2009 Linux Graphics Survey Results

[phoronix]

Phoronix: 2009 Linux Graphics Survey Results

For the month of November we ran the 2009 Linux Graphics Survey, which is a survey in regards to X.Org and the Linux graphics stack that we have been hosting annually for the past three years. This year there was 13,836 results submitted and we have now had the time to go over these results and are publishing all of the numbers today.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14429

[V!NCENT]

The first thing that I notice is the percentage of VESA users almost equals the percentage of VIA users.

[Wyatt]

Looking at the distributions of various things, I was wondering: next year, why not run the questions by the community before posting them. Do some brainstorming and get some idea of what questions may be problematic, or hard to contextualise.

For example, brand is pretty easy but driver is not so much. What hardware are they using? R100-R200? R300-R500? That sort of thing. How many of those nVidia users are on the legacy drivers? Which legacy driver?

Also, there need to be more "none of the above" choices. How many people aren't using any of the X.org display features? Because everyone can select multiple things, there's a loss of context.

The seventh question could probably use an option for "autodetection". That's more or less what I use on any machine I set up these days, and the closest option is "manually editing xorg.conf"-- not quite the same. The option conflates two types of users. (This isn't to say that I won't bust out vim on the thing myself on occasion; I'm well familiar with that file and its simple syntax. X.org is just getting better and better about not needing to do so.)

The desktop resolution question seems prone to misleading data. There is a proponderance of annoyingly low-resolution 1280x800 screens on many laptops, thus skewing the low-range and not allowing us a clear picture of who is running older hardware versus newer devices like nettops. And it doesn't account for common, but weird-ass things like 1680x1050: where does that go?

The key-interests question would probably be best served with a "choose the top three items"-type question and get numbers that way.

The "Active Linux Tasks" could use "other" or "none of the above" options, so as to get a better idea of how many people are actually working. The last question has similar issues, in my opinion. What's a "mainstream user"? Are developers really something you could call "mainstream"? I don't feel it is; not many people know what programming entails at all.

Still, the numbers we've got are the numbers we've got, and they're still decently interesting. Thanks again, Michael.

[DataPath]

What I found interesting was if you add up the users of the various ATI drivers, and add up the users of the various nvidia drivers, the numbers are very very close.

Given the difference in uses of ATI cards versus nvidia, it would seem to suggest that most of the VESA driver users would have nvidia cards.

[Michael]

Looking at the distributions of various things, I was wondering: next year, why not run the questions by the community before posting them. Do some brainstorming and get some idea of what questions may be problematic, or hard to contextualise.

There was in late October on the forums and an announcement on the main site too I believe...

[Wyatt]

There was in late October on the forums and an announcement on the main site too I believe...

Then my apologies; I missed it completely. (Was also in the middle of a move, so things were rather hectic).

[autono]

The first thing that I notice is the percentage of VESA users almost equals the percentage of VIA users.

I suggest that for some people, VESA is the only driver that they know about so that's what they wrote on the survey. My knowledge of graphics is somewhere between the "Vesa" users and yours. I would guess that some of my responses were wrong. (X-server?)

Next year, you might add a little note below each question: (To see which X-server you are using, do this ...) You will get better data and you will help educate some users

[Kano]

Well some use both (or even all 3) drivers for ATI depending on purpose. So summing up is not always the correct way.

[Craig73]

I'd love to use TV-Out... but don't have time to program it.

[chiron80]

Michael,

I have two suggestions for next year's survey. First, make it clear at the top of the forum that you should fill out the form once per computer you have (I filled it out taking into account my three computers, and when I got to the end it said "now fill it out again if you have another computer").

The second suggestion is similar to what Wyatt proposed. You should ask not only what (or how old) hardware they have (which makes a big difference for ATI users, I'm among the users who are stuck with the open source ATI driver after ATI dropped support), but a question getting at whether the user bought new hardware during the past year (or what hardware they would buy in the future), or if they recently switched drivers, etc. These types of questions would help determine whether people are switching in droves to (or from) any one vendor due to a change in their policies (again, I would have a hard time buying another ATI card after they decided to drop support for my less than 3 year old, still under warranty laptop).

- Ben