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).

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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).

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.

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

–jeremy

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 new features or sections would you like to see? 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 2011 in Portland. Stay tuned for more details.

With more than a decade under our belts, you may be wondering what’s next for LQ. I’m happy to say that after eleven years, our mission remains as laser focused 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. With the recent launch of The Questions Network, we also plan to use what we’ve learned at LQ and apply it to other related topics. The second TQN member site, AndroidQuestions.org, was recently taken out of BETA and we’re continuing to stabilize and improve the next generation platform that will soon run LQ. We anticipate adding other sites to the network as it makes sense, although a final decision for the next topic has not been decided yet (and we’re certainly open to feedback on that topic). Once nice thing about TQN is that, once you’re a member of one site you can use your credentials on any other member site. We’ll likely add OpenID, twitter, facebook and other identity providers to the mix soon which will make it easier than ever to participate.

Here’s to the next eleven years.

–jeremy

–jeremy

–jeremy