DistroWatch

[fiorello]

[Thev00d00]

=O

woohoo!

[emilio]

Hippy WOUUUU !!! |

[Fitzcarraldo]

You're a month late, emilio! SL has dropped to tenth place on today's 7-day DistroWatch page hit ranking. Not that the DistroWatch thing means anything, anyway. We all know that SL is no. 1, right?

[Thev00d00]

We all know that SL is no. 1, right?

Ill drink to that!

[turquoise]

Indeed. Champagne for everyone who thinks so.

Champagne pour tous ceux qui pensent que Sabayon est no. 1!

[WarraWarra]

SL rock's / No1 for me as well.
Distrowatch is cute for the few that know about it then click's the distro's link = counted = statistic or 100 clicks = 100 counts.

Just installed 3.4 kde and 3.5 xfce POD today to do some testing on wpa / new wifi router and every thing works on the live cd / installed = SL freaking awesome distro.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Actually this thread has made me pause for thought regarding SL's popularity.

2007 was SL's best year to date, at least according to Google search statistics: Google Trends: SL. Interest appears to have waned in 2008 and has more or less flattened out since, although perhaps there is a very gradual increase in the trend in 2009.

How can we increase SL's profile and get more people to try SL and, importantly, remain as SL users? SL has had some good press recently in Linux Format magazine, but we seem to be fighting an uphill battle with the likes of Ubuntu, SUSE and Fedora who have much, much larger user bases and publicity. At least interest in SL seems to be stable or very slightly increasing over the past 12 months, unlike e.g. PCLinuxOS: Google Trends: SL and PCLinuxOS.

The KDE 4 saga hasn't helped, although the SL developers at least recognised the problem and released a GNOME version of SL 4.1 first. Hopefully the improving stability and functionality of KDE 4.* will help matters in future, with newcomers encountering less problems.

Entropy was a sensible move, of course: the use of Portage alone would never allow SL to move into the mainstream. Much as I like Portage (it's what I use), it's just not appropriate for newcomers to Linux or to PCs: the possibility of breaking the installation and the complexity are just too much for beginners. So Entropy is a sound foundation for enticing new users.

The excellent visual makeover has had a very positive impact too. This looks set to continue, although beauty is only skin deep and SL still needs to deliver functionality reliably.

Is it just my imagination or are more people posting in the SL Forum about booting and networking problems recently? The latter I think is possibly more to do with 'upstream' deficiencies (NetworkManager). But the boot thing does surprise me a bit. Is this perhaps an area for further investigation?

Also, the ATI ebuilds seem to be causing some problems. SL 4.1 releases (GNOME and KDE) both use the AMD Catalyst 9.3 driver and the 2.6.29 Sabayon kernel. However SL 4.1 GNOME has ati-drivers-r10 which seems to work OK, whereas SL 4.1 KDE has ati-drivers-r11 which seems to not work OK with some ATI GPUs. I reiterate that they both download the same AMD Catalyst 9.3 driver; the main difference is in the patch applied. So it looks to me like an ebuild problem and not an AMD problem. Of course it doesn't help that, coincidentally, AMD has dropped support for some older GPUs (mine included) in the Catalyst 9.4 driver, but that's a different issue.

I believe SL already detects the ATI GPU during installation and chooses either the open-source Radeon driver or the closed-source fglrx (Catalyst) driver depending on whether or not the GPU is supported by fglrx. With the dropping of support of some more older ATI GPUs in the Catalyst 9.4 driver, this check needs to be rock solid for the next SL release or we're going to have a lot of people complaining of black screens with a blinking cursor in the top left corner.

Apart from statistics from the SL Bugzilla, I wonder if there is some way to mine statistics from the forums? It would be interesting to know the proportion of the various problems encountered by users.

[genfool]

How can we increase SL's profile and get more people to try SL and, importantly, remain as SL users?

In my circle of friends, the complaints I here of sabayon is
A: is gentoo, to much hassle or difficult.
B: To bloated for more advanced users.

