How is MX Linux reigning #1 on Distrowatch?

Zyratoxx@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 99 points –

Please don't get me wrong, this is not meant to be rude slander. MX Linux is not a bad Distro at all (even tho I've always opted for Debian instead) and peops are free to use what suits them best.

But compared to other Distros (like Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian or Mint) there doesn't seem to be much excitement about it. I hardly see articles about MX and I have barely seen people outing themselves as MX users which makes me wonder:

Are MX users just low key quiet, am I escaping their presence or is there a different reason for MX' high HPD score?

Btw: feel free to take a shot every time I write MX :p

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Because:

The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch was accessed each day, nothing more.

So people see it on the list and click on it wondering "what the heck is this MX Linux thing". And that boosts the ranking. And now that it's at the top, it attracts more curious clicks, thus it continues to remain on top.

And now that it's at the top, it attracts more curious clicks, thus it continues to remain on top.

That's exactly how I learned about MX and started using it.

lol same, around 2018 IIRC, I was tired of Mint/Cinnamon, I wanted something simple, check DW, download MX, never looked back.

It was around the end of last year for me. Got truly sick and tired of using Arch and derivatives for 2+ years and having them crap out all the time. Went through a bunch of distros, but MX felt the best and had the best support for xfce. Slapped nix on top to install userland packages, and it's pretty damn good.

@d3Xt3r @zyratoxx IT is true that this is a terrible way of measuring popularity, like they could put surveys or use the searches on the site for instance

Back in the days of the Linux counter that’s essentially how it worked.

I haven't tried MX Linux. So they set the distrowatch page as start page in the browser, and users never change it?

No, people go on the distrowatch website, see mx linux at the top and wonder what it is because it seems to be popular but they've never heard of it, so they click on it, which boosts the ranking and makes it remain at the top. A website can't change your browser's start page.

Definitely, but still those hit per day numbers gotta come from somewhere. There is of course the possibility to mess around here but I don't want to make accusations out of the blue when there may be that huge fanbase that's just keeping it low >.<