I just read Louis Gray’s post titled “On the Web, If You’re Not Growing, You’re Dying.” It gave me a chilling realization about web services. Like everything else, what goes up must come down. This must apply to Linux distributions too, right? So, what’s happening with Linux? Which distributions are growing? Like Louis Gray, I’m going to use data from Google Trends. People searching the name of Linux distributions on Google can be considered new users. After all, wouldn’t experienced Linux users already know where the websites of the big Linux distributions are?

Let’s start out with Debian. I’ll note here that if you want to see the Google Trends search results, and not just the screenshot, you can click on the images.

Debian is slowly declining. Has its time passed?

What about Red Hat and Fedora?

Both Red Hat and Fedora are declining, but Fedora has some huge spikes on new releases.

I’m a big OpenSUSE fan. How’s that doing?

While the name SuSE is being searched less, the name OpenSUSE is growing. Searches of OpenSUSE should overtake SuSE pretty soon.

Now, I remember going to Slackware after trying OpenSUSE 11. How’s that doing?

Of course, I didn’t really expect Slackware to be growing.

Now, I’ve been saving the best one for last. What does Ubuntu’s graph look like?

Of course Ubuntu is growing rapidly. What else would you think? But here is where things get shocking.

That’s right. Ubuntu looks like it’s almost ready to overtake Linux as a search term.

So, what does this tell us? First of all, Ubuntu is pretty close to being considered the face of Linux. Second, it’s the newer distributions like Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora that new Linux users are going for. Of course, it’s mainly Ubuntu, but I believe that there could be plenty of new users arrinving at the Fedora and OpenSUSE communities if both distributions work hard to become more user friendly.

So? What’s going to happen to the distributions like Debian and Slackware? I’ll leave that to you.

i80and’s EDIT: While it is true that Ubuntu is increasingly becoming Linux to many people, DistroWatch.com shows that not all is doom and gloom for the “classic” distros; Slackware had been on a rise for the past 6 months as of 07/01/08, as has Debian. However, broadening the statistic query to the past 12 months unsurprisingly shows a generally more neutral growth, with Debian still gaining H.P.D (Hits Per Day) whereas Slackware falls.

possible248’s EDIT: I knew that I was going to get in trouble for using the word “dying” in my post title. I did not mean to say that Debian was going to be wiped off the face of the Earth. What I was really trying to point out was that it was the newer ones that were being searched for, and that Ubuntu is growing at a shocking rate.

Sorry for all the distributions with positive trends that I didn’t cover. I’m also aware that Google Trends isn’t the best place to get data on this topic. My original intention was to show you some of the more interesting parts of the data from Google Trends and then leave you to your own conclusions. Clearly I did not do that properly.

I would also like to thank everybody for their input. We were seen on:

• Digg (222 diggs, 25 comments)
• Reddit (56 points, 63 comments)
• Tuxmachines (529 reads)
• Linux Today (6 talkbacks, 3478 reads)

UPDATE: The reason why there is not a scale on the Y axis is because I took these screenshots when I wasn’t logged in. Sorry for the confusion.

These days, everybody has so many accounts at various web services. This is a known fact. Look at FriendFeed. One of it’s purposes is so people can view the online activity of their friends in one place. That means that you don’t have to go to all those separate websites to catch up on what your friends are doing.

But that’s not the only change. Before, people really liked it when all you had to do was sign up for a free account to use a service. Now, that’s not the case. Signing up for an account, keeping track of the username and password, logging in from time to time, and all that work just seems like too much when you have to do it for so many web services.

So now, there are many web services that you can use without signing in. I’ll use FriendFeed as an example here. There have been a couple blog posts that talk about how to get the most out of FriendFeed without signing up for an account.

An example is typing the below string into your URL.

http://friendfeed.com/public?service=blog

What it does is show you what all the FriendFeed users are blogging about. With URL tricks like this, you can get quite a bit of functionality without logging in.

Another example. My dad has recently discovered Digg. He doesn’t have an account, because he doesn’t need one to read interesting news. He is able to use a service without logging in.

What does this all mean? It means that new services have to come up with ways for users to try out their service without having to sign up. Of course, it’s impossible in some cases, like for webmail services (Gmail). If the ONLY way to use your service is to register an account, your service is at a disadvantage.

So, what is the latest in using services without having to sign up? Well, there is Posterous. You can start a blog without actually having to register an account. You use your email account, a service that you already signed up for, to make your first post to your blog. You are then give a reply email that asks if you want to get a password. Getting a password allows more functionality, like the ability to choose your own subdomain name, instead of having an automatically generated one.

So, what is in the future of web services and accounts? I think we will just have to wait and see.

I’m a fan of FriendFeed. FriendFeed, to me, is total awesomeness. At the time of this writing, I’ve written fifteen posts on FriendFeed (including this one). Robert Scoble loves FriendFeed too. But now, I love FriendFeed even more. Why? Because it’s possible to create truly excellent applications with the FriendFeed API.

The FriendFeed API is far from perfect, but what’s making me love it is NoiseRiver. So, who is behind this masterpiece of an API application? directeur on FriendFeed is responsible for this masterpiece of an API application.

So, what do I like about it? First off, the user interface is excellent. It takes the simplicity of FriendFeed’s user interface and entwines it with an elegance that is so hard to achieve when building a good user interface. Click on the below thumbnail to see the screenshot full-size.

Now, it does more than serve up a pretty user interface. It actually solves some of FriendFeed’s most basic problems. What does it solve?

Well, several people have talked how noisy FriendFeed users can drown out the posts of less-frequent FriendFeed users. Now, if you like the posts of the noisy and quiet FriendFeed users, you’re at a bit of a disadvantage. It’s more difficult to hear the quiet FriendFeed users, and there may be some cases when you’re more interested in what the quiet users have to say.

NoiseRiver to the rescue! It allows you to select which users you like more than others.

Okay, but the noisy FriendFeed users might also talk about topics that you aren’t interested in or don’t like at all. What do you do about that?

No problem. NoiseRiver solves this problem by allowing you to insert keywords and rate those too.

Now, I might really like NoiseRiver, but you are annoyed with something in NoiseRiver’s user interface. What do you do?

Wel, there’s the NoiseRiver FriendFeed room where you can post suggestions, and a lot of the suggestions are acted upon immediately.

In conclusion, NoiseRiver is a top-notch web application that has a great user interface and solves some of FriendFeed’s problems.

For some additional reading, you can check out Louis Gray’s coverage of NoiseRiver.

UPDATE: Apparently some people think that NoiseRiver actually has a chance of being acquired.