Linux

48343 readers

455 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

674

Wayland usage has overtaken X11 (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

254 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Source: https://linux-hardware.org/?view=os_display_server

Reporting is done by users who voluntarily upload their system specs via
# hw-probe -all -upload

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] atzanteol 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That will definitely be part of it. It's going to be some cross-section of "people who know about it" and "people who are motivated to have their data recorded" which is going to skew the data in ways we can't reliably understand. Maybe "newbies" are more likely to report than grizzled neckbeards? Maybe desktops are over-represented vs. servers? Maybe one distro lets its users know about it and so its defaults are over-represented? We can't know.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

people who are motivated to have their data recorded

I mean, it's not like it's sensitive information.
hw-probe excludes such information.

newbies

Definitely not, most newbies don't even know about it. It's really useful for gathering general hardware system info for bug reports, and I often end up having to tell newbies about it.

Maybe desktops are over-represented

Absolutely true, if you look at the database it's vast majority desktop and laptop systems.

Maybe one distro lets its users know about it

I know of no such distro, I've hopped between many popular and unpopular distros over the years, haven't found a single one that does it.
Maybe an abscure distro, but it's impact would be questionable.

Also, there's a point to be made in the other direction. The command you need to run is :
sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload
Without -E the environment isn't preserved and it'll think you're on X11, despite being on Wayland.

[–] atzanteol 2 points 6 months ago

people who are motivated to have their data recorded

I mean, it’s not like it’s sensitive information. hw-probe excludes such information.

I know about the tool. I've used it. I don't report my system data. I'm not "motivated" to have it recorded. I couldn't care less about their data gathering.

Since you're relying on people actively reporting their data they need to be motivated to actually do it. That doesn't mean they're afraid of what is being gathered (though have you seen the Linux community?) just that they haven't, for whatever reason, taken the time to do so.

For the rest of it - I was just giving sample potential sources of bias. I wasn't proposing any of those as actual flaws. Just that their polling methodology couldn't account for any of them or whatever actual biases may exist in their data. It's just a list of self-report crap.