Monthly Stats - March 2009

[clem]

Donations & Sponsorships:

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

Donors:

* $100, Bill S. (Canada)
* $100, Jack W. S. (Denmark)
* $100, Richard M. (UK)
* $50 (2nd donation), Herbert L. (UK)
* $50, Andrew B. (USA)
* $50, Jamie G. (UK)
* $50, Larry B. (USA)
* $50, Clive B. (UK)
* $41, Andreas S. (Germany)
* $34, Peter K. (Netherlands)
* $34 (2nd donation), Lothar S. (Germany)
* $30, Robert P. (USA)
* $27, Bernard L. (Norway)
* $25, Gary B. (USA)
* $25, Dean Di P. (USA)
* $25, Tim B. (USA)
* $25, William S. (USA)
* $25, Paul B. (USA)
* $25 (2nd donation), Jim D. (Australia)
* $20, Felipe M. V. (Mexico)
* $20, James T. (USA)
* $20, Yance F. (USA)
* $20 (4th donation), Jaxon L. (USA) - http://um-reloaded.blogspot.com/
* $20, Syrinx (Canada)
* $20, Jose D. G. (USA)
* $20, Matthew W. (USA)
* $20, Seth S. (USA)
* $15 (3rd donation), Brian B. (USA)
* $15, Jacob S. (USA)
* $15, Andrew M. (Australia)
* $14, Asgeir K. (Norway)
* $14, Eniko V. (Italy)
* $14, Marion T. (UK)
* $14, Germano S. (Italy)
* $14, Robert B. (UK)
* $10 (2nd donation), Richard Garrison (garrisonr – USA) - http://www.richard-garrison.com/
* $10 (3rd donation), Henry W. (USA)
* $10, Steven M. (USA)
* $10, Dan B. (USA)
* $10 (2nd donation), Jindrich Radic (Czech Republic)
* $8, Israel V. (USA)
* $7, All-Access Customer (USA)
* $7, Matthias Z. (Germany)
* $7, Frantisek Z. (Slovakia)
* $7 (2nd donation), Wilken S. (Germany)
* $7, Eoin S. (Ireland)
* $7, Giuseppe P. (Germany)
* $5, Alex K. (USA)
* $5, Sean D. (USA)
* $5, Timothy K. (USA)

Sponsors:

* $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, Vassilis Skoullis (Greece)
* $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, J. Cain (ronnoc - USA) - http://realestatepointe.blogspot.com/
* $5, LA Express
* $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 March:

* Donations: $1256
* Sponsors: $300

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: 7.99%
* Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 19.76%
* Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 72.24%

Web Stats:

* Visits: 1,277,408 (+18.66%)
* Pageviews: 2,437,531 (+17.62%)
* Page impressions: 1,019,289
* Search queries: 2,630,797
* Forum users: 14266
* Forum posts: 131709

Rankings:

* Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1482 (3rd)
* Distrowatch (traffic share): 2.5% (3rd)
* Alexa (website ranking): 37,932th

Events:

* Linux Mint 6 KDE CE RC1 was released: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=655
* Linux Mint 6 Fluxbox CE RC1 was released: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=651
* Linux Mint 4 Daryna reaching end of life: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=698
* mintCast released 3 episodes of their podcast: http://mintcast.org/
* Don Cosner, our release manager, also known as Exploder had a baby

Summary:

* We’ve had a really successful month. If we ignore the depreciation of the US dollar our income went up 31%. Both sponsorship and donations were up as well. Of course we’re comparing a 31 days month with a 28 days one, but still, the results are extremely good.

* The activity also grew on the forums and the traffic got bigger on our start pages, indicating a growth of our user base.

* Our Distrowatch rankings went down but their website only covered 2 of our releases this year. In comparison Ubuntu hit their frontpage 6 times with 4 Alphas, 1 Beta and 1 revision release. This is not a complaint and Distrowatch have explained their stand on this, but our apparent lack of activity partly explains the figures. We’ve also lost our novelty factor and if Mint is still quite new in some circles it is well known by now among Distrowatch visitors. The traffic share is at 2.5% which is very good but not accurate since it’s only based on the figures for April, which just started.

* 20% is the share of Elyssa LTS among Linux Mint users. It is quite low. Mint 5 LTS will get updates, the latest tools and innovations, long after Mint 6 and even Mint 7 will be made obsolete. It represents the best alternative for people who don’t want to upgrade every 6 months. In fact people moving away from Linux Mint 4 Daryna, which is about to reach end of life, are typical users who do not follow Linux Mint with each new release and instead of migrating to Linux Mint 6 Felicia which will be replaced by Linux Mint 7 Gloria in a few months they would be better off opting for Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS. We made changes to our download page to put more emphasis on Mint 5 LTS and we’ll make our best to promote it more efficiently. This is a sign of a lack of communication and we’ll address it.

[Timmi]

Congratulations on the work you are doing. I feel very tempted to start donating, even though I'm unemployed at the moment.
After experiencing some frustrations (call it bewilderment and lack of understanding) about your decision to bundle oo.o 2.4 with it's antiquated user-hostile interface, I've tried out a few other distributions, and have decided to come back. But only because I already have OOO 3.x on my windows partition, and don't really use office apps that much these days anyways (otherwise, I'd make more of a fuss over it).
Why am I writing? Well, just trying to make a point.
After trying other Ubuntus, including Ubuntu 8.10 and UbuntuStudio, as well as Mandrake, I have a better appreciation for the progress you've given Ubuntu. However, I believe that your "market share" could certainly be improved if you didn't follow each and every hickup that they make when there is infighting at the Ubuntu team, and use a little more logic, making your release a little bit more cutting edge, without going overboard into bleeding edge.
Open Office is constantly refining the packages, improving the user interface, usability, making it more pleasant for the user. Remembering the days when you had to buy PageMaker to do desktop publishing, and seeing all those features today, plus more, in our word processors, I don't expect new leaps and bounds to be made in "features"! As a matter of fact, some of the features that microsoft introduces are counter-productive, because they start linking too much things together, and word and excel often take initiatives that you don't want them to take, and you have to go searching how to disable/change a certain initiative that it took. So added features aren't always good - you need to look beyond that.
Giving the users the later version, with improved user interface, and not forcing them to go to the forums or lose valuable time trying to overwrite it with the newer version, would go a long way to make new joiners have a great first experience with Mint. It is so much easier to KEEP a new convert, than to convert new users... immensely easier. So don't you think you could make the extra effort, when Ubuntu makes a doubtable decision, to perhaps move away from the pack, and take an initiative? (especially in the case of oo.o).
Otherwise, what incentive do I have, as a user, to choose Mint over many other good distributions? What is the statistical chance you are selected, expecially when a major component is outdated?
Yes, I came back... but not everyone does... with 500 distributions to choose from, there is surely another distribution that claims to be close to it's users, and deliver on that.