先转一个中文的点评吧,英文原文附在后面
发信人: RealShrek (燃烧吧，小宇宙！), 信区: LinuxApp
标 题: 2007 年桌面 Linux 的一份统计zz
发信站: 水木社区 (Fri Aug 24 00:31:19 2007), 站内
著名的 DesktopLinux 今天发布了 2007 年桌面 Linux 的一份统计。如果想了解统计的具体内容和相关数据，还是请您看看原文，这里不再重复了。这份统计很有意思，很多数据也很有代表性，我就这份数据随便扯淡一下。
07 年最受欢迎的 Linux 发行版：SuSE
“有没有搞错，是 Ubuntu 吧！”看完上面那个标题，你一定会有这样的疑问。显然，单单从统计结果上来看，Ubuntu 确实以 30% 的使用率独占鳌头，但以 21% 使用率紧随其后的 SuSE 很有看头。06 年时，SuSE 使用率仅仅占 Linux 各发行版中 13%，而短短一年则有 8 个百分点的提升，这确实是很惊人的。而 Ubuntu 相对去年同期增长不过1%，从发展势头上看 SuSE 确实是后劲十足。因此，我说他是今年最受欢迎的发行版一点也不过分。
这个结果一定程度上也说明了一个问题：对于一款桌面系统，方便好用是根本，但漂亮也是不可或缺的。Ubuntu 和 SuSE 从易用性上在 Linux 发行版中都是佼佼者，但 SuSE 就是赢在了漂亮上。我身边很多人装过 openSuSE 后就再也看不上其它 Linux 发行版了。所以 Ubuntu 在 7.10 中迫不及待的加入 Compiz Fusion，也显示出 Eye Candy 对于个人用户还是非常必要的。
此外，Fedora 只占 9% 确实有点出乎我的意料，看来昔日 Linux 霸主 RedHat 彻底转战企业领域了。
桌面环境：GNOME KDE 平分秋色
作为 Linux 上最出色的两个窗口环境，GNOME 和 KDE 依然霸占着 Linux 用户的桌面。丰富的软件，以及大多发行版的预设是造成这一结果的原因。不过貌似很多高手都很喜欢秀 Xfce，不过我是懒得折腾那个东西，老老实实用 GNOME 吧。也许“怕麻烦”代表了不少桌面系统使用者的心态，所以就不难理解 Mac OS X 为什么那么火了。
浏览器：Firefox 的天下
对于 Firefox，Linux 绝对是一块儿沃土。这个后起之秀如今已经占据 60% 的 Linux市场，而另一款非常优秀的浏览器 Konqueror 虽排第二位，却落后他近 40 个百分点。但如今 Mozilla 基金会发展的重点似乎是 Windows 平台，我倒是觉得 Firefox 应该利用这个优势，为开源桌面环境的普及出点力。
作为 Web 开发者，估计恨不得全世界人都用 Linux，这样就再也不用做很多无用功去CrossBrowser 了。全都用 Firefox，世界太平了。
Email 客户端：Web Mail 时代到来
各项评比中，差距最不明显的就是这一项了。尽管 ThunderBird 相比第二名的 Evolution 要强大很多，但使用者却多不了多少。而 Evolution 看似领先 Kmail 不少，但那是因为 GNOME 领先 KDE 造成的差距。用哪个桌面环境自然用它配套的客户端了，要不然还要为满足依赖关系装好几百兆的包。
造成这种平均化的原因，我认为是如今大量的用户开始转向 WebMail 平台，而放弃了传统的客户端。Gmail 的推出彻底颠覆了 WebMail 的概念：超大的容量让你无须删除邮件；丰富的功能让你快捷的完成一切需要的操作。随着三大邮箱的跟进，如今 WebMail 已经具备了传统 Email 客户端软件的一切优点，取代它们只是时间的问题了。
Windows 模拟：速度第一
Linux 再好，应用还是不如 Windows 软件质量高（主要是一些商业软件）。因此 Linuxer 们还是常常要运行一下 Windows 程序救急。统计结果表明，更多的使用者还是倾向于用 Wine 这样的 API 转换平台，而不是虚拟平台。
其实 Wine 相对 VMWare 这样的虚拟平台，易用性兼容性等方面都差很多。但速度却非常的快。只要是 Wine 可以顺利跑起来的程序，速度和在 Windows 上跑没什么差别。在这个效率至上的时代，速度见长的 Wine 占了优势。
当然，随着虚拟化技术的不断发展以及硬件上（特别是 CPU）对虚拟化技术的支持，虚拟系统和本地系统的速度差距将会越来越小。到时候我估计 Wine 就不会如此风光了。
原文作者对 VirtualBox 的异军突起感到惊讶，因为它似乎还不如 Qemu/XEN 这样的虚拟环境有名。但需要注意的是，VirtualBox 是 Ubuntu 默认的虚拟机程序，这就是捆绑的力量。
其实现在的 Linux 系统确实非常好用了。要不是因为我实在受不了没有 Photoshop 造成的不便，我想我每天用 Ubuntu 的时间会比现在更长（现在写 Blog 还是会切回 Vista）。过于强调开源导致优秀商业程序的缺失已经严重制约 Linux 成为流行的桌面系统。当然，Windows 发展至今天这个程度，是十几年经验累积的结果。Linux 要想成为一个流行的 Desktop OS，还有很长的路要走。
英文原始统计统计资料:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8454912761.html
2007 Desktop Linux Survey results revealed Aug. 22, 2007
Analysis -- According to DesktopLinux.com's just completed survey, the number of Desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the past year, and Ubuntu remains their Linux distribution of choice.
digg this story
Since DesktopLinux.com's recently completed survey is a self-selected group, we can't claim scientific proof that the number of desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the past year. Still, this year's survey produced 38,500 votes versus 14,535 votes over the same number of days in a similar survey one year ago.
