Linux users survey!

boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net to Linux@lemmy.ml – 143 points – Encrypted Form
pad.tchncs.de

To get an idea of this community, and to try the cool CryptPad Survey feature, I created a pretty big Linux usage survey!

The data is anonymized and the content encrypted on the server. I plan on publishing the results.

Have fun!

It works on hardened Firefox on a phone, but the experience is better on a PC.

live results

Notes

  1. I am very sorry but the question "it is okay that my above message gets published" cannot reasonably be respected, as the text is just dumped into a single block
  2. Lag caused some empty questions to appear, removed
  3. A question about disk encryption and "why do you use other OS" got mixed up
  4. i changed the wording of some questions or added more options, so there may be duplicate old answers or too little new ones. You can edit your submission and update your answers.
46

There's a few "Your question here" questions...

I suspect those may depend on choosing a particular response to some of the previous questions

No thats lag as the form doesnt handle over 50 questions that well.

Yup, oops. Those were caused by lag as the form gets horribly slow at that size, server-side somehow.

So aside for a few wording and technical issues, something stuck out to me. Using "special" to refer to neurodivergence is a bit problematic and potentially dogwhistley because of the historical contexts it's been used in to dismiss and look down on people. And even if it wasn't, it's a bit ambiguous; can someone who feels that they are in touch with their "spiritual side" consider themselves to have a "special brain"?

If you're wondering about neurodivergence, probably better to just ask "Are you neurodivergent?" rather than using euphemisms.

I am neurodivergent myself.

The word is complicated but for sure, I may rephrase that. Not sure if this will mess up the results though, it may create a second question out of it.

I think special is a positive word.

wow I did not expect Linux to be this male dominated

Is it really that surprising? Specially the type of person that would be on Lemmy and use Linux.

well yes, it means we still have a very long way to go as a society edit: at least as community

No me neither, crazy huh.

At least this community. Linux ≠ Linux community on the Fediverse.

Why the fuck does a survey need a loading screen with a progress bar?

Holy shit, people, some HTML with input fields and a submit button does not need to be this over engineered!

Its encrypted on the server and decrypted in your browser. Not useful for this survey though

Filled out the survey, hope some other people do too. Would be interesting to see how people answered.

Sorry, but how are a lot of the questions relevant for this community?

Especially concerning the (family) income, age, being neurodivergent etc. These are sensitive information and seem more fitting for a market survey/selling ads.

What is your goal with the answers? What are your research questions? How will the answers help this community?

I think they are relevant to getting to know this community. The questions are optional.

So going into this survey my idea of this community was

  • Linux mint or arch users
  • male
  • 25 average
  • often neurodivergent
  • more income than average as tech stuff is kinda educated friendly

I am neurodivergent myself. I am interested if free software actually reaches poorer people. I am interested how diverse we are.

Thanks for your answer, I guess fair enough. ;-)

Good luck for your survey!

Why did you start using linux? it was the 80s/90s, windows didn't exist, I used un*x at uni, of course I couldn't install HPUX, AIX, Solaris or IRIX on my 386, so I installed Linux. There was minix but it was not free. Also BSD was tempting.

Origin? A couple of floppy images downloaded from usenet :) there was no distro really.

it was the 80s/90s, windows didn’t exist

Wow, that's a pretty narrow gap. The 80386 started mass production in 1986 and Windows 3.0 (the first actually usable one) came out in 1990.

I refused to use Windows until Win95 and even then I was experimenting with OS/2. In 1997 I installed Slack 3.4 and have been around every since. I'm currently running Linux Mint but I sorta miss SuSe and may go back to it.

If you were using linux in the 1980s you were way ahead of the curve.

End of 80s was un*x, I started using Linux as a main OS with kernel 0.99

Some questions I wish I could say because it's open source or I believe in open source projects

Free software is an option but for sure the open sourceness makes sense even if it wasnt free

Just to note, Kali is a downstream release of Debian Testing, not Ubuntu. Also for question 55 you didn’t include “git clone and build binary from src”.

Thanks, but poorly changing this now would cause breakage.

Yes forgot source install completely, thats an issue.

Some of the questions about distros don't take into account those of us who have been using Linux since the mid-90s. Your scope here seems to be directed at the last decade or so.

There are some issues with some questions: empty ones (variant 1, variant 2, variant 3 etc) and toggles where radio buttons would be more appropriate

Done.

I once used CryptPad Form as well, it's pretty cool.

So there are 43+ NixOS users and noone switched away for another OS?

Woot!

I keep pondering switching back to Debbie and every time I get in a fight with ... well everything I try to install ... And I look at my configuration.nix and sunk cost fallacy sits in.

I don't really need Splashtop, NinjaRMM, Parsec Server right?

I dunno, I don't wanna take part in any survey, it feels wrong to me. But filled it halfway, just to see my own thoughts on linux. BTW you shouldve added " for fun" as a option to the question "why'd you use linux", thats the first thing that came to my mind

I think that is an option.

And that survey is anonymous, I dont get any personal info like IP address etc.

Cryptpad still doesn't support rclone file transfer or at least WebDAV? Was waiting for this for ages...

Encrypted forms are not usable. Uncaught Error: TIMEOUT. I enabled WASM.

I didn't see these questions at all.

  • Do you feel represented in the community?
  • How do you feel, how could the community improve?
  • Do you modify your install in these areas?

I couldn't find an answer for this question

  • Why did you start using Linux? (My answer would be, found it on a magazine)

This question is not distinctive

  • Do you use other Operating Systems? (Yes I do use Android but not on a PC)

I would expect "independent" as an answer for these questions

  • Where does the distro you use originate from?
  • What origin was your FIRST distro from?