Download statistics by operating system

Have you wondered which operating system is the most popular? Well, I mean among BleachBit users.

More than idle fancy, the information helps guide important development decisions such as packaging and as platform-specific cleaners. There are specific cleaners for Windows, Ubuntu, Fedora, and maybe others. Slackware required a special tweak to prevent deleting important files. Debian and Ubuntu require .deb packaging which is completely different than the .rpm packaging for CentOS, Fedora, Mandriva, and OpenSUSE, and Red Hat. Of course, Windows users need .exe files with PyGTK included. All these special needs require extra time, which is time taken away from other platforms.

When I started BleachBit seven months ago, I first packaged it for Fedora, which I myself use. Then, I used openSUSE Build Service to build packages for Debian, Mandriva, openSUSE, and Ubuntu. I was surprised by the disparity and quickly realized most downloads were for Ubuntu, many for Debian, and only a few for Mandriva.

The major change is BleachBit now runs on Windows. When Download Squad reviewed BleachBit, the Windows numbers gave Ubuntu some competition. For the last week since 0.5.2 was released, the chart below shows Ubuntu is back in the lead. (Note: SourceForge doesn't update its stats often. These were the same numbers as yesterday, so who knows how old they really are.)

Mark Twain one wrote, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Indeed, this chart doesn't tell the whole story. BleachBit is included in the Debian and Ubuntu repositories, so there are more Debian and Ubuntu downloads than shown. However, Ubuntu Janty Jackalope users still download BleachBit from BleachBit because the version 0.3.x in the repository is old. SlackBuilds for Slackware has an old version 0.4.1, but I don't provide a package for Slackware. I don't know which version openSUSE's repository has, but a few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to find it in openSUSE. Last time I checked, Fedora's repository had too many rules for me to try to submit a package, and no one has volunteered. Last of all, Windows of course doesn't have a central repository (try to keep up, Microsoft).

Another factor is BleachBit for Windows is new, relatively unknown, and advertised as a "preview." Depending who you ask, there are 10-100 Windows desktop users for each Linux desktop user. As BleachBit matures on Windows, Ubuntu will likely take second place.

Now I'm confused which platform is still the most popular, but I still think Ubuntu wins— for now.

BleachBit 0.5.2 released

Version 0.5.2 is a maintenance release of BleachBit, the free and open source file and privacy cleaner for Linux and Windows. BleachBit aims to be an easy, advanced, and smart way to clean junk including cache, cookies, Internet history, localizations, logs, and temporary files. BleachBit is better than freeware: it's open source.

This release is considered stable for Linux and a preview release for Windows. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

UPDATE

July 1, 2009: BleachBit 0.5.3 has been released.

Changes

The following changes are included since 0.5.1:

• Clean Pidgin (chat client).
• Clean Miro (Internet multimedia player) thanks to juancarlospaco.
• Enhance Vuze/Azureus to clean backup files.
• Clean OpenOffice.org 3.1 recent documents history.
• Fix bug preventing URL history of Firefox 1 and 2 to be cleaned.
• Fix error when cleaned size is negative.
• Specific to Linux
  • Clean gedit thanks to Roman Horník.
  • Clean Nexuiz thanks to juancarlospaco.
  • Clean Firefox 3.5 beta on Ubuntu 9.04.
  • Clean more espeak localizations on Ubuntu and avoid error message.
  • Delete files in ~/.local/share/Trash/expunged (which can be left there by a Nautilus bug regarding files owned by other users).
  • Enhance aMSN (chat client) to clean cache.
  • Fix shredding of write-protected (read-only) files.
  • Fix compatibility packaging BleachBit on Python 2.6 systems (such as Fedora 11).
  • Don't ship Windows-only cleaners in Linux installation packages.
  • Publish RPM installation package for Fedora 11.
• Specific to Microsoft Windows
  • Clean Winamp.
  • Clean Yahoo! Messenger.
  • Clean Windows temporary file folder.
  • Workaround Python bug where in some cases BleachBit could not find files to clean because ~ did not translate to %USERPROFILE%.
  • Update NSIS installer to 2.45 for better installation on Windows 7.
  • Show BleachBit uninstaller in Add/Remove Programs.
  • Use NRV2E instead of LZMA executable compression, so BleachBit will start faster.
  • Fix shredding of Firefox URL history.
  • Fix bug requiring user to confirm system-wide cleaners.
  • Don't ship Linux-only cleaners in the Windows installation package.
• Add Dutch translation thanks to rob.
  
  Want to help translate BleachBit?
• Add Hungarian translation thanks to alfa00red.
• Update Arabic thanks to MaXeR.
• Update Brazilian Portuguese thanks to A. Gabriel.
• Update Czech thanks to Roman Horník.
• Update German thanks to MixCool.
• Update Italian thanks to Luca Falavigna.
• Update Slovak thanks to milboy.
• Simplify some strings to make it easier for translators. (This is a work in progress.)

Known issues

• On Windows when upgrading it's recommended you uninstall before installing the new BleachBit. In the future the installer will be improved.
• Internet Explorer index.dat files cannot be cleaned because they are in use (locked) by a running process. You will see a red error. (Other cleaner programs queue the Internet Explorer index.dat files for deletion during the user login process before Internet Explorer even starts.)
• On Windows when there is an exception (such as when a file can't be deleted), py2exe throws up an error dialog about a log file when exiting BleachBit.
• Do translations work on Windows? BleachBit 0.5.2 is in 19 languages. Please reply with a comment on the blog or a bug report.

Web changes

BleachBit is now hosted on Google App Engine at http://bleachbit-project.appspot.com [update from 2026: this site is no longer valid], and there are new discussion forums—a great place to ask questions.

Download

Download BleachBit now. Installation packages are ready for 19 platforms including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Windows.

"Features," the new web page

BleachBit's home page has been simplistic with few details about the application. It's about time it had a page detailing its capabilities, and now it does. Check out the new BleachBit features page on the new web site hosted on Google App Engine. The page lists all the cleaners, all the cleaner options, and enumerates the advanced features you may have overlooked. The new page also gives a sneak peak in to the next version 0.5.2.

Seeing all the cleaners for both Linux and Windows on a single web page emphasizes the length of the list. In fact, I have a backlog of cleaners to review submitted by BleachBit users. Many are for applications I have never heard of. In BleachBit's menu the list of cleaners feels cluttered. Each person prefers a different applications, so a feature needed more each day is a way to automatically hide irrelevant cleaners.