Bonum Certa Men Certa

StatCounter's Shortcomings and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 30, 2024

A spooky, old abandoned house.

About two months ago we said we'd leave StatCounter (or statCounter) aside to better focus on topics that aren't GNU/Linux growth. We've managed to do exactly that and a lot has happened since, even if the media is generally stagnant. It fails to cover so many issues. It instead latches onto anything some celebrities say, as it's so much cheaper to go with "Torvalds says" pieces than to actually investigate some issue.

So far we've found exactly one publisher, a CIA-funded company, writing about the latest news regarding Russia and Linux. We'll keep track of any updates in this page, but the gist is, Russia’s digital ministry is responding to the expulsion of Russian Linux developers. That requires translating - i.e. real work - so it's more expensive than "Torvalds says" pieces.

Meanwhile, in recent days we saw several articles about HarmonyOS Next (China). There's this example (in English) from last week and we had another in yesterday's Daily Linux. China is creating its own alternative to what's perceived to be US-controlled Android and Linux (the Linux Foundation has long been blatantly nationalistic, not inclusive or internationalist by any stretch of imagination).

What does this have to do with StatCounter? We've long argued that StatCounter's software is outdated as it is unable to cope with or parse user-agents for some operating systems, such as China's own. The "Unknown" part continues to grow, but they make no effort to specify what this unknown (to them) actually is.

So while GNU/Linux and Android continue to grow at Windows' expense there will be other operating systems growing. They're not controlled by GAFAM (e.g. Google, Apple, Microsoft).

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