{"id":206,"date":"2006-08-21T00:11:01","date_gmt":"2006-08-20T22:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lucas-nussbaum.net\/blog\/?p=206"},"modified":"2006-08-21T00:11:01","modified_gmt":"2006-08-20T22:11:01","slug":"who-is-using-debians-and-ubuntus-development-versions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lucas-nussbaum.net\/blog\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":"Who is using Debian’s and Ubuntu’s development versions ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott J. Remnant claimed that<\/a> it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the development community that use Debian testing or unstable.<\/em> This doesn’t match my personal experience (I know many people running Debian testing\/unstable who aren’t interested in Debian development), however I needed a better way to check this than just “my personal experience”. So I tried to answer the following question :<\/p>\n

Are normal users using Ubuntu edgy and Debian testing\/unstable, or do they stick with Ubuntu dapper and Debian stable ?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Simplified summary:<\/strong> (read below for details)<\/p>\n

Ubuntu users:
\n…Ubuntu dapper (stable): 96%
\n…Ubuntu edgy (development): 4%
\nDebian users:
\n…Debian sarge (stable): 24%
\n…Debian testing\/unstable (development): 76%<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Detailed process:<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, I did a poll on #ubuntu@irc.freenode.net using a CTCP VERSION query, and looked at people using Xchat and Ubuntu (Ubuntu<\/em> is displayed in CTCP VERSION replies). I got 288 replies from Xchat users, 197 of them were using the Xchat package from Ubuntu. 189 (96%) of them are using version 2.6.1 (the version in Dapper), 8 (4%) of them are using versions 2.6.4 or 2.6.6.<\/p>\n

Then, I did the same poll on #debian@irc.oftc.net. I got 85 replies from Xchat users, and filtered out 15 of them because they weren’t from Debian users for obvious reasons. 17 users (24%) are using versions 2.4.0 or 2.4.1 (Debian sarge), 53 users (76%) are using versions 2.4.3, 2.4.4, 2.4.5, 2.6.1 and 2.6.4 (Debian testing\/unstable – v.2.6.4, the current version in testing\/unstable, has 41 users on its own). Statistically speaking, this isn’t very good, so I compared those results with another source of information : Debian popularity contest<\/a>. 3002 submitters are using v.1.28 of the popularity-contest package (version in sarge) while 9682 submitters are using v.1.33 (version currently in Debian testing\/unstable). That accounts for respectively 24% and 76% ! Same as above ! (OK, this is not so good, because I haven’t considered the intermediate versions here, while I did above)
\nOf course, those numbers are huge approximations, and are subject to a lot of hypotheses and questions, amongst them:<\/p>\n