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Arch and Arch based distros seem to represent 29% of answers, way higher than Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros, at 22% including Linux Mint, or 16% not including it. It's higher than Fedora at 19% of answers.
Another surprising number is NixOS, sitting at 7%. Final thing that surprised me is SteamOS: it only got 39 answers, meaning virtually no one seems to use their Steam Deck as their main computer.
89% of people who answered the survey said that they don't use an immutable distro.
Plasma is, on the surface, the most used DE out there, it sits at 30%.Vanilla GNOME sits at 14%, but if we tally up all GNOME implementations, we land on 35%, beating KDE pretty soundly.
Tiling WMs gathered up 21% of votes, meaning that they're actually the third thing used by people, far above any other DE than GNOME and KDE.
Hyprland seems to be very popular right now, at almost 48% of answers. We also have Sway, at 12%, i3 at 11%, and then a smattering of others, like AwesomeWM, bspwm, qtile, xmonad and more.
Speaking of which: Wayland got 66% of answers here, versus 34% for X11.
As per hardware, I asked people which kind of GPU and CPU they used. For CPUs, AMD and Intel are really evenly matched, at 50% for AMD and 49% for Intel, the last % being for ARM based CPUs.
As per GPUs, AMD takes the lead here, but not by much, we get to 39% of answers.
22% of people who answered only have an Nvidia GPU, so that's still pretty high, and if we add Nvidia GPUs as a hybrid configuration in a laptop, we land on 37%.
Pure Intel configurations, represent 22% of answers for integrated graphics, and 1% for dedicated Intel only, plus another % for people who run a hybrid config with a dedicated Intel GPU, so at most 24%.
As per the provenance of that hardware, a lot of people seem to build their own computers to run Linux on, at 44%. 40% of people who took the survey bought a PC from a major window manufacturer, with WIndows preinstalled, or no OS if the option was available.
Apart from that, only 4% said they used a computer from a Linux manufacturer, like TUxedo, System76, Slimbook, and the like, 2% use a mac, and, interestingly, 5% bought a computer from a major manufacturer with Linux preinstalled, so presumably from Dell or Lenovo, as these are the 2 main ones that have the option, AFAIK.
I paired that question with another one, asking how well Linux ran on people's computers, and overwhelmingly, it seems that hardware compatibility is great these days. 63% of respondents said they experienced 0 issues after installing Linux, and 23% said they did have small problems that they could fix. Only 13% said there's still hardware that doesn't work at all, and 1% said their computer performs pretty badly under Linux.
66% of people who answered use flatpaks mixed in with packages from other sources, and 6% only use this format, meaning we're at almost 3/4 of respondants that use Flatpaks daily.
The results are not as positive for other formats, with Snaps not being used at all by 84% of people who answered, and 54% of people not using APpImages at all.
On the topic of applications, Firefox seems to be the asbolute most poplar browser here, at 68%, with an extra 9% for Firefox derivatives like Librewolf.
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No, thanks.
you are operating under a big misconception, the original Arch is not plug and play, but derivatives, like EndeavourOS is as plug and play as any debian or ubuntu flavours. Endeavour is also very conducive to gaming especially and works well for general work. i am sure this is a major factor into things.
Arch users were just really excited to tell a survey that they use arch lol
Hey, I am running Arch too, btw 🤣
Me too btw
@@andreapadovan5845 me too btw 😅
we use arch btw
i use endeavour btw
This is the biggest "I use Arch, btw" moment of all time
I use Arch, btw
i use Arch, btw
I use nix btw
I use Endeavour, btw
I use Debian, btw
I follow you because your “Use whatever works for YOU” mentality. You have your own biases, but you never use them to bash opposing views.
Yup! One small example from my own experience: I'm still using X11, but never have I felt bothered by Nick's enthusiasm and support for Wayland. Where we diverge I mostly either don't care or am actually quite happy to hear another perspective and keep other options in mind.
Can we use them to zsh opposing views?
It should always be use what works for you.
For the next survey please announce it at the start of a regular video so I won't miss it again. Thanks!
Same here, I feel guilty watching almost every video on this channel then missing a survey.
I think announcing it at least a month ahead on several videos with an email sign up would do a lot for getting a larger involvement.
i think the low amount of steam decks is actually the opposite of being sold to avid linux users with a linux desktop, i think deck owners are mostly windows gamers who don't watch this channel
also steam os is arch based so i imagine many will have clicked arch derivative and moved on
this definitely seems like the reason why steam OS is an arch derivative anyway XD
I got one but it's definitely not my main driver - that title goes currently to the sister model of the zotac steam machine ;)
it's likely under reported because the form was only for one computer and people (like me) were too lazy to do it again
Yeah I was about to comment that. Using the Deck as a desktop sounds pretty weird to me because odds are, people who buy it just want to play games and the fact that it runs linux is irrelevant.
