OpenSUSE's Slow Start: Only About 70,000 Installations a Week After Big Launch

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2008-06-25 19:40:34 UTC
Modified: 2008-06-25 19:40:34 UTC

penOffice.org exceeds 1.2 million downloads per week without even a hyped-up launch. Firefox 3 will have exceeded 20 million downloads shortly (a week after its release).

With all due respect, OpenSUSE's big release (11.x) is nowhere near some of the leaders of the GNU/Linux pack in terms of appeal. And it shows:

* more people downloaded the 64bit DVD (+4%) * 63% more downloads in the first 30 hours * approx. 65.000 installations so far, for 10.3 we had 40.000 after 6 days

A huge summary of OpenSUSE 11.0 reviews we will deliver at the end of this week. Meanwhile, someone from the #phoronix channel tries to use guilt as a deterrent against criticism. Some hours ago:

<vadi2> Hey man, just a question. If you're on Gnome, when you go to Places - Search for Files, select 'File System' for Look in folder, and for search options, make it contains the text "novell", do you get any documents shown?

Steve Ballmer rides SUSE <vadi2> If you're on KDE, the equivalent of this <schestowitz> What do you see if you try this? <vadi2> A lot of contributions by Novell to my linux desktop. You? <schestowitz> Oh, I get it.. <vadi2> np, just a small thing I found out yesterday :)

Well, OpenSUSE is not our target; Novell is. OpenSUSE will be fine even without Novell's leadership. The mental association does it no good anyway. ⬆

Comments

Francis

2008-06-25 20:33:43

Of course it's hard to predict the actual number. Those are only registered installations (for example I've installed many times and never bothered to register). The figure is actually extremely encouraging. 63% growth in one release (judging by downloads) of course is.

You keep saying openSUSE isn't your target but you keep attacking it as if it was. It's also pretty surprising to see your last story on openSUSE "reviews", where in that story you tried to portray a completely negative portrayal of the release, ignoring the very obvious fact that EVERY _major_ news website (LWN, Linux.com, Ars) has been extremely positive about the release. I have actually never seen this happen for _any_ distribution's release.
Roy Schestowitz

2008-06-25 20:46:53

The increase may be related to magnitude of the release. (10.2->10.3 vs 10.3->11.0).
Xanadu

2008-06-25 22:02:42

It actually seems like a disappointingly high number it disturbs me so many people would use it with so many distros out there that wouldn't give a MS-dependent Novell more market share. I'll keep my hopes that those numbers are inflated, We've seen Novell use unethical advertisement ways in the past so trying to inflate growth in download counts is not far fetched for this post-deal Novell.
Anonymous

2008-06-26 05:19:41

BREAKING NEWS: With all disrespect, the amount of Boy.com readers is nowhere near some of the leaders of the news business like CNN.com. Nevertheless the editor of the site regularly tries to convince you of the influence of his site and its global internet site ranking with inflated numbers.
Roy Schestowitz

2008-06-26 05:23:32

@ Xanadu: I don't think it's a very large number if you consider the overall growth of the GNU/Linux userbase (two surveys indicated it had roughly doubled in a year)

@ Anonymous: the site drove almost 3GB of traffic yesterday.
somebadomby

2008-06-26 08:54:09

Ahem. And also, the numbers have been posted FIVE days after the release of openSUSE 11.0 (as you can see from the http-address), and I don't believe that they were counted and posted round midnight, so probably they didn't even count the # of installations on day 5.

The actual growth here will be much higher than 50%.

If your intention was to let SUSE look bad it really has backfired.
Josh Bell

2008-06-26 12:55:21

How about comparing apples to apples? It's quite difficult to take you seriously when you compare OpenSuSe with OpenOffice or Firefox. Did you differentiate between OpenOffice or Firefox for Windows and Linux and only include Linux downloads or did you include all downloads? Comparing an application such as an office suite or a browser to an OS is unfair and unbecoming. Comparing downloads of OpenSuSe and Fedora would be more fair, why not do that? Wait, wait, if I look at distrowatch.com and look at the HPD for the last 7 days Opensuse is ranked number 1 and Ubuntu is #2
Anonymous

2008-06-26 12:58:10

> the site drove almost 3GB of traffic yesterday.

How can we know that this digit is not inflated? :-) Honestly, that's not much. Most of that are likely bots and feed readers. And much traffic goes for your silly graphics you keep on reposting all the time.

Reputable sites define their reach by unique visitors per day, not GB.
Roy Schestowitz

2008-06-26 13:08:23

We must have hit a sensitive spot if OpenSUSE supporters can't help posting in a site they purport to dislike.

@somebadomby:

If your intention was to let SUSE look bad it really has backfired.

No, it hasn't.

Wait, wait, if I look at distrowatch.com and look at the HPD for the last 7 days Opensuse is ranked number 1 and Ubuntu is #2

That's normal when there is a major release. OpenSUSE 10.3's release had an identical effect.

Reputable sites define their reach by unique visitors per day, not GB.

Thanks for the insinuation that we are not reputable. Why are you here in this Web site again? :-) :-)
Anonymous

2008-06-26 18:18:14

> Why are you here in this Web site again?

Why do people visit sites with jokes? For their entertainment.
Josh Bell

2008-06-26 18:35:16

But you still didn't answer the question. Did you differentiate between Windows and Linux downloads of Openoffice and Firefox? I get on this site to see what FUD and lies you continue to spread without facts to back them up. You have come to the point now where OpenSuse is bad because it only had 70,000 downloads compared to millions of downloads of openoffice and Firefox.
Roy Schestowitz

2008-06-26 19:13:50

Regardless of the success of cross-platform applications, I drew a similarity that involves GNU/Linux distributions.

"With all due respect, OpenSUSE’s big release (11.x) is nowhere near some of the leaders of the GNU/Linux pack in terms of appeal."

I predict that OpenSUSE will stay where it is now.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8454912761.html
Josh Bell

2008-06-26 20:13:51

Really? How do you know that? It seems to do better than most on distrowatch. Over the past year it is #2 after Ubuntu which makes sense since Ubuntu and its variants have been making a push for the desktop market. You base that on 4 or 5 days of downloads? How nice to play fair.
Roy Schestowitz

2008-06-26 20:23:02

Josh Bell,

Your point is valid, but please wait until Distrowatch 'settles'. This always happens when there are major releases and media 'outbreaks'.
Francis

2008-06-26 21:17:52

Just FYI, not that it will necessarily overtake Ubuntu on distrowatch's default 6-month viewing, but openSUSE has been #1 for the last 30-days viewing (not just 7 days) for well over a month (or two) now.

If you also judge the way that it's been changing over the last couple of months my prediction is that openSUSE will also overtake Ubuntu for the 3-month viewing within the next 30 days. Ubuntu does seem to get more hits at release time than openSUSE's 11.0 did, so it may still not be enough for the 6-month-viewing, like I said.

Roy, you do realise that your quote about openSUSE 11.x "being no way near other distros" was written in August 2007, that's 10 months before its actual release. I mean -- is a little intellectual integrity too much to ask for? Come on guy.

OpenSUSE's Slow Start: Only About 70,000 Installations a Week After Big Launch

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