Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

So I checked and there are about 2 billion PC's wordwide. Around 2 % of them uses Linux. So that's around 40 million.

And then probably Ubuntu takes a lot of shares here, they say they have 20 million daily users but have also stated like 40 millions or something. And then there are more popular distros like Debian, Fedora and the like.

So is maybe 1 % of Linux users using Puppy? That would mean maybe 400'000 seems high given there were 30'000 or so users at the old forum and the facebook group for Puppy has around 4'000 users.

So how many people do you think uses Puppy Linux? 80'000? 40'000?

If it's 80'000 users that is only 0,004 % of computers using it or in effect maybe 40 people in one million. Seems a bit high what do you think?

Bear one thing in mind; not every computer user joins a forum to chat about stuff.

The old forum probably had 5 or 6 times as many "lurkers" as registered users over the course of its lifetime.....and if most of those can achieve what they need to know, merely by reading other folks' posts, what reason have they got to register..?

That estimate is probably pretty accurate for most Linux forums. As an example, I'm registered over at LinuxQuestions.org. Some of their members have been registered for over 20 years, yet in all that time may have perhaps made just a handful of posts.....

Statistics can be manipulated to present facts in any way you want them to. I think, in all honesty, that there's an awful lot more Puppy users than would care to admit to it.....though that IS just my personal opinion.

Yours may well differ.

Mike.

Less than 10 years ago the biggest Australian bank recommended doing banking with live Puppy Linux for security.

Limited typing on Android: reason for your interest? Belief or knowing about anyone else's?

Related: viewtopic.php?f=145&t=2973&p=26288&hilit=Organic#p26288

@JASpup, are you refering to me? In my country there is a saying that goes a bit like: "talk out from the beard", which means kinda speak your mind, don't be vague, say what you want to say clearly. Vague implicit accusations is something I don't appreciate. So let me "speak out from the beard": I have no hidden agenda whatsoever to ask what others here think about the numbers using Puppy. I do not in any way work for a large corporation that would want this kind of information. I am a very very very totally honest person I hate all kinds of spying and hidden agendas. Also, why would any large corporation or anyone dishonest care about Puppy Linux, there ain't many users of it compared to other Linux distros and Linux is only used by like 2 % of PC's. So I do not think there is great interest to be honest. And I would assume there would be even less interest in Puppy, given that for example on distrowatch it is like at place number 18 in popularity (I guess based on how many visitors check the page regarding it there, not downloads or amount of users), way behind Ubunty, Fedora, Debian, Mint and MX Linux for example. My reason for opening the subject is I think it's kinda interesting how many people would use an OS like Puppy.

For me there was quite a learning curve.

And personally I don't care for many people using the same OS as I use. One reason would be to have good community where one can ask questions and solve issues and the like.

But it is still interesting and I assume a lot of the people who put up versions for downloads are active here, so they would know approximately how many people have downloaded the .iso files, which would be an indication. But then also they could share the .iso or decide not to run Puppy after having tried it out or something. But then some people could be using old versions, but then app support would be limited I suppose, compared to something like windows or MacOS where you can often use new apps on older OS versions. Again, I don't mind this.

And sure there may be more users than forum members. But me, starting out I needed to ask quite few questions to get going and I have a lot experience with computers and the like. And this forum has only got like 1'500 members. With ten times as many people visiting sure there may have been 20'000 people or more checking out this forum. But sure there may be users around that don't need to check the forum or may have gained knowledge from the old forum or something (or registered users that don't bother to login), but that was down for quite a while so I guess for new users to find out about things they would have to visit this forum, that at it's peak has had 107 visitors at the same time. But even if we assume that only one in four users would visit a forum to get info during like a year, that would still be around 80'000 which was my guess maybe.

I guess one reason for caring about numbers is that there is enough people involved, so that there is a community which does help with an OS like Puppy. And also that there is continued development.

All your figures are wrong. You've been mislead by photoshopping. There are only 10,000 people. They just keep changing their clothes and hair-styles.

O-kay. As I get to share on occasion, I was driven here by Mint, and to Mint by the final straw of not having access to Windows installation media on a machine bought with Windows pre-installed.

Mint was crashing, buggy, and I believe that had largely to do with system resources and pressing to be installed. It doesn't run live as well as Puppy.

There were other little things, like I came across two package installers, neither as good as quickpet or ppm.

Alas it comes in three desktop environments and though I like MATE best aesthetically, there is a reason XFCE is #1. It's a combination of refinement, usability and light-weight. I'm in it now because this machine is so fast it doesn't need JWM and I'm trying to ween off USB to live usage and it takes longer to customize JWM for live use.

Re. interest, I believe there's great potential both in increasing Linux's percent of pc installations AND Puppy's rank. In Economics we'd call it market share and growing the market, and look upon both favorably (i.e., resources would go there).

I also see central users are personally enthusiastic but do not care about expanding usage and are fairly chauvinistic about how it is used, as written on in my two posts on pg. 3 of Re: What if Puppy no longer worked?

There's pretense of the opposite, e.g., you are free to customize and use all the options, but ultimately you are the master of your desktop and we won't appeal to friendliness or popularity.

I would be interested expansion, but only if others cared. There would have to be another incentive that is not financial. I agree that you want a greater community pool to draw upon for support.

