LQ Choice Awards for 2009

LinuxQuestions.org run polls every year, where members get to vote for their best Linux apps.

Now anyone cries wolf over missing choices, which seems to be the opposite extreme of being sensible on the net, know that you can make a difference by getting involved on the forums, and suggest those choices to the moderators next year. It’s a community thing after all ;)

Here are the winners with a summary of runner ups. Some figures are rounded for readability in the text; Graphs show accurate poll results.

Desktop Distribution of the Year
Ubuntu won 30% of the votes, nearly double the votes of runner up Slackware, at 17%. A sign that Ubuntu adoption is growing still, by both new and elite users. Fedora follows with 10%. Next but certainly not the least, Debian and Linux Mint trail at 9 and 8 percent.

Server Distribution of the Year
Debian took this round with 24%, Slackware is close in second place with 22 pecent. CentOS (16%), Red Hat EL (13%) and Ubuntu LTS (12%) are grouped in the teens. We can see a wider spread of votes here for server distros.

Security/Forensic/Rescue Distribution of the Year
BackTrack took 44% with SystemRescueCD on it’s heels at 32%. The remaining thirteen entries, smoothwall, Helix and RIPLinux included, all received below five percent of votes.

Database of the Year
MySQL topped at 61%, almost three fold the votes of runner up PostgreSQL, which got 23%. Apart from sqlite which received 8%, the other eleven entries shared the remaining votes, each under three percent.

Office Suite of the Year
No surprise OpenOffice ruled with a whopping 91%; being the default office suite in Ubuntu possibly adding a big chunk to that number. KOffice came second with 4.5% and Gnome Office and Go-oo behind just under 2% each.

Browser of the Year
Firefox flamed the rest with it’s 65% votes, and surprisingly Chrome comes in at 14%. It’s used more than both Opera (9%) and Konqueror (2%) combined.

Desktop Environment of the Year
It’s a close call, with Gnome leading 42% to KDE’s 40% (strictly a 1.59% difference). Xfce is third with 11%.

Window Manager of the Year
Compiz weighs in at 23%, followed by KWin at 20%, and Fluxbox with 16%. Some tiling window managers made it too, xmonad (1.8%), awesome (2%) and Ratpoison (0.5%) to name a few. MetaCity got 6% despite it being the default WM in Ubuntu. Guess folks love eye candy!

Messaging App of the Year
Pidgin leads with 49 percent, enter Kopete and Skype with a (round) 12% each, Skype with two plus votes. Interestingly Empathy has only 5.5%, and XChat ranks one vote below it.

Mail-Client of the Year
Thunderbird rolls in to crush with 54%, Evolution (15%) and Kmail (11%) following behind. Mutt and alpine also make an appearance, with 5% and 2% each.

Virtualization Product of the Year
VirtualBox got 354 votes, that’s 67%, VMWare is next with 15% and KVM and Xen trailing at 7% and 6%.

Audio Media Player Application of the Year
Amarok is the most used at 39%, chased at a distance by Rhytmbox with 17% votes. Audacious (9%) and Songbird (8%) follow in the back.

Audio Authoring Application of the Year
I must mention these entries are not directly comparible, as each serves a different purpose, but for our audio authoring tools, Audacity makes noise with an overwhelming 77%, LAME far behind with 8% and Ardour two votes below that at 7%.

Video Media Player Application of the Year
Videolan (VLC) tops with 46% and mplayer not far behind it with 36%. Xine, Totem and kaffeine follow 6%, 5% and 4.5% each.

Video Authoring Application of the Year
As with our audio authoring, not all video tools can be compared one-on-one, but as for what us users use: FFmpeg crunches ahead with 22%, Avidemux next with 17%, and mencoder and Kdenlive tie at 14%. Blender drops in at 8%.

Multimedia Utility of the Year
GStreamer wins 33% of the votes, digiKam on it’s heels with 26%, and XBMC (15%) and MythTV (14%) following behind.

Graphics Application of the Year
GIMP beats the others with a stunning 66%, Inkscape got 13%, Blender 6% and ImageMagick behind with 4%. Note we’re mixing raster & vector editors here. I wonder if GIMP will lose votes now that it’s not the default editor in Ubuntu Lucid, only time will tell.

Network Security Application of the Year
Nmap Security Scanner came in at 30%, Wireshark following with 23% and ClamAV follows with 11%.

Host Security Application of the Year
SELinux secures pole position with 39% of the votes, entries chkrootkit (17%), AppArmor (12%), Rootkit Hunter and Tripwire (10%) are next in line.

Network Monitoring Application of the Year
Nagios counts 51% member usages, runner up OpenNMS has a reversed 15%. Zenoss had the next most votes at 6%.

IDE/Web Development Editor of the Year
Eclipse is most used at 23% with Netbeans coming in at 16%. Bluefish and Geany tie at 10% of the votes.

Text Editor of the Year
vim got a big 35% chunk of the votes, while gedit only received 16%. Kate (10%) nano (9%) and emacs (8%) made the top 5. Seven percent goes to vi, and joe and pico both got one pecent.

File Manager of the Year
Nautilus received 25% of the votes, Dolphin (20%) and Konqueror (19%) is close behind. Thunar and Midnight Commander tie at 50 votes each with 8.5 percent.

Open Source Game of the Year
Battle for Wesnoth conquers with 15.5 percent, Open Arena and Nexuiz come next with 9%, followed by Frozen bubble (8%) and SuperTux (6%). The other eighteen entries fall under 5%, with fans of Nethack, SuperTuxKart and Frets on Fire ranking at 3.6 percent.

Programming Language of the Year
Python received 28 percent votes, while C, C++ and PHP got a rounded 14%. Java trails behind at 9%, and Perl at 8 percent.

Backup Application of the Year
Command line tool rsync tops in at 49%, deservedly so. tar follows at a distance of 14%, and Clonezilla at 9 percent.

Open Source CMS/Blogging platform of the Year
Popular WordPress sets the bar at 45% of the votes, it’s a close one between Drupal (23.6%) and Joomla!(22.8). The remaining votes split between the twelve other entries, Alfresco at 2 percent being the more popular choice.

So, what to make of all these results?
It’s a nice snapshot of what Linux people are using right now. It obviously doesn’t speak for the entire community, but it does include users across various distros, countries and ages.

Just because an app scored low, doesn’t mean that it’s bad, just unknown. In this vein I saw many apps listed that I never heard of, and I bet some of them are great, too! I plan to try some of those out, gmusicbrowser being the first on my list.

Here is the link to the poll forums

Tags: Choice Awards, LQ