I’ve recently read the results of a survey on DesktopLinux.com that shows how Gnome “seems” to have more users than KDE. This image is from their website:
I don’t believe that, and you’ll soon see why.
(This is not AGAINST Desktop Linux, by the way: I’m just trying to see things in a clearer way. This is not against KDE or Gnome, either. I’m not discussing their quality, but just their diffusion in the planet.)
PRINCIPLE: If we have two similar products, and they’re both internet-related in some way, we can guess their diffusion simply comparing their “ranking” among search engines and stuff like that.
A) I took the first four sites about KDE and about Gnome, and these are their “web popularity” results:
You can see that KDE gets +2 Pagerank in total (I know, it’s not linear, but you get an idea), and better overall Alexarank than Gnome (remember that lower is better).
B) Now let’s see their Link Popularity:
KDE gets ten times link popularity on Google/AOL/Hotbot, and a slight advantage on Yahoo/Fast/Altavista. Remember that it’s more difficult to get links counted in Google.
C) If you search Google, Yahoo! and DMOZ, you’ll see that…
Googling for Gnome: 35,500,000 results.
Googling for KDE: 70,000,00 results.
Yahoo!ing for Gnome: 30,100,000 results.
Yahoo!ing for KDE: 63,100,000 results.
Dmozing for Gnome: 315 results.
Dmozing for KDE: 595 results.
So, my dears, I guess KDE still holds the throne, in terms of popularity.
I’m pretty sure, though, that with the rise of Ubuntu among Linux distributions, and its wider diffusion than Kubuntu, Gnome is getting much attention, and will soon compete for the first place!
Hope you enjoyed my reasoning; feel free to comment if you have suggestions.
UPDATE: It seems that results were in some way faked at the end… see here: http://dot.kde.org/1187823215/1187853706/. Fast: the last 10,000 votes were mostly OpenSuSE and Gnome… a suspect pattern, isn’t it?
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17 Comments
Thanks Ubuntista, I didn’t believe too that Gnome was more popular than KDE… your stats seem to confirm that!
Cheers,
Hmmm… those are not strictly scientifical data, either!
But anyway, they’re not so bad after all!
This is pretty weak evidence, tbh, although there’s an interesting discussion on dot.kde.org where multiple people report the same very odd results - over a few hours, the results were skewed *massively* in favour of the combination OpenSuse/GNOME/Firefox/Evolution/some virtualisation option, which is even more weird since Opensuse’s survey shows that its users prefer KDE to GNOME by about 72%:22%.
I mean, do we really believe that Opensuse gained a whole 10 percentage points in one year or, even more unbelievable, that the buggy and bloated Evolution stole 7 percentage points from the wildly popular Thunderbird over the course of 1 year?
Yeah, KDE is more popular than Gnome… your point is good.
Pretty week stuff…
What’s the first chart prove exactly? Maybe just that KDE users see the need to tweak their desktop more than GNOME users? Otherwise the GNOME/KDE “main sites” seem pretty much the same. You post kubuntu up there but fail to leave off ubuntu… hmmm… And what does gnomefiles correspond to.
I would tend to trust the DesktopLinux survey results more - if anyone were to come out “in force” I’d think it would be the hardcore KDE users, but that did not happen…
Your “research” is pretty circumstantial… don’t quit your day job…
BooRadley: i’m not a statistic expert, I’m just trying to point out that KDE is more popular than Gnome on internet, and thus, being two similar products, I infer that KDE is more popular among users.
For the first chart: I’ve chosen the first 4 sites on a google search about “kde” and “gnome”.
In any case, I’m not quitting my job, I perfectly know that this kind of stuff is NOT my kind of expertise.
Please keep commenting… I like, believe it or not, intelligent and motivated commenters, even when negative
Thanks!
Oh my, you really can’t accept it! Check the previous 2-3 yearly surveys, GNOME share keeps growing and KDE keeps going down. Check http://www.google.com/trends?q=GNOME%2C+KDE&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 as well (and I don’t think that so many people are looking for garden gnomes)!
Francesco, I don’t have problems with Gnome winning on KDE. I’m just trying to get more elements to REALLY understand which one is more popular.
By the way, your note on google trends is very interesting, and shows that Gnome and KDE searches have similar numbers.
obviously the results where faked. See: http://dot.kde.org/1187823215/1187853706/
costa: great suggestion, that link explains a lot.
Yes, it explains that some people really can’t accept what they don’t like. The site doesn’t report the news, the commentators try every possible way to refuse the reality. Disgraceful.
@Francesco: I’m sorry, what? That was a comment by someone on an article, not an article on the news site.
@Francesco
well, google trends don’t mean much..because “a gnome” in english is also part of the widespread fantasy subcultre.
and c’mon let’s speak our minds.. gnome is doomed
What with the popularity?, they are Desktop Environments not a spring queen election…
Gnome is different to KDE ’cause is like in pieces, at least that’s the way I see both desktops, I like them both, but I prefer GTK…
I don’t know why put a crown to the KDE symbol or things like that…
PD: I forget to put this in the comment, but obviously there will be more KDE webs ’cause KDE is older (2 versions older in fact) that Gnome =)
biomega: web popularity is a “rough” way to get an extimate… if you use something, you’re probably going to write about it sooner or later.
The fact that KDE is more web popular means something.
KDE is older, right, but at that time, web was very small.
Yes, but it still being a difference of dates…
Gnome-Look was creater after KDE-Look… asdf
And popularity is something irrelevant… windows is more popular than linux…
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[...] Vi spiego perchè, nel mio blog inglese (la terminologia è molto semplice, non dovrebbe essere un problema capire): http://www.ubuntista.com/2007/08/24/the-truth-about-gnome-vs-kde [...]