amd64 is already the 2nd most important arch (WasRe: Let's remove mips, mipsel, s390, ... (Was: [Fwd: Re: GTK+2.0 2.6.2-3 and buildds running out of space])

[Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>]

Don Armstrong <don <at> debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> > Thanks for cutting and completely ignoring the part where I
> > demonstrated the lack of usage beyond i386 and maybe four or five
> > other arches.
> 
> You used package download results from one (1!) debian mirror to
> demonstrate the supposed lack of usage. However, those download stats
> only point to who is actually downloading packages with that
> architecture from only that mirror in a single month.

These were the only public usage numbers, broken out by arch, from a primary 
mirror, that I am aware of.  Which is why I used them.  If you suspect that
they are unrepresentative, you would greatly enhance the debate by providing
additional data from the US, UK, DE, FR, JP, ... mirrors and actually proving
me wrong -- rather than just calling the Earth flat.

In any event, I found a way to complement these numbers -- using the upload
reports from popcon.debian.org, taken earlier today.  With a little emacs 
editing, we get the data file below, which is used by the few R commands 
include below as well.  [1]


              reports  percent
hurd-i386           1   0.0175
kfreebsd-i386       1   0.0175
ppc64               1   0.0175
arm                 2   0.0351
mipsel              2   0.0351
m68k                3   0.0526
s390                4   0.0702
mips                5   0.0877
ia64                9   0.1579
hppa               12   0.2106
alpha              33   0.5790
sparc              47   0.8247
powerpc            87   1.5266
amd64             257   4.5096
i386             5235  91.8582
total            5699 100.0000


Now this shows that *amd64 is already the second most important arch*. We are
so busy looking after the arches used by basically nobody that we are not 
getting around to releasing with what is becoming *the* main alternative to
i386.  

Oh boy.

Dirk


[1]  I removed the entry "unknown" -- this corresponds to assuming that
     "unknown" as  population corresponds to the distribution of all "known"
     dists shown here.  Lacking knowledge of what drives "unknown", this 
     appears fair.  If someone has a breakdown of "unknown", I will gladly 
     use it. 

[2]  Raw data, stored in /tmp/popcon.txt
                  reports
alpha             33         
amd64             257        
arm               2          
hppa              12         
hurd-i386         1          
i386              5235       
ia64              9          
kfreebsd-i386     1          
m68k              3          
mips              5          
mipsel            2          
powerpc           87         
ppc64             1          
s390              4          
sparc             47         
unknown           1116  

[3] Simple transformation script popcon.R

Raw <- read.table("/tmp/popcon.txt", header=TRUE, row.names=1)

ind <- which(Raw==Raw["unknown",1])     ## find row with "unknown"

Dat <- Raw[-ind,,drop=FALSE]            ## create new data.frame without it
Dat <- Dat[order(Dat[,1]),1,drop=FALSE] ## order by downloads
Dat <- rbind(Dat, total=sum(Dat[,1]))   ## add a new row for totals

Dat <- cbind(Dat,                       ## add a percentage column
             percent=round(100*Dat[,1]/Dat["total",1], 4))
print(Dat)                              ## show result