Mandriva on Distrowatch

[adyx]

When  e.g. the Mepis community launched the "increase the Mepis ranking on distrowatch" campaign, not only they, but Mepis itself got blaimed for this action.

 

I did not know that this idea was used by another community. Interesting. So this bring us to another subtile conclusion. People are interested by Distorwatch if the "modification" of the results bring such reaction from the users :)

[arctic]

People do not get a "hint" by checking distrowatch but by checking various forums and stumbling on these rather counterproductive threads. Distrowatch actually has nothing to do with this. It is mostly "veteran Linux users" that get upset with these campaigns. And for a good reason. After all: ALL distributions on distrowatch are Linux or BSD distros. What name they have is only of secondary importance! And those "improve the rank" campaigns hurt the overall image of Linux even outside the Linux community and leads to unnecessary flame wars between Linux users.

[pmpatrick]

A.I., I agree with your observations.

Also, I'm not accusing anyone of cheating. I think there is clearly a campaign to elevate the ubuntu score but I assume that these types of campaigns are within the rules of distrowatch. As to whether we should launch a similar campaign, assuming the rules permit it, I agree with everyone here that it would not be advisable to do so. IMHO launching that type of campaign is a tacit admission that your distro couldn't receive a decent score without such extraordinary efforts.

[adyx]

I think you are right at list on the most of the arguments, but: I am a "veteran" user, I think that this kind of projects are not started by beginers. The best page to find dedicated pages on the Internet is the Mandriva Page on Distrowatch. The name of the distribution and the distribution itself have a great importance, it's not the same thing to use Gentoo and Mandriva even both of them are Linux distros. I belive that you will not like Linux anymore if someone will force you to use different distro motivating that is the same thing. We are different and Linux distros are a reflection of that differences, in fact a reflection of us.

[adyx]

Also, I'm not accusing anyone of cheating. I think there is clearly a campaign to elevate the ubuntu score but I assume that these types of campaigns are within the rules of distrowatch.

 

Good point.

I think that we have found some interesting ideas in this topic.

Edited September 28, 2005 by adyx

[arctic]

I think you are right at list on the most of the arguments, but: I am a "veteran" user, I think that this kind of projects are not started by beginers.

I disagree here. My experience is that these things were started by users who switched to a distro only some weeks/months ago

The best page to find dedicated pages on the Internet is the Mandriva Page on Distrowatch. The name of the distribution and the distribution itself have a great importance, it's not the same thing to use Gentoo and Mandriva even both of them are Linux distros. I belive that you will not like Linux anymore if someone will force you to use different distro motivating that is the same thing. We are different and Linux distros are a reflection of that differences, in fact a reflection of us.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My opinion is that all Linux distributions are basically identical, as some 90% of commands and config files are identical, the Kernel is almost identical and the software you have is also almost identical. But all of these distributions have their very own touch, based on the audience they want to attract/ what they were packed for.

 

I could use Gentoo (and did it once) and I can use Mandriva (still doing it). Both offer Gnome or KDE, both have Firefox, both use Xorg, both use a 2.6 kernel, both have some 6000 packages available... so where is "basically" the difference? The differences are too subtle for me on the "desktop-oriented distros" for really saying: distro A is totally different from distro B. And once you know your way in and out in Linux systems, switching to a different distro is basically not a big problem. You will adopt to any distro very fast. The only "major" difference is in reality the package management and the basic selection of tools available. ;)

 

Of course, distros like IP-Cop or EnGarde are a slightly different matters as they are not "desktop oriented"

[mystified]

Like most people I don't care what distro watch says. My distro of choice (Gentoo) will never rank in the top and I really don't care. And even tho I'm a Gentoo user I still think Mandriva is a great distro but for me personally I just prefer Gentoo. But that doesn't mean that I think Gentoo is a better distro than Mandriva. Like arctic said, it's all Linux and it's all just a matter of preference. To me Ubuntu is just the "flavor of the month" and I don't really care about the hype. I've never used it because I'm quite happy with my distro and am not interested in it. So I really wouldn't worry about what Distro Watch says. Just use what you like. :)

[adyx]

That thing with "I can use any distro" is more or less true. Of course is the same structure or commands but in the real life this is not enough. It's like pretending you can love every woman. They are basically the same :)

Ok. Thanks guys, I have learnt a lot from this topic and I give up my idea. Once again, thank you.

[Reiver_Fluffi]

In all honesty, who cares about Distrowatch?????

 

I didn't even discover it until about a month after using Mandy. In fact I looked at ubuntu before Mandy, but I still chose Mandy. Most people, when getting their first insight either visit the site of a distro they know of, or google! For me google prompted me to go look at linux iso, yada yada!

 

So ok, Distrowatch's articles can be handy if you want to keep an eye on whats hapenning, but, in my opinion, its hardly the best place for noobs to browse distro's and take their pick. Again, who cares about distrowatch's rankings, especially when somewhere down the line, there will be a flaw in the statistics (i.e. outliers, etc) that will distort them!

 

What's the saying,

There's lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics!

Edited September 29, 2005 by Reiver_Fluffi

[arctic]

... It's like pretending you can love every woman. They are basically the same :)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Of course I can love every woman... if they have enough cash.

 

Just kidding. :D

[daniewicz]

Ahhh....MUB has a gigolo!

[adyx]

Belive me, sometimes even cash did't help at all.

[Rainer]

I don't think it matters too much whether Mandriva's actually no. 1 on Distrowatch - however, considering Mandriva's clearly one of the best general purpose distrubutions out there, it does deserve to be recognised as such (somewhere), and being comfortably within the "top 10" seems about right.

[ianw1974]

In all honesty, who cares about Distrowatch?????

 

I didn't even discover it until about a month after using Mandy.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I didn't know about distrowatch until this thread appeared :P

[Artificial Intelligence]

It's because you're slow, Ian

 

 

:P :D