Linux popularity across the globe (Royal Pingdom)

Linux popularity across the globe (Royal Pingdom)

Posted Aug 22, 2008 2:35 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)
In reply to: Linux popularity across the globe (Royal Pingdom) by evgeny
Parent article: Linux popularity across the globe (Royal Pingdom)

I'd say you're an extremely _happy_ user, then; when I buy a new foobar hardware, plug it, and it isn't recognized (or doesn't fully work), the first thing I do is "foobar linux" in the "G" input of firefox.

Hehe, sounds like me. :-) What's concerns me is how the overall quality of information has declined due to the Internet. I sort of feel sorry for libraries as their patronage seems to be declining, and meanwhile I've got multiple tabs opened to the likes of Wikipedia (I know, I know!), Google News, LWN (obviously), and some article about digital piracy of print-magazines (a sad irony, isn't it?).

I can certainly feel a little guilty for (over-)using the "Google Crutch", but with the sheer numbers of reduced-quality content articles online, I'm bound to find a HOWTO somewhere on how to get my shiny new foobar working in Linux.

Back to lbm's (parent) comment, I'm reading between the lines that perhaps you feel that measuring Linux penetration based on raw Google searches with Geo-IP tracking is a poor metric. I agree with you--this seems like a cheesy correlation at best. But, I'm left wondering whether, in this day and age, one really can establish market penetration merely by Google (or other search engine) hits categorized by geopolitical regions. Comments, anyone?

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> What's concerns me is how the overall quality of information has declined due to the
Internet.

I'd say that the quality of information on the Internet declined radically too - back in the
day, an Altavista/Yahoo/Lycos/Google search could usually get you right to the point, while
today one has to wade through lengthy list of blog posts and alike random crap in order to
find a meaningful answer...

In the very beginning you don't even needed to search at all. See a pattern?
Google won his current status by being more accurate than Yahoo and Altavista. Maybe the time
has come for the next step? 
Build a system that makes easier for people to get to the content they want and the price can
be HUGE. It's not an easy task, mind you.