Hi,

Two days ago I found this project. It basically trying to find 1'000'000 Linux users around the world.

If you know Linux / Open Source, and are proud of it, then go over and register.

Cheers,

Christian

I doubt that particular site will ever get a million users signed up on it, even the Linux Counter only has ~128K users (speaking of which, was there really any reason to create another site to count Linux users?), but there is without a shadow of a doubt more than a million Linux users in the world.

If you take into account people who are using Linux without even knowing it, in the form of devices which run an underlying Linux OS (TiVo, NAS devices, phones, many routers, etc), then that number would be much much higher. TiVo alone has over 3.5 million users.

@cwaidelich: That site appears to have ~200 registered users. A bit shy of the 1 million, but I guess it's early.

Manual registration (on an obscure site with a form that must be posted, no less) is not going to be a reliable way to get a count. Something like the smolt program - used by Fedora - is the right idea. But, in practice, even that is hugely limited because 1) it's optional; 2) it counts just one distro.

A look at package/source repository usage is another idea, but it would probably be difficult to organize and implement.

Could you be more clear on that point, I don't get it.

I always thought that it could be posible to implement like a registration key (free of course, look at avg) and start counting those keys. To be clear: The installation progress creates an install key. The first time you update, it registers this install key and creates a similar key on the server. That counts +1 linux base computer installation. When the user updates one more time, it doesnt count again.

What is the definition of a "user"?

I currently have 6 running distros:
Mandriva 2009.1 = my fileserver
Arch = my test machine
Mandriva 2009 = my wife's workstation
OpenSuse 11.1 = my mother's workstation
Mandriva 2009.1 as openbox client under Vista
Fedora 11 as openbox client under vista

Does that count as 1 user (all on the same ISP IP address)
or 3 users (3 people)
4 users (4 major distros)
5 users (5 distro versions)
6 users (6 installations)

In addition, I have probably downloaded at least 40 distros. I have probably installed at least 100 times.

I've installed: Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, OpenSuse, Debian, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, Puppy, Sabayon, CentOS, Arch, Mepis, Slackware, Kubuntu, Gentoo, Redhat (before Fedora), and LFS.

Would that make me a nightmare for an automated Linux user counter?

Thanks to all for discussion!

1 user = 1 human being

After registering there (and waiting for that to be "moderated") I see two of the last twenty, including me, use Mepis but the stats by distributing don't include Mepis.

coming soon ... i was in hospital till few hours ago.

ok, now i have another question: is this a general users counting, or is it a proud linuxer? i mean, my wife knows linux and she uses it, but she is not at all happy about it... so yes she could say she uses linux, but proud and defending it? i would say no...

@ cwaidelich: We are searching 1'000'000 people who know Linux as a platform and have fallen in love with it!

We are looking for the proud user!