Monthly Stats – June 2009

Donations & Sponsorships:

Many thanks to the following donors and sponsors for financially supporting Linux Mint:

Donors:

  • $116, Oscar T. (UK)
  • $100 (2nd donation), John Ritchie (Aging Technogeek) (USA)
  • $100, Douglas M. (USA)
  • $100, Terry M. (USA)
  • $100, Egyirba H. (USA)
  • $72 (5th donation), Theodore T. (UK)
  • $72 (2nd donation), Carlos C. (Portugal)
  • $72, Emil D. (Ireland)
  • $72, Patrick L. (Switzerland)
  • $72, Bjorn A. (Sweden)
  • $72, Muharem H. (Germany)
  • $58, Giovanni S. (Italy)
  • $50 (2nd donation), Jonathan B. H. (USA)
  • $50, Robert P. (Australia)
  • $50, Protecting Our Future (USA)
  • $50, Anthony F H. (USA)
  • $50, William R. (USA)
  • $50, John W. (USA)
  • $43 (8th donation), Temel B. (Germany)
  • $40 (4th donation), Philippe W. (Switzerland)
  • $36, Andreas H. (Germany)
  • $35, Adam S. (USA)
  • $30, Gabe G. (USA)
  • $30, Krzysztof K. (Poland)
  • $29 (2nd donation), DB. (Dick) (Netherlands)
  • $29, Emmanouil P. (Greece)
  • $29, Robert S. (UK)
  • $29, Aldo R. (Italy)
  • $25, Eddie F. (Australia)
  • $25, William S. (USA)
  • $25, Majestic Combined Services [MCS] (USA)
  • $25 (3rd donation), Gordon Hilliard (ghilly) (UK)
  • $25 (3rd donation), Michael G. (subslug) (USA)
  • $21, Julio S. (Portugal)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Douglas S. (USA)
  • $20 (2nd donation), Colin C. (Canada)
  • $20, John A. (USA)
  • $20, Glenn E. (USA)
  • $20, Nebojsa R. (Canada)
  • $20, Curtis O. (USA)
  • $20, David F. (USA)
  • $20, Harreson S. (Canada)
  • $20, Juha A. (Finland)
  • $20, Craig B. (Australia)
  • $20, Douglas T. (USA)
  • $20, Donald P. (USA)
  • $20, Brian G. (Canada)
  • $15 (4th donation), Kevin S. (kevinrs) (UK)
  • $15, Jonathan R. (Canada)
  • $14 (2nd donation), HeLikesMint (Germany)
  • $14, Pablo P. (Belgium)
  • $14, Morten F. H. (Denmark)
  • $14, Subtlekiss (UK)
  • $14, Fernando C. P. (Spain)
  • $14, Slavoljub M. (Norway)
  • $10 (5th donation), Henry W. (USA)
  • $10 (2nd donation), Dan B. (USA)
  • $10 (2nd donation), Richard G. (USA)
  • $10, Matko G. (Croatia)
  • $10, Jorn L. (Norway)
  • $10, Edward F. (Australia)
  • $10, Michael S. (UK)
  • $10, John P. (Australia)
  • $10, Mairin C. (Ireland)
  • $10, Andrew M. (USA)
  • $10, Charles E. (UK)
  • $10, John D. (UK)
  • $10, Joseph G. (USA)
  • $10, Robert David J. (UK)
  • $10, Maurice R. (Canada)
  • $10, John R. (USA)
  • $8, Dag Eirik A. (Norway)
  • $7 (3rd donation), Jindrich R. (Czech Republic)
  • $7, Socrates D. (Greece)
  • $7, Andre J. (Germany)
  • $7, Rowena J. (UK)
  • $7, Stanislav G. (Germany)
  • $6, John H. (UK)
  • $6, Sergey P. (Russia)
  • $5.5, Stephen M. (USA)
  • $5.25, Aneesh A. (India)
  • $5, Hamed K. (USA)
  • $5, Mark S. (UK)
  • $5, Arvind D. (Mauritius)
  • $3, Luca M. B. (Italy)
  • $2, Tomas H. (Slovakia)
  • $1, Shane L. (USA)

Sponsors:

Money raised in June:

* Donations: $2402
* Sponsors: $498.5

http://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php
http://www.linuxmint.com/sponsors.php

User Stats:

Repartition of Linux Mint users across releases:

  • Linux Mint 7 Gloria: 60%
  • Linux Mint 6 Felicia: 26%
  • Linux Mint 5 Elyssa LTS: 9%
  • Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna: 4%

