Posted on Tuesday 21st of August 2007 at 05:55 in Linux

PCLinuxOS gaining more popularity than Ubuntu?

This may not be as absurd a claim as you may think, especially when you take into consideration the minor backlash that Ubuntu has experienced. So is PCLinuxOS the next poster-child of usable Linux?

It's only natural that something that gains a massive amount of popularity in a relatively short period of time receives some criticism. You see this behaviour in the majority of mainstream society: fans of a movie will become ostrasized when it becomes popular for the masses, the same thing happens with music and anything else that was once "private". So Ubuntu has been suffering this - as discussed in my Ubuntu Kane and Abel community struggle.

pclinuxos chart

Ubuntu has dropped on Distrowatch!
This is what made me stop and think. On the Distrowatch 'page hit ranking' chart (which is a reasonable indication of each distro's popularity) Ubuntu has slipped from the top within the past 3 months. Any metric you use that is within the last 3 months (be that the last 30 days or even the last 7 days) then PCLinuxOS appears above Ubuntu.

ubuntu

Why could this be?
Well, PCLOS has not had any new releases lately; the last one was the distribution release back in May (the 21st if memory serves) so it's not traffic relating to a new product. Ubuntu has a new release out in October (7.10) and put out development release Alpha 4 on the 9th of this month.

Logic would dictate that even if they carried identical popularity then Ubuntu would still have a higher ranking due to the interest around the Alpha releases. Not so. PCLOS has been receiving 400-500 hits per day higher than Ubuntu.

The calm before the storm?
I imagine that 7.10 is going to be another epic release by the Ubuntu team; given the impressive things they're doing with usability (multi-monitor support etc) so this could just be the calm before the storm... Especially considering Ubuntu has averaged 2,600 page-hits-per-day over the past 6 months (which is higher than PCLinuxOS, even at it's current high).

Google trends tells a different tale
Comparing the search terms "ubuntu" and "pclinuxos" tells an entirely different story to the Distrowatch charts:

Ubuntu should be higher than PCLinuxOS, especially considering the fact that their servers got hacked. So you can pretty much make your own deductions from this!

I've preferred PCLOS to Ubuntu ever since I first tried it so an increase in popularity would be well deserved - but that's not to say that Ubuntu isn't without it's merit. It's got such a strong community, so many developers and strong contracts (like Dell) to support it - so i find it hard not to be happy for the direction it's pushing Linux. What do you think?

Visit the Distrowatch Page Hit Data chart

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Comments

Showing most recent 20 of 34 comments [View all comments]

first of all pclinuxos zealotes are cheating and clicking over and over again and voting over again the same people, this is why it came to the first rank, they even were warned to stop with this.
what is this all a religious war fighting with different distros?
the truth is that I tried it more time pclinuxos 2007, dadly they go backword, download too slow, it takes days to do and configure anything, vlc player is not playing my movie clips it plays only sound eventhought I installed all the plugins, it is not detecting my ip1800 printer, many things are not working, it has horrible sound problems etc.
in the past it was better but not anymore.
the best out of the box and easiest are 3 ubuntu based distros,
Linux Mint, and gOS, and ubuntu studio, gOS is only good with the gnome desktop, enlightment is not good, many things are not working, but the best is gOS and linux mint.
all works like it should, very fast download, very huge repository, configuring very easy and fast, no need to do much.

white-lion

poop poop

popeye

I doubt most desktop users would care about all this fuss. After some years of fiddling around with RedHat, Fedora and such I’d imagine the typical user to want things to work out of the box, hassle-free installation and such. Who wants to spend the better part of their lives googling on how to get pretty pictures to display on screen?!

I’ve used Distrowatch as an *indicator* to identify the more popular distros as a starting point, then looked into reviews, forums, and tried the livecds on my older PC/Laptops. So far I feel the closest fit to a "lazy user’s distro" would be either PCLinuxOS or Linux Mint (Ubuntu based, mind you). And nothing’s perfect either - I have PCLOS/Mint/Ubuntu LiveCDs throw up on three different desktops/laptops at home. It’s pretty interesting to gaze upon three flavours of stuffed up desktop screens.

One last thing: Power users do know how to research further. Please stop treating others as idiots who blindly follow the stats.

