On 20 December 2006 03:58, Grant wrote: > I think other posters to this thread may be trying to compile a > similar set of statistics, but I'll just come out and say it. Can we > compare historical data on the number of Gentoo users and the rate of > Gentoo maintenance and growth? Conceptually, I would think a 2-axis > chart along with three plot-lines would be appropriate. Which data > points should be plotted? We need something to represent users, > maintenance, and growth.
As others have said, it is next to impossible to determine the number of users to any degree of accuracy. Commercial distros can at least tell how many sets of CDs/DVDs they sell, although that doesn't give them the exact number of users either. It is even more difficult for distros like Gentoo where everyone can download the stuff. The Polytechnic of Namibia maintains an unofficial Gentoo mirror. So everyone around here that can access their network uses their mirror. Those downloads are invisible for Gentoo. I maintain one portage tree and install all my customers' boxes from it. These installations are even less visible to Gentoo. I can't think of any method to get real numbers. Uwe -- A fast and easy generator of fractals for KDE: http://www.SysEx.com.na/iwy-1.0.tar.bz2 -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
