Posted Nov 7, 2011 23:43 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)
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User Agent string is no longer a valid way to compare distros at all. Neither Chrome nor Firefox (circa Firefox 7) list the linux distribution by name any longer in the user agent string. The list "linux" and some cpu information now. I've personally made the wikimedia stat script maintainer aware of this change in the last couple of months.
Any linux distribution shipping officially branded firefox by default and conforming to the constraints that Mozilla places on trademark usage will no longer be differentiated in these stats. It's already started to impact the Ubuntu stats significantly in the last couple of months, There is an accelerated downward trend in "Ubuntu" over the span of several months that can only be reasonably accounted for by this user agent string policy change. I fear that people will misattribute the drop in Ubuntu wikimedia user agents stats I expect to see after the 12.04 LTS release as a reduction in Ubuntu usage. And that would be a real shame.
-jef
A Linux Mint 12 preview
Posted Nov 7, 2011 23:48 UTC (Mon) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641)
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I guess that means distrowatch will in the future also not be able to differential. So those are also useless.
A Linux Mint 12 preview
Posted Nov 7, 2011 23:57 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)
[Link]
Distrowatch doesn't use client user agent strings. Distrowatch makes no effort as far as I am aware to tell what you are currently running as you view the site. It's strictly about which pages on their site are viewed by the most ip addresses every day.