Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

Bruce Byfield

In the last couple of years, I've spent much of my time observing the Linux desktop and its growing fragmentation. However, accurate figures are hard to come by, and often I can only give my impressions. That's why LinuxQuestion's Members Choice Awards for 2011 interest me so much -- they're the first confirmation that what I'm observing is actually happening.

Of course, the awards can be criticized on a number of grounds. Voters are self-selected, and, considering LinuxQuestion's role and age, probably represent reasonably experienced users; my impression is that new users may visit the site, but are less likely to hang around long enough to participate in the survey.

Still, with 627 voters, the sample is a fair size, although its unnamed margin of error must be several percent. Fortunately, you don't have to argue from a decimal or two's worth of difference to see the obvious trends in the survey.

Upsets and newcomers

To start with, the most popular environment is KDE. It received 33% of the vote, down only a few tenths of a percent from 2010. Even if you take all the various versions of GNOME (GNOME 3, aka GNOME Shell, Unity, and Linux Mint's Cinammon and MATE recreations of GNOME 2), KDE still has a three percent lead. Moreover, unlike GNOME, KDE remains unaffected by any effort to recreate older versions, since Trinity Desktop Environment, the KDE 3 fork, had just over 1% of the vote.

In other words, when the dust settles, KDE is left the most popular desktop of Linux. Apparently, though, it has reached that spot, not because everyone is suddenly recognizing its excellence, but because GNOME has fragmented. KDE has retained its users, but apparently the user revolts against Unity and the GNOME 3 release series have not encouraged significant numbers to switch from GNOME to KDE. The old rivalry seems to remain very much alive.

So where have dis-satisfied GNOME users gone? Considering that GNOME 2 had 45% in 2010, and GNOME 3 only 19% in 2011, they have clearly gone somewhere, no matter how much the GNOME project maintains its silent denial of any problems. Some might have gone to the various GNOME alternatives, but that still leaves 15% of GNOME's 2010 vote unaccounted for.

The likeliest answer is that many GNOME refugees are now sheltering in Xfce. Xfce has been steadily gaining in the LinuxQuestions survey for several years, with 11% in 2009 and 15% in 2010. However, in 2011, Xfce jumped to 28%, finishing well ahead of GNOME 3, and in second place -- the first time that any environment except KDE or GNOME was in second place or even close to being so.

As for Unity, which has dominated Ubuntu's development for more than a year, it registered 5%. Yet, at the same time, the survey showed Ubuntu more or less in a tie with Slackware for Desktop Distribution of the Year at 21%.

Apparently, voters like Ubuntu, but not Unity. A look at Xubuntu's download statistics arranged by year might indicate what they are using instead of Unity.

However, Unity's poor showing might not matter much to Ubuntu or Canonical, its commercial arm. Every indication suggests that Canonical's goal is to entice new users, not to please existing ones. Whether this is a sound strategy is uncertain, since Ubuntu now seems partly estranged from the rest of the community, but no doubt the largest distribution can afford to do things its own way.

Yet another interesting point is how well Linux Mint's attempts to recreate the GNOME 2 series managed to do. MATE, the GNOME 2 fork, and Cinammon, the GNOME 2 look-alike built on GNOME 3, each managed to win 3% of the vote. Yet both are unfinished works in progress. Not only that, but when the survey began in mid-December 2011, both environments were in rapid development.

In fact, MATE has still not been officially released, while the first reasonably mature version of Cinnamon, version 1.2, was not available until 23 January, 2012, a month after the survey began. If these two projects can do so well with such brief exposure, they may be major contenders by the time the 2012 results are released. Together or separately, they might even exceed GNOME 3's popularity.

Rounding off the survey were LXDE, up a percentage point from 2010, rox at .5%, and Razor-qt, another environment announced late in 2011, at 1%.

Confirmations

Most of these results were what I expected to find after spending the year tracking the desktop environment news. However, while I expected an increase in Xfce usage, I was surprised by how large an increase it actually was. The same goes for GNOME 3's decline. Otherwise, the major take away I have is that my observations were mostly accurate -- much to my relief.

For me, the largest surprise is that more people didn't turn to choices like LXDE. Yet, while GNOME users are searching for alternatives, they seem to be looking for something as familiar as possible. They're not turning to KDE but to whatever can offer a GNOME 2-like experience, whether that's Xfce, MATE, or Cinnamon.

All of which goes to show that the free desktop environment is becoming a much more crowded place. Just a few years ago, discussing the desktop meant talking about GNOME and KDE, and maybe Xfce and a few odd minority choices in passing. Now, the space is much more chaotic, and seems likely to become even more so by the end of 2012.

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