On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 7:43 AM, Michael Greenly <mgreenly at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can't figure out why anyone would put any value in the distrowatch
> numbers.  Only a tiny tiny tiny tiny percentage of the people who use Linux
> even know it exists and the majority of those who do don't go there.  It's
> numbers are truly valueless and even worse they're easily gamed.  The Google
> trend numbers are slightly more interesting  but even those I wouldn't put
> much stock in.

I think it's useful as an indicator of which distros are receiving
attention from people just getting into Linux. Newbies often get sent
there or end up there when they're distro shopping. It's probably been
more than 5 since I actually looked around distrowatch, but when I was
last looking for a new distro I did go there to see what was popular
and to read the reviews/notes about different distros.

Even knowing that the numbers are likely gamed shows you that some
distro has enough passionate users to care about gaming it.

I agree that's is fairly meaningless as an indicator of what existing
Linux users are actually using though.

--
Michael Moore