I understand the reticence for more categories, but some missing categories are glaring:
* word processor or document authoring, that could include: LyX, LibO Writer, OOo Writer, Abiword, LaTeX
* statistical package: GNU R, Octave, Maxima, etc.
* automatic backup and sync: SpiderOak, Dropbox, Syncany, etc.

I keep drumming about these for a couple of years now, but apparently onto deaf ears. I'm not quite sure why you don't include these?

Thanks for the feedback.

We've done this in the past; participation was low and the category was not competitive.

This is almost certainly not of wide enough interest to dedicate an entire category to. We only have 30 polls and this is a small subset of a topic (programming) that is not a core focus here at LQ.

It's possible we'll switch out the backup category for this one next year.

--jeremy

Well, LyX is an awesome app, and I would love to be able to vote for it. I'm sure many LaTeX addicts roam around here, too. And document authoring is a topic that touches pretty much everyone, nowadays. But well, that's my view.


If you look at it from a programmer's perspective. Data analysis and computational tasks certainly rely on much programming, but are a breed of their own. This said, I would also expect low voter turnout for such a category.

Thanks!

Hey Jeremy- my $0.02 on this would be a poll that excluded webmail. Yes, webmail has become the defacto default for many, and hence overwhelmes non webmail clients, making the poll useless.

However, since one of the benefits of these polls is to clue folks into various options they might otherwise have overlooked, I think it might be useful to have a client side "MUA" poll next year. I guess one could argue that a web browser talking to a webapp is just as much of an MUA as something like PINE talking to a POP/IMAP server so maybe call it a "Power User MUA" poll. Webmail may offer convenience, but I've never seen one that even came close to a good client side MUA, e.g. Mutt, Sylpheed, etc.

For example, presently I am using Wanderlust on Emacs and it kicks butt on anything I've used previously when it comes to dealing with LOTS of email. Efficiently. Yeah, more of a pain to set up and not going to rock it on every feature under the planet, e.g. calendars, rss feeds, etc., but conveience is not _always_ the primary criteria and I've got other tools for those tasks. So it might be interesting for newer Linux users to see what some of us old school folks are doing. Maybe not....

To add to this 'Statement', I have re-Installed K-Ubuntu 3 times to get familiar with the structure of the "Mount" process. ALL IS WELL - just one comment, it takes so much time; I have a Pentium 3 processor with 2GB ram. Now I have to tackle the various panels and their content. I also need to find the 'Command Dictionary' I used to work with UNIX long ago and now I have to re-learn the language. The purpose of my interest in Linux stems from the fact that Windows Operating system is becoming impossible because by the time it comes out, there is all ready a new version. The only thing that seems to be the same is the 'kernel'. I just wish that there would be something for me to be able to use 'MicroStation Bentley V8i' with Linux because it seems like Bentley does not want to go that way.

Thanks

Sir, you are correct. The cloud is a convenience item. Only a fool would put the company's private data in it. I mean, come on, if the governments web sites get hacked regularly, and that's tough, the cloud is there for all to see. Yep, no cloud for me. Besides there are other and better ways to access private data.

Master Rod

I didn't see a category for DVD authoring application of the year. I recall it was included 2 or 3 years back.

If you're running on legacy hardware, especially circa PIII, I suggest you ditch the big DE's entirely (Gnome, KDE, Xfce) and opt for a lightweight window manager. OpenBox would be a good place to start. Lightest yet, imho, are the tiling wm's, e.g. Awesome, Scrotwm, etc. See the wm polls here for examples. Then pick and choose your apps carefully, w/an emphasis on lean and mean. I'll bet you can cherry pick apps that give you 80% of what you need with only 1/3 or the calories (and commensurate bloat) found in the DE standards. Caveat being that you're going to have to roll up your sleves and get under the hood to get these tuned to your tastes. The upside being that you'll actually learn something in the process.

Maybe try LXDE if you need the more cohesive integration of a DE. I used to run LXDE on a couple boxes for my kids on 700MHz PIII hardware and 1GB ram, but that was in earlier days of LXDE and I suspect it's fattened up a bit since then.

For something of a middle ground between WM and DE, maybe take a look at Enlightenment, wh/is extremely efficient (and my personal favorite), but even that is getting noticably heavier these days (E18) and moving more towards DE as they continue adding features. Hence, while I'm sure Enlightenment would be more responsive than KDE, I think it would still be a bit heavy for your hardware.

One thing for sure, you've found the right place for advice. Just make sure "whoever" is being sensitive to your specific situation and canback up their recommendations with technical considerations, and not just proseletyzing their particular fave. Check how many posts they've made. Reputation points can also provide some measure, as can blog posts, etc.

Now that the polls are over, here's one more request for next year: PLEASE allow to sort the results by percentages. It is so frustrating to make any sense of the results, especially in case of many entries and highly competitive polls.

Thanks for the feedback. While that unfortunately isn't possible with the software we currently use, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2013mca.php does give a nice visual representation of all polls.

--jeremy

Thanks. Statisticians don't like pie-charts; better use bar graphs:
And completely off-topic: Have you considered switching to more efficient than forums, StackExchange-like Q&A software, such as this open-source product: https://github.com/ialbert/biostar-central ?

Q&A software and forums have fundamentally different goals, so switching LQ to a Q&A platform wouldn't make sense (as LQ is largely about community and discussion). That said, we did launch a Linux and Open Source Q&A site called LinuxExchange quite some time ago: http://linuxexchange.org/

--jeremy

Didn't know the new site. Thanks. As for forums vs Q&A, I suspect then that LQ is slightly misnamed.

To be fair, when I named LQ almost 15 years ago I didn't imagine in my wildest dreams that it would grow to become what it has.

--jeremy

And to be fair, LinuxExchange looks like a good name choice for the Q&A site. I also looked quickly at the stats and it looks less popular than unix.SE.com.