Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Monsie]

Hi all,

Wary and Racy 5.3 are just out now, and already I have noticed over at SOFTPEDIA an announcement to this effect --complete with the latest screenshot of the desktop. While I've seen announcements from SOFTPEDIA regarding other distros in past (especially Ubuntu), I don't remember seeing anything about Puppy. However, I am sure that someone can set the record straight on this... Lobster?

It would be interesting to find out if Puppy is gaining recognition lately, although it's a rather challenging task to gather enough data to answer this question... daily hits and rankings at Distrowatch only give us a general indication and not a conclusive result.

Monsie

[chromoite]

I doubt anyone but puppy users notice new releases. The rest of the world has other things to do.

Most people think puppy is a rescue disc or a curiosity. They use it once or twice, throw it in a drawer and forget it.

[chromoite]

Clicking links at distrowatch has no relationship to the number of users a distro has or how many people try it.

[Monsie]

Hi all,

I did some searching and found this announcement from SOFTPEDIA regarding Lucid Puppy 5.2 when it was released just over a year ago. So, obviously SOFTPEDIA has been covering Puppy development for some time --I just hadn't noticed this, and as a result was thinking that maybe Puppy is now creating a larger blip on the radar screen --so-to-speak.

Monsie

[Lobster]

A few years ago, when talking Linux.
mentioning Puppy would get blank stares
(like you get from a Windows user when you ask them if they are using NTFS).
It has changed.
Smart Windows technicians, Linux users of all persuasions
and our growing kennel, all use and know Puppy as a powerful tool.
We were always designed as a support for the big dogs.
Some of us, most of us here, prefer to use Puppy as our main Operating System. However work or circumstance may mean we use other Operating Systems too.

For example we may have Android on our ARM powered phones.
We may play games on a console. We may prefer Ubuntu or
BSD as our day to day system.
In the kennels, Puppy users (aka Puppys) prefer puplets or specific or emerging versions.

There is a growth of users and Barrys release and the Lucid updates, continue a tradition of diversity and end user satisfaction.
Puppy is not perfect.
It does teach you loads. Mostly it shows you how to own your hardware.
Of course it grows in popularity. It is fun.

Puppy
Popular Linux

[chromoite]

[James C]

Just an insignificant show of interest...

[chromoite]

Are clicks at distrowatch important? Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. People will read into it whatever they want.

One thing is certain, visits and clicks is how distrowatch gets people to look at their ads. How can they lose with hordes of linux fanatics clicking links 24 hours a day? I wish I’d thought of it.

[Monsie]

chromoite,

For the record, when I started this thread, I was not trying to suggest or make anyone believe that "the world is [sic] beating a path to Puppy". Having received a university education some years ago, I support the emperical method when it comes to drawing any conclusions about trends, user preference etcetera. I was (and still am), interested in trying to determine if there is any noticeable difference in the numbers of users who are using a version of Puppy (for whatever reason) over the past year or so. While making such a determination is easier said than done, I am not trying to make any sweeping statements here...

You can relax a little bit...

Monsie

[chromoite]

Monsie Is this a serious question? Have you learned anything yet? What plan do you have to achieve your goal? Is your goal attainable? Will we hear more speculation about how puppy has increased its market penetration?

[Dave_G]

Monsie

As a Puppy user, I too would be interested to see if my favourite
distro is gaining popularity for no particular reason other then curiosity.

I suppose one way to "guestimate" this would be to look at the stats
on the main page forum for things like number of new posts versus
some time period and number of new members and total members.

Save this info to a text file on a daily basis and then once a week parse
the data file via Gnuplot.
(Add a bit of Bash scripting and one could automate the whole thing).

Of course this method is far from ideal or 100% accurate,
but I suspect it will give a pretty good indication of the trend.
My thinking being that the more people that find out about Puppy and land up
using it on a regular basis, the more are bound to join this forum even
if they don't post very often.

One could even combine the data from Distrowatch and see if there
is any correlation in the general trend.

[Monsie]

Hi Dave_G,

Thanks for your input.

When I started this topic, I was thinking out loud. I asked if Puppy recognition is growing --out of genuine interest and curiosity. After only eight months of using Puppy, I suppose I am guilty of being a Puppy enthusiast. That said, I am also a realist. I started this topic to get some meaningful feedback, especially from those members who have been a part of this Discussion Forum for a lot longer than I have. I believed such feedback might not only provide some good answers but help put the question into some sort of perspective. This is not formal research --rather, it is gathering information based on what I call the "gut impressions" of others.

Since then, I have given some more thought to my question, since it was from the beginning a serious one, a question that was asked in the spirit of community, rather than in the spirit of provoking some sort of contention or controversy. I believe it can be answered with formal research.

While I would be interested in getting actual numbers of "new" and "old" Puppy users for a given time period with the objective of trying to determine if the user base is indeed growing and by how much etc., I think that such data is rather hard to collect unless one has administrative access to the Forum for example... although some well worded community polls that attempt to gather such data might provide a meaningful sample for statistical analysis.

So, lets consider my question: Is Puppy Recognition growing? I think it is an easier question in terms of collecting the data. While it does not answer the question about userbase, it can provide an indication as to whether Puppy is gaining attention and (therefore?) growing in popularity. I want to frame this question in the context that I originally conceived it, that is to say: Are there more articles being written on-line about Puppy today, (this year) than last year? If so, I might be able to conclude that Puppy Recognition is growing and by how much.

I propose that I could start with a small project: namely, to gather data for the numbers of articles written on-line that are completely outside of the Puppy Community for the years 2010 and 2011. Once this data is collected, I would do a simple chi-square analysis to determine if there is any significant statistical difference for the two years.

I am guessing that the Puppy Community would be interested in this kind of information... but I could be wrong. My thoughts are that this sort of question has probably come up on the Forum before, although I have not yet searched for similar topics... maybe I should do so. In any event, if I get some affirmative replies that there is indeed interest in such research, I will go ahead and do it for the Community --time permitting. If not, no worries... your positive feedback is welcome.

Monsie

[Lobster]

[L18L]

Yes, everyone who knows puppy knows that it is growing.

Your title should be: How much is it growing?

DNFTT

[Lobster]