I think the sabayon team has done a great job of addressing these issues. With entropy and sulfur, a novice can use sl right along with more advanced users who do not want to spend time compiling, yet...still can if they choose to use portage.
I believe the team is also on the right path with the introduction of choices for de or even no X on install. This option alone has sparked interest in a few I know, who prefer a leaner system. Also mce is an interesting twist that will draw people.

I think team is building a great foundation for the perfect os for all, from the beginner to advanced users. Sabayons best resource is the quality of the people behind it. The dev, simply are the best and all the others that help on this forum, irc and contribute to the wiki makes sl shine.
Just saying, with the hard work of the team and constant improvements of sl, There is no where to go but up. Sabayon certainly is not a slouch in current ratings.
My hat goes off to the team and all they do.

[WarraWarra]

At this time UP stream is the biggest problem and only way to find out is to test it in beta pre release or live and there is not enough guy's for beta testing or diverse enough hardware during testing to cover all possible problems. Stuff happens.
Possibly having a beta release same as 4.0 beta 1/2/3 might be a solution.

The word gentoo makes most people / linux users tremble as genfool mentioned and then the change from using other linux distro's and the old tech they use to ours is a leap of faith and takes a bit of time to get used too.
Win users changing might find it easier to go directly into SL dual boot or SL only install, learn once use many times and they will not go to other non gentoo distro's likely.
It is not just slightly different commands but /etc/rc.d/rc1 versus /etc/rc.conf this gets a few guy's.
The first 3 weeks is the critical time that can make or break a new users into any distro on any hardware. Once you are past this there is no looking back, you are either using SL or not after this time.

We can only do more exposure if you have a alternative method for new users to test before using, that is why I sometimes suggest vmware / virtualbox just to get the hang and then once ready dive into SL installed for new and skilled users.

It is also very difficult to say to someone here is 60mins to 8 hours dvd / small dvd download and then you can live cd /dvd it and test then the ati drivers or wpa or similar / lack of mc causes a few problems or all of them together. Not everyone can fix this easily.

For this reason I keep on hammering on about a cd / 700mb / 350mb version as base or stablelized ~x86 and then users can go from there and do their own thing or jump to the dvd / small dvd and have this as a more unstable beta testing version for the more advanced users. DO we really need 300mb of office or can we just use a small word processing program and after install download and customize to latest versions of what we might need ?

Alternatively we might be able to create a live cd that is like a demo that can not really be used for much except it runs thru what SL can do using the new users own hardware showing of compiz type desktop bling using generic ati or nvidia drivers that we know is stable / less problems. It can even download and run fixes to optimize this experience / use this fixed to install to hd.
IE: 700mb cd or 350mb cd + rest of 700mb can be used for this / compiz bling demo ??

The time and logistics in this can be a major problem so might as well skip and do a cd only and for advanced users get the dvd or alternatively "cd image + bin packages expansion image on a dvd" for custom SL build where the packages images can be xdelta'd to include fixes / alternative software to broken software ???

This way the new user can test and play then get serious about SL and the base / cd has limited packages that can only have a few problems = easier to fix than big brother dvd and thousands of packages / thousands of possible problems.

With a demo cd like this I can say to a lot of people there download and run or .exe containing win virtualbox + what is needed to extract and run without any config for novice users. If you like give me a shout and we can get it installed and we know it works on his / her hardware / stable ~x86 or x86 .

Imagine if for a accountant in another town you can say just click this link in windows and let it run and later we can do this for real if you like = no skill or expertise needed. = More user switching. A accountant will always ask about linux accounting software LOL.

This is what it boils down to and my frustrations.
4.1 gnome and 4.1 kde dvd's, a donor persons can not even pop in the live dvd on a Imac 20" core extreme Ati 2/3600 pro HD, dvd that I shipped to them to show what we are about at this stage because of upstream problems. Show a working example and we can donate / fund your project = my hands are tied.
minm. 10% of $400 000 could have been ours with more later if I could have done this, Loosing $400 000 on a bad California deal or donating it = same to us as donors.
Same with the 2 servers "8 cpu quad core Amd Tyan in each server" I could get as donations. Show and we donate.

We should be able to get much more unskilled persons or new other linux distro users to use SL same as the Peurto Rico university guy = it works we can used and modify if not = no go SL.

Yes I understand the issues around most of this ideas and time involved.