The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#1

Post by webwanderings » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

The OS Wars: We Have A Winner
sourceforge.net

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#2

Post by metachris » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:23 PM UTC

The reasons why the number of sourceforge visitors with Linux is declining might also include GitHub, which became hugely popular in this crowd.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#3

Post by andyking » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

metachris wrote: post #2

The reasons why the number of sourceforge visitors with Linux is declining might also include GitHub, which became hugely popular in this crowd.

They seem to have counted downloads, rather than site visitors.

The decline in Sourceforge downloads by Linux users is likely to be down to the fact that most will simply grab the package from their distro's repository, rather than getting it from SF. If I download, say, FileZilla on my Windows machine, I get it via Sourceforge. On my Ubuntu box, it's in the repo.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#4

Post by robin_reala » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

I can’t remember the last time I found a project hosted on SourceForge. Actually, I can, it was http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/ about 4 years ago. I assumed everyone had moved en masse to Github?

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#5

Post by xm1994 » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:28 PM UTC

I think they need to work on their data collection. The unknown "Other" is almost as large as the other OS categories combined. This makes it hard to draw any conclusions.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#6

Post by rajpaul » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:28 PM UTC

Unsurprisingly, Windows dominates with more downloads than all others combined.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#7

Post by Tsiolkovsky » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:31 PM UTC

andyking wrote: post #3

metachris wrote: post #2

The reasons why the number of sourceforge visitors with Linux is declining might also include GitHub, which became hugely popular in this crowd.

They seem to have counted downloads, rather than site visitors. The decline in Sourceforge downloads by Linux users is likely to be down to the fact that most will simply grab the package from their distro's repository, rather than getting it from SF. If I download, say, FileZilla on my Windows machine, I get it via Sourceforge. On my Ubuntu box, it's in the repo.

Yeah that's how I get almost all the software for my GNU/Linux boxen, all from repositories. And if I'm hacking on something just pull it out from Git or BZR or SVN or similar. Many projects also left SF since they started with changes that made it a bit of pain to use.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#8

Post by thenextcorner » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:34 PM UTC

andyking wrote: post #3

metachris wrote: post #2

The reasons why the number of sourceforge visitors with Linux is declining might also include GitHub, which became hugely popular in this crowd.

They seem to have counted downloads, rather than site visitors. The decline in Sourceforge downloads by Linux users is likely to be down to the fact that most will simply grab the package from their distro's repository, rather than getting it from SF. If I download, say, FileZilla on my Windows machine, I get it via Sourceforge. On my Ubuntu box, it's in the repo.

Actually what was counted was the OS of the people who downloaded software projects.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#9

Post by icebraining » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:57 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #4

I can’t remember the last time I found a project hosted on SourceForge. Actually, I can, it was http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/ about 4 years ago. I assumed everyone had moved en masse to Github?

Not everyone likes Git, and SF offers other niceties like forums and mailing lists.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#10

Post by onedognight » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 5:58 PM UTC

Linux downloads have declined because most developers get binaries from their distribution and fewer and fewer old projects (i.e. those from source forge) need to be downloaded as source.

OS X is a backwater as far as binary distribution is concerned and so developers have to use brew or macports. Every time you do "brew install blah" you have a 1/3 chance of downloading a project from source forge.