{"id":3375,"date":"2013-07-18T12:02:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T02:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/?p=3375"},"modified":"2013-07-18T12:02:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T02:02:34","slug":"an-argument-for-popcon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/18\/an-argument-for-popcon\/","title":{"rendered":"An argument for popcon"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a package called popularity-contest that’s available in both Debian and Ubuntu (and likely other Debian derivatives). It grabs the list of packages installed on the machine and submits it to the Debian<\/a> or Ubuntu<\/a> popularity contests.<\/p>\n

There you can see which are the most popular packages in Debian and Ubuntu. Unsurprisingly, dpkg, the package manager is rather popular.<\/p>\n

Why should you enable it? Looking at popcon results are solid numbers as to how many users you may have. Although the absolute numbers may not be too accurate, it’s a sample set and if you examine the results over time you can start to get an idea on if your software is growing in popularity or not.<\/p>\n

But there’s something more than that, if you can prove that a lot of people are installing your software on Debian, then you’re likely going to be able to argue for more work time being spent on improving the packaging for Debian.<\/p>\n

Quite simply, enabling popcon is a way to help people like me argue for more time being spent on making Debian better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a package called popularity-contest that’s available in both Debian and Ubuntu (and likely other Debian derivatives). It grabs the list of packages installed on the machine and submits it to the Debian or Ubuntu popularity contests. There you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,533,55],"class_list":["post-3375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-debian","tag-popcon","tag-ubuntu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5a6n8-Sr","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3377,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/06\/popcon-historical-a-tool-for-monitoring-package-popularity-in-debianubuntu\/","url_meta":{"origin":3375,"position":0},"title":"popcon-historical: a tool for monitoring package popularity in debian\/ubuntu","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2013-08-06","format":false,"excerpt":"I've just uploaded (where 'just' is defined as \"a little while ago\") popcon-historical to github. It's a rather rudimentary way to look at the popcon data from Debian and Ubuntu over time. It loads all the data into a Drizzle database and then has a small perl web-app to generate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "code"","block_context":{"text":"code","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/flamingspork.com\/popcon-historical\/pt.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/flamingspork.com\/popcon-historical\/pt.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/flamingspork.com\/popcon-historical\/pt.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":366,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/01\/epson-c65-on-ubuntu-linux-and-debian\/","url_meta":{"origin":3375,"position":1},"title":"Epson C65 on Ubuntu Linux (and Debian)","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2005-03-01","format":false,"excerpt":"Quite easy to get going under Warty (as well as Debian Sid). Add a printer (System Configuration -> Printers, double click 'Add Printer'). Select Local Printer, \"USB Printer #1\" as the port, then, select the model as Epson Stylus C64. Works fine. I guess you can fiddle with quality settings\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3365,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/05\/switching-to-fedora-from-ubuntu\/","url_meta":{"origin":3375,"position":2},"title":"Switching to Fedora from Ubuntu","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2013-07-05","format":false,"excerpt":"I've run Ubuntu on my desktop (well... and laptop) since roughly the first release back in 2004. I've upgraded along the way, with reinstalls on the laptop limited to changing CPU architecture and switching full disk encryption. Yesterday I wiped Ubuntu and installed Fedora. Previously to Ubuntu I ran Debian.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "GNOME"","block_context":{"text":"GNOME","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/gnome\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":375,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/18\/gcc4-in-ubuntu\/","url_meta":{"origin":3375,"position":3},"title":"GCC4 in Ubuntu","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2005-03-18","format":false,"excerpt":"... and not in debian. so, can see if it makes a difference to performance on my desktop. should be fun!","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":272,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2004\/09\/16\/ubuntu-linux\/","url_meta":{"origin":3375,"position":4},"title":"Ubuntu Linux","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2004-09-16","format":false,"excerpt":"Ubuntu Linux - Welcome to Ubuntu Linux Yes... the super secret debian project is out of the bag! Installing on my crash-n-burn machine now... so far: - text install will be replaced with GUI in next release (good thing) - ext3 is default filesystem (eww). - install taking an okay\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":808,"url":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/27\/jbod-can-bite-you-and-ubuntu-704\/","url_meta":{"origin":3375,"position":5},"title":"JBOD can bite you… (and Ubuntu 7.04)","author":"Stewart Smith","date":"2007-03-27","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, so one of the disks in a JBOD (well... single LVM) has been on the way out (hopefully can recover some stuff off it... there's nothing completely important... but still). I've now learnt and desktop has three new 320GB drives in a RAID5. Currently installing Ubuntu 7.04 on it.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "life, the universe and everything"","block_context":{"text":"life, the universe and everything","link":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/category\/life-the-universe-and-everything\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3376,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3375\/revisions\/3376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flamingspork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}