Linux Help blog now has a new feature - Polls

Any blog hosted on blogger.com has its own share of advantages and disadvantages. But over the 4 years since this blog has been online, I can very well say that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

At times I have felt a dire need for an easy way to clip posts on the front page by providing a "Read More" link. Yes there is a third party hack for this feature which is cleverly implemented using a combination of CSS and script. But nothing beats having a simple inbuilt solution as seen in Wordpress or Drupal CMS. That is not all, there are lots of other features that I feel could be incorporated in Blogger.com.

Having said that, Blogger development team is working hard to improve and better integrate many useful features. And Polls are its latest offering. If you check the right hand side of this blog, you will find a poll which you can participate in. Do try it out. You can also view the results of the poll which is implemented using Ajax so your page will not be reloaded.

And every two weeks, this blog will have a new poll which will try to mine the computing trends of different people. So keep an eye on the polls when you visit this blog and do take part in it. The very first poll asks you which is your favorite text editor.

Poll shows majority favor Vi as their editor of choice

Two weeks back, this blog had run a poll which asked which was your favourite editor. The poll was open for voting roughly for a period of two weeks or 14 days. And nearly 750 people participated in the poll.

Guess what ? Over 50% of the people that is well over 375 people said their favourite editor is Vi or its equivalent such as Vim, GVim and so on. And I find this a pleasant surprise because I am myself an avid Vi user.

Fig: Pie chart representation of usage of the editors

The second place goes to GEdit - the default text editor in Gnome followed closely by Kate and Emacs. One thing worth noting is that perhaps the people who participated in the poll might have a programming or system administration background which could be why Vi editor fared so well over the notepad equivalent editors such as Gedit.

Or it could be that most Linux and Unix users are predominantly hard core techies who do programming or system administration for a living and who have already mastered the fine art of editing using Vi to appreciate its true power.

While GEdit is a far second in the poll having garnered just 13% of the votes, I suspect that it is quite popular with non-techies who use Linux since it is the default editor in Gnome. Many times I myself have reverted to Gedit when I couldn't find GVim on a Linux machine.

Finally, while I listed some of the most widely known editors, I forgot to include an 'Other' option in the poll and so the poll fails to indicate the percentage of Linux/Unix users who favor an editor not in the lis

Poll - Which Window manager or desktop do you use the most ?

Nowadays, a majority of Linux users make use of a Desktop or a Window manager while working in Linux, irrespective of the flavor of Linux distribution. Some of us are more comfortable when using KDE while many others swear by Gnome. Again, lots of people use alternatives to the big two - Gnome and KDE for their own personal and practical reasons.

This new poll asks you which Window manager or Desktop you use the most while working in GNU/Linux or any other Unix.

One thing which I would like to highlight is that there is a slight difference between a Window manager and a Desktop. For instance, all Desktops can be considered to be window managers but not all window managers can be categorized as desktops. But for this poll, you can use the two words interchangeably.

So which window manager or desktop do you use the most ? You can cast your answer by participating in the poll. Like last time, the poll will be open for voting just over two weeks ie, till 31st of August 2007.

Poll indicates GNOME the most popular desktop environment with KDE close behind

Around one month back, this blog featured a poll that asked you which window manager (Desktop) you used the most. The poll was open roughly for two weeks and closed on 31st of August 2007. In those two weeks, nearly 900 (889 votes) people voted in the polls. And the results are not entirely out of expectation.

GNOME and KDE are neck and neck in the popularity front with GNOME being the favoured window manager by 361 people vs KDE by 335 people. Now it can be stated with certainty that both these window managers (desktops really) are equally popular since the difference is just less than 30 votes. The third place goes to XFCE which is also not a big surprise and it snagged 71 votes (around 7% of the total votes cast). Fluxbox/Blackbox combination takes the 4th place.

What is really surprising is that Enlightenment received 18 votes which is more than what IceWM got. Now, I have not seen that many Linux distributions or Unices which come pre-loaded with Enlightenment window manager, though I have found it a very good one. But many Linux distributions such as the mini ones do bundle IceWM with them.

Fig: Pie chart of the percentage of votes polled

Below are the full results of the polls.

Total votes cast : 889

Window manager	Votes	% Votes
GNOME	361	40%
KDE	335	37%
XFCE	71	7%
Fluxbox, Blackbox	44	4%
Enlightenment	18	2%
IceWM	15	1%
Window maker	9	1%
Fvwm	5	<>
After step	2	<>
Some other	16	1%
I don't use a window manager	13	1%