Seven Percent

[Andy Green]

Results from the 2006 Desktop Linux Survey

15,000 voters... still, self-selected.  Anyway -->

''...
Ubuntu, with 29.2 percent of the vote, has been the hottest community 
Linux since early 2005. While this Linux has had its problems lately, 
such as the update fiasco on August 21st and 22nd, users continue to 
download, install, and love it.

And, why not? It's an excellent distribution. It's not just users who 
think this; reviewers have also labeled it the Desktop Linux Champ.

A little closer peek at the data, and some comparison with the 
Distrowatch page hit list, reveals that "classic" Ubuntu with the GNOME 
interface is the real winner. Kubuntu, with its KDE desktop, and the 
educational Edubuntu distributions have their fans, but Ubuntu is what a 
plurality of Linux desktop users appear to be running today.

In a distant second place, with 12.2 percent, we find Ubuntu's ancestor, 
Debian. Close behind it, there's openSUSE with 10.1 percent of the 
users. If you included in openSUSE's totals its corporate big brother, 
Novell's SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) numbers, 2.9 percent, the 
SUSE-twins would be in second place with 13 percent.

After this, we come to what I think of as the first surprise in our 
survey. Gentoo took fourth place with a total of 9.6 percent. Gentoo, to 
me, is a Linux expert's Linux. I know many serious Linux users who work 
with Gentoo to better understand Linux, but almost no one who uses it as 
their first choice for day-to-day work.

In fifth place, we find Fedora, Red Hat's community distribution. 
Fedora, while still somewhat popular with 7 percent of the vote, seems 
to have lost some of its charm to users in the last year.
...''

http://desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5816278551.html

Does it matter, so long as there is some arbitrary population of users? 
  Is ubuntu up there, with basically the same stuff in it as Fedora, due 
to PR alone?  Should Fedora compete, does it having any meaning with a 
Free OS?
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