http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Metrics says: > Perhaps the most promising technology is adding a phone home into > anaconda. <snip> > This could also be considered something to be done one time on first >boot. <snip> > Cons: <snip> > * Cannot track current number of installs, only total successful > installs Would it be possible to ask the question near the *start* of Anaconda, and get the install to try to "phone home" twice with a GUID -- once at the start of the install, and once after a successful install when the box gets Internet connectivity. (And then the machine could forget the GUID). That way, you'll get: 1) computers that started the install online but never finished it; 2) computers that started the install online and finished successfully; 3) computers that started the install offline and then went online. By comparing 1 and 2, you'll have an idea of the proportion of unsuccessful installs. By adding 2 and 3, you'll have an idea of the number of total successful installs. So you can estimate the total number of unsuccessful installs. (This would have to assume that online users were no more likely to be able to finish an install -- this assumption is not necessarily correct.) (I know it's possible for someone to start an install online, then unplug the machine and it never go online again. But how often will that happen?) You'd also have an idea of how useful making repos available at install time really is -- if 75% of users aren't online when they install, then the answer is "not very" and we need to put more effort into making ISOs available of what's currently in Extras. On the advisory board list, Christopher Blizzard commented: > If we are able to collect a set of hardware profiles for people, just > after an install, and tie that to a unique machine identifier, we could > make that really useful for people. The reason being that having access > to information about what hardware people are really using allows us to > know where we need to concentrate our efforts. If you could send that at the *beginning* of the install process, you could also look for hardware on which Fedora just does not install. No-one seems to have taken Xen into account in this. Do you actually *want* Xen clients to appear as separate installs or as one? I understand you want to know which packages are the most popular. I don't think install-time popularity contests are going to buy you much -- you'll mostly get variations on the standard options Anaconda gives. Many (most?) people will change what's installed after install, and too many people will change what they actually use over time. And very few users will actively remove software they're not using, especially if they're not sure what it does. I was going to suggest that logs from even one or two mirrors would give you a good idea of the proportions of downloaded software, but (e.g.) South American mirrors wouldn't see much demand for Far Eastern input methods. Hope this helps, James. -- E-mail: james@ | a11y: There's a sense of irony in a term defining aprilcottage.co.uk | accessability which makes non tech savvy people go | "Whaa?". | -- Dave Jones
