On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 04:58:55PM +0100, Laurence Hurst wrote:
On 09/08/2012 16:50, Darac Marjal wrote:
Fair point. However, comparing[3] popcon results for xfce4-session[1] and
gnome-session[2], less than 4% of debian users use[4] xfce, compared to a
little over 16% who use gnome.
Hmm. My numbers seem a little suspect there. Is a graphical session
REALLY used by such a small majority of the userbase?
You seem to be suggesting that xfce4-session and gnome-session are
the only desktop environments - I, for example, use pekwm at the
moment (and openbox before that) so will not be in either that 20%
(assuming no overlap, which is probably wrong).
Looking at xserver-xorg[0], the most popular X server at the moment,
it is installed on 52% of systems partaking in the popularity
contest. I suspect this is a reasonable reflection on the number of
graphical installs in popcon as a lot of production headless servers
will probably not be reporting stats (whereas my headless boxes at
home, which do not have an X server installed, do). Because of this
I expect the real number of graphical desktop (compared to
non-desktop installs) is less than 52%.
OK. Perhaps I was a little lax in my language there.
xserver-xorg-core is probably the more accurate package for "uses graphics".
xserver-xorg is a meta package which brings in all the drivers. But if
you want a slimmer system, you'd probably remove them. You'd still use
xserver-xorg-core, though. 37% of users use that regularly. A little
less than twice the above numbers. So the remaining 17%
(xserver-xorg-core minus gnome-session minus xfce4-session) of users use
another session manager (such as kde) or no session manager at all.
Still, while this is a big change, it seems like it will affect only a
minority of users.