With the new Inkscape release we got a link on Slashdot, which meant a lot of downloads and traffic to our site. I was disappointed with the comments on Slashdot, effectively lowering my esteem for the site even more. Most weren't useful (not saying that the average user on Slashdot knows enough about graphics to make a good comment) and many were antagonistic. What I found most interesting though was the makeup of the downloads, assuming most are from a pro-Linux site like Slashdot.
| Downloads | Platform | |
|---|---|---|
| 38,000 | Windows | |
| 8,000 | Mac OS X | |
| 3,000 | Source package | |
| 1,000 | Autopackage |
There is over 3 times the downloads of Windows packages as all the other listed platforms combined. Now, Linux users can get the program from their distribution, but it still would lead us to conclude that most of the Inkscape users are Windows users. Which is odd, because most of the developers are not.
I was also surprised by how many people downloaded the Autopackage file. It's nice to see a project trying to make Linux easier to use catch on. Software installation is a common complaint by users and software packagers combined, and they're taking it head on!
We own a special thanks to SourceForge and their mirrors as we've used over 600GB of bandwidth in the last 3 days from downloads alone. It's a crazy amount of bandwidth, and something that we could definitely not afford on our own.
posted Jul 30, 2005 | permanent link