I will note, Brodie poked a bunch of us to go fill out your survey, and Brodie's community is a bit more Arch-and-rice-y. I'm watch both of you, but as a person who is pretty technical and can't use a plug-and-play system effectively, I still really value your opinions on things as someone who wants things to be plug and play, because I do think the smoothness of the user experience matters, and it's easy to forget as a very technically focused developer.
That's a community!
fair point. I'm a sysadmin and use ubuntu largely out-of-the-box because it's really polished when you get to it and does exactly what I want without messing around.
Im on the exact same page as you
Makes sense. I was surprised how many people were using not only Arch but vanilla Arch.
I also found out via Brodie, but I'm also a huge fan of this channel -- been here longer than with Brodie even. KZhead just doesn't think that I need to see Nick's posts for some reason :(
I think because of the kind of community you built, it still attracts a lot of non-elitist "pro" users who run complex setups themselves but appreciate linux getting simpler to get into for noobies and like staying informed on anything foss related, I'm basically in that category
I feel this. Even tho I use Ubuntu and Fedora, I'm also running a Btrfs LUK2 Bcache raid 10 on a server. I want tech to become easier and more user friendly while still powerful and customizable because I know how hard it had been to do a lot of things. Helvum for example was an application I wanted 5 years ago, but virtual patch panels weren't really possible until pipewire made it easy. I remember reading guides for jackd and alsa that were driving me nuts when all I wanted was to route my microphone and desktop audio to the same application.
Maybe, but Arch doesn't necessarily mean complex. Just look at Manjaro.
Same
Linux needs more users like that IMO
@@Luredreiermanjaro is complex because you have to be a pro for it not to break after a handful of months and to fix it again and again
i'm probably in a 0.1% who don't use linux at all in this community, but still enjoy watching the vids.
Hey, I was the same for several YEARS, before I finally switched to Linux 5 months or so ago. Getting to be informed before you do the switch helps in it being more smooth. And in general it's good to be informed.
the atheist that goes to church
😮
switch
Out of interest, why do you not use Linux, and why do you enjoy the vids regardless?
Shout out to the 101 other ARM users!
I love my M1 Mac Mini
Termux here, although I don't know if could be considered Linux per se
@ArcRCG finally, someone as crazy as I am! Termux is awesome
I have way too many raspberry pis
termux is so damn fun and cool lol @@ArcRCG
8:40 i'm 99.9999% sure the one you forgot is dwm
That's the one I thought about as well, although I don't think that many people are actually using it (I, for one, no longer do)
I was thinking exactly that. So, I went with the wm I used before I switched to dwm, which was Qtile.
I use dwl .
@@qwfp i think it is currently used and pushed by ChrisTitusTech, another huge linux content creator. so it only makes sense :)
was about to comment that
We use Arch btw
agreed 😂
Hats off to the 28 Gnome Web users
It improved a lot. It's usable. With the vim extension it would be great
The Hyprland responces come from the Hyprland developer pinging everyone in the Hyprland Discord with your survey on the first of April. So there are some skewed results.
I noticed this too 😂😂😂 it's definitely skewed.
thats why i'm here
I mean, elementary also pinned the survey in their Mastodon, but still got hilariously small amount of votes, not even 1% XDDDD Compared to 3-5% they were steadily getting few years ago, this is just pathetic
This would explain why Arch is so popular in this poll because they made probably the biggest part of Hyprland users
I'd assume every hyprland user is running arch or nixOS, so that might explain the prevalence of those as well. Not that I'm that surprised tbh, I always assumed that people who are watch a channel dedicated entirely to linux news and content are probably intermediate to advanced users.
I wished you mentioned the survey in a video before, I've never used the yt community tab. I'll wait for the next survey
Same
But it was mentioned in the discord of the Arch-heavy Hyprland community. Don't wanna imply that the poll wasn't representative due to biased promotion. /s
@@alicethegrinsecatz6011 Of course it was lol
Same
youtube shows community posts on main page as suggestions. that's how I learned about it. do you have community posts on your youtube main page?
I would personally count myself as a part of the “advanced” camp, however I still enjoy your more beginner friendly content, since it really helped me set up and make the right choices for family members that are not as technologically involved.
Same here .. though I do run what is one of the more beginner friendly options (Pop). I spend enough time configuring complex software, containers and development. I like my desktop as straight forward and clean as possibly.
Appimages would have a higher % if there was a package manager for them, but they're basically like Windows exes. They just run. You have to download them yourself. I like this when I'm on systems where I don't have root access, but other than that, they kinda just exist.
They are certainly niche too but when you do want or need them they can be nice to have.
