this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Source: https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_display_server

Reporting is done by users who voluntarily upload their system specs via
# hw-probe -all -upload

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[–] onlinepersona -4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Why would it be skewed? What would be the cause for a subset of linux users, that upload hardware probes with extraneous information about their display server, to skew the extraneous data?

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[–] refalo 14 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Because a huge portion of the people willing to do this are already on Wayland, but I believe there exists an even larger percentage on X that are not submitting any data.

And another commenter said:

We’re just left to do armchair psychology about the type of people who would submit data to this site. So the numbers are effectively useless.

[–] onlinepersona -2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Because a huge portion of the people willing to do this are already on Wayland, but I believe there exists an even larger percentage on X that are not submitting any data.

What is the basis for that assumption?

And another commenter said:

We’re just left to do armchair psychology about the type of people who would submit data to this site. So the numbers are effectively useless.

So because one cannot know which type of people submit data to the site it should be disregarded? That's basically saying any poll or questionnaire with anonymous yet unique answers are invalid. That's a pretty bad argument.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

So because one cannot know which type of people submit data to the site it should be disregarded? That’s basically saying any poll or questionnaire with anonymous yet unique answers are invalid. That’s a pretty bad argument.

This is basically a survey or poll. You want people to provide you with data about what they're running. To get an accurate view of the entire population you need a representative and randomized sample. If you're relying entirely on self-reported data you're not going to be getting a reliably randomized subset of people. You'll get people who are motivated to report their usage to a third party. That can lead to persistent biases in the data.

It may be that Wayland use is being under represented because the people reporting want to show that "X11 is still king!" Or it could be that this website is shared frequently with certain user groups (e.g. in some arch (btw) forum or something) and so you're getting a skew towards that population and away from the whole.

We don't know who these users are and we can't "offset" for those factors. And the data isn't reliably randomized so it's subject to those biases whether we know about them or not.

Though as another person pointed out the trend itself may be of some interest if the population being polled is consistent. Though I doubt anybody suspected that Wayland use is NOT increasing?

[–] refalo 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Anonymous polls are indeed useless for several reasons.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Man I spent 4 paragraphs saying what you just said in one sentence. 😅

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

by default, your content is all rights reserved, the most restrictive license possible. AI trains on "all rights reserved" content all the time. You really think adding a CC-BY-NC is gonna do anything?