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Re: Debian is losing its users



Wei Chen wrote:
Hi,

The search volume for Debian has been continuously decreasing in the
recent years, as shown in the search trend statistics of one of the most
famous search engines. This indicates that Debian is losing its users,
e.g. about 50% in the last 3 years.

The Debian team should not focus only on the development and maintenance
of a good and stable operating system, but also on the promotion of its
products.

Being free of charge is not an excuse of not actively participating in
promotional activities. Higher visibility can be beneficial for a
community, since it can bring more new developers. It can be a vicious
circle: if the current situation and trends do not change, the whole
project will eventually not be able to continue because of the lack of
developers and users.

There should not only be developers in the team. Professionals are
needed for the handling of public relations, and the leader should be
responsible for that. Desktop applications should be paid more attention
to, since an active desktop user is more likely to become a developer
than those who use other operating systems as their desktops. You may
also think of ways for the promotion of the projec.t.

HTH


If Debian is actually dropping in popularity (and I'm certainly not convinced), then, IMO, addressing this with public relations is simply bone-headed. If you want Debian to be more popular, work at making it better. Ubuntu is on top mostly because it satisfies the needs and wants of more users than other distros. But any of the others, with enough creativity and effort, could leapfrog Ubu. And it will happen.

If you want Debian to be popular with more people, work at making it better for more people.

Jeff


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