrictions… the list is almost endless. Unlike say, iOS and related apps, which only have to support a very finite number of configurations, Android and related apps have to deal with an almost endless number of combinations. This is an issue that Google is also working on, and has made significants strides with, but one that I think may take a little more time to figure out completely. It’s an issue they have to figure out if they want Android to be a long term success though, so I’d say there is a good chance they will succeed.

So, is Android fragmentation a problem? I’d say much less so than in the past. More importantly, I think it’s an issue that Google is well aware of, is working on intently, and will eventually mitigate to a large extent.

–jeremy

PS. If you have an Android-related question, don’t forget to visit LQ’s new sister site: AndroidQuestions.org.

Filed under Android

2011 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners – Thoughts

February 9, 2012 1 Comment

The polls are closed and the official results are in. You can view the detailed results here, but I’ll include a list of winners at the end of this post for convenience. We also have a nice visual overview of all categories on a single page, new last year, available here. This was the eleventh annual LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards and we’ve set a record for participation each and every year. We once again had some extremely close races, including multiple categories decided by a single vote and our first ever tie. If you have feedback on how we can improve the Members Choice Awards, let us know.

My thoughts on a few of the categories:

Browser of the Year – I’m fairly surprised how handily Firefox beat Chrome here. It’s significantly more skewed than our actual browser stats are.

Desktop Environment of the Year – After a multi-year run, Gnome has been unseated by KDE. Xfce had a very strong showing, while it’s clear many are still not happy with Unity.

Desktop Distribution of the Year – Ubuntu squeaked out another win, but Mint is definitely coming on strong. Note that as LQ is the official Slackware forum, we tend to skew toward that distro more than the general Linux community. I’d say that one of the only places where we’re not indicative of the general community consensus though.

NoSQL Database of the Year – Our first ever tie and the next runner up was right in the race. It’s clear that this nascent category of products is going to be a very competitive landscape for the time being.

Database of the Year – Despite the acquisition by Oracle, MySQL still easily won this category.

Office Suite of the Year – The same can’t be said for OpenOffice.org, however, which got crushed by LibreOffice in a category it has easily dominated for years.

The complete list of the winners is as follows (percentage of votes received in parentheses):

Desktop Distribution of the Year – Ubuntu (21.83%)
Server Distribution of the Year – Debian (31.15%)
Mobile Distribution of the Year – Android (69.43%)
Database of the Year – MySQL (49.54%)
NoSQL Database of the Year – Cassandra and MongoDB (26.23% each) <- first MCA TIE
Office Suite of the Year – LibreOffice (81.01%)
Browser of the Year – Firefox (56.60%)
Desktop Environment of the Year – KDE (33.01%)
Window Manager of the Year – Openbox (15.90%)
Messaging Application of the Year – Pidgin (53.57%)
VoIP Application of the Year – Skype (59.67%)
Virtualization Product of the Year – VirtualBox (61.13%)
Audio Media Player Application of the Year – amaroK (19.52%)
Audio Authoring Application of the Year – Audacity (77.46%)
Video Media Player Application of the Year – VLC (60.92%)
Video Authoring Application of the Year – FFmpeg (34.32%)
Graphics Application of the Year – GIMP (72.08%)
Network Security Application of the Year – Wireshark (24.35%)
Host Security Application of the Year – SELinux (50.42%)
Network Monitoring Application of the Year – Nagios (64.71%)
IDE/Web Development Editor of the Year – Eclipse (22.14%)
Text Editor of the Year – vim (31.21%)
File Manager of the Year – Dolphin (24.63%)
Open Source Game of the Year – Battle for Wesnoth (18.70%)
Programming Language of the Year – Python (29.48%)
Revision Control System of the Year – git (58.73%)
Backup Application of the Year – rsync (37.35%)
Open Source CMS/Blogging Platform of the Year – WordPress (48.62%)
Configuration Management Tool of the Year – Puppet (54.55%)
Open Source Web Framework of the Year – Django (32.38%)
Media Center of the Year – XBMC (47.76%)

–jeremy

Filed under LinuxQuestions.org Tagged with , , , , , , ,

SCALE 10x Musings

January 23, 2012 Leave a comment

I’m currently on a flight home after attending SCALE 10x, which seemed like an opportune time to reflect on the event. SCALE was once again an amazing event. Kudos go out to Ilan, Gareth, Phil and the entire SCALE team; the tracks were excellent, the event well managed and well attended (I don’t know if official numbers are out, but I believe they fell *just* short of their goal of 2,000 attendees) and the social scene was as vibrant as ever. SCALE really is the bar by which local community events should be measured.

While I didn’t live blog the event this year, as I have in the past, I did live tweet it. Visit the @linuxquestions twitter account if you’re interested. Some general thoughts after attending SCALE.

* Open Source and Open Standards, as they pertain to the cloud, are going to be huge and hotly debated topics in 2012; and likely well beyond. There seems to be a feeling that this is something huge that’s still just in its infancy, and that makes the topic interesting and exciting.
* Big data and distributed filesystems also appear to be heading for widespread mainstream adoption in the near future. On that note, LQ is considering moving away from OCFS2 as part of our next infrastructure update. If there’s anyone with GlusterFS experience in a production web environment, we’d be interested in hearing from you. We’d also be interested in other solutions you feel may be well suited.
* The MySQL ecosystem is not only thriving, but wildly more diverse than when it was just MySQL AB.
* Very small but very powerful devices such as the Raspberry Pi and the Pandaboard are not only remarkable, but should open the door to a whole new class of devices and possibilities. The amount of innovation here should be awesome.
* DevOps has really matured at an impressive rate.

I look forward to attending SCALE 11x, which will be my 8th, next year.

–jeremy

Filed under community Tagged with , , , , , ,

Happy New Year & Browser and OS stats for 2011

January 2, 2012 6 Comments

I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year on behalf of the entire LQ team. 2011 has been another great year for LQ and we have quite a bit of exciting developments in store for 2012, including a major code update. 2011 also marks the year that we expanded on the LQ vision to launch The Questions Network along with LQ’s fist sister site, AndroidQuestions.org.

I’ve once again posted to this blog far less frequently in 2011 than I’d have liked to, and I’m going to work to change that this year (I do post to twitter fairly often, for those interested).

As has become tradition, here are the browser and OS statistics for the main LQ site for all of 2011 (2010 stats for comparison).

Browsers
Firefox 53.07%
Chrome 24.79%
Internet Explorer 13.50%
Safari 3.59%
Opera 3.05%
Android Browser 0.26%
Konqueror .23%

The Firefox decline at LQ continues, while one in four now use Chrome to access the site. For the first time, a mobile browser has broken into the top 10.

Operating Systems
Windows 52.68%
Linux 38.55%
Macintosh 6.99%
Android .44%
iPhone .35%

Windows and Macintosh use are slightly up from last year, while Linux use is actually slightly down. While Android and iPhone use are both up, Android surpassed iPhone for the first time.

I’d also like to take this time to thank each and every LQ member. You are what make the site great. Don’t forget to vote in the 2011 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards, which recently opened.

–jeremy

Filed under AndroidQuestions.org, LinuxQuestions.org, The Questions Network Tagged with , , ,

Migrating This Blog

December 15, 2011 Leave a comment

Just a quick heads up that I am moving this blog to wordpress.com. I’d like to resume blogging at less sporadic intervals, so stay tuned. All subscriptions, permalinks and settings should have been preserved during the migration. If you notice any issues, let me know ASAP. Thanks.

 

–jeremy

Filed under LinuxQuestions.org

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