2009 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners

February 9, 2010 Leave a comment

The polls are closed and the 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. This was the ninth 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 and a couple multi-year winners were unseated this year. KDE, which had won Desktop Environment of the Year every year we’ve had the MCA’s, was finally unseated… by Gnome (in a very close race). There’s quite a bit of interesting information in the data, so I recommend you check out the detailed results. You can also view the full results of previous MCA’s if you do a search.

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

Desktop Distribution of the Year – Ubuntu (30.13%)
Server Distribution of the Year – Debian (24.24%)
Security/Forensic/Rescue Distribution of the Year – BackTrack (43.48%)
Database of the Year – MySQL (60.81%)
Office Suite of the Year – OpenOffice.org (90.76%)
Browser of the Year – Firefox (65.21%)
Desktop Environment of the Year – Gnome (41.96%)
Window Manager of the Year – Compiz (23.10%)
Messaging App of the Year – Pidgin (48.74%)
Mail Client of the Year – Thunderbird (53.48%)
Virtualization Product of the Year – VirtualBox (67.43%)
Audio Media Player Application of the Year – Amarok (38.81%)
Audio Authoring Application of the Year – Audacity (77.26%)
Video Media Player Application of the Year – VLC (46.05%)
Video Authoring Application of the Year – FFmpeg (21.94%)
Multimedia Utility of the Year – GStreamer (32.84%)
Graphics Application of the Year – GIMP (66.48%)
Network Security Application of the Year – Nmap Security Scanner (29.85%)
Host Security Application of the Year – SELinux (39.26%)
Network Monitoring Application of the Year – Nagios (51.11%)
IDE/Web Development Editor of the Year – Eclipse (23.28%)
Text Editor of the Year – vim (35.29%)
File Manager of the Year – Nautilus (24.92%)
Open Source Game of the Year – Battle for Wesnoth (15.45%)
Programming Language of the Year – Python (27.59%)
Backup Application of the Year – rsync (48.99%)
Open Source CMS/Blogging platform of the Year – WordPress (45.20%)

If you have feedback on how we can improve the Members Choice Awards, let us know.

UPDATE: Here’s a very nice user-contributed summary of the top 5 nominees in every category. Thanks Wesley.

OStatic has also covered the results.

–jeremy

Filed under LinuxQuestions.org Tagged with ,

Happy New Year & Browser and OS stats for 2009

January 6, 2010 2 Comments

First, I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year. 2009 was another great year for LQ and we have a ton in store for 2010. You may have noticed this blog has been quiescent lately. While I have been twittering regularly, the terse and off the cuff nature of twitter is markedly different than most blog entries here (the conference based live-blogging entries aside). I’d like to resume regular blogging in 2010, even if the frequency isn’t what it once was. 2010 looks to be another interesting year for Linux and Open Source, so finding material to blog about shouldn’t be too onerous.

I’ll finish this post off with the browser and OS statistics for the main LQ site for all of 2009, which I like to post after the conclusion of each year. Here’s the post from 2008, for comparison.

Browsers
Firefox 64.28%
Internet Explorer 18.23%
Mozilla 4.80%
Chrome 4.30%
Opera 3.75%
Safari 2.88%
Konqueror .98%

Note that Firefox is actually down .16% while Chrome passed Opera, Safari and Konqueror in its first year. Firefox versions are once again all over the map, with 3.0.10 being the only version above 10% of FF users at 10.70%. No version of 3.5 comes in the top five, but 3.5.3 is the most used in that branch at 6.48% (with 3.5.5 hot on its heels at 6.37%).

Operating Systems
Windows 52.73%
Linux 40.94%
Macintosh 5.43%

That’s right; both Windows and Linux are slightly down from last year, while Mac is slightly up. The most used mobile OS is the iPhone at .12%, with Android coming in at .02%.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source Tagged with , , , ,

LinuxQuestions.org Turns 9

June 25, 2009 1 Comment

It was nine years ago today that I made my very first post at LQ. 3,578,611 posts and 407,152 members (note: we prune inactive members – more than 480,000 members have signed up) later, I continue to be astounded by what LQ has become. As I’ve stated many times, the site has grown well beyond my initial expectations. If you’d have told me in 2000 that I’d be traveling around the world, from London to San Francisco, evangelizing Linux and Open Source on behalf of LQ… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have believed you. I started LQ as a way to give something back to a community that I felt had given to me. I wanted LQ to be a place that was friendly and welcoming to those who were new to Open Source and Linux. Despite our ever growing size, I think we’ve maintained that objective. With an absolutely great group of members and the best mod team on the net, we’ve only just begun however. From the very beginning, LQ has thrived on member feedback. That will never change. Visit this LQ thread to let us know how you think we’re doing. We want to know what we’re doing well and where we can improve. We really do listen closely to feedback and many of the improvements we’ve made over the years were direct responses to member suggestions. I’d like to once again thank each and every LQ member. It really is the members that make the site what it is. Here’s to another nine years!

