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What Desktop Environments Are Czech Fedora Users Using?

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Yesterday, I posted results of a survey to find out what distributions and desktop environments Linux users are using. Today, I asked the editor-in-chief of Root.cz for figures solely for Fedora to find out what desktop environments Czech users of Fedora are using. Here are the results (and comparison with figures for Ubuntu from the same survey):

Fedora: GNOME 3 – 45.8%, KDE 4 26.5%, Xfce 12.4 %, GNOME 2 8 %, LXDE 1.8%, KDE 3/Trinity 0.6%, Others – 4.9%. Ubuntu: Unity – 29.8%, GNOME 3 – 20.5%, GNOME 2 – 17.5%, KDE 4 – 14.9%, Xfce – 9.9%, LXDE – 3.8%, KDE 3/Trinity – 0.5%, Others – 3.7%. GNOME 2 also includes GNOME 3 Fallback, MATE.

And some findings:

  • Adoption of GNOME 3 among Fedora users is not bad at all. Almost half of them is already using GNOME 3. Xfce didn’t gain much ground and GNOME 2/Mate is quite low. Ubuntu is apparently struggling more with adoption of their new default environment – Unity. Less than 30 % of its users are using it and the number of users with GNOME 2 is high compared to Fedora.
  •  KDE 4 is very popular among Fedora users. Over 25 % is a really decent job for an environment that is not default. It proves that our KDE SIG is doing a great job. They have always had to fight the widespread opinion that Fedora is a GNOME distro and not very KDE-friendly. Those figures show they are doing great at it and I have a feedback from the community that KDE in Fedora is really well supported. In Ubuntu, KDE is not so popular according to these stats.
  • I expected Xfce to be more popular in Fedora than the stats show. There have been many people loudly saying that they are switching to Xfce because of GNOME 3. This has probably been a bit exaggerated, at least in the Czech Republic. But still: Xfce is more popular among Fedora users than among Ubuntu users.
  • KDE 3/Trinity is pretty much dead. Again, I’ve heard many people saying that they stick with KDE 3 and don’t want to switch to KDE 4, but in fact, almost no one is using it today. It may be a message for MATE developers that stopping time is not a viable vision for a desktop environment. Most users just get used to new generations of DEs, or switch to something else, but don’t stick with old generations.
  • Unity is still an Ubuntu-only thing. Unity was recently ported to Fedora, or more precisely there is a third-party repository with Unity for Fedora, but Unity didn’t get a single vote from Fedora users in this survey. Maybe it’s too early, we’ll see later.
  1. davkol Avatar
    davkol

    Isn’t GNOME 3 Fedora’s default DE?

    Reply
    1. eischmann Avatar
      eischmann

      Yes, it is. What’s the point?

      Reply
      1. nicu Avatar
        nicu

        the point is, GNOME 3 is Fedora’s default for almost 2 years now (3 releases) and still used by less than half of Fedora users. In the GNOME 2 days that percent was much higher.
        of course the GNOME 2/MATE/Cinnamon users are very few since neither MATE nor Cinnamon are available in any official repo, Cinnamon is in an unofficial repo and buggy (it didn’t work for me), MATE is hopefully be available only from F18.
        I am not totally shocked by the low percentage of Xfce users, I moved myself to Xfce on the netbook but I am unhappy with it, it lacks feature and polish, so I keep it only on th erarely used netbook, not on my desktop workhorse.

        Reply
        1. eischmann Avatar
          eischmann

          Nicu, let’s be precise. GNOME 3 has been default since Fedora 15 which was released less than 14 months ago. That’s not “almost 2 years”. IMHO half of the user base using the default desktop environment when there are strong alternatives – KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon,… is not bad. FYI Cinnamon has been officially in Fedora 17 repos for about 2-3 weeks. It works as well as in Mint. The environment still needs some polishing, but you should definitely give it a try.

          Reply
          1. nicu Avatar
            nicu

            ok, my mistake, 14 months, still 3 releases. meaning all suported (not yet EOL’ed) releases have GNOME 3 as default. the big “Download” button on the front page goes to a GNOME 3 download. try to find a survey from Fedora 14 or eariler and see the GNOME/KDE/Xfce percentages, compare with that.
            Cinnamon being in an official repo for 2-3 weeks makes it irrelevant in the survey, is way too new.

          2. Jan Wildeboer Avatar
            Jan Wildeboer

            Well – more Fedora users switched to Gnome 3 as Ubuntu users switched to Unity AFAICS. Isn’t that really interesting, Nicu?

          3. nicubunu Avatar
            nicubunu

            There was no alternative to GNOME 3 in Fedora land, where KDE is way different and Xfce low on features. Now with F18 just releases, there are more alternatives. Still, it will take a while until they will get measured.
            I see around me both Fedora people happy with G3 and Fedora people thinking Unity is better, as I see Ubunutu people happy with Unity and Ubuntu people thinking G3 is better.
            Miself, I witched to MATE with F18.

  2. Esteban Avatar
    Esteban

    Interesting 🙂

    Reply
  3. Digitalus Avatar
    Digitalus

    As a recent convert to KDE I can only imagine what would the difference be if KDE was the default. I think it would lead a lot more. I think so because I’ve used GNOME so far only because it was default and now that I’ve also experienced KDE I found it was a lot better.

    Reply
  4. Anixx Avatar
    Anixx

    You made incorrect conclusion. Users do not use KDE3 on Fedora and Ubuntu because it is not available there (just as Unity is not available on Fedora). Conduct a similar survey among openSUSE users and you will receive a significant proportion of KDE3 users.

    Reply
  5. Anixx Avatar
    Anixx

    You make incorrect conclusions. Users do not use KDE3 on Fedora and Ubuntu because it is not available there (just as Unity is not available on Fedora). Conduct a similar survey among openSUSE users and you will receive a significant proportion of KDE3 users.

    Reply
    1. eischmann Avatar
      eischmann

      There is a big difference between what’s provided by default and what’s not. In Fedora, GNOME is the default environment. And I don’t see such a big difference between installing KDE 4 from main repositories and installing KDE 3 from a third-party repository. People who go for KDE in Fedora know what they’re going for and it’s not more difficult to learn how to add KDE 3. So the fact that KDE 3 is not in the main repositories doesn’t really explain why it’s pretty much dead among Fedora users.
      KDE 4 is over 4 years old. Many users don’t even remember KDE 3 which is why they don’t look for it, but it’s in compliance with my conclusion that stopping time is not a viable vision for a DE because it will become irrelevant as KDE 3 has become no matter how much some people love it. Don’t get me wrong. I loved KDE 3, too, was a KDE 3 at the time, but don’t see it as a relevant DE any more.

      Reply
      1. nicubunu Avatar
        nicubunu

        I am no KDE fan and don’t want to defend KDE 3 here, but is a HUGE difference between what’s on the main and third party repos, and a big part of that is about QA (but not only).
        I personally use only GIMP and Firefox from external repos with the single reason that the distro I’m using does not have recent updates for them.

        Reply
      2. Anixx Avatar
        Anixx

        There is no normal KDE3 in Fedora, even in third-party repositories. Trinity is unstable and has extremely limited set of packages. They even do not have all KDE3 localizations, not to say additional software. People who want KDE3 just would not use Fedora, they would choose openSUSE.

        Reply
    2. Anixx Avatar
      Anixx

      There is no normal KDE 3 in Fedora, even in third-party repositories. Trinity is unstable and has extremely limited set of packages. They even do not have all KDE 3 localizations, not to say additional software. People who want KDE3 just would not use Fedora, they would choose openSUSE.

      Reply
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