App images are very useful at times, especially when your operating system has an older version of a program that is dependent upon repositories for updates. I'm not exactly sure if you would call the latest updated version of browsers apps, yet they are similar since they run as a standalone program option. These browsers are especially good for older operating systems whether it be Linux or Windows, you may not have security update support yet the latest browser will at least let you get onto the internet and offer some security updates for that latest version.
I think that's the advantage of them. Why use flatpack or (god forbid) snap, if you could use the distro's package manager. The main advantage of appimage is that its not tied to anything. Anyone can just make the executable and provide it as a side package (eg. on their own website) without asking anyones permissions, requiring accounts or risking the app disappearing if some admin/moderator decides he does not like it any more. The last one is especially important in modern world full of consorship and cancel culture.
Absolutely. I've recently put some on a couple of my students' school laptops, and I've sometimes used them as a last-ditch fallback for the few packages I can't get in either Manjaro's repos, nor in Flatpak, nor even in the AUR, just before actually installing snapd or using Wine. For that situation, though, they're awesome.
Ubuntu based users are happy to use their distros while Arch users are happy to tell you they use Arch. This could explain some of the numbers.
True. 3 Ubuntu's in this house that did not vote :)
Arch users are the Linux equivalent to religious zealots. They will do anything possible to promote their religion.
Yeah, I manage (directly or indirectly) about 15 Linux desktop systems and they all run Linux Mint. I didn't respond to the survey and generally don't.
I think, arch users are just more involved in the community
@@FlorinArjocume too. I didn't know about the survey
I really did NOT expect Arch to be on top considering how much you talk about Fedora and Ubuntu. Great video!
This was really interesting. It would be really cool if you could do it next year and have other linux channels involved so you could get a larger sample of users.
Besides the entire Arch meme (yes I use Arch btw), for me personally the reason why I just haven't been able to get into other distros besides Arch is they don't have a wiki like Arch. The Arch Wiki is the bible of Linux Honourable mention: The Gentoo Wiki
I agree! Arch wiki is the best btw
I use arch as my daily driver since about two years or so, but recently when getting into haskell programming I've started using a nixOS machine for that as it has much better support for the haskell ecosystem out-of-the-box. I don't like my nixOS setup as much though yet.
For me I started with Endeavour OS and made a huge list of programs which I install in clean boot and now I am totally dependent on it. If I have to switch to non arch based distro it would be a huge pain in the ass to install everything. I use Arch btw if you couldn't tell
Well, the informations in Arch wiki are widely applicable on others distros, I'm not using Arch but I agree that Arch wiki is the best one, and using it often.
I wonder how much of those Arch+Tiling WM folks are from Brodie's audience instead of yours 😂
Can confirm I found out about the survey through his community post, but I already watched this channel to begin with.
Personally as an Arch+Gnome user, I watch both Brodie and TLE, sad that I missed the post about the survey.
This survey was really interesting and I think all Linux KZheadrs should do this annually to see how their communities like Linux. If it's true that Brodie sent over his viewers, then I think the results would've been different without them. If every creator runs this survey annually, then I think it'll provide helpful data to the devs.
There aren't that many Linux focused channels and this one is one of the better ones for news. I think there's a lot of cross-pollination going on. I follow several of them and don't really care if my preferences don't line up with Nick's preferences. I love Arch, Nix and tiling and I don't like Gnome, but I also don't require other people's validation as a requirement for me to hear them out. 😉
last sentence hit lol@@Xaito
I'm one of the NixOS people. I follow your channel because you're one of the best channels out there for general Linux information and news, and have a forward-thinking reasonable perspective! I am still a little surprised by the NixOS numbers though, since it feels very specifically suited to people "like me" (software developers who like spending their free time messing around with config files). Also I'm only on X11 because i'm on a NVIDIA GPU and try as I might I have not been able to get it to work with XWayland on my machine, I'm almost certain because of NVIDIA's insistence on not supporting implicit sync. If I could get XWayland with NVIDIA's drivers to work on my machine, I'd immediately switch because Wayland solves so many problems for me. Ideally I'll either be able to get an AMD or Intel GPU (I'll be honest I want an A770 because it would be *really* funny to me to have an AMD CPU and an Intel GPU) to replace my 3060 or the next Mesa release with NVK as the default will hopefully solve those issues for me without a really bad performance hit.
I'm totally in the same boat with you there. I've had to switch to an old AMD GPU because of all of the Nvidia instability issues on Wayland as well. I can't play any of my proton games through XWayland on my green gpu atm. 💀 Linux gaming on Nvidia through Wayland on 500+ drivers for now...