Web Stats:

  • Visits: 1,559,894 (+13.17%)
  • Pageviews: 2,939,104 (+9.17%)
  • Page impressions: 1,303,421
  • Search queries: 3,250,028
  • Forum users: 17,862
  • Forum posts: 156,267

Rankings:

  • Distrowatch (popularity ranking): 1350 (4th)
  • Distrowatch (traffic share): 4% (2nd)
  • Alexa (website ranking): 29,001th

Events:

Summary:

  • The community continues to strongly support the distribution. 88 people donated money in June for a total of $2402.
  • The amount of money received from our sponsors grew to $498.5.
  • All indicators show that the release of Linux Mint 7 created a boom in the size of our user base and that its growth is now getting back to normal.
  • On Distrowatch, Linux Mint is slowly loosing its popularity as the novelty factor isn’t there anymore and the news related to the distribution aren’t relayed in the press and on Linux related websites. Linux Mint isn’t new anymore, but it isn’t as established as other distributions yet and de facto not considered a “major” within the Linux community even though the size of its user base can in times be as much as two to three times larger than the ones of projects like SUSE, Fedora or Mandriva.
  • The Overall income is up 29%, and June 2009 was the (4th consecutive) best month ever since the start of the distribution.
  • In brief: Finances have never been so good, Linux Mint sits in a very comfortable position on the Linux home desktop market second only to Ubuntu, its user base continues to grow but the distribution needs to engage in marketing, ads and/or promotion campaigns to get the attention of the medias. Now that Linux Mint is known to most Linux users and that it gathers the second biggest share on the market, it needs to get itself known to others and to compete with other desktops such as Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS.

10 comments

  1. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: one way Ubuntu stays on top of Distrowatch is every 2nd week they’re announcing a new release, be it Alpha (1-6), Beta (2) RC (1 or more, if necessary) and Final. Why do we not announce *any* Alpha’s & Beta’s or RC’s; just Final. x64 wasn’t announced at all, KDE and Fluxbox probably won’t be… Most people go to Distrowatch very frequently to see what’s new. If we’re not in the news, it appears stale. Make more announcements; it can’t hurt.

  2. But congrats none the less. Despite my rant above, Mint is still the best distro out there, hands down! 🙂

  3. I like Ubuntu, but I love Linux Mint. It’s really an Ubuntu plus distro.
    Good luck with the good work!

  4. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: one way Ubuntu stays on top of Distrowatch is every 2nd week they’re announcing a new release, be it Alpha (1-6), Beta (2) RC (1 or more, if necessary) and Final. Why do we not announce *any* Alpha’s & Beta’s or RC’s; just Final. x64 wasn’t announced at all, KDE and Fluxbox probably won’t be… Most people go to Distrowatch very frequently to see what’s new. If we’re not in the news, it appears stale. Make more announcements; it can’t hurt.”

    Respectfully, I disagree. One of the things which makes Linux overwhelming for new users is that which makes it most attractive for old users: The variety of options. There’s nothing scarier than attempting to find an alternative, only to learn that you have to suddenly learn the (minimal) difference between 100 different distributions, all of which are encouraging you to keep as cutting-edge as possible.

    I believe the answer is to create, emphasize, and market around a long-term stable release. As the stats above show, very few of the current users use the LTS. For many people (myself included), using the most recent Mint is simply part of using Linux. But for new users or users who want something without major bugs, this push to upgrade every six months is frightening. I think part of the way to reach out to new users was touched on in this discussion: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=27560

    Let Fedora capture the attention of people who want to have a distribution in chronic beta testing. If we’re genuinely going to show people that there’s an alternative to Windows and OSX, we’re going to have to create something that’s next to bug free, and has as wide a range of hardware support as possible, rather than always pressing for the most recent high-end functions. If Ubuntu is staying on top because it releases a new version every 2 days, so be it. But I’m inclined to think that the people they’re attracting in that case are distro-hopping current Linux users, rather than actual “new” users.

  5. And, by the way, I think it’s worth saying that I find the last bit in the post exciting. To lose the initial excitement factor is a great opportunity, despite the hurdle it represents. I think Mint can become more than a novelty… it can become an OS for everyone. And the recent recovery is a true reflection of the quality of Mint.

    Not to mention the donations! Anyone else think it’s amazing that individual donations outweighed sponsors almost 5:1? That’s sweet!

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