From Fedora Project Wiki

(Don't be so mean.)
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It's uncertain whether the old method used for Fedora 9 and previous releases was properly counting all unique IPs.  The new method works incrementally, and thus takes longer, but should be slightly more accurate.
It's uncertain whether the old method used for Fedora 9 and previous releases was properly counting all unique IPs.  The new method works incrementally, and thus takes longer, but should be slightly more accurate.


{{admon/note|Currently there is no reliable way to count total users of Linux or a specific distribution.|Anyone who tells you otherwise is dishonest or trying to sell you something.
{{admon/note|Currently there is no reliable way to count total users of Linux or a specific distribution.|Anyone who tells you otherwise may be misinformed, dishonest, or trying to sell you something.


The numbers above do not represent a total user count for Fedora.  We are counting IP addresses because that is the only thing we can reliably measure.  ''OEM shipping numbers, application popularity contests, and other "estimates" all have huge, intrinsic error factors as well.''  Without a 1:1 sales figure or registration process, user counting is a very difficult problem to solve.  Our [[#Accuracy_of_metrics|accuracy]] section below has a discussion of what's wrong with IP number counts, too.
The numbers above do not represent a total user count for Fedora.  We are counting IP addresses because that is the only thing we can reliably measure.  ''OEM shipping numbers, application popularity contests, and other "estimates" all have huge, intrinsic error factors as well.''  Without a 1:1 sales figure or registration process, user counting is a very difficult problem to solve.  Our [[#Accuracy_of_metrics|accuracy]] section below has a discussion of what's wrong with IP number counts, too.

Revision as of 12:37, 8 April 2010

This page contains a variety of statistics about Fedora's usage. The Fedora Project believes that metrics are an important tool.

Who uses Fedora?

Lots of different people. Millions, in fact -- many millions! You can see some notable examples on the Overview page.

Fedora 12 (Constantine)

Constantine unified starting on 2009-11-17.

Yum Data

Current release connections

Connections to yum
Week Dates New Unique IPs Total Unique IPs Total compared to Leonidas
Week 1 2009-11-17 -- 2009-11-23 91,620 91,620 87%
Week 2 2009-11-24 -- 2009-11-30 88,238 179,858 92%
Week 3 2009-12-01 -- 2009-12-07 88,194 268,052 97%
Week 4 2009-12-08 -- 2009-12-14 89,622 357,674 97%
Week 5 2009-12-15 -- 2009-12-21 90,215 447,889 99%
Week 6 2009-12-22 -- 2009-12-28 89,697 537,586 98%
Week 7 2009-12-29 -- 2010-01-04 90,096 627,682 97%
Week 8 2010-01-05 -- 2010-01-11 98,631 726,313 97%
Week 9 2010-01-12 -- 2010-01-18 101,423 827,736 97%
Week 10 2010-01-19 -- 2010-01-25 94,734 922,470 96%
Week 11 2010-01-26 -- 2010-02-01 108,173 1,030,643 96%
Week 12 2010-02-02 -- 2010-02-08 113,659 1,144,302 97%
Week 13 2010-02-09 -- 2010-02-15 113,893 1,258,195 97%
Week 14 2010-02-16 -- 2010-02-22 117,088 1,375,283 97%
Week 15 2010-02-23 -- 2010-03-01 77,693 1,452,976 95%
Week 16 2010-03-02 -- 2010-03-08 124,960 1,577,936 96%
Week 17 2010-03-09 -- 2010-03-15 127,100 1,705,036 96%
Week 18 2010-03-16 -- 2010-03-22 125,588 1,830,624 97%
Week 19 2010-03-23 -- 2010-03-29 124,949 1,955,573 97%
Week 20 2010-03-30 -- 2010-03-05 121,740 2,077,313 97%

Total repository connections

Total connections to repositories (as of 2010-03-29)
Method Fedora 7 Fedora 8 Fedora 9 Fedora 10 Fedora 11 Fedora 12 Rawhide TOTAL
Mixed 4,009,693 6,067,198 3,410,439 3,969,997 3,594,656 2,077,313 995,251 24,124,547
New 4,033,517 6,155,699 3,569,956 3,932,868 3,512,834 1,830,624 985,440 24,396,389
TOTAL UNIQUE IPs: 20,695,617

It's uncertain whether the old method used for Fedora 9 and previous releases was properly counting all unique IPs. The new method works incrementally, and thus takes longer, but should be slightly more accurate.

Note.png
Currently there is no reliable way to count total users of Linux or a specific distribution.
Anyone who tells you otherwise may be misinformed, dishonest, or trying to sell you something.

The numbers above do not represent a total user count for Fedora. We are counting IP addresses because that is the only thing we can reliably measure. OEM shipping numbers, application popularity contests, and other "estimates" all have huge, intrinsic error factors as well. Without a 1:1 sales figure or registration process, user counting is a very difficult problem to solve. Our accuracy section below has a discussion of what's wrong with IP number counts, too.

When you hear someone estimate a count of users, the right questions to ask are:

Precisely how did you arrive at this number?
For Fedora the answers are located at this page.
Where is the data located, so someone can duplicate the process?
Although you do need appropriate access to our logging hosts to gather the data, our Infrastructure team does welcome people who want to participate in their work.

