Popularity of Debian/Download of packages
Hi,
I was wondering how popular Debian is and I thought it should be possible
to get an estimate for the stable distribution by measuring how often
the Packages file for the main section is downloaded between updates.
Since stable is very stable and apt only downloads the file if it is
updated it should be downloaded approximately once per machine that
has debian running. This won't be exact for several reasons but should
provide a guide.
Possible sources of inaccuracy with this technique:
+Machines which don't use apt.
+Machines which download the Packages file from unofficial mirrors.
-Machines which download the same packages file from multiple official
mirrors.
-Machines which have been uninstalled or re-installed.
-Machines whose clocks run backwards.
It might be possible to improve the estimates by checking how much the
downloads go up when the Packages file is updated. But I leave that
to statisticians.
So, does anyone have these statistics, or see any further problems with
the idea. Even an estimate based on a subset of mirrors would probably be
helpful in establishing a lower bound for number of debian installations.
William Hay
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