DEs from my Transmission Client

WetGeek

I don't know if this can be relied on as an indication of popularity, but all four DEs have been available on my torrent server for the same length of time, and these are the seeding results so far.

It would seem that Budgie is the clear winner, and apparently almost nobody has been interested in GNOME during that time. Huh ...

Harvey

Pretty sure seed speed and latency to the peer has a big part to play on what seed a peer picks from the swarm to download from when there are several options. In my experience Plasma won, Budgie a close second followed by Mate and Gnome. So all you can really say is people that have a good connection to you prefer Budgie. There are many other variables to consider.

I have no doubt Budgie is the most popular Solus edition but seed ratios are not a good indicator. We would sometimes compare the initial seeding for new Solus releases on IRC. While Budgie was clearly popular there would be significantly different rankings amongst seeds, for some Mate was winning.

brent

Harvey but seed ratios are not a good indicator.

just passing thru here but what's the more palpable indicator of Solus DE popularity? Downloads from the main site page?
edit: probably updates provide the best data as well unless there are updates that are DE agnostic?

Harvey

brent
Solus does not track anything so there is no perfect indicator.

This is the closest we have https://discuss.getsol.us/d/40-what-is-your-favorite-solus-edition and that too is flawed. Not everyone uses the forums, not everyone that does use the forums voted. Additionally numbers naturally shift around all the time so now that the post fell out of popularity its just a snapshot in time of a poll we knew would never be a true indicator.

You can't even rank support requests from memory. One DE might just have more issues, but that too might be a false conclusion. Perhaps that DE just attracts more novice users so they need more help.

WetGeek

Harvey Solus does not track anything so there is no perfect indicator.

It's a good thing this wasn't important! Looking at the seeding numbers stimulated my curiosity. I never thought it was a scientific result.

brent

Harvey ok thanks. I know we have minimal telemtry but I thought you (solus) would have some weekly ticker like 'we pushed 7,456 Budgie updates, 6947 Plas, 6000 Mate, 6000 Gnome' this weekend.' Like you said, even if you did have a counter how much faith could you put in the numbers

brent

WetGeek Looking at the seeding numbers stimulated my curiosity. I never thought it was a scientific result.

Stimulated mine as well. Your seeding may very well be indicative of something as far as draw, though.

Harvey

brent I know we have minimal telemtry but I thought you (solus) would have some weekly ticker like 'we pushed 7,456 Budgie updates, 6947 Plas, 6000 Mate, 6000 Gnome' this weekend.' Like you said, even if you did have a counter how much faith could you put in the numbers

Just to be clear for anyone that reads this, Solus does not have telemetry. Some applications you use that are not made by us might depending on their settings, like google chrome.

Even if we implemented telemetry for downloads of ISOs it would be flawed as downloads != installs. I am not trying to be the fun police and stop people from speculating, I was one of the users that would share the seed ratios on IRC. 😛 Just pointing out Solus has no way of knowing and every method has its own set of flaws.

Staudey

Just to add a data point for fun:

brent

Harvey Just pointing Solus has no way of knowing and every method has its own set of flaws.

Gotcha. I love that Gnome can't be ruled out as #1 used DE. I also love this subject remains a mystery.