Accuracy of metrics

The numbers above for yum represent unique IP addresses that reach our update server, not simply downloads. We believe it is reasonable to equate a "new IP address checking in" with "a new installation of Fedora", with the following caveats:

  1. Users who have dynamic IP addresses will likely be counted multiple times, which inflates the number by some amount.
  2. Users who are behind NAT or corporate proxies will not be counted at all.

The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations suggests that group (2) is significantly larger than group (1). As such, we believe that the true numbers in the field are higher than the numbers on this page.

For a more thorough discussion and enlightening information about the measurement of Fedora's userbase, refer to this blog entry by Jef Spaleta.

Smolt Data

Smolt is Fedora's hardware profiling project. It is an opt-in database that tracks unique installations of Fedora, and various details about that install. People who install to runlevel 5 will be able to opt-in during firstboot, but people who install to runlevel 3 will have to install the smolt client via yum and manually register.

BitTorrent

The following table shows the number of downloads that have been made over BitTorrent. This table shows downloads only through trackers connected to the official torrent server.

Downloads from bittorrent (as of 2010-03-23)
Sulphur (F9) Cambridge (F10) Leonidas (F11)[1] Constantine (F12)
443,932 518,642 356,366 223,842
  1. The statistics for BitTorrent were interrupted on or about 2009-09-04 Fedora 11 because of a torrent server reset. Totals at that time are added to the current totals (F10: 306,696, F11: 169,832).

Direct Download

The following table shows the number of direct downloads of Fedora 39 media from unique IP addresses, as shown in the web proxy logs. The actual number of raw downloads tends to be much higher.

Direct downloads from the web
Week Dates Downloads this week Total downloads
Week 1 2009-11-17 -- 2009-11-23 154,804 154,804
Week 2 2009-11-24 -- 2009-11-30 84,372 239,176
Week 3 2009-12-01 -- 2009-12-07 68,829 308,005
Week 4 2009-12-08 -- 2009-12-14 61,611 369,616
Week 5 2009-12-15 -- 2009-12-21 56,961 426,577
Week 6 2009-12-22 -- 2009-12-28 51,148 477,725
Week 7 2009-12-29 -- 2010-01-04 49,480 527,205
Week 8 2010-01-05 -- 2010-01-11 54,668 581,873
Week 9 2010-01-12 -- 2010-01-18 57,865 639,738
Week 10 2010-01-19 -- 2010-01-25 57,698 697,436
Week 11 2010-01-26 -- 2010-02-01 57,785 755,221
Week 12 2010-02-02 -- 2010-02-08 57,286 812,507
Week 13 2010-02-09 -- 2010-02-15 54,932 867,439
Week 14 2010-02-16 -- 2010-02-22 54,803 922,242
Week 15 2010-02-23 -- 2010-03-01 56,533 978,775
Week 16 2010-03-02 -- 2010-03-08 57,795 1,036,570
Week 17 2010-03-09 -- 2010-03-15 55,488 1,092,058
Week 18 2010-03-16 -- 2010-03-22 51,196 1,143,254
Week 19 2010-03-23 -- 2010-03-29 49,675 1,192,929
Week 20 2010-03-30 -- 2010-04-05 47,370 1,240,299

fedoraproject.org unique visitors

fedoraproject.org visitors
Period Unique IPs
January 2008 785,583
February 2008 782,043
March 2008 830,078
April 2008 723,776
May 2008 1,128,115
June 2008 825,912
July 2008 751,521
August 2008 773,209
September 2008 1,461,490
October 2008 1,351,477
November 2008 1,993,547
December 2008 1,873,217
January 2009 1,815,135
February 2009 1,697,108
March 2009 1,816,077
April 2009 1,749,571
May 2009 1,996,040
June 2009 2,305,280
July 2009 1,929,651
August 2009 1,964,544
September 2009 1,859,708
October 2009 1,996,649
November 2009 2,423,626 (all-time monthly high)
December 2009 1,969,482
January 2010 1,829,467
February 2010 1,628,215
March 2010 1,728,081

Edits to Fedora wiki

Fedora wiki edits
Period Total edits Edits from unique IPs
October 2007 921 426
November 2007 1,090 472
December 2007 807 378
January 2008 1,170 580
February 2008 1,244 645
March 2008 1,280 705
April 2008 1,283 755
May 2008 6,043 766
June 2008 6,561 731
July 2008 4,112 528
August 2008 2,226 423
September 2008 4,738 791
October 2008 3,848 617
November 2008 4,619 715
December 2008 4,627 751
January 2009 6,327 739
February 2009 7,444 764
March 2009 8,650 973
April 2009 5,294 844
May 2009 5,191 928
June 2009 5,337 858
July 2009 5,373 807
August 2009 4,864 702
September 2009 5,796 868
October 2009 5,407 782
November 2009 5,665 957
December 2009 4,058 653
January 2010 5,319 711
February 2010 12,384 761
March 2010 12,176 834

Contributors

Accounts 2010-02.jpg

In April 2008, the Fedora Account System CLA process was converted to a click-through process instead of a manual process of GPG signing and fax/email.

Ambassadors

Information about the number of Fedora Ambassadors.

Translators

Information on the growth and numbers of Fedora Translators.

Maps

A variety of maps showing various statistics.

Charts

Some charts are available reflecting some of the information shown on this page.

Legacy Statistics

Older releases and years are on the Legacy statistics page.

Commands

Information on how these statistics are gathered is found here.