Llama

Well.......imho ubuntu is more popular bcoz u guys out here did
not cosidered it’s popularity in asia since it support multiple languages not like pclos ,,,,single language and no.....64bit binaries at the moment. U C that is a fact and also a major portion of the matrix that is not included. U have to be in Asia & Africa to notice it....since this 2 continent users will simply overwhelmed all matrixes provided as above .....due to it;s sheer population......just imagine China & India usage???

Kew

PClinuxOS is the only distribution that I have used where my Epson EPL-6100L printer worked right out of the box even off the liveCD. Even Mandriva, the distribution that it is alleged based on, doesn’t do that. Ubuntu doesn’t even support my printer ... my printer isn’t even that old, roughly 3 to 4 years. In addition, with PCLinuxOS, everything works out of the box including flash and java. The repositories are updated suprisingly quickly with the latest applications, including OpenOffice 2.3. The desktop is fast, everything loads up quickly. So I’m not at all suprised that it has generated the most interest on Distrowatch. Everyone nowadays is looking for an alternative to Windows and in my opinion, since I am one of those Windows migrant as well, PCLinuxOS is far more suitable to a Windows migrant than Ubuntu is. I think Ubuntu is more of a geek hobbyist distribution and its popularity was due to the fact that geeks found it fun to use. But that time has long past as Linux moves into the mainstream where it is set to become a viable alternative to Windows.

hounddog

Rubbish ;)..you mean .PCLINUXOS,,the os that is quoted as: ....

" DISCLAIMER: This is experimental software. Use at your own risk. PCLinuxOS/Texstar cannot be held liable under any circumstances for damage to hardware or software, lost data, or other direct or indirect damage resulting from the use of this software "

...is currently what everyone wants ?

ah ha yeah sure..Im going to RUN right out and download and install it because I want to use experimental ’use at your own risk’ software..in your dreams . I agree with blueglue as well that its likely just people clicking on what is #1 especially in light of what I’m talking about ;)

I truly do think though that linux needs to organize and choose ONE to stand upon and make it truly amazing. You get a decent set of features if you combine all the top distros, but individually they become less at once.

Would life as we know it end if we had one distro and one WM ? ;))

I didn’t think so ...

cheers
nl

neighborlee

it’s not so hard to explain google graph.
when you download ubuntu you have to search for advices how to get your hardware working, how to play mp3, how to install nvidia support (we are still talking about feisty and prior), how to play wmv etc.
pclinux works out-of-box, hence less googling.
also kde is more intuitive (or MSwin like) for simple user than gnome.

and i really agree with blueglue (comment below) that many linux beginners are going with "stream" and go for the most popular distro on page like distrowatch (if you browse "linux" sooner or later you get there as to main list of linux distros).

khai

I’m pretty sure that if I were not a Linux user and decided to find out what it was about, I would google the word "Linux" the chances are I would come across Distrowatch. Now not knowing anything about Linux, I would choose the most popular because that’s what Linux people use right? That’s why there is alot of good stuff way down the list that I’m sure stays installed unchanged for way longer than the fashion boy distro’s at the top of the pop list. I personally started using Linux because my work/data was way more important than being up with the Jones’s and those constant upgrade/update messeges from every fking application installed on my redmond were beguining to take prefference over the actual task in hand, THE CURRENT FAN BOY DISTROS OF ANY FLAVOUR ARE NO BETTER! Also I would like to add that the guys who constantly hit DW are people who break their OS after a week and move on, so why not move on to windows and just reinstall that after a week and stop worrying about others choices in life. Is it possible that there are alot of hardcore Debian, Slackware, Redhat, BSD guys out there who haven’t looked at distrowatch for years?

blueglue (Mr.)

I think your cord has ran out, get someone to give it another pull

Paul

Up here in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve laid plenty of traps for the Penguins to gnaw their own arms off in order to get out of. So, your latest infighting is whether or not you have a Texas Penguin or a South African Penguin? We don’t even have to throw your dirty birds out of our MSWindows to show you that Penguins don’t fly. I’m gonna send this URL to everybody on my Kontact list.

Roots in Debian? Roots in Mandriva? God Almighty! Even the "Linux-Lovers" will rip apart if it means they get more blog page-hits. Just go here: http://n.ethz.ch/student/mkos/pinguin.swf if you wanna help us bash Linux.