The Steam OS having such a low percentage is funny to me. I never consciously used Linux until I bought a Steam Deck and then had to figure things out to get some really old games working. And as the tinkering continued on, I eventually tried Linux on the desktop as well. So even though Steam OS is not my primary OS, if it hadn't been for the Steam Deck then I would probably still be using Windows today
That's me. The Deck was my first exposure to Linux, and playing around with it coincided with my getting frustrated with M$, so I decided that maybe it wasn't the worst idea to try that Linux thing on my main computer. The Deck has never been my main computer, but it got me introduced
13:10 personally I wouldn't "prefer" but regional availability of those brands are mostly bubbled around EU or US 😅 Also, as the hardware support is better than ever, no-OS big-brand hardware works really well with the added price advantage.
They are still new and I run a 10 year old PC for example but will strongly consider them, when I replace this one. So I guess, there are others like me and this will change in the next couple of years.
These brands are just too expensive, as I can get the same performance for less than half the price. Even if I want to support them, that's just too much of a difference and my Lenovo Legion works just perfectly - if we ignore that you can't update the BIOS.
The problem with dedicated Linux laptops is that they don't usually ship to locations where there's a high number of Linux users, or are too expensive for people there to afford. Remember that survey last month about how users went up to 4%? Most of the countries with high number of Linux users are third-world countries who either don't get the hardware or can't afford the price.
I'm from Brazil and I had to change my notebook recently, I wanted to buy it from a dedicated manufacturer, but it was either possible or it was too expensive. about compatibility I still have problems, for example, on my new notebook I can't make bluetooth to work.
Only Windows PCs go on Sale. The few Linux ones always stay full price
I just love the flexibility of Plasma.
4:30 for the steam deck I think the reality is that it's more being used by previous windows users rather than people who already use linux as a daily driver. It's likely the case that a lot of people using the steam deck just think of it as a console (as that's the intended purpose anyway) and aren't really a part of the linux community. I think if a gaming or pc hardware youtuber ran the same poll their numbers for steam deck would make up a larger proportion but that's just a guess. Also IMO a misconception about arch is that it's not user friendly because it doesn't have things like flatpack setup by default but I think realistically it just means that everyone on arch is using the same format so it makes things more easy and consistent. if it's not on the official repos it's on the AUR. if it's not on the AUR you build it from github or an equivalent and it just feels like package management is never an issue, it's just the same command every time.
I mean, I'm part of the linux community and still use my Steam Deck mostly as a console, I don't see the reason to daily driving it when I already have many devices I can use for everyday tasks.
@@telldo8016 i got a steam deck because it's the only way i was able to upgrade my pc, and I daily drive it now, though I'm probably the only one doing that lol
Gives people the chance to tell that they use Arch. Is surprised that people told him they use Arch. I too, use Arch btw.
I proudly use Arch btw.
4:45 "Seems Decks were sold to people who already have a Linux computer for their desktop needs" That is now how I interpret this data. This does not appear take into account that the Steam Deck doesn't make for a good desktop system when this survey is about desktop Linux systems. There is also still no official downloadable version of modern SteamOS even if someone wanted to use it that way. People are using their Steam Decks and SteamOS for gaming and not as a desktop is the answer. There are also absolutely a significant number of Steam Deck users that become curious about Linux and end up using a completely different distro on recommendation for their first time Linux desktop experience.
At this point, all I need is someone talking about Linux in background while I work. So keep these videos coming.
Did you forget DWM in the Tiling WM section?
yeah I'm guessing that's one of if not the main one missing. something like xmonad and ratpoison are probably more rarely used. outside of this particular survey maybe i3 is the most widely used for now, followed by sway?
As others have said - given that at the time of writing you have nearly 30,000 views, I suggest you invite people to do another poll now we've been informed there IS a poll ! First I heard of it was this video!
Another option should be "I have some hardware that doesn't work, but I really don't care about it", such as fingerprint readers and such junk - I have a fingerprint reader that doesn't work at all, and I don't care about it enough to even look in its direction, but the rest of the hardware works exceptionally well. Given the options, I would have voted as "works perfectly well", and only now I would be reminded of this FP reader's existence. Come to think of it, there are also a built in mmc card reader and a smart card reader of some sort that I've never bothered testing. Bloat(hard)ware?
The card readers usually work out of the box. At least I've never had any issues. Edit: typo
Yeah, the only thing that didn't work ootb on my Asus laptop was the "numperpad". There is a reverse-engineered driver but I didn't bother with it since the feature is pretty useless.
Yeah I'm also having some issues with printing, but I don't care I can just use a windows laptop for it. There's like 5 times a year when I have to use a printer.
@@H4GRlD If your printer has network connectivity try to install it using IPP and a generic printer driver. You wont be able to use all the features, but basic stuff (printing and checking ink levels) should work, since those are part of the IPP format.
@@hubertnnn Hey, thanks for this!
ah yes. I use arch btw prevails
Yep!
