openSUSE takes off
December 11th, 2006 by Kevan Barney 
Del.icio.us
There’s an interesting trend on display at DistroWatch.com. DistroWatch tracks average page hits per day for Linux distributions, and for last 30 days, openSUSE has jumped into the top spot, from its typical place in second. The popularity margin is even greater when you look at the last seven days.
Undoubtedly, the release of openSUSE 10.2 has a lot to do with that jump, but it’s also great evidence that openSUSE is still a top distribution, important to the community and to Linux users, despite a few predictions that openSUSE would lose support based on the dissatisfaction of some with Novell’s recent agreement with Microsoft. It also shows that openSUSE is not just about Novell, but about a broad community of developers and contributors who are committed to delivering the top Linux distribution for promoting the use of Linux everywhere, especially among traditionally non-technical audiences.
January 11th, 2007 at 5:59 am
[...] This is not the case….DistroWatch does not track download access, it tracks the average hits per day for each of its own distribution pages. Barney had highlighted the Distrowatch page hit figures on his blog in mid-December, using them to demonstrate popularity and alleged community support for openSUSE [...]
January 11th, 2007 at 8:25 am
[...] The problem with high profile stuff like this deal is everything is examined in even more minute details, and the latest news, about the deal being welcomed by the business community as judged from downloads, turn out to be untrue because the statistics quoted is about the number of hits on a open SuSE download page hosted on a website, which, while is an indicator of buzz around the open SuSE, does not track the actual downloads. Actual downloads are better indicator of whether people is really interested, as it means they take the time and trouble to get it. It is still an indicator because there is no guarantee the downloads where used to run the application. [...]
April 15th, 2009 at 11:01 am
This is very up-to-date info. I think I’ll share it on Digg.