Distrowatch Mint vs. Fedora

[Harrs]

I think this or next week Mint Linux will be ranked higher than Fedora..

1357 vs 1359..

But Open Suse and Ubuntu are always higher than Mint Linux..

I believe that all the PCLinuxos user have changed to OpenSuse..
And many Ubuntu User have changed to Mint..

but Mint Linux is still my favorite

[Dutchmaster]

Given that the Distrowatch ranking is not a good measuring stick for the actual numbers of users, I hear you. Puzzling.

Try as I might I can't figure why the PCLinuxOS user would go to a high-learning curve with bugs galore OpenSuse when they can instead come to ultra-low learning curve with almost no bugs Mint.

Beats me.

[sundayrefugee]

Same here - while also agreeing with the above post that Distrowatch is possibly the *worst* way to measure popularity and usage (I can go into more detail if needed), Mint, Mepis, Ubuntu proper, Mandriva, Zenwalk, and any number of others would all be better alternatives for that crows, IMO.

[Phosgene]

Have you seen the sheer weight of Fedora's userbase? It's heavier than the distro itself. In terms of popularity, Mint has a long way to go.

[clem]

The best way to compare user bases would be to look at the share of traffic distributions have on a website that is used by almost everyone... in brief, all it would take for us to know exactly our market share would be for Google to track our user agent and give us their traffic stats.

The closest thing we have is Distrowatch's Awstats figures, which tells us the market share we have among Distrowatch readers:

http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats. ... etail.html

As you can see we're doing well, we're 2nd behind Ubuntu. The problem with this however is that it's not fully reliable, because we can't assume that the proportion of Mint users reading Distrowatch is the same as the proportion of Fedora users reading Distrowatch. What it measures very well though is trends. Whatever that ratio is, we've been going up since we first released and that's very positive.

Fedora is among the nicest distributions out there and it's a project I personally like a lot. We've obviously passed them in terms of popularity and traffic on Distrowatch and I think our respective user bases are now of comparable sizes. They're still way ahead of us on certain aspects though, when it comes to media presence, to popularity in the press, to structuring the community, its talent and the effort given by the users, when it comes to produce artwork and system improvements... in brief they're way more structured and organized than we are, and even though there might be as many or more Mint users than Fedora users they're still a much bigger project than we are.

Clem.

[FedoraRefugee]

Hello Clem,

Fedora is claiming F10 users near the 1 million mark. Total Fedora users at 9.5 million (I seriously question this one). They actually do have a good way of measuring usage, you will find this interesting:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics

I would propose that Fedora usage is way greater than Mint and probably greater than Ubuntu. I also respectably disagree with some things you mention. Fedora is ahead of mint simply because it is way way upstream. But is this their advantage? Mint is a "perfect" distro, Fedora by its very nature, will always be somewhat buggy and is a very hands on distro. Mint makes it simple, Fedora shows new innovations first. They are very different animals.

Fedora has much talent. But believe me, the community is not structured. There is a very bad divide between the developers and the community. Even in the development world, there are so many chefs working in the same small kitchen. It shows. You have RH employees and outside Fedora developers. It seems that the distro is being pulled in two directions, one faction wants user friendly, mainstream while the other wants to keep things as they traditionally have been, a development distro meant to be first in putting new technology into the field.

Then you have the user community. This is the biggest rift. Their forum has some very talented people, people who have, for years, taken the half finished, rough distro the developers put out and find on the spot fixes for all the bugs and problems. People who know their way around the OS and know how to fix or revert. Members over there have started their own Compiz-Fusion repo with git head packages, created install scripts for all the media stuff that Fedora will not ship with, created one heck of a package manager front end, yumex, which the developers have ignored for years opting to include crappy stuff like pup and pirut and now packagespit instead. The developers are divided from the user base. The developers advertise this great, perfect distro and it is the forum community that makes it possible for people like me to even use it, then the devs look down their noses at the forum community and claim the bugs we fix do not exist.

I am sorry for the rant Clem, but this is why i got out. Fedora is a great distro it has taught me everything I know and I have loved my time with it. But it has always been a tinkerer's distro. Yours just works. Period. Mint is the most polished, user friendly distro out there, and it only takes 5 minutes in the Fedora forum to see all of them acknowledging it. We have been sending folks your way for a couple years now. Be proud of what you have created, the grass is no greener over there, in fact, once you look up close you can see all the weeds coming up.

[altair4]

This is just my perception. I have no facts and figures to back it up but not having facts has never stopped me before

Fedora is to Red Hat what OpenSuse is to SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED). Both of them are betas and test vehicles and some of what's in them may eventually find their way into their corporate offerings. I for one would prefer not to be a beta tester, that's what Windows before the first or second service pack is for. I'm looking for a stable and reliable desktop OS that can be a platform to get work done. That's why I look for distros like Mint.