I will say, once my vtuber software and xenia emulator work on linux, I'm swapping back to arch so i will use arch btw
@@stanzacosmi xenia emulator?
xbox 360 emulator. literally those are the only 2 programs holding me back to windows currently (I DID use arch before though but got into vtuubing so lol)@@zeta_eclipse
@@zeta_eclipse I presume it's the Xbox 360 emulator
Not a lot of reasons to say Wayland is great because it is implied. But yeah, Wayland is great in my opinion
I agree. For me it works even better than X11
Agreed! It's still not perfect and has some small issues, but for the most part, it works great if you're using a DE or WM that has good Wayland support. On my laptop, which has a high DPI built-in display and I need good trackpad gestures, Wayland is a must, especially since I usually have it connected to a secondary 1080p regular DPI monitor, and X11 doesn't support having different scaling factors on each display.
@@theodoros_1234 My thoughts exactly. GNOME on X11 is pain, since that DE is *nothing* without its touchpad gestures. I don't think X11 should be deprecated at this point for any reason other than "we need more hands on Wayland so they can report bugs" since there are cases where Wayland isn't equal or better than X, but that doesn't mean occasional critic towards Wayland, an unfinished project, mean that it's awful. People just take criticism too personally.
how do i use x11vnc on this oh so cool wayland. sometimes i need a desktop remote connection and not just ssh
On the subject of “buying from Linux-first hardware vendors”, I would love to but, where I am (Brazil) they’re either not available for delivery here or are shipped from far which means big shipping and import tax costs. So people end up buying from big brands (Dell, Lenovo, etc). And there aren’t even many configurations, I bought a Windows laptop to install Linux because there isn’t a laptop here with the configuration that I need and Linux out of the box. :/
Totally agree ! I personnaly switched to Linux around 2 years ago (used to run Windows), but sticked to the same PC as everything was working fine so I didn't want and didn't see any reason to buy a new one with no OS or Linux preinstalled. And I believe a lot of newcomers follow the same path, ditching Windows on the way without changing their PC.
If love if I could get a Framework laptop from System 76... I'd buy that. And it will be my next hardware with Pop either way.
The problem with your hardware question is that I do not consider my gaming rig to be my “main” machine. So I answered integrated Intel when I do have a machine with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and a Radeon RX 6600XT - which is where any of my hardware Steam Survey statistics derive.
I don't use immutable distros yet, but it's definitely something I'd be interested in once the Flatpak / Snap ecosystem matures more.
You dont need to. You can use Distrobox and install any application inside it with no performance impact, while being containerized.
@@critzlez8593 I know, I just can't be bothered to manage that stuff. I'd rather casually install something through Flatpak or Snap.
Snaps have all their sandboxing only with Apparmor. In the past this was not upstreamed so only Ubuntu, today MAYBE also OpenSuse, Arch etc. But OpenSuse and Fedora both prefer Flatpak, just as many smaller Distros do. GNOME has nearly all their apps verified on Flathub, with KDE being second place. Flatpak is the future for GUI apps.
Oh and Snaps will not be Sandboxed at all on Fedora, using SELinux. And btw if you use Waydroid this will only be sandboxed if you use SELinux (i.e. only on Fedora and similars)
Plus, the Fedora Atomic ones have rpm-ostree, which allows you to install native packages when needed.
no you must not stop poking fun at Arch they deserve it
Apart from the Brodie's recommendations influencing your result, I think some of the tiling WM users (like me) do watch your videos to just see the state of GNOME/KDE, to follow Linux in general and your opinions on Linux topics.
I use LxQT and XFCE on my potato laptops, but I too like to keep up with other DE's.
Shout out to the other 3 Linux From Scratch users out there that took the survery! 4 (including me) people who use it is more than what I was expecting, only 2 at most, but we got 4. That's pretty good!
Oh, hey there! Question, besides the learning and "I built it myself" satisfaction, are there any other reason to go LFS ? I'm on Gentoo and I'm slightly curious, but I feel it's just something to try at one point for the experience, then I'd rather continue staying on Gentoo.
@Winnetou17 I covered that in a vid I did called "Why I like LFS", and I hate promoting my own crap but it explains it in a better way than what I can comment. Basically it boils down to me having issues with minimal distros so I realize the only way to truly be happy with a distro is to make it myself from the ground up, where Arch and Gentoo are more automatic, less customizable, less flexible, and do things in their own way.
@@zeckma Neat, I'll check it out, thanks!
@@Winnetou17 No problem!
@@zeckma Curious how Gentoo is less flexible than LFS with their USE flags? I mean, I've never used Gentoo but how I understand it is that you can use these flags to set things up however you want. Maybe that's wrong. LFS was a cool experience, both to learn how Linux works and how to use it. It's how I got started in Linux, but I can't say I'd be likely to go back.
