Monthly Stats - April 2009

[clem]

Donations & Sponsorships:

Many thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:

Donors:

* $100 (4th donation), Erik Anderson (deadguy - USA)
* $100, Dar D. (Canada)
* $100, John R. (USA)
* $100, Terry L. (USA)
* $70, Michael P. (Greece)
* $53, Gabriele C. (Italy)
* $50 (3rd donation), Harvey Elliott (UK)
* $35 (5th donation), Jerry Jackson (UK)
* $35, Bernhard M. (Germany)
* $30, Geoff P G. (Australia)
* $28 (2nd donation), Marcos Antonio S. (Italy)
* $28, Jonathan McK. (UK)
* $28, Frederic S. (France)
* $28, Uwe S. (Germany)
* $25, Jerry W. (USA)
* $25, Christopher P. (USA)
* $21, Michael B. (Germany)
* $20 (2nd donation), Phillip H. (Australia)
* $20, Thomas K. (USA)
* $20, Summers MBM (USA)
* $20, Matthew L. (USA)
* $20, Robert M. (USA)
* $20, Ronald M. (USA)
* $20, James F. (USA)
* $20, Robert B. (USA)
* $18, Ariel G. (USA)
* $18, Jack H. (USA)
* $15, Michael C. (Australia)
* $14 (2nd donation), Marco R. (Italy)
* $14, Taras Z. (Russia)
* $10 (4th donation), Henry W. (USA)
* $10, David M. (USA)
* $10, Douglas R. (USA)
* $10, Nicholas S. (USA)
* $10, William S. (USA)
* $10, Goran C. (Canada)
* $10, Nate D. (USA)
* $7, Michael D. (Germany)
* $7, Tomas O. (Slovakia)
* $7, Tjutju T. (Indonesia)
* $5, Laurens Van W. (Belgium)
* $1, Mauro P. (Italy)

Sponsors:

* $100, Host Color (USA) - http://www.hostcolor.com/vps
* $70, Philippe Lotz (alsaphil - France)
* $50, Linux-Onlineshop (Germany) - http://www.linux-onlineshop.de
* $45, Linux Compatible Poker (USA) - http://www.linuxcompatiblepoker.com
* $40, Az Van (newW2 - USA)
* $20, TOPIMMOBILIEN (Tim - Germany) - http://www.immobilien-es.com
* $10, Jim Rogers (USA)
* $7, Jesse Burroughs (JpBя - USA)
* $7, Panagiotis Papasaikas (Greece) - http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ppapasai/
* $5, Dimitris Athanasiou (RHO, Greece) - http://www.speedtest.gr
* $5, linuxmint-fr.org (ludal - France) - http://www.linuxmint-fr.org
* $5, linuxmint-italia.org (Pietro Martino / prior123 - Italy) - http://www.linuxmint-italia.org
* $5, Guillermo Enrique Guglietti (Canada) - http://www.urbancsa.org
* $5, MPD Digital
* $3.5, Ian Egland (Echolynx - USA)
* $2, Joerg Dreckmann (Germany)
* $1, BusinessSale - http://www.webvaluer.org
* $1, very-clever.com - http://www.very-clever.com
* $1, Busybits - http://www.busybits.com
* $1, linboo.com - http://www.linboo.com
* $1, Expert Bookings - http://www.expert-bookings.com
* $0.5, Martijn van Loon (aapiethaaap - Netherlands)

Money raised in April:

* Donations: $1192
* Sponsors: $385

http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

* Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 6%
* Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 16%
* Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 65%
* Linux Mint 7 Gloria RC1: 13%

Web Stats:

* Visits: 1,225,840 (-4%)
* Pageviews: 2,337,877 (-4%)
* Page impressions: 1,036,845
* Search queries: 2,483,442
* Forum users: 15689
* Forum posts: 141049

Rankings:

* Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1428 (3rd)
* Distrowatch (traffic share): 2.9% (2nd)
* Alexa (website ranking): 34,772th

Events:

* Linux Mint 6 KDE CE was released: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=731
* Linux Mint 6 Fluxbox CE was released: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=724
* mintCast released 2 episodes of their podcast: http://mintcast.org/

Summary:

* April 2009 saw the release of the last two community editions (KDE and Fluxbox) which had been released as RCs the month before and the jump made by the development team from Linux Mint 6 to Linux Mint 7.
* Although the growth observed in April was only between 1 and 4%, last month was the best month ever for Linux Mint since the start of the project.

[phoenixrising]

....last month was the best month ever for Linux Mint since the start of the project.

Congratulations, Clem and the Mint Team!

[longhorntl]

The monthly stats inspired me to donate. However, I did not see where I could put that the donation should be in the name of my company BLT Soft Incorporated instead of me.

