I am wondering which webside is gived most true information about popularity linux distribution if distrowatch isn't that webside.
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Depends on what you mean but "true information" and "most popular". Distrowatch is pretty accurate and their ranking system is based on clicks, not overall downloads and daily active users. This is not a secret and there's nothing inherently wrong with this measurement.
Another way of measuring popularity, again without access to the official number reported by the distribution itself, is the number of news articles, tutorials, etc., about a certain distribution. In that regard I would say Ubuntu wins most of the time.
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I deeply appreciate Distrowatch for how informative it is of Distros packaging, included versions and desktops.
Distrowatch provides a wealth of information.
Yes, the "Popularity" is based on Page Views and not Distro Usage - but Distrowatch discloses this very clearly and has no way of monitoring Distro Usage. And if it did do so - that would be invasive.
Personally, I see the popularity as a Minor Sidenote.
Is there a website that does show this information?
No... because we run into this problem:
and has no way of monitoring Distro Usage. And if it did do so - that would be invasive.
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Then users what used linux distributions is "X" and never can be count?
Propably the popularity comes with how many download was some distribution.
Even Downloads would not be a true measure. I have downloaded a very large number of distros (Very large number...) yet, I only use one of those distros. Plus, a person may download multiple times.
We value our privacy on Linux and in the end, you cannot really get a "true" number for popularity.
So the only remaining question is: Does it really matter?
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Even the census that each distribution uses internally may not be accurate enough, because of virtual machines and re-installs. I downloaded Debian 12's net installer once, but I have since installed it at least a dozen times as virtual machines and a couple of times on real hardware.
I don't always enable the census but this is just to say that there are only estimates and these are not necessarily accurate themselves, nor publicly available.
There's no accurate numbers I'm afraid as most linux distro are distributed freely.
Truth is as many as there are people.
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