I used other distros before I first touched arch... but it wasn't until after I started using arch day to day that I got to really understanding more about what makes Linux different "under the hood" so to speak. Still remember the first time I was able to get my system running pipewire properly (before it became a standard on the distro) I was so excited. Or the time I switched to using a tilling window manager for a couple of months. I might not always stick with the more hacky solutions in the long run, but they teach me a lot, and they can be fun to play with.
The saddest is thing that linux content creators (no hate to them) can earn money but devs dont, still they are developing it like crazy
Good thing some of our favorite creators donate to these projects
@@vtoldaccount1222 yea
Because most of the distro are open source and community themselve included in development. Some exception are zorin os which is a nice distro and it's pro version deserve to be sold. Also some devs started that particular project because they developed what they want on there system. And they think if it's a great piece of software or tool or distro, why not share it with community. I have to develop that for my use, but why don't let others use that as well. These are some of the reason why more than 90% linux stuff is free and open source.
@@rayrai982 I like linux mint and it has most potential than any other distro. It should be well paid off
@@rayrai982 like rhel is doing nowadays?
Shoutout to the other 14 Slackware users 🎉❤
Howdy! Slackware user since the beginning. Boot and root floppies baby!
@@gregholloway2656 Hi! Wow! I guess back in the day it was a challenge! I started my Linux journey in February 2023 and did a lot of distro hopping. But Slackware caught my heart!
Finally found the comment I was looking for :) Moved to Slackware on my Mac since 2021, never looked back
Arch having such a strong presence might be related to how arch users behave, after all, a survey on the internet where they can indirectly say "I use Arch btw" was too tempting not to answer.
Arch user: Witness me!
😂😂😂 true
Happy to hear these results! I use arch btw
Endeavor os is my go to
17:30 I used to distro hop everytime I messed up my system but then I found out NixOS and using it for more than a year.
It's great to see NixOS is getting more popular. It seems that (in your fanbase) we occupy 2 thirds of the immutable distro market.
16:55 You forgot to add an option of Linux + something else or just "something else", since I feel like BSD systems are also popular among a specific part of the community.
Hi Nick. I'm a professor in the business intelligence program at Marymount University and I do a lot of work with statistical analysis. It'd be a lot of fun to do some exploratory analysis on your survey results. Looking at things like correlations between some answers and factor analysis might give some deeper insights to share with your fans. It could also be a cool dataset to look at with my students. If you'd be open to sharing your data, please hit me up :)
The raw data is available as a link in the video’s description! I’d love to get some more in depth analysis, don’t hesitate to send me your results in a file in an email :)
I hope this becomes an annual tradition, sort of like how vlogbrothers do their regular Nerd Figheria censuses. You've already identified some areas for improvement which would be interesting to see a followup on. Also would be good to see cross tabs of some audience verifiers (eg. "are you a subscriber") to tease apart some of the skews you mentioned.
Remember that there might be a lot of people (like me) who use Arch _derived_ distros, like Endeavour, but aren't "i use arch btw" arch superusers. Those people would probably, lacking a clearer option, check a box saying Arch is their main distro.
As someone running both arch (laptop) and endeavour (desktop), they are exactly the same in day to day usage, it is just arch install in better. Don't tell the arch people tho So I found it fitting to put it just into the using arch category
@@marsimplodation If you're familiar enough with the base Arch install process, then I suppose there's nothing wrong with using Endeavour to as the installer to save time. It's like with nmcli and nmtui . Don't argue. Just use whatever is best for you lol.
I agree, Garuda and Manjaro are both in this category AND come with the 'flashy' installer! But yeah, in the terminal we all use pacman (or pamac) - so technically we are running Arch... Technically.
I Use Arch Linux with the Arch Linux Endeavour installer by the way! >If you're familiar enough with the base Arch install process Yea, i am. The arch install iso sucks. Only a "DOS Terminal from 1980". No copy paste, no firefox, tiny default font. Makes a nice rescue system for troubleshooting if system doesn't boot, right? Around 800MB iso for "Dos terminal".
>Manjaro @@Vilvaran No Manjaro isn't Arch because they don't use the original arch linux package mirrors in pacman. And some say Garuda has more custom things like custom kernel that is more far from Arch than Endeavour but may be better for gaming.
In my experience, using Arch gives me a more pleasant experience using my desktop OS. When I was daily driving Mint, I would remove pre-installed things to install what I wanted, and later when I tried updating to a new version of Mint it broke everything (probably my fault), and I didn't want to go through all of that again. While with Arch, I set up up to be how I want it from the beginning, and I only get what I want to have since of the clean slate you start with. Additionally it has been easier to maintain since I just update my packages every now and then, and I don't have to worry about a new point release forcing me to reinstall, or potentially it breaking my current install. Also, the AUR/pacman stuff has more of the packages I want/need, and it has up to date versions, so I don't have to install the binary manually to get the latest version.