DistroWatch or Google as a valid barometer? No wonder your Old Mens OS is a distant third. You may as well check if PCLinux or Ubuntu has as many videos or page views on their YouTube.com fanboy numbers; that would prob be more accurate and just as scientific as those nerd sites and their esoteric surveys.

Heres a clue: There are not too many distros for young people, only Old Farts think that. There once was, when you had to install everything. Nowadays the "LiveCD" has delivered you from all that partitioning and installation and young tinkerers can trade them like baseball cards.

Heres a clue: People who work for a living and kids in school don’t care about whether their OS has a Texas/Mandriva Mommy or a African/Debian Daddy. Little Timmy just wants to play KHangman, Jenny wants look up the 1st Amendment on WikiPedia while hiding Kopete in a back window, and Grandpa is playing Frozen Bubble on Level 60.

Heres a clue: standout names like Ubuntu, Mandriva, and Tupac are not something that you hear everyday; yet at least one of them has been dead for a while. PCLinuxOS is a too-plain, corny name and PCLOS is a dumb acronym. Thats why either people don’t remember the name, but most people just call that particular distro "Linux" when they’re telling someone about it; trying to describe its spinning-cube, KDE Beryl NVidia sweetness.

From the looks of some of these blogs on devisive topics with buzz-word hyperbole headlines, PCLinux isn’t the only one concerned with page hits. Linux will be broken up into factions long before M$ will, and according to most judges, M$ is an illegal monopoly. Divide, and conquer... Now, if we could only get a Granny Smith or Red Delicious distro/faction/clique to help us bring down Macintosh OS.

Balmers KNotes

I fix PCs for $50 per hour if you give me cash, $60 an hour if you write me a check. I’m lucky if relatives give me dinner for fixing their crappy WinDoze. I have switched them all over to my fave distro PCLOS, and they are VERY happy and I can assure you they have never even heard of DistroWatch.

Geeks need to stop trying to keep Linux for the Nerd clique. Theres nothing wrong with us, so lose the Inferiority Complex. I used Gnome in the early days [Helix, Ximian] only because I had to. KDE delivered us from Gnome.

Since I got PCLOS way back in Big Daddy era, I’ve seldom used a terminal. It’s all push-button goodness, so that I can actually get some work done. After work, I use the same PCLOS to get some play done.

My mom likes Frozen Bubble and my cousin likes Penguin Racer; I like Nexuiz and Saurbraten [Cube 2]. All of those are from the same PCLOS respostories.

You make it sound all "funny" like PCLOS has tampered with some DW stuff. Texstar and the Ripper Gang are so BROKE from people not sending in their donations that I’m sure they don’t have time to consider page-ranking on DW as a piority over eating.

You make it sound like PCLOS hurt your little feelings because they displaced Ubuntu to #2 of all places; how Geekified. You can’t possibly own stock in the new #2, so why write those negative things about the new Big Daddy #1? PCLOS loves you; thats why they gave you the Hardware Database and freed you from guessing and playing the UnderDog role all of the time because you chose Linux.

I will "pay for pretty", and PCLOS is prettier than a pail full of kittens. I don’t hate Redmond because their products faults generate me income; I do not hate Mac OS. I CHOSE Linux, because I actually like it; always have. There is room for Ubuntu and others in here. To a lot of us, Linux is actually ABOUT choices.

I’ve sent in my donations and will continue to do so; especially with all you haters out there.

Anony

There are too many distributions, and not enough great ones - the poor minority give Linux a bad name. PCLOS is a good distro, even if it does have a clunky name. Ubuntu is a good distro too... LInux is finally finding its feet, and all the power to it.

Kaipaith

If you search a distro : check the forums. That will tell you much more than DW.

Yep

most popular doesnt always mean the best. there is no best. different distro’s is like different tastes. it depends on what u need and wat u expect out of a distro. i like pclinuxos coz its kde and works out of the box without further tweaking. thats my reason. pclinuxos is not perfect, it has a few problems, but their improving. i started with ubuntu also.

xmido

Whats the problem with everyone, so pclos goes to the number one, so what. Why do people feal threatened by this.............

