per this
http://distrowatch.com/

see right column on this page


What are big differences between Mint and Ubuntu?
Why more people using Mint nowadays??

That "right column" is a page hits counter not an actual user base statistic. I would be very wary of going off 1 statistic claiming that it is reality. LQs own statistic showed Ubuntu is No 1, Slakware is No 2, Debian is No 3 and Mint is 4th with Fedora 5th.

Because of unity...and the policies of canonical.

Point, but the same applies to LQ stats. But I'll admit that ubuntu probably does have more users than mint. The distrowatch page hits just shows that more people are dissatifed with ubuntu/canoncial and are checking out mint. A lot of them would be 'non-technical' users, or users with a limited understanding of linux and the distros IMO.

Yeah, but it is what it is. It is a count of people who were interested enough to click on a link to get more information. That's not a number of people who installed it (and stayed with it or gave up immediately), and it isn't even a list of people who ever intended to install it (I quite often look up release dates or versions for a reply, without ever having an intention of installing).

Note that if there is a buzz on the interwebs about something, a lot of people will look it up, 'just to see'.

Who said there have to be big differences; there will always be a 'grass is always greener...' crowd who will always be looking to change, irrespective of whether there are big differences. And, in this case, Canonical have made some controversial changes and made them in a way almost calculated to get people a little irritated (coming quite close to 'who cares what users want, this is what we'll force on them') and that was never going to be the most popular way of working, whatever you think of the technical changes.

Well it is probably true that more people are using Mint than once were

• the project is maturing
• it does a good job of providing what users want
• it is becoming better known over time

But, if you are trying to suggest that there are now more Mint users than Ubuntu users, I'm not sure that is supported by any real evidence, even if Ubuntu is shooting itself in the foot.

I also don't get why 'which is the most popular distro' should even be a question of much interest; do you have a distro that works for you, or not? If you do, why should what other people like have much relevance? If you don't, what do you need that you haven't got?

I don't quite see the connection to 'Distro X has put on 5% of users this quarter, and Distro Y has lost 5%' (or whatever the numbers might be); I can see 'Distro X has pissed me of by not supporting Y' or 'by including the not-yet-ready, and still buggy, Z', but I don't get the 'a lot of other people are moving, so I should to' idea.