There’s a big drawback to pacman though: rollback. It’s not a smooth process at all, which means if a major bug gets introduced (*cough* Bluetooth in kernel 6.8.2 *cough*) and you don’t have any snapshot to roll back to, that’s a tedious process.
I'd like to think I use a GNOME+ type of environment: it's visually and functionally vanilla, but with the addition of several QoL extensions / features already planned by GNOME for the future.
Honestly, all I really need is dash to panel and caffine and it's pretty much my ideal desktop.
Once again, thank you for the work you put in this channel. It was really fun to see the results of the survey. It sounds like tha arch community was activated by other means, so that definitely seems like a reason that arch had that many entries. Another thing might be your news videos? I have used a lot of different setups over the years, but the news videos have always been an accessible way to get news about privacy, security and desktop agnostic news in general. Even though i can see from your views, that the most popular videos are the ones abiut kde and gnome, it seems that the news videos hokds a VERY consistent viewer base 🙂 Also, next time you do a survey, let us enter for mutiple systems if nextcloud can handle it 👍
As a GNU/Linux user since 2003, NixOs makes a lot of sense. No more updates breaking the system, no more ansible or custom scripts to restore a fresh system. No more distro hop (fingers crossed). Easy to add programs that are not packaged (insanely simple for most use cases). This is so refreshing to have stability by design while also having the option to go explore whatever program you want using nix-shell. These features are making this os way simpler than any other linux distro in the long run.
To be fair, the entire huprland discord was pinged to vote.
Just to be clear, I did not buy my Linux machine from a major manufacturer because I *prefer* them, but because my knowledge of other options is limited to just Tuxedo and System76, neither of which were making devices that appealed to me at the time. I ended up getting an HP Dev One, only to see support for it dropped on hardly two years. And then I ended up reusing my desktop PC instead.
Now we just need everyone - Nick, Chris Titus, DT, Brodie, Primeagen, TechHut, LinuxCast, Mental Outlaw, BugsWriter, LearnLinuxTV, WolfGang to do a survey and promote it together!! That would say a lot about the community.
Thank you for that survey. I'm glad that made you reconsider some of your thinking process.
With people buying from big name manufacturers rather than Linux-first manufacturers, many of them might have bought the laptop intending to keep Windows on it, but switched to Linux later down the line. It would be interesting to see how many people ran Linux from day 1 on their current PC or if they have switched from another OS.
I bought my current laptop with Windows preinstalled. I kept it on Windows for a few days, did some testing and ran some benchmarks on it, and completely wipe the hard drive before installing Linux. I think for people who already adapted and are comfortable with Linux, it is the natural thing to do to get rid of Windows asap.
@@osoiii Definitely, but very few people have Linux as their first OS, and I think most people replace Windows on an existing machine rather than buying a brand new computer just to get started with Linux. There could be a lot of people filling out the form who used Windows on their computer for years before they even learn about the Linux desktop, and then installed Linux on the same computer afterwards.
The fact that there are so many "advanced" users (who can run Arch or Nixos) watching your channel speaks a lot about the quality of your work! Congrats! Even though I am not one of those knowledgeable I enjoy watching your videos a lot.
Absolutely awesome there were so many responses to the survey, I enjoyed doing it and the video response 🙂
Fedora hyprland user here. No complaints, not a gamer, tinkerer at heart ;) successfully completing the university year with that environment. Huge workflow improvement over gnome :)
I didn't vote on this, but Debian stable was my OS of choice. Wanted something with good documentation, relatively easy to work with, but not hand holdy to the point where I don't learn anything. I'm a dual booter with windows but more of my workflow has been put onto Linux.
Arch has the best wiki and for some time it was the top suggested distro for advanced users. At least that's why I decided to bite the bullet a few years back
I use the Arch wiki all the time even when driving Fedora or Ubuntu. It's just one of the best information resources and often the only one on a niche topic.
To be fair, Arch is a lot more user friendly than it used to be plus it's documentation is probably some of the best out of all the distros, in addition, it seems many KZheadrs prefer arch so finding video tutorials is also pretty easy.
It is all about the people who watch your channel and feel strongly enough to participate.
i use arch btw
This makes me more curious about tiling window managers
i3 or sway may be good places to start in that case. i3 is not my favourite, and I haven't tried sway for that long, but I think they probably give the best experiences out of the box, while many others require more tinkering to get started. Or maybe Pop OS or it's WM, if you want to try out a middle ground between tiling and floating.
