Linux Questions 2012 Readers Poll results.

[salparadise]

For those of you, if any, who missed this...

Slackware coming in at Number 1 for favourite distro has caused a few toys to be thrown out of a few prams. Shrieks of horror from Ubuntu flavoured numpties. Muhahahahahaha haha. Oh happy day.
 

Desktop Distribution of the Year - Slackware (20.59%)
 Server Distribution of the Year - Debian (28.74%)
 Mobile Distribution of the Year - Android (66.86%)
 Database of the Year - MySQL (40.00%)
 NoSQL Database of the Year - MongoDB (38.96%)
 Office Suite of the Year - LibreOffice (85.14%)
 Browser of the Year - Firefox (52.76%)
 Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (31.31%)
 Window Manager of the Year - Openbox (17.53%)
 Messaging Application of the Year - Pidgin (52.06%)
 VoIP Application of the Year - Skype (51.82%)
 Virtualization Product of the Year - VirtualBox (53.79%)
 Audio Media Player Application of the Year - amaroK (15.68%)
 Video Media Player Application of the Year - VLC (64.99%)
 Graphics Application of the Year - GIMP (69.85%)
 Network Security Application of the Year - Wireshark (25.79%)
 Host Security Application of the Year - SELinux (34.07%)
 Network Monitoring Application of the Year - Nagios (55.29%)
 IDE/Web Development Editor of the Year - Eclipse (23.62%)
 Text Editor of the Year - vim (34.35%)
 File Manager of the Year - Dolphin (23.77%)
 Open Source Game of the Year - Battle for Wesnoth (11.72%)
 Programming Language of the Year - Python (28.03%)
 Revision Control System of the Year - git (61.35%)
 Backup Application of the Year - rsync (42.82%)
 Open Source CMS/Blogging platform - WordPress (56.63%)
 Configuration Management Tool of the Year - Puppet (61.70%)
 Open Source Web Framework of the Year - Django (34.31%)
 Web Server of the Year (NEW) - Apache httpd (74.04%)
 X Terminal Emulator of the Year (NEW) - Konsole (22.68%)
 Open Source Hardware Product of the Year (NEW) - Raspberry Pi (79.29%)

[Mad Penguin]

Mmm,

Firefox - in terms of raw performance, it just can't compete with Chrome
KDE / Kconsole - just "ick!" , try "MATE" (GNome#2 fork)
Virtualbox - (a) this is an Oracle product (b) KVM is better
Eclipse - yeah, because an unstable application to edit my code jumps right to the top of my list (try Komodo)
Dolphin - maybe for Android users, or if you're a fish ...
Apache - worth noting the world + dog seems to be migrating to Nginx, see latest Netcraft stats. (and lighttpd is better!)

The outstanding entries on the list;

MongoDB
GIMP
Wireshark

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

These kind of polls are an absolute waste of space/time ..  not knowing who voted and why, you can infer nothing of any value 

Except perhaps that an inordinate amount of Slackware users visit LinuxQuestions .org and like entering polls

[Mad Penguin]

However, on occasion they mention a fantastic app I've never heard of .. Just not in this case ....

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[salparadise]

On the other hand, rather than being some in the News "recent polls revealed..." where you don't know what question was asked or to whom and in the certain knowledge that the right question asked to the right group of people can make polls indicate just whatever the pollster wishes to show, this is just pure User input. Mostly, the only people using the site are Linux users, so it's a grass root thing (albeit somewhat skewed in favour of Americans). For each category there's a multiple choice selection of answers covering all the available options. It's a popularity contest, nothing more and nothing less. Indicative of current trends.
Sort of.

Mostly harmless.
 

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

I disagree.

Take the Slackware vote .. if you consider most people will USE what they consider the best disto .. that result would seem to confirm Slackware as the most popular/used distro  .. which I seriously doubt 

Anyone that voted for Slackware as distro of the year, yet uses something else is either an idiot and not worth listening to, or has never used Slackware but wants to be perceived as a Slackware devotee for some reason.

The results mean nothing without knowing who voted and why.

NO poll has any meaning unless YOU are the one that chooses the questions, and the entrants.

I'll bet if you look hard enough you'll find a Slackware forum somewhere that has a posting asking people to shoot over to LinuxQuestions and enter the poll .. the results would then only indicate Slackware users tend to stick together, not a bad thing in itself but has skewed the original poll beyond meaning.


You tell me, what meaningful conclusion can I draw from :-

Desktop Distribution of the Year - Slackware (20.59%)

?

It's a popularity contest, nothing more and nothing less

Are you really trying to tell me Slackware is more "popular" than Mint/Ubuntu/Fedora/SUSE/Debian/etc. ? .. Slackware is only #11 on Distrowatch (which also means nothing)

or would you agree the voter pool was somehow skewed, so it's meaningless ?

My point is .. without knowledge and control of the voter pool, ANY results are meaningless.

--

[salparadise]

More likely is that Mint and Ubuntu users tend to end up on the Mint and Ubuntu forums. Whereas people who use other distros tend to end up on LQ.
When I started using Linux there was no Ubuntu or Mint and LQ was about the only place to go for help. Lots of highly technical people there. Having spent a fair amount of time on there helping newbies, it was very noticeable that once Ubuntu had been out for a while there was a drop in the number of newbies asking typical newbie questions. If one goes there now and follows the "zero reply threads" link, the tendency is to find lots of very technically complicated questions being posted, often from people with low post counts. This indicates to me that LQ has drifted towards more technical people, amongst whom Slackware is far more widely used.
So the readers poll is quite accurate, once the background has been taken into account.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

I didn't doubt it was accurate .. just that it was meaningless .. as pretty much all polls are.

So what you're saying is there IS an uncommonly high percentage of Slackware users in the voter pool .. so the results ARE skewed.

Even the question is IMHO meaningless .. "distro of the year" .. on what grounds ? .. and to whom ?

BTW, I'm not knocking Slackware .. for all I know it may well be the best distro since sliced Yggdrasil

[salparadise]

Blimey geezer.

I posted the results because I thought they might be of some interest, not to lay down a new canon.

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Sorry, you just hit a pet hate of mine .. polls that don't at least attempt to put their results into some kind of meaningful context just annoy the crap outa me

8 out of 10 owners said their cats preferred it 

--

[Mad Penguin]

Yes , but are we talking about a random sample of cats here, or cats belonging to a specific special interest group ... 

Details

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

I think it more likely the owners belong to a special interest group .. and anyone that suckers for the figure belongs to a special needs group

[greenian2]

just a thought are the download rankings the same for lq as distrowatch (just wondered if they are as it is a slight different type of end user for both sites (could include sourceforge and softpedia as well) just wondered thats all )
i know downloads have no meaning as a user satisfaction guide but someone has to be downloading (unless it's mark shuttleworth and Clement Lefebvre are rigging the results) after all newbies and code writers are two very different users etc.

[SeZo]

Hmm.. I wonder if Peppermint landed in the top spot the reaction here might have been somewhat different
Also how many noticed that KDE claimed the top spot for the Desktop Environment...

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Hehe .. Do I really come across as that much of a hypocrite ?
(I just know I'm not going to like the answer to that)

So just in case .. I'm saying nowt about the KDE choice