Some info

[Carroll Grigsby]

Rajiv Vyas wrote:
> I have been doing some "Google" research using news, Google and blogs on topics
> such asUbuntu, GNOME, KDE, and Linux for the past couple of weeks and here's
> something I put out recently on couple of boards after manually typing in
> keywords.
> 
> It's very similar to the Google "mind share" concept program. The difference
> is that by combining Google, Google News and Google Blogs, one can spot some
> interesting trends and hopefully use it for marketing or research.
> 
> 
> Google News: The world Linux GNOME appeared more than Linux KDE in the past
> few days. Red Hat consistently has been in the news twice as many times as
> SuSE and reporters seem to like Ubuntu more than Mandriva and Linspire.
> 
> 
> Google: This gets really interesting. There are 435 million times
> Linux appeared
> on Google vs. Microsoft 716 million -- that's fantastic. KDE is 15% more
> popular than GNOME on Google search.
> It gets even more interesting: Ubuntu (with the word linux) is more popular
> than "Linux Mandriva" and neck and neck with "Linux Mandrake".
> 
>  Google Blog: This is Google's new service so the results could be spurious.
> Also, Blog writing could be popular in certain countries, so the results may
> not be that accurate. But: SuSE is neck and neck with RH and Ubuntu is getting
> super popular with bloggers -- 12,000 + blogs vs. 17000 for Debian.
> 
> 
> Rajiv
> 
> 
Rajiv:
Hmmm. Interesting, but this short summary does raise some questions.

First, when you search for Microsoft, how do you handle the common 
variants such as Windows, MS, XP, ME, 98...? (And, if you're looking at 
blogs, then there are all of the other variants to consider, such as M$, 
MickeySoft, Winsux, the Vole.... Don't waste your time on Microsoft Bob, 
though.)

As for "Ubuntu" vs "Mandriva": When did Mandrake change its name? My 
vague recollection is that the new name was introduced at roughly the 
same time as Ubuntu came on the scene, but it took a while for the new 
name to become accepted. I do know that Mandriva didn't change their web 
addresses until early this summer, and that boxed sets with the old name 
were on store shelves just a few months ago.

Did you consider just "Fedora" as opposed to "Red Hat Fedora"? I note 
that on the Red Hat pages, they always use the term "Fedora Project".

Just asking...
-- cmg