The polls are closed and the results are in. We once again had some extremely close races (including our first 3 way tie) and the large number of new categories this year certainly kept things interesting. Congratulations to each and every nominee. The official results:

If you have any questions or suggestions on how we can improve the MCA's next year, do let us know. Visit https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ce-awards-131/ to view the individual polls, which contain the complete results. Visit http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2020mca.php for a visual representation of each category on a single page.

--jeremy

Yeah, add a non-Linux category like "UNIX OS of the year".

-macOS
-OpenBSD
-FreeBSD
...
etc

...like I've been suggesting for the last two years now.

None of the winners had a majority of users supporting its categories. This screams for rank choice voting (RCV). I'm not a programmer, but this seems to be an app that can quickly get us to a majority winner with a series of if fi commands (e.g., if a candidate gets less than 1%, apply those voters' next choice until 1% = zero, if a candidate gets less than 2%, apply those voters' next choice until 2% = zero, etcetera, until a candidate has a majority, with honorable mentions to the runner(s)-up.) Let's do it this way next year. It'll be fun!

Yeah. Have permanent choices in some categories for veneration. ed(1). If you don't have the standard editor, then... Even if it gets 0, it should be left out of respect.
Or, you could have a "VENERATE" button for it below the poll. Just kidding. As for Rank Choice voting, that is an interesting idea. I would still want to see what percentage of people picked what as their #1.

It's not a popularity contest, really, it's not what "most" users (other than, say Firefox, Virtualbox or System76, in their categories) but what the admitted fragmented Linux community on this forum particularly picked as number ones. If I recall, the raw data, or something resembling it, is available if you want to manipulate it in your own manner such as rank choice after the fact.
Otherwise, it would remind me of the US presidential voting system (shudder) where the one and two percent candidates don't even show up in most results.

if Desktop Distribution of the Year - Ubuntu
File Mangager of the Year = Nautilus

Why not use Desktop Vendor as an example of that number crushing and show, what difference it would make...?

OTOH... it is after all only some 400 votes, so hardly worth making too big a deal out of the whole thing...

I'm interested in graphics editor, IDE, mail and security, so will go look for insparation now.


Thanks for the polls, LQ

Cheers!

As always, most of my favorites aren’t the majority’s favorites.

Me too. Does that make us UNIX saints?

I was shocked to see Konsole take terminal of the year.
I was also shocked (in a good way) to see Slackware win as live distro of the year.
Finally vi(1) was split four ways (elvis, vi, neovim, vim) and yet vim more than doubled emacs!
Oh well, M-x ewww probably doesn't support the polls anymore.
I wish ed(1) had made it.

ed(1) keeps being denied, sadly.

I actually use it quite frequently. If I get an error from a compiler or interpreter I can correct it without having to remember the line number, and type of error.
Had it been in the polls I would have voted for it this year.

In Ireland, We have a system of Proportional Representation for Elections which seems to be what is being requested. Candidates are voted for, and any candidate who reaches the Quota is deemed elected. The Quota = (Number of Votes divided by number of seats) +1. As 'Best' means there's only one place being awarded, the quota would be (Number of Votes divided by 2)+1.

The counting goes as follows

1. First preferences are counted, and can be extracted and mentioned separately.
2. The least popular candidate is eliminated. If the 2nd least popular won't reach the quota with the least popular's votes they are eliminated also, and so on up, until somebody could reach quota with 100% of the eliminated candidates' votes.
3. The second count counts the second preference of these eliminated candidates.
4. The least popular remaining candidate is eliminated, and his votes are divided by their next preference.
5. Repeat until somebody reaches the quota. If a preference is blank, discard the vote.
6. If nobody reaches the quota, elect the last remaining candidate without reaching the quota.

This can all be done in a spreadsheet, and is done here to give ammunition for pundits, and allow projections.

In most categories, anything voted for becomes a candidate. Candidates can be given as a list, for this reason. There's vi, vim, elvis, nvi, & many others. All were categorized as 'vim' or 'vi type editors.' Otherwise the plethora of vi type editors might allow emacs to win. Likewise a classification can/should be withdrawn if the same program has won a number of years in a row - VLC for example. I can't remember when that did not win.

There are tons of ranked choice voting web apps, so it might be fairly simple to use that method next year: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22r...voting+web+app

LOL

I am not shocked to see the winners, they are (most of the time) not my choices but, that's to be expected in a fragmented environment as this.

Living La Vida Linux!

I suggest adding some additional categories:

• Best Shell
• Best Prompt
• Best Tiling Window Manager (keep the generic window manager category though too)