Part of the increase undoubtedly was because this year's survey received front page coverage on both Digg and the German news site, Heise Online. That said, we've also seen an increased interest in Desktop Linux, based on our own website statistics. We've seen significant increases during the last year both in terms of unique visitors and site page hits.
You don't need to believe our numbers or surveys, though. Dell and Lenovo didn't invest in pre-loading Linux desktops to win points with the cool Linux kids. Both companies did it because they want to make money with the Linux desktop. Dell, in fact, has expanded its Ubuntu Linux offerings both in the U.S. with its 1420 laptop line, in Europe, and in the Chinese office desktop market. Today, Linux desktops are a business, not just a hobby.
So, what are desktop Linux users of 2007 using?
Desktop distributions
The leading Linux distribution is the Ubuntu family -- 30 percent of our survey respondents are using Ubuntu or one of its sister distributions: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Edubuntu. While there are other distributions that owe a great deal to Ubuntu -- Linspire, Freespire, MEPIS, Linux Mint, and Pioneer all come quickly to mind -- we decided not to count them for Ubuntu this year, since some, like Freespire, have just made the switch, while others, such as MEPIS, are switching back to Debian, and Pioneer is going in its own direction.
Which Linux distros do you use on your home or office desktop system(s)?
(Click to enlarge)
Next in popularity, after the ever-popular Ubuntu family, comes the SUSE Linux family with 21 percent. In our survey, we found mostly openSUSE users (19.7 percent) with a scattering of SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) users (1.3 percent). This isn't too surprising, since our preliminary analysis of our survey data showed that the majority of our respondents were individual rather than corporate users.
It's also noteworthy that the SUSE Linuxes have taken a major step forward. In 2006's survey, the SUSE family came in a distant second place with only 13 percent of the user base. In terms of year-over-year growth, openSUSE and SLED were the real winners, in fact, with a jump of 8 percentage points. The Ubuntu family, by comparison, built on its lead by only 1.2 percent.
In third place this year we have "other Debian," which includes Debian and all of its relatives besides Ubuntu: Debian, Freespire, Linspire, Linux Mint, MEPIS, and Xandros. While this group, at 14.2 percent, may have dropped behind SUSE this year, if you add in Ubuntu -- the most popular Debian-based distribution of them all -- Debian once again dominates the desktop Linux landscape, accounting for near half -- 44.6 percent -- of this year's distribution votes.
The Red Hat/Fedora family -- which this year includes CentOS -- came in at the fourth spot with 9 percent. This represents a small loss from last year when Fedora had 7 percent, while Red Hat added in a mere 2.2 percent, for a total, including smaller Red Hat/Fedora-based distributions of less than 10 percent.
