[wellylug] Desktop Linux survey

[Brent Wood]

Thanks Jim,

That is exactly why I posted it here. This is a pretty diverse group of Linux
related users, & I figured that any inherent bias from us regarding any of the
questions was pretty minimal.

Basically we're a pretty anarchistic group who have found what we like & use-
very much formed our own preferences. If it was a PCLOS users list (for
example), then the concerns Jethro cited would indeed be valid.

Which is just what the survey is asking about- personal preferences.

By restricting the poll to a smaller number of users who only hear about it by
select means, you are without doubt introducing a bias. I'm not enough of a
cynic or conspiracy theorist to suggest the organisers of the poll intend such
a bias :-)

There is at least one other similar poll at present, much smaller scale & I'm
not sure I could even find it again, just on "preferred distro". Quite
different results, Debian(s), SUSE, Mandriva the top 3, but no separation of
Ubuntu or SLED/OpenSUSE, etc. A much poorer poll, which I did not bother
posting here (even though the results were more along my preferences :-)

So, while Jethro's citation is perfectly accurate & reasonable, my post was
also reasoned. I thought about including it in my post, but figured anyone who
was interested enough to go would see it anyway & if you you weren't it
wouldn't matter.

But you don't HAVE to agree with me or participate :-)


Spotcha....

   Brent


--- Jim Cheetham <jim at gonzul.net> wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 10:49:24AM +1200, Jethro Carr wrote:
> > On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 15:30 -0700, Brent Wood wrote:
> > > Have a vote for your favourites....
> > > http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey.cgi?id=0821200617613
> > 
> > From rom the site:
> > "NOTE: Participants are asked to refrain from promoting or advertising
> > the survey to mailing lists, or encouraging friends or co-workers to
> > vote for specific software choices. This will ensure that the survey
> > represents a broad sample of Linux desktop users rather than being used
> > to advance a particular open-source software cause. "
> 
> Yeah, but all he was doing was mentioning the existance of the survey.
> It's not like the link was posted to a KDE-advocacy list, where you'd
> expect the responses to be skewed.
> 
> I'd never have heard of the survey if it wasn't posted to the list ...
> 
> -jim
> 
> 
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