Just my opinion

[exploder]

Then you have the user community. This is the biggest rift. Their forum has some very talented people, people who have, for years, taken the half finished, rough distro the developers put out and find on the spot fixes for all the bugs and problems. People who know their way around the OS and know how to fix or revert. Members over there have started their own Compiz-Fusion repo with git head packages, created install scripts for all the media stuff that Fedora will not ship with, created one heck of a package manager front end, yumex, which the developers have ignored for years opting to include crappy stuff like pup and pirut and now packagespit instead. The developers are divided from the user base. The developers advertise this great, perfect distro and it is the forum community that makes it possible for people like me to even use it, then the devs look down their noses at the forum community and claim the bugs we fix do not exist.

That description almost fits Ubuntu too! Ubuntu releases start out as half finished too. If it was not for the work of the GetDeb Team the Ubuntu base would not be a very pleasant choice to me. What good is an operating system that can't even burn a DVD? What good is a new version of xorg that can't set your screen resolution or even give you the proper choices to do it yourself? What are these people thinking?

[kaixi]

I see your point, guys, but I think that the only correct way to measure the popularity of a distro is checking the forum stats:

Ubuntu: 789,183 members
Fedora: 135,361 members
Mandriva: 58,516 members
OpenSUSE: over 20,000 members
LinuxMint: 13,695 members

To me, these numbers give us a quite accurate view of the userbase of each distro. Of course, you could say that some Ubuntu users now use LinuxMint but the other way around happens as well, so we actually end up with some balanced stats.

[GoustiFruit]

Some say that the popularity of a forum only indicates the level of problems its users have to face...

[Katzedecimal]

I can see why some would say that, GoustiFruit. I can agree with it as well. I hang out here on the forums because I want to learn Linux, and because I want to be an example for other n00bs. After all, people keep saying Linux won't be 'good' until Jane Average suburban housewife can use it, who just wants to surf, read her email and listen to mp3s and well, that's what I am But I've introduced several people to Mint and very few have even looked at the forums, let alone had to post a question. It's just worked out that nicely for them.

[badmotor]

Some say that the popularity of a forum only indicates the level of problems its users have to face...

Good call. I know some people that use Mint that have probably never wandered into this forum.

[clem]

The longer the forums exist the more users they get, it's the pace at which they grow which is more interesting (we're at 16 members per day at the moment). Also they're a snow ball effect when it comes to forums so large forums naturally tend to grow faster.

Anyway, our website is monitored by Google Analytics, and that includes our start pages (which we can assume are only seen by Mint users). Unfortunately that tool doesn't let me calculate the number of unique visitors for a particular page so I can't exactly tell you how many people ever ran Felicia, or Elyssa.. or even Linux Mint, but I can tell you with confidence that we have less than 3 million users since we had less than 3 million unique visitors (and we can assume our number of users is definitely lower than the number of unique visitors visiting our website).

Now what troubles me though, is how do we get such a traffic share on Distrowatch? Either the 9.5 million of people who ever used Yum actually didn't stay with Fedora and we're looking at a distribution which is "tried" a lot but not actually used that much... or else... Fedora users hate Distrowatch twice as much as Mint users love it??! That doesn't make much sense to me.

Of course, there's also the reliability problem of the counting done with Yum and Google Analytics..

In the end, I can tell you with a 100% level of certitude that we are growing. And I can tell with a 100% level of certitude that we do not know how many people run Linux Mint.

Now are we bigger than Fedora? We don't know either.. and maybe/?probably? we're not. All we know right now is that there are more people visiting Distrowatch under Mint than there are under Fedora.... whatever that means is up to our own interpretation, and whatever it means it does represent a milestone to me and it does make me happy. We measure success with relative indicators and this one is telling us that we're doing well.

Clem.

[jasperlotus]

The best way to compare user bases would be to look at the share of traffic distributions have on a website that is used by almost everyone... in brief, all it would take for us to know exactly our market share would be for Google to track our user agent and give us their traffic stats.

The closest thing we have is Distrowatch's Awstats figures, which tells us the market share we have among Distrowatch readers:

http://distrowatch.com/awstats/awstats. ... etail.html

As you can see we're doing well, we're 2nd behind Ubuntu. The problem with this however is that it's not fully reliable, because we can't assume that the proportion of Mint users reading Distrowatch is the same as the proportion of Fedora users reading Distrowatch. What it measures very well though is trends. Whatever that ratio is, we've been going up since we first released and that's very positive.

Fedora is among the nicest distributions out there and it's a project I personally like a lot. We've obviously passed them in terms of popularity and traffic on Distrowatch and I think our respective user bases are now of comparable sizes. They're still way ahead of us on certain aspects though, when it comes to media presence, to popularity in the press, to structuring the community, its talent and the effort given by the users, when it comes to produce artwork and system improvements... in brief they're way more structured and organized than we are, and even though there might be as many or more Mint users than Fedora users they're still a much bigger project than we are.

Clem.

Very nice comment.

I'm a Fedora user (from the release of F6) because of its professional style project management, and the first Linux that I saw was Redhat Linux 7.