Why is it that just because someone uses something different to what they use, they feel the need to impose there will onto them, as if it questions there own integrity.

I don’t use Ubuntu because i don’t like it, simple, kubuntu was nice but didn’t sync with my mobile mem card well, big deal. pclos worked well for me and still does so i donated to them. When this changes i’ll go somewhere else.

I found linux through ubuntu so god love them for that, but i’ve moved on now.

my point, people use what they like, and how dare somebody tell them otherwise with your bullying type behavour and mockery, you shouldn’t like this you should like what i like.

ANYBODY who touts ANY OS and disrespects another to prove their point is not contributing to the solution.

I really like linux, but i think the community could do with a major personality check, less bitching at others, moaning about other distro’s, it’s driving wannabe users away with all the childish squabbling. How the hell am I supposed to convert people if all they see is this day in day out.

It’s worth dumping computers completely, and going to live on a desert island with my coconut radio and abacus.

Paul

Whats the problem

The following is NOW HISTORY: "PCLinuxOS is an English only live CD initially based on Mandrake Linux"!

The PCLOS "Mandrake fork" got wornout and had to REBASE ON MANDRIVA 2007! But you will NOT see this in any of their official documentation (except in some informal forum discussion thread), why the CHARADE and "MANDRAKE FORK" MANTRA? False pride pehaps?

IMO, PCLOS in noway can even be considered a "Major" distro, it just does NOT have what it takes to be one.

The folowing is some info from Distrowatch Comments section (early July) that shines some light on my above claim:

"...119 • @117 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-03)
No, he didn’t know that PCLOS takes Mandriva packages and removes the changelogs without directly acknowledging that package came from Mandriva, and he didn’t know that PCLOS does not contribute its changes back to Mandriva....."

126 • @125 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-03)
[...]
I don’t know how many times I have to say it - I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said it in this thread already - I am NOT TRYING TO BASH PCLOS, nor am I discussing the relative merits of PCLOS and Mandriva. I’ll keep saying that until you understand it. I am trying to say that _some_ PCLOS developers and community members could go further towards recognizing how extensively PCLOS is based on Mandriva, and it would also be nice for PCLOS to contribute its work upstream.

132 • @130 (by Adam Williamson on 2007-07-03)
[...]
"...You missed one of my major points, which is that several PCLOS backers - note *not* Tex - frequently seem to give the impression that PCLOS is already heavily forked from Mandriva and would barely notice if Mandriva ceased to exist. See the quotes already cited from davecs and PastorEd. For proof that this is indeed the impression that some people get, see the expressions of surprise from several users who read my comparison and realized for the first time how closely PCLOS is based on Mandriva. It is this that I am most worried about. Most of what I’ve posted has been devoted to showing that this is not, in fact, the case: PCLOS is very heavily based on Mandriva and if Mandriva were to cease to exist, PCLOS would need to either somehow find the resources to maintain a lot of packages itself which it currently doesn’t, or would need to go through the hassle of re-basing off a different distro.

I will keep repeating this until you understand it. It’s really not that complicated. ..."

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070702&mode=19

Observer

Do a google search for the word "linux"
Ubuntu shows on the 5th link.
PC Linux OS doesn’t even show in the first 100 hits.

Distrowatch rating DOES NOT WORK and they should just remove it all together.
It confuses people and gives bad judgement.

Albert

I am a regular user of PCLinuxOS, at home and work and have tried every release of (K)ubuntu as well. PCLinuxOS just slips into "working mode" easily is definitely superior.

Who got lucky in the market is no indication of quality anyway.

KenAlpha

Short term Distrowatch statistics tend to change quite a lot depending on recent news, fanboy activity (clicks just to raise the Distrowatch position) etc. Perspective of half a year is necessary to give any kind of reliable stats.

As to Google searches: Ubuntu as a word doesn’t refer only to Ubuntu Linux but may refer to lots of things and projects especially in South Africa that use that word (social collaboration etc.) too.

Batman

Only a toddler would worry about who’s distro is getting more use. And gauging this by distrowatch’s hit ranking is a really bad idea since that doesn’t really tell you how many people have installed and used the distros.

Jan Hooks

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PCLinuxOS gaining more popularity than Ubuntu?