Having written about a few methods of measuring popularity, including Torrents, Google Trends and Distrowatch Rankings I felt that I could try and draw some conclusions from all the data collected.

The problem is not so much talking about ethics as the fact that we have not been talking about the benefits of ethics. Instead of the four freedoms that appeal to developers, we need a similar list that explains what advantages free software offers for ordinary users.

Want to know what the most used Windows applications are, based on a real-time survey of 75,000 software tracked volunteers? The good news is that it ain't Internet Explorer which got an ass-kicking from Firefox and Google Chrome.

I just came across a discussion on Reddit why Ubuntu is the most popular distro? Everyone who comes to know about Linux first hears about Ubuntu. Why is it so?

Have you ever wondered which Linux distribution was most popular during the previous years? If you have, then you may be interested in some of the data that I’m going to present to you.

The first thing we can say about the Linux desktop in 2007 is that there are more users than ever. The Linux Foundation 2006 survey had fewer than 10,000 people signing in. This year more than 20,000 Linux desktop users reported in.

Distrowatch gives some pretty decent stats on the main Distros but for a while I've wanted to know how Google sees their popularity; mainly by how many pages mention specific distros.

In a mildly childish attempt at putting the popularity of Ubuntu into real context, I've enlisted the help of Google trends to benchmark searches for "Ubuntu" against other words. Mindless spam or important sociological experiment? You decide.