For now, I'm using Opera on Linux Mint 7 but I'm also considering switch back (again) to Fedora. My Fedora installation was failed yesterday, and Mint is the alternative from my USB stick.

However, Mint has its own great features that Fedora doesn't (not those pre-installed codecs). It startup damn fast, small in size and very stable, so it maybe my choice (forever).

PS: Anybody can give me suggestions should I switch back to Fedora or continue with the Mint?

[FedoraRefugee]

PS: Anybody can give me suggestions should I switch back to Fedora or continue with the Mint?

You want someone else to tell you this?

F11 is solid as far as Fedora goes. Mint 7 is the cat's meow. I use Arch.

[DrHu]

PS: Anybody can give me suggestions should I switch back to Fedora or continue with the Mint?

Use both and swap every so often ?weekly, just to keep the hand-in..

I also quite like Fedora xx (the last one I tried was 10), I think their Kde 4x selection was fine.
--for Fedora, I quite like urpmi; although I don't like rpm that much, preferring Debian apt

I am also not against Suse, it was almost my first Linux distribution (the paid versions), and OpenSuse is simply the evolution; yast I thought was OK, but actually I like Synaptic better.

[FedoraRefugee]

PS: Anybody can give me suggestions should I switch back to Fedora or continue with the Mint?

Use both and swap every so often ?weekly, just to keep the hand-in..

I also quite like Fedora xx (the last one I tried was 10), I think their Kde 4x selection was fine.
--for Fedora, I quite like urpmi; although I don't like rpm that much, preferring Debian apt

I am also not against Suse, it was almost my first Linux distribution (the paid versions), and OpenSuse is simply the evolution; yast I thought was OK, but actually I like Synaptic better.

I wish you would clear up your post, you have shown that to be my quote, which is out of context. I am quite happy with the distros I am using.

[jasperlotus]

PS: Anybody can give me suggestions should I switch back to Fedora or continue with the Mint?

You want someone else to tell you this?

F11 is solid as far as Fedora goes. Mint 7 is the cat's meow. I use Arch.

Wow, again, an Arch guy. My brother tells me that I should better switch to Arch, but I don't have much time and the patient for those command lines to config the entire system manually. Fedora is so solid but it doesn't run on my PC , that why I use Mint for now.

PS: Actually, I just return to use Linux for a week, and before is Wondins for the sake of my food.

[FedoraRefugee]

PS: Anybody can give me suggestions should I switch back to Fedora or continue with the Mint?

You want someone else to tell you this?

F11 is solid as far as Fedora goes. Mint 7 is the cat's meow. I use Arch.

Wow, again, an Arch guy. My brother tells me that I should better switch to Arch, but I don't have much time and the patient for those command lines to config the entire system manually. Fedora is so solid but it doesn't run on my PC , that why I use Mint for now.

PS: Actually, I just return to use Linux for a week, and before is Wondins for the sake of my food.

Arch is a bit of work to set up. You need to know exactly what components you want before you start. But if you follow the manuals on the Arch site and do everything by the letter it is a fun process. Once set up though you really shouldnt have to do much else. It is a rolling release so just update it periodically. Pacman is a bit more spartan than app-get or yum but with the help of Shaman it is accessible. I would say Arch is at the extreme other end of the spectrum to Mint and it is funny those are the two distros I use. Mint for ease of use on the kid's computers and for when I need to just install a distro and have everything work immediately, Arch for my laptop and desktop because I love the simplicity and modularity. Arch is what Linux is SUPPOSED to be, what Linux was 10 years ago, but Arch is modern and up to date also. Yeah, it is not for everyone, but I love it.

[jasperlotus]

Arch is a bit of work to set up. You need to know exactly what components you want before you start. But if you follow the manuals on the Arch site and do everything by the letter it is a fun process. Once set up though you really shouldnt have to do much else. It is a rolling release so just update it periodically. Pacman is a bit more spartan than app-get or yum but with the help of Shaman it is accessible. I would say Arch is at the extreme other end of the spectrum to Mint and it is funny those are the two distros I use. Mint for ease of use on the kid's computers and for when I need to just install a distro and have everything work immediately, Arch for my laptop and desktop because I love the simplicity and modularity. Arch is what Linux is SUPPOSED to be, what Linux was 10 years ago, but Arch is modern and up to date also. Yeah, it is not for everyone, but I love it.

Even the iso image of the Arch I've downloaded from Arch's site doesn't run on my VirtualBox, sad again.

I don't like the way of words like ``on the kid's computers'' or ``distro for noobs.'' Computer's components are ugly, full of wires, capacitors, circuits, etc so it needs a case/cover and even a really beautiful and attractive one. System configurations are ugly too, so we need good user interface for fast and easy done!

Some say that Linux Mint just an Wondins emulator, oh, how great it is when you just click one, and another click to run your program instead of locate through a bunch of menu items to have the Terminal run?

PS: A small problem to me is that my girl friend isn't happy if I work on computer too long. She takes care of me, so I must think of our happiness, not just stick with the computer all day long to make the X window run properly on Arch