Thanks,
Loyal

[clem]

Hi Loyal,

You will receive an email at the address used by your paypal account. You'll then have the opportunity to accept or refuse to have your name published and you'll be able to communicate a name and a URL for the entry in the list of donors. Donations used to be processed one by one but as the community and the project grew they're now processed in batch at the end of the month.

I'm hoping to change that. I realize it's not really nice to donate money and to only get a thank you a month later.. not to mention donations are a very important and should be encouraged as much as possible. I promise to look into it as soon as Mint 7 is out.

Clem.

[icefire]

So pleased to hear that last month was the best month for stats ever. Clem, you have done a wonderful job with this distro. It became apparent to me as well, that in order to keep this project alive, I should offer some financial assistance. What a great distro to have for free. To good to just continue to take without giving a little something back. Thanks again.

Colin

[marcus0263]

I also have a suggestion, an essential tool is the Adblock plugin for Firefox. With the onslaught of in your face and obsessive obscene ads that infest the Web today Adblock is a tool I and many others cannot live without. But since Clem chooses not to infect his site like others with Ads I think the word needs to get out to disable Adblock on the Mint Website. This should help with the ad revenue.

[clem]

Sadly the whole business model consisting in giving people services for free is based on advertisement. Someone has to pay, and with this model, it's not the user, but the advertiser. This model is used by TV and radio channels so it's not something new at all. When it comes to Linux Mint, some of the income coming from advertising is generated via the ads on this website, but a larger part comes from the usage of Firefox and the interaction with other ads, especially on Google.

Now, I know what you're saying. Some websites are actually unreadable, flawed with ads, right in your face, hiding the content... so you do need to fight against that, but keep in mind that advertisement is the primary reason why almost everything is free. As long as it's not intrusive and it doesn't force the user into anything, it keeps everyone happy, the service provider, the advertiser, and if the adverts are pertinent, even the user.

Adblock is great as long as it's used by a minority of people. The day everyone use it and no-one sees the ads, advertisers will stop paying and service providers will be faced with a choice: make their users pay or stop providing the service.

Clem.

[marcus0263]

Sadly the whole business model consisting in giving people services for free is based on advertisement. Someone has to pay, and with this model, it's not the user, but the advertiser. This model is used by TV and radio channels so it's not something new at all. When it comes to Linux Mint, some of the income coming from advertising is generated via the ads on this website, but a larger part comes from the usage of Firefox and the interaction with other ads, especially on Google.

Now, I know what you're saying. Some websites are actually unreadable, flawed with ads, right in your face, hiding the content... so you do need to fight against that, but keep in mind that advertisement is the primary reason why almost everything is free. As long as it's not intrusive and it doesn't force the user into anything, it keeps everyone happy, the service provider, the advertiser, and if the adverts are pertinent, even the user.

Adblock is great as long as it's used by a minority of people. The day everyone use it and no-one sees the ads, advertisers will stop paying and service providers will be faced with a choice: make their users pay or stop providing the service.

Clem.

Yeah I know what you mean, but like most of the problems I see today, things are taken to the extreme. Ads when they are applied in moderation are not only fine but actually helpful. But they have been taken so far to the extreme as a whole and people have responded by tools like Adblock. Heck I've even went so far as totally rejecting mainstream broadcast TV and Radio. I only watch DVD's and listen to streaming audio over the internet, the epiphany came while I was attempting to watch a movie the TNT network. The movie was unwatchable due to not only excessive commerical breaks but banner ads during the movie and I was "paying" for the privilege.

Anyway not to get off on a total rant I just wanna say thanks Clem for not being "excessive" with ads and to mention Mint users to disable Adblocking on Mint's websites.

[clem]

I completely agree with that. If ads alienate users then they defeat their own purpose.

Clem.

[lexon]

Point taken in this thread. I will remember to disable Adblock. I disable Flash Block also.

lexon

[kaixi]

I never use AdBlock. Ads are part of our life.

[marcus0263]

I never use AdBlock. Ads are part of our life.

Well getting a toothache is part of life, but some of us choose to deal with it and not let it ruin our lives.

[Rob Brill]

Hi,
@ Clem
Now, I know what you're saying. Some websites are actually unreadable, flawed with ads, right in your face, hiding the content... so you do need to fight against that, but keep in mind that advertisement is the primary reason why almost everything is free. As long as it's not intrusive and it doesn't force the user into anything, it keeps everyone happy, the service provider, the advertiser, and if the adverts are pertinent, even the user.

----------------------------------------
Great
Yes it's very true!

I don't like and i will never use AdBlock and FlashBlock
Sponsors need to ad but for those websites that bother me too much i simply
close the browse (tab) and go to another one which can show me the same or similar content.

Roberto