Axel Braun composed on 2020-03-29 10:04 (UTC+0200):
But stll people look for these kinds on rankings....
IMO DW is not irrelevant. IMO it is a place people wanting or needing to leave Windows go to make comparisons among options, and for this purpose, it's good because of the way it tabulates objective characteristics, such as release dates and major package versions. I'm unaware of anything remotely like it to compare to. That to experienced Linux users it obviously is subject to distortions in its "popularity" system doesn't really doesn't seem to me would impact inexperienced users or non-user shoppers. Maybe most openSUSE users or those active as "marketers" don't want such users to be a cause of openSUSE growth. Maybe that's consistent with making "openSUSE the platform of choice for Linux developers and software vendors", but I don't see it as consistent with making it "the most widely used Linux distribution". It seems to me shoppers are likely to equate "rolling" to "unstable" or at least, to impacted by changes with higher frequency. Don't others here agree this could be so? The subject dual characterization is only the most recent thing about DW that bothers me. Those that bother me more and have probably been around longer are: 1-page count rankings, whether distorted or not, had Fedora and openSUSE in more or less tandem for over a decade. That's been history for some time now, as instead of zero separation in between there is now a growing number, currently up to 9, with Fedora remaining in the top 10 despite the possibly scripted distortions that seem evident. 2-There's nothing evident to explain away the misleadingly ancient official (SLE) kernel version in Leap. Who wants to begin a new existence with an "old" heart? As a problem hunter, fixer and non-optimist, I spend considerable time trying to answer questions on forums and mailing lists. I see fewer questions on openSUSE's own than in the past, and as a result spend enough time more recently on linuxquestions.org to get a feeling that DW popularity rankings may well be in line with actual usage. Even though they seem to have competent and active forums of their own, Mint, Ubuntu and more recently MX and AntiX users' questions dominate. When I try to gather info in trying to answer these, Ubuntu hits on Google are always prominent, while to find any from opensuse.org I need to include site:opensuse.org as a search term or navigate to hits beyond the first page full. The competence of openSUSE surely plays some part in low openSUSE support request numbers, but these things I routinely encounter, plus the number of board candidates running low and last minute, plus the number of Wiki pages still showing only long ago retired versions while absent current, give me the feeling openSUSE is in decline or stagnation, not growth. Only health reflected through BS activity, which I don't know how to track, and designer distros don't feature, seems likely contrary to decline. -- Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org