Fedora Core 6 reaches the 1 million mark

Fedora Core 6 reaches the 1 million mark in just 74 days

http://distrocenter.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/01/08/1937206&tid=107

A mere 74 days after its release, Fedora Core 6 (Zod) has been downloaded over 1 million times, according to the project's leader. That works out to approximately nine downloads per minute for more than 10 weeks straight.

The Fedora team uses Cacti, an open source data-collection and graphing tool, to track and compute the metrics associated with the release's downloads. Cactus tracks the number of unique IP addresses that check in via yum for updates, rather than simply tracking the number of times FC6 was downloaded. According to comments made on the fedora-announce mailing list by Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack, "This metric is much more useful than tracking downloads, because it demonstrates actual 'installed instances' of FC6 that are making a connection back to our servers in search of updated software."

If you haven't read it already, this is the bible for the "if you can't figure it out on your own, you're not a programmer, don't know how a computers works and thus do not have the right to own a computer" Linux crowd:

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Every time I see something about Linux's popularity, market share, increasing usage (which is like 3 times a week) I'm always reminded of this oft-quoted article, which denies that there is interest in such a thing...

...but don't miss the bit about user friendliness, which is TOTAL BULLSHIT. I studied ergonomics in college: it IS an empirical *SCIENCE*. But then *I* studied it. Code programmers DON'T GET that's it's a SCIENCE and think that if it makes "sense" to THEM, that's good enough. An excellent article we had to read in ergonomics was in fact titled, "Why 'common sense' does not work"...

Well, *I* care about Linux's market share, considering how much time I've invested in it, and I'm very happy to read about this! The fact is that Fedora is but one of many distros, and I take many months to install a new distro (I'm still VERY happy with my FC5)... The point here is that those who downloaded FC6 represent a small percentage of Linux users, and this figure is very encouraging...

One does not have to be a part of the "if you can't figure it out on your own, you're not a programmer, don't know how a computers works and thus do not have the right to own a computer" crowd to find much wisdom in that article. No, not all of it is on target, specifically on a point that you highlight. A lot of it is on target. Linux *isn't* Windows and should not be.

Second, an important point to consider in this market-share business (something I also follow and care about) is that use of Linux outside the US specifically is exploding, especially in places where people are generally too poor to afford the latest and greatest hardware, much less the overprice, bloated pile of garabage that is Windows. Not just geeks are using it either. People who want to use a computer are starting out with it because it's free, and it works. I regularly leave open seeds to various distro .ISOs I have downloaded, and I keep track of unique IPs and the locations of those grabbing parts from me. Over 75% are typically outside the US.

Microsoft probably thinks (publicly) this is a good thing for them. It isn't ... at all.