The polls are closed, the data has been audited and the results are in. Here are the official results for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards:

Distribution of the Year - Ubuntu (26.44%)
Live Distribution of the Year - Knoppix (26.22%)
Browser of the Year - Firefox (74.61%)
Database of the Year - MySQL (61.68%)
Office Suite of the Year - OpenOffice.org (89.79%)
Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (56.58%)
Video Media Player Application of the Year - mplayer (41.93%)
Video Authoring Application of the Year - Kino (27.81%)
Audio Media Player Application of the Year - amaroK (57.07%)
Audio Authoring Application of the Year - Audacity (67.07%)
Multimedia Utility of the Year - K3b (69.51%)
Messaging Application of the Year - Gaim (51.52%)
Window Manager of the Year - Fluxbox (21.44%)
IDE of the Year - Eclipse (34.47%)
Mail Client of the Year - Thunderbird (52.74%)
Text Editor of the Year - vi/vim (38.42%)
Graphics Application of the Year - GIMP (65.60%)
Security Application of the Year - nmap (20.94%)
Windows on Linux Application of the Year - Wine (50.10%)
Web Development Editor of the Year - Quanta (36.34%)
Shell of the Year - bash (89.45%)

A big congratulations to all the projects that were nominated this year. The number of quality projects out there is truly impressive. We once again had a record turnout, so a thank you is also in order for the LQ members who make initiatives like this such a success. For winners, a certificate and site badge will be available soon. As always, the full results will be available at http://www.linuxquestions.org/awards until the nominees for next year are announced.

--jeremy

Next year can we have server distro of the year?

Most were what I expected excpet for K3b, which I didn't think was really considered a multimedia program (used it for cd & dvd burning). Hmm, still learning.

That was fun! Now let's do it quarterly!

On a side note, even those that didn't make it shoudn't be overlooked.

Glad to see that only about 30% of the winners were my own picks. When I find myself in the majority, I'll know I'm doing something wrong.

I know it isn't precisely true, but I have to confess, on reading this list, I was quite depressed: when we started, Linux was supposed to be about choice but it has become a broken record playing the same lines over and over and over and over. How many times has GIMP won this poll? Or Kino, or mplayer or ...

and what relief might there be on the horizon as alternatives to most of these? It's nice that Ubuntu has come along as a viable Upsetter, and I plan to check out this Fluxbox thing if only for the YokoOno-connection to the name! But the rest? sigh -- I thought this was supposed to be about choice.

You can choose not to use GIMP or mplayer or whatever. There are alternatives out there... GIMP and mplayer are just the best of the bunch, and that consistently.

In the field of browsers, even though Firefox won with an overwhelming majority I don't use it, because I don't really like it that much, to tell you the truth. I'm coping fine... same goes for thunderbird.

It's interesting to look at the polls themselves to look at the things that came in second, e.g. in the distro of the year, slackware wasn't that far behind ubuntu.

Perhaps this shows that most people does not like change, if something works and works well they'll stick with it.

I don't think we should be too quick to lament a lack of choice ...

Of the 21 categories, 9 winners won with less than 50% of the vote, which means there must be a significant amount of choice in those areas at least, and a further 6 won with what I would call close to 50%.

Sure GIMP, mplayer, Firefox and OpenOffice dominate their categories, but they're areas where users demand a fairly high level of performance, and they're lot of work to build and maintain, so I don't think we should be too surprised about those. Even in the commercial software world I imagine Photoshop enjoys a similar majority, and we all know MS Office does ... maybe not so true for media players and browsers, but that's probably because they're seen by their makers as vehicles for popularising the particular proprietary technologies that they support, rather than as pure software offerings.

I've been using Linux for a long time and I get used to using things and doing things the same way. This poll illuminated some new projects and applications I hadn't known or bothered trying in the past. This year it was Amarok. Never even *bothered* to fire it up. I've been using xmms for years. I tried Amarok because of this poll and I think I'm going to switch permanently!

Another one was Wireshark. I haven't tried this one yet but I will based on the recommendations of others.

I was *shocked* at the distribution of the year results. I thought Suse and Red Hat/Fedora would do better. Suse was number 3 which is still good. Hell, even Debian beat out Fedora this time. I've always hated Fedora/Red Hat, even as far back as 1995! So I'm glad to see others are finally moving away from it too. It has nothing to do with company size for me and everything to do with usability. Red Hat has always been a pain to configure and customize. I'm glad to see Ubuntu doing well. Can't believe there are so many Slackware lovers still out there as it came in number 2! That really warms my heart, as Slackware it my all time favorite.

Another new thing for me was Beryl. No plans on trying it but I'm glad I know about it now.

Once again, great Member's Choice polls. Now if we could only get Slackware to be number one again like in 2004;-)

you know I've been a Linuxer for some time now and I'm sick n' tired of watching people coming up with yet another way of doing the same thing with a different feel/look/sound to it. It's time to move to customizable software vs the non-ending variants on the same thing. A great example is KDE, you can tweak it to look and behave almost exactly like you want it to. Whenever I hear of yet another multimedia program offering me nothing new, I'm getting that much closer to a breakdown. This is not the way forward, it's just a way of saying I'm different for difference's sake. Start wearing your shirt w/o a tie or your hat on backwards if you feel so ordinary..

I second that, plus rate a few specific servers, too. I'd be curious what folks would rate as the best mail server...

i'd say this's a rather disappointing results, these results are only based on popularity not actuall advancement in these products, i bet these were the same winners last year too, at least most of them are! well, i hope that changes next year =)

I am not sure how it is actually done but gives the absence of a number of applications I used from the shortlist I would suggest that we should ask people to nominate their favourite programmes before the poll starts next year. For example Quod Libet, Exaile and Listen! are missing from the list of audio players, Enlightenment - from DEs, Xara from graphic apps and mousepad from text editors.

well, i am a n00b. So i can't comment much but I think Ubuntu deserves it.

Yes it is about choice and we have chosen! You act as if other OSes give lots of choices. What a ridiculous comment.