[ubuntu-art] Example Content

[Matthew Nuzum]

On 2/9/06, Henrik Nilsen Omma <henrik at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > As far as numerical data is concerned, I was thinking of doing
> > something like this along with a related presentation:
> >
> > Plot data showing linux adoption trends over the last few years. At
> > first I thought it would be interesting to show some data from
> > distrowatch that demonstrated the rising popularity of Ubuntu as
> > compared to other linux distros, but i feel that would present a poor
> > image to new Linux users (since it seems to show competition amongst
> > the linux community).
> I actually tried this already. You can quite easily get the distrowatch
> numbers from the last year at http://distrowatch.com/text/newhpd.csv but
> at that time Ubuntu was already #1, so the curve doesn't look that
> impressive :) We would need one that started at 0. (but I also agree
> with your point on competitiveness).
> > The related presentation that I was envisioning would be a "PR"
> > feeling document that would explain why people like Linux so much,
> > some of the great things that make Linux unique and then show adoption
> > trends with a graph from the spreadsheet.
> Perfect!

Well, finding interesting data is more difficult than it sounds. I've
started working on a writer document (I've crashed OOo by inserting an
EPS Ubuntu logo, which is interesting - I reported it).

I'm having trouble locating data on Linux adoption trends. I've
thought that maybe I could get my hands on some other data instead.
Some ideas I've had were the number of Ubuntu downloads or maybe the
number of posts to ubuntuforums.org. I've also considered the number
of Linux or Ubuntu users in various regions of the world, maybe by
continent.

Any suggestions? Henrik, do you feel the people at Canonical would be
willing to share any stats about Ubuntu downloads or trends in
adoption, or is this information considered private?

I guess if worse comes to worse, I could plot data about the number of
spam messages that come through my mail server... (just kidding).

I think a good looking graph would show multiple series of data, for
example, comparing the number of Ubuntu downloads in each month during
2004 vs. the same month in 2005, or the number of Ubuntu downloads for
each continent for each month in 2005.

If anyone has any suggestions, or better yet, interesting data that is
freely available, let me know.
--
Matthew Nuzum
www.bearfruit.org