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Ubuntu is just one of a myriad of Linux distributions, but no one can deny that its rise to fame has been meteoric, especially as a desktop OS.

This week Google announced a “forecast” feature in Google Insights for Search. Essentially it’s a new function that looks at the search history (popularity) of a term and tries to predict what the future trend for that term will look like.

So just out of curiosity we decided to try Ubuntu versus Linux to see what would happen. The dotted line furthest to the right in the chart below is Google’s prediction. We’ve marked the point where the interest for Ubuntu is predicted to overtake Linux with a red arrow, i.e. February 2010.

Since this is based on past data it is in no way a secure prediction of the future, but it does look quite plausible. The interest for Linux (at least as a search term) has long been declining while the interest for Ubuntu has been increasing (although it has slowed down recently).

One interpretation of this data is that the interest for Ubuntu is surpassing the interest for “just” Linux. It’s becoming quite a brand…

Perhaps we’re playing devil’s advocate here, but are we seeing the beginning of the end of the Linux distribution chaos? Will Ubuntu eventually become the Linux distribution of choice for more or less everyone?

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17 Comments

A united Linux front? If that ever happens Microsoft will have reason to get extremely nervous. :)

Looks like Ubuntu is succeeding in supplanting the term “Ubuntu” for Linux. This is something I’m highly against and cringe at the thought. Linux needs to have a united front, but Ubuntu seems like Intel where it’s their way or the highway. This is so very bad. Already, I see many distros invoking Ubuntu-like features, which I also detest. I simply do not like Ubuntu, it’s business practices, or it’s nasty habits as an OS.

I’m an Ubuntu user myself but, if you want devil’s advocates, I could point out that the Google results could equally be down to Ubuntu users having more niggly problems that they have to search for help on … repeatedly!

Tacking “Linux” in front of a search term typically gives good information targeted at advanced Linux users who don’t need a lot of hand-holding. Prepending “ubuntu” typically gives newb-level information, ie, step-by-step instruction, or even copy-paste pseudo-scripts.

Convincing users to adopt the linux philosophy (by whatever name it is called) is extremely desirable.

Ubuntu is a mom and pop distro. I know so, cuz I’m a mom and I have been using it for almost 2 years. It’s friendly and accessible, and does everything a mom and pop OS should do. I don’t do much hacking, or gaming, neither do I compose music or movies (thought I sometimes watch and edit some). I have looked at some other distros, but not many (Puppy, Opensuse, PCLOS) and I always return to Ubuntu. Maybe it’s a desktop thing: Xfce and Lxde are nice and fast, KDE is Kool, Enlightement is amazing…but Gnome is nice, comfortable, and complete. I suspect when my girls reach 12, they will start to stray towards those “kooler” distros and desktop, and I will sure as hell let them. They will probably introduce me to my next distro as my needs will change over time.
Ubuntu is a great entry point into a remarquably diversified OS world, and I’m damn happy with it.

Ro: The “niggly” problems are the ones that prevent widespread adoption… If Ubuntu’s only contribution to Linux is better documentation, it’s worth it.

Ubuntu Bug Stats as 8.20-09

* Open (60697) +609 over last week
* Critical (28) +1 over last week
* Unconfirmed (28316) +350 over last week
* Unassigned (52346) +558 over last week
* All bugs ever reported (303196) +1977 over last week

I am in 100% agreement with the poster LinuxLover. Could not have put it better myself.

The sharp drop for “Linux” is not compensated by Ubuntu (nor Fedora or Redhat or debian). Why is it? I am quite surprised.

Compare Linux and Windows on Google insights. It is interesting because you will see that both have the exact same trend.
So my personal attempt at a conclusion is simply that people search less for these terms because they know better how to use Linux or Windows.

But basically I see no correlation between Ubuntu rise and Linux decrease.

Ubuntu is Linux!!!! Why do people think that Ubuntu isn’t linux!? Also why do some people think that Ubuntu is the only Linux distro and that it is the best Linux distro!? Ubuntu SUCKS!! Slackware linux and Gentoo etc. are much better!

I have gone through a lot of distros learning linux, and I love Gentoo.I love Gentoo so much I want to marry it.

As Super Bowl 46 is approaching, fans will flock to the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana, and to TV sets around the world to follow the New York Giants battle it out with the New England Patriots.

Kickoff is scheduled for 6:30EST on Sunday, February 5, and we’re already monitoring Superbowl.com to see how the site will handle the event.

What team will win Super Bowl 46? How will the site cope? We can only wait to find out.

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Weekend must-read articles #2

Every Friday we bring you a collection of links to places on the web that we find particularly newsworthy, interesting, entertaining, and topical. We try to focus on some particular area or topic each week, but in general we will cover Internet, web development, networking, performance, and other geeky topics.h

This week we bring you a collection of articles focusing on cloud, with a few other topics thrown in to boot.

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Out of the 59 US-based e-commerce sites we monitored during the holiday season last year 28 scored a perfect 100% uptime for December.

Whether this helped spur on the booming sales in the US, we don’t know, but retail e-commerce spending in the US reached $37.2 billion for the November to December 2011 period. That was an increase of 15% from the same period in 2010.

We decided to dig into the numbers for these e-commerce sites to see how well they did in terms of uptime and performance. After massaging the data coming from our Pingdom probes, it turns out that the sites overall performed well during December 2011 in terms of uptime, but response time was an issue for several sites.

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Pingdom Podcast #5

Pingdom’s Mobile Podcast is a weekly show about Internet, web, and mobile stuff.

In this show, Saleh also gives us an update on the pending submission of his Carbon for Windows Phone Twitter client. We’re also joined by Mario Lurig, who talks about using Amazon S3 and Cloudfront to speed up a website.

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Want to be able to download a DVD worth of data in about 38 minutes? It may not seem very impressive, but that’s with the average Internet speed in South Korea, according to the latest “State of the Internet” report by Akamai.

Covering Q3 2011, the report again puts South Korea at the top of the list of countries with the fastest Internet connections. The country scored an average connection speed of 16.7 Mbps in Q3 2011.

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