I use daily and gaming with PopOS. It works fine for me
Thing with Arch is, once you really try it and go through the docs and get to the level where you're comfortable customizing the install to your parameters, people rarely go back. Unless you need to reinstall super quick and have some sort of script to setup your environment (albeit these exist on arch too), Arch Linux is the way to go, and NixOS also provides a super, insanely quick way of setting systems up (you literally carry a config file that sets it all up for you). Linux operating systems really encourage people to become a bit more intimate with their computers, both in hardware and software, due to the tinkering you sometimes require, plus the free and open nature of its code. Getting into the internals is actually not that hard at all, and I really appreciate the (non-elitist) Linux community that teaches and encourages others to learn more about computers. Much love to all the rest of the Linux users, and a huge shoutout to the ARM bros and gals, I'd love to run an ARM rig soon! Also please announce your polls at the start of your videos, so I can participate next time around. As always, great content!
10:15, I have some issues with wayland, but wayland is great!
Why was there no option for nix as external package manager?
The one thing that I love this channel for, is the up-to-date news about Linux and FOSS. Its the perfect amount of detail in a convenient location. Other topics you cover is simply a bonus :) So from that stance, if there are others like me here, I think the survey says less about how we use linux and more about what we love about your channel.
Make more surveys in the future, this is fan and insightful information!
In the future for browser selection, could it be multiple select for those of us that silo different aspects of our life into different browsers
Of course nix and arch are gonna be so popular. I imagine a fair amount of people chose arch even though they ran an arch-based distro, but my actual theory for why they're so popular among your viewers is that this is simply one of the best linux related channels, thus many people, regardless of their skills, are gonna follow you. It just so happens that arch is popular among the mid to high range skill level.
9:41 I'm shooketh that my comment got featured here! 😲 I actually fixed the stuttering issue, and while it's not perfect, it's really close to native performance in Windows already!
I was looking for these statistics, thanks!
It's a breakdown of your Discord users, not the popularity of Linux options... a bummer but there it is.
As an arch user, please never stop making fun of arch😊
We love y'all like younger siblings
Would have liked a Nix option for the snaps/flatpak/appimage section.
I noticed Brodie posted your survey on his community, so I guess it got some attention there aswell. Although I must say I'm still not surprised by a large amount of people using arch and tiling wms, because even if this channel is very much focused on beginner friendly content, I'm sure more experienced users (me included) do enjoy that type of content sometimes as well, and your news are definitely worth watching for anyone.
I don't particularly hate Wayland. If I used a full desktop environments instead of tiling WMs and didn't have an NVIDIA card, I'd probably already moved on to it. As of right now though I have Wayland disabled on my system (Gentoo).
Love Linux Mint both versions and Tuxedo OS
Just because I use a distribution that provides me a lot of ability to modify things at the cost of being plug-and-play, doesn't mean that I have any illusions about plug-and-play being what would bring more people over to Linux. Moreover, for most use cases, plug-and-play is what would be most effective and useful.
No please keep making fun of Arch it keeps us humble god knows we need that
Where are my fellow Arch Users at??😊✋
Here btw
if linux became more mainstream then ubuntu would have way more people than the other types of distros. Hopefully one day
It was interesting to see the survey results, thanks. I think a survey focused on Desktop Environments and Window Managers would be very interesting also.
There's no surprise in the success of the Arch base. It's the only place where you can install everything you want without the need to add PPAs or build from source. Typically, Arch-based distros perform very well too. The Debian/Ubuntu approach is actually terrible for general use (compared to Arch). People with decent machines benefit a lot from newer kernels, drivers (and packages in general). And that's just for the 'average' user. For power users, you have complete control over your system.
I wish the global AMD-Nvidia-Intel GPU user distribution was similar to the figures in Nick's community.
what a fun market that would be
This video is amazing. 9500 answers is not a small number by any stretch of imagination. As a point of potential improvement, I think it would be enough to mention the selection bias at the beginning and at the end, not every time you make an interesting observation. I hope you can do this yearly or so.
I was one of the responders to your survey. In my case, many of the choices are constrained by technical factors or work requirements. For example, I have to use X11 because I have to interact with servers through X11 forwarding. I have to use Google Chrome because of its progressive web app capabilities. I would love to use Firefox exclusively, but I need to run Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams as PWAs, which Firefox does not natively support. These are minor gripes, though, as 90% of all my dev work runs on Linux servers. When it has to be a Windows native app, I have the company issued Windows laptop to work on.
There definitely wasn't an announcement on the Hyprland Discord about this pole. 😅
Cries in Stacking WM.(openbox, labwc, standalone xfwm)
I never met an Arch user who was afraid to tell everyone what distro he used. I'm so proud to be a GNU/Linux - Gnome desktop user because of it's wonderful extensions and available tweaks. Debian 12 is scary stable - it simply just works. Universal packaging is the wave of the future. There seems to be an abundance of choice within the Linux Community, and everyone hates hackers with all their evil malware.
"it doesn't work well" and "it should be abandoned immediately, it's garbo" can also be said about x11