There is a great learning curve. It is not impossibly great but extremely time demanding.

I care about both users numbers and fix-it commiseration. They're correlated. I want the best tools most prominent, and I think Microsoft's model is harmful.

I've booted about a dozen Puppy versions but lately it's been just four, and if I were just 64-bit it would be two, Xenial JWM & XFCE. What's counted? What should be?

Mike3 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 01, 2021 9:25 am

@JASpup, are you refering to me? In my country there is a saying that goes a bit like: "talk out from the beard", which means kinda speak your mind, don't be vague, say what you want to say clearly. Vague implicit accusations is something I don't appreciate. So let me "speak out from the beard": I have no hidden agenda whatsoever to ask what others here think about the numbers using Puppy. I do not in any way work for a large corporation that would want this kind of information. I am a very very very totally honest person I hate all kinds of spying and hidden agendas. Also, why would any large corporation or anyone dishonest care about Puppy Linux, there ain't many users of it compared to other Linux distros and Linux is only used by like 2 % of PC's. So I do not think there is great interest to be honest. And I would assume there would be even less interest in Puppy, given that for example on distrowatch it is like at place number 18 in popularity (I guess based on how many visitors check the page regarding it there, not downloads or amount of users), way behind Ubunty, Fedora, Debian, Mint and MX Linux for example. My reason for opening the subject is I think it's kinda interesting how many people would use an OS like Puppy.

For me there was quite a learning curve.

And personally I don't care for many people using the same OS as I use. One reason would be to have good community where one can ask questions and solve issues and the like.

But it is still interesting and I assume a lot of the people who put up versions for downloads are active here, so they would know approximately how many people have downloaded the .iso files, which would be an indication. But then also they could share the .iso or decide not to run Puppy after having tried it out or something. But then some people could be using old versions, but then app support would be limited I suppose, compared to something like windows or MacOS where you can often use new apps on older OS versions. Again, I don't mind this.

And sure there may be more users than forum members. But me, starting out I needed to ask quite few questions to get going and I have a lot experience with computers and the like. And this forum has only got like 1'500 members. With ten times as many people visiting sure there may have been 20'000 people or more checking out this forum. But sure there may be users around that don't need to check the forum or may have gained knowledge from the old forum or something (or registered users that don't bother to login), but that was down for quite a while so I guess for new users to find out about things they would have to visit this forum, that at it's peak has had 107 visitors at the same time. But even if we assume that only one in four users would visit a forum to get info during like a year, that would still be around 80'000 which was my guess maybe.

I guess one reason for caring about numbers is that there is enough people involved, so that there is a community which does help with an OS like Puppy. And also that there is continued development.

I see the actual access logs to this forum and the murga forum. I also have access to the logs on the original murga forum's server. These access logs are generated by the web server. Then I have gigabytes of logs from the database server that also tell a story. Then there are the logs generated by phpBB that detail who what when.

I am by no means in anyway trained in statistical analysis so the using the log's information to the fullest extent is not my mission. I look for errors in system function and overall system health with them. Otherwise I use log rotations to keep them trim. BUT one can see plenty of information on numbers of actual visits and page looks all boiled down to the "bounce rates".
Actually what pages are looked at and for how long is calculated into a value called the "bounce rate".

Now all these logs are fine and dandy but you want some sobering information? You should see what Google and it's Bots can tell us through the MANY tools Google provides and how detailed their analysis of what is what.

I see the final results and tallies of what statistics and information are collected and calculated by Google. Do any of these stat's tell us how many are actually using Puppy Linux? Not exactly, but we can tell who is interested in information about Puppy Linux.

Not surprisingly there are some very interesting IP's looking around at times.

Just a point of interest...... my wife and daughter use puppy linux, but neither is a member of this forum. Of course I use puppy also. I've also installed various puppies over the years on friends' computers -- generally not highly computer literate people, but friends who are poor and happened to have old laptops which were obsoleted by prior end of service windows versions. So I did the installations.

They are also not members of the forum. I provide very occasional support as needed for them. Since they mainly use email and browse, that's about all they need.

By this reckoning my single presence here actually represents about a half dozen Puppy users directly.

I also have naturally recommended Puppy to more computer adept friends, some of whom use it occasionally for fun or interest, and I also know for a fact that at least one does not belong to this forum -- people who do not rely on Puppy every day for a main OS generally do not have frequent enough or grave enough problems to sign up and discuss.

Similar to vtpup, above, I have installed puppy for about a half dozen friends, who are not computer literate. Other than the MD(friend), the others just email and surf.
However, none have gone to any forums.

@vtpup I also probably represent 25-30 people who I have installed a form of Puppy Linux for and loosely support. Listen to music, surf the net, some Zoom, word processing and more of the usual stuff. I don't think any one of them has even looked at this forum.

I also have Puppy's out there very specialized to run camera security and network video recording. Maybe some of the admin's of those might look here but more on the Zoneminder forum. So far those Puppy web servers run so solid they don't really run into a need to look at the forum all that often. Those systems that are usually isolated, need very, very few updates to the Puppy Linux operating system if any at all. Only zoneminder gets updated and the web server components as needed.

My wife (and 2 children) and my mother are both using Puppy linux , probably without knowing it !!!

I didn't know the Linux computers % was so small compared with the total of computers in the world.