Finally, in our "top five," we have Gentoo, which also declined -- from 9.6 percent to 7 percent. After that we come to a group of smaller, independent distributions. Of these also-ran distributions Mandriva showed the best.
Perhaps the most surprising result of our survey was that PCLinuxOS showed so poorly. On DistroWatch, PCLinuxOS has been at the top of the site's page hit ranking for the last 30 days. Frankly, we're not sure why this popular, easy-to-use community distribution didn't do better. The site supporting it had recently had problems, but that problem's long been history. Perhaps, it's simply that unlike the other popular community distributions -- Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora -- PCLinuxOS doesn't have corporate backing. Canonical, Novell, and Red Hat all provide support and hardware partnerships for their community distributions that PCLinuxOS can't match.
Desktop environments
The desktop environment results held little in the way of surprises. GNOME, in large part because it's Ubuntu's default desktop, came in first with 45 percent of the users. KDE took second place with 35 percent. Interestingly, this is the first time in DesktopLinux.com's surveys that GNOME has out-polled KDE. Signs of a looming upset in standings were apparent last year, when KDE scored 38 percent and GNOME was right behind it at 35 percent.
The only "shocker" this year was that Xfce took third with a substantial 8 percent of the vote. In fact, 20 percent of our survey's respondents indicated that they use desktop environments other than the big two. Given this, and the loss of KDE's desktop dominance, it strikes us that there's still a chance for some other Linux desktop environment to make a go of it.
Which windowing environments do you frequently use on your Linux desktop(s)?
(Click to enlarge)
Browsers
You can probably guess without even looking at our graph of the survey's results what the most popular Linux web browser is. If you guessed Firefox (aka IceWeasel), you'd be right.
Which web browsers do you frequently use on your Linux desktop(s)?
(Click to enlarge)
Linux users love their Firefox, with 60 percent of all users making it their web browser of choice. Trailing in the rear, you'll find KDE's Konqueror, with 14 percent, followed by what I find an interestingly strong performance by Opera, with 12 percent, and then the rest of the crew.
Email clients
Thunderbird, Firefox's email sibling, is the most popular Linux email client, but it's not nearly as popular as Firefox. Thunderbird commands the loyalty of 37 percent of Linux users, but Evolution is right behind it at 32 percent. KMail takes third place with 17 percent. We also found that many Linux users -- over 10 percent -- have abandoned email clients for web-based email systems like Google's Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
Which email clients do you frequently use on your Linux desktop(s)?
(Click to enlarge)
Running Windows applications on Linux
When it comes to running Windows applications on Linux, nearly half of our survey's respondents -- 39 percent -- say they simply don't bother.
Which of these methods do you use to run Windows apps on your Linux desktop(s)?
(Click to enlarge)
Of those that do, many turn to Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator ), which runs the Windows API (application program interface) on top of Linux. More than 44 percent use Wine for their Windows applications needs.
I suspect that many Wine users actually use Wine with the help of programs that makes deploying Windows applications on Linux easier. However, of the two most important of these programs, Cedega, which specializes in running Windows games on Linux, and CrossOver, which focuses on Windows business and productivity applications, only 6 percent of our survey respondents said they used Cedega, while even less, 5 percent, said they used CrossOver.
What they did use, however, was VMware, the well-known proprietary virtualization program, which was selected by 27 percent of all users. In third place was something of a shocker: VirtualBox, with 8 percent. Why a shocker? Well, here at DesktopLinux.com, we like to think we've at least heard of all the popular Linux virtualization programs -- Xen, KVM, etc. -- but we've never heard of this one. Needless to say, we're going to be taking a closer look at VirtualBox soon.
Based on our survey results, we think that everyone should be taking a closer look at desktop Linux. What we see here is a quickly maturing line of desktops that are capable of replacing Windows desktops for both home and business uses.
The Linux desktop is gaining quickly in popularity, and it's not because of technology-happy fans. It's gaining users because it's an inexpensive, secure, and efficient alternative to today's mainstream desktop operating systems. After all, 38,000 plus users and two major PC companies can't be wrong.
For the full results of our survey, see the raw data on the DesktopLinux.com survey site.
--Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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