Comment 2T7A Re: Debian is a dying project.

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Debian is a dying project. (Score: -1, Troll)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-10-01 02:17 (#2T19)

Debian is a dying project. It is like Mozilla and GNOME. Once, a long time ago, they were all relevant. But then they started to crap all over their users. That's one thing that an open source project or organization of any type cannot do: crap on its users. These users have ample choice. They will leave. Disgruntled Debian users have already moved to Gentoo and FreeBSD. Disgruntled Firefox users have moved to Chrome. Disgruntled GNOME users have moved to KDE and Xfce. I don't even think that Debian, Mozilla or GNOME can redeem themselves. Their names have become synonymous with getting crapped on. Soon their names will be synonymous with complete and utter failure.

Re: Debian is a dying project. (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-10-01 03:16 (#2T1B)

The parent makes some good points, and should be modded up.

I've been looking at the stats for my web sites lately, and over the past four years Firefox's usage has totally dropped off, while Chrome's has gone through the roof. This is consistently the case no matter which of my sites I look at, and even when I isolate the stats to specific geographical regions, or periods of time, or other such groupings.

Linux distros can die, too. Just look at Mandrake. It was once really popular. I think it was even at the top of DistroWatch's popularity list at one point. But now it's a has-been that is used by very few people. The same could happen to Debian.

When I look at my sites' stats and see Firefox go from 35% four years ago down to 7% today, while Chrome goes from 10% to 56% over the same time period, I think it's clear which project is dying and which is thriving. Hint: it's Firefox that's dying.

Re: Debian is a dying project. (Score: 2, Interesting)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-10-01 05:12 (#2T1C)

The numbers tell a different story. Chrome's market-share can only minimally be at the expense of Firefox... i.e. Chrome is more popular now than Firefox EVER was, and Firefox hasn't fallen dramatically off of it's brief highs... Instead Chrome's incredible popularity is almost entirely at the expense of Internet Explorer. So, if something is "dying" it's Internet Explorer. And yet, none of them are for-profit works, so 100% or 1% market share is all the same, and it's unlikely that any of them will "die." Getting caught-up in the market-share horse-race is a fool's errand that does no good for anyone.

With Debian, the claim it is dying is even more ridiculous. There's really no distro out there, free of systemd, that has a snowball's chance in hell of getting corporate adoption. Companies are never going to build their own Gentoo systems, and hardware/software markers would never support it. Whatever complaints you may have against Debian does not translate into it dying, or even losing the slightest bit of market share. If someone has some numbers, showing Gentoo or FreeBSD overtaking Debian/Ubuntu/Redhat/Suse, I'd love to see it. Otherwise, the claim is just an utterly and totally ridiculous and laughable bit of trolling.

A bit ironic, I know, as it's FreeBSD that's supposed to be "dying"...

Re: Debian is a dying project. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-10-04 13:20 (#2T35)

Firefox's market share has gone from the mid-30% to somewhere around 10%. So where exactly did that 20% go? You claim it isn't to Chrome, but it mostly is.

Both IE and Firefox have lost users to Chrome. But IE is clearly making a comeback. It's getting better, while Firefox is getting worse.

That's the difference between a dying project and a thriving project: a dying project is heading in the wrong direction, while a thriving one is improving.

Debian is heading in a very bad direction with the adoption of systemd. That's why it's a dying project. Like GNOME and Firefox, it's collectively making bad decisions that are ruining the user experience, and driving users away.

"Dying" doesn't mean "dead", either. Debian could very well come back, if they're smart and ditch systemd now, before the community is too fragmented.

And FreeBSD was never dying. The whole idea behind those comments at /. was that they flew in the face of reality, and that's what makes them amusing. FreeBSD has always been a thriving project.

Re: Debian is a dying project. (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-10-06 05:33 (#2T4K)

Firefox's market share has gone from the mid-30% to somewhere around 10%.
Nope. Numerous sources put it at 15% to 21%:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table
So where exactly did that 20% go? You claim it isn't to Chrome, but it mostly is.
I didn't claim that at all.
But IE is clearly making a comeback.
Also completely wrong. Through August 2014, IE has continued falling, with absolutely no indication of a rebound. W3Counter, Clicky, and StatCounter stats all say exactly the same thing. A straight fall for IE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Historical_usage_share

Here's a graph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_%28Source_StatCounter%29.svg

Firefox has fallen off it's highs, but not substantially.
Debian is heading in a very bad direction with the adoption of systemd. That's why it's a dying project.
You call it a bad direction. I call it a good direction. You are only predicting Debian will become a dying project in some distant future, with zero evidence to back-up that claim, just like your complete nonsense about browser share, clearly based on how you personally FEEL about them, rather than... reality.

Besides all else, if systemd is going to hurt Debian, it will necessarily hurt every other Linux distro out there, so Debian is no worse off. Only Slackware/Gentoo is abstaining from systemd (for the moment), and they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of being adopted by corporations, in lieu of, say RHEL. FreeBSD similarly isn't going replaced the installed base of Linux distros. It's utterly and totally ridiculous to claim Debian is hurting, or going to hurt, because of systemd, when there is no alternative.

Re: Debian is a dying project. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-10-10 15:57 (#2T7A)

Actually according to StatCounter, in Germany Firefox is still the most-used browser, although it markedly went down from its peak of 62.25% in November 2010 to "just" 41.95% in October 2014.

Unfortunately data before Juli 2008 is not available; but since then, Firefox has consistently been the #1 browser; only the #2 has switched from IE to Chrome.

So if Firefox is dying, it still has a long way to go.

#browser-DE-monthly-200807-201410" rel="nofollow">

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