Early Ubuntu Hardware/Software Survey Data

[starshipeleven]

Not sure the meaning of Single core? does that mean these people are running laptops? or AMD cores/Intel no HT?

Single CPU usually (and in this case too) means single physical CPU, not single core CPU.

There are servers that can run 2 or 4 physical CPUs on the same motherboard (each with its own RAM and PCIe lanes, but working together under the same OS).

They say "We haven’t broken this down to cores but is something we will look in to."

[starshipeleven]

A bit odd they count how many CPUs you have, but not cores or threads.

I'm betting it's because their data collection script is garbage. The examples of collected data from Michael back when he tested this were full of holes.

EDIT: maybe it's only their data mining script (the script that extracts data from the reports) that sucks.

[M@GOid]

Why so long? My Arch installs only take 10 and that's to get a full desktop up and running.

A look at the variables might explain:

- How is the size of the ISO file on Arch? Ubuntu is 1.8GB;

- What is the media being used? USB flash drive is faster than a DVD. A fast USB 3.0 driver will fly during a install;

- What CPU and drive are being used? A Atom with a HDD will be a lot slower than a i3/i5 with a SSD;

- Are you messing with the options of the installer? I myself never use the default options;

- Are the installer pulling packages from the internet? Ubuntu always pull packages from the internet in my installations.

I can install Ubuntu really fast, but the variables above have a say on the total time of any installation.

[torsionbar28]

A bit odd they count how many CPUs you have, but not cores or threads.

I don't find it strange at all. Unlike games (e.g. Steam survey) that are optimized for high clocks and low core counts, a general purpose Linux OS will benefit from as many cores as you can throw at it. I can see where game devs care about core counts, since historically most games have not been written to take advantage of more than 4 cores (and many even less than 4). If 90% of the install base is using 4 cores, why spend the money to thread the game beyond 4 cores? For an OS vendor though, what difference does it make whether the user has 4 cores or 8 or 16? We all know the Linux OS will schedule processes accordingly.

What an OS vendor might care about however, is socket count. One socket tells us it's probably a consumer grade desktop or laptop peecee. Two sockets is a professional workstation or small/medium server. Four+ sockets is a big honkin mega server. Knowing this gives them valuable info on where their OS is being deployed.

[creative]

This sounds about right. Installed from CD takes about this long. Last install I did was with a USB drive and that went much quicker.

Expected statistics.

Speaking of USB drives, a 32Gb 3.0 thumb drive, I did a complete Manjaro installation from DVD installation to USB using Gnome it was interesting. Now to try that with the Xfce version. It will be much more responsive. A scenario where 16GB of ram and no swap becomes handy. Novel and fun.

[audi.rs4]

Why so long? My Arch installs only take 10 and that's to get a full desktop up and running.

Maybe because you can surf the web during the Ubuntu installation and some people didn't notice that they need to press restart to finish the installation?

This sounds about right. Installed from CD takes about this long. Last install I did was with a USB drive and that went much quicker.

[Brophen]

RAM is the most important statistic to take out of this imho, particularly with these guys going full blown GNOME, which eats more ram than Windows on boot.

Not sure the meaning of Single core? does that mean these people are running laptops? or AMD cores/Intel no HT?

Single CPU, not single cpu core as far as I could tell

[JeansenVaars]

RAM is the most important statistic to take out of this imho, particularly with these guys going full blown GNOME, which eats more ram than Windows on boot.

Not sure the meaning of Single core? does that mean these people are running laptops? or AMD cores/Intel no HT?

[tzui]

Why so long? My Arch installs only take 10 and that's to get a full desktop up and running.

Maybe because you can surf the web during the Ubuntu installation and some people didn't notice that they need to press restart to finish the installation?

[Slithery]

The average Ubuntu desktop install takes 18 minutes.

Why so long? My Arch installs only take 10 and that's to get a full desktop up and running.