–jeremy

Random stat: In our ninth year on the net, well over 25,000,000 unique visitors came to LQ.

Filed under Linux, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source

Win a Gratis OSCON Pass from LQ

June 24, 2009 Leave a comment

I’m happy to announce that we’re able to give one full “Sessions Only” pass to OSCON away absolutely free. For those of you who’ve never attended OSCON, it’s always a great event. While the event is in San Jose and not Portland this year, I still expect a top notch showing from O’Reilly. At almost $1,500 the “Sessions Only” pass will get you into everything except for the tutorials. Visit this LQ thread for more information on how to be eligible for the free pass. I’d like to thank O’Reilly for making this possible. See you in San Jose.

–jeremy

Filed under LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source, OSCON

Wikipedia changes its license

June 2, 2009 Leave a comment

(via David A. Wheeler) The proposed change that the copyright licensing terms on the wikis operated by the WMF – including Wikipedia, be changed to include the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license in addition to the current GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) has been approved. From the official results:

If “no opinion” votes are not included, the Yes/No percentage becomes 87.9%/12.1% (15071 votes).

This impacts us at LQ due to its implications to the LQ Wiki. We recognized the desire to license content CC-BY-SA some time ago and added that as an additional option as a result. With this Wikipedia change it’s likely we’ll do the research needed to offer the same dual licensing option that the WMF now offers. Stay tuned.

–jeremy

Filed under FSF, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Formats, Open Source, Open Standards

LQ Social Networking Update

May 11, 2009 Leave a comment

While LQ has been on the various social networks since the beginning, we’re finally starting to use them all regularly. If you’re not already following LQ, here are the relevant links.

Twitter: @linuxquestions
identi.ca: @linuxquestions
Facebook: @linuxquestions

We should have a Facebook app coming soon. If there’s something specific you’d like to see, let us know.

–jeremy

Filed under LinuxQuestions.org

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

April 8, 2009 Leave a comment

I’m in San Francisco for the 3rd annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. I wasn’t able to attend the event last year, but I was at the introductory Summit and really enjoyed it. I know this blog has been quiet in the recent past, but posting frequency should return to normal moving forward.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Linux Foundation, LinuxQuestions.org

Headed to SCaLE 7X

February 19, 2009 Leave a comment

I’ll be heading to Los Angeles for the weekend to attend the Southern California Linux Expo. I’ve tried to make SCaLE a yearly trip and it’s one of my favorite Linux conferences. If you’ll be anywhere near LA February 20-22, I encourage you to stop by the Westin LAX. If you do make it to SCaLE, be sure to stop by the dotorg section of the expo floor and visit the LQ booth (#35). See you in sunny southern California.

–jeremy

Filed under Linux, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source

Random LQ stats – Browser and OS 2008

February 19, 2009 1 Comment

I like to post random LQ stats every once and a while, and here are the browser and OS statistics for the main LQ site for all of 2008.

Browsers
Firefox 64.44%
Internet Explorer 21.48%
Mozilla 4.97%
Opera 4.09%
Safari 2.20%
Konqueror 1.58%

It’s interesting to me that Firefox versions are all over the place, with no single version having over 14%. The top 5 are: 3.0.1, 3.0, 3.0.3, 2.0.0.14 and 2.0.0.12.

Operating Systems
Windows 53.23%
Linux 41.59%
Macintosh 4.38%

–jeremy

Filed under LinuxQuestions.org

The Art Of Community

January 14, 2009 Leave a comment

I just came across the announcement that Jono will be releasing a new O’Reilly book called Art Of Community.

Today I am proud as punch to announce the Art Of Community.

A while back I was approached by Andy Oram, a senior editor at O’Reilly to write a definitive book about how to grow, build and energise a community. This book will be called the Art Of Community.

The book covers a wide range of topics designed to build strong community. This includes the structure and social economy behind community, building effective and easy to use infrastructure, setting up community processes, creating buzz and excitement, governance, conflict resolution, scalability and more.

This book is much more than merely a textbook on building a compelling community. I believe that we learn how to build strong community through the exchange of stories and experiences. We all have great insight into community. These stories are illustrative vessels for important lessons and subtleties in how great communities work. The Art Of Community is a compendium of stories, anecdotes and experiences inside and outside the Open Source world.

Congrats to Jono and O’Reilly on an idea that I think has a ton of potential. As someone who runs a little community myself, the content of both the book and the website are something I’ll keep a close eye on. One thing I’ve learned about community is that the rules are always changing; you always have new things to learn, new ideas to implement and places to improve. I think that’s one of the reasons that after over 8 1/2 years of running LQ, I remain as excited and dedicated as the day I started it.

There’s one other part of the announcement I think is of note:

The release of Art Of Community is actually rather exciting. The book will be available in two forms.

* Firstly, there will be a normal printed copy available to buy. This will be available from the usual places you can buy O’Reilly books.
* Secondly, The book will also be available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. This provides everyone with the opportunity to share, modify and re-use the content.

Fantastic!

–jeremy

Filed under community, LinuxQuestions.org, Open Source

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