Sometimes it seems like Google is the all-knowing oracle, with their millions of bots constantly indexing the internet and instant results