Ubuntu clearly the winner
I used Google Trends to check which Linux distribution is the most popular among Google search users. As you could probably easily guess and what is visible on the diagram Ubuntu is clearly the winner at the moment with the biggest number of search requests. What is interesting is that at the beginning of 2003 there were at least three equally popular distributions: Debian, Suse (now OpenSuse) and Mandrake (now Mandriva) with Red Hat slightly behind. Situation changed since then though. Debian sort of maintains its share. But other distributions became less and less popular with Mandrake loosing the most but partially probably due to changed name. Ubuntu with its excellent online community gains attention with linear search volume increase. I hope it will remain like that and then it is a matter of time when Windows with its ridiculous Vista release will go to hell.
Popularity: 25% [?]
Robbie Clutton said,
January 8, 2008 @ 12:48 am
I used Ubuntu at home and will be using Ubuntu next cycle on my work laptop. It’s the first Linux OS I’ve used that is as easy as it should be. I’ve tried Red Hat and Suse before when trying to convert from Windows and it had always been too painful. By the same token, I didn’t have spare laptops to play with back then either.
Josh said,
January 9, 2008 @ 1:13 pm
Compete.com has a closer race: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ubuntu.com+debian.org+redhat.com/?metric=uv
znachor said,
January 9, 2008 @ 2:27 pm
Interesting. For me the fact that the Google Trends statistics show Ubuntu as the most popular search target and not so much when looking at compare.com is an indication of big community of that OS. There must to be a lot of traffic generated to different domains than ubuntu.com.
znachor said,
January 9, 2008 @ 6:42 pm
I wonder how popular will be the gOS http://thinkgos.org (thanks Josh for pointing me on that distro) with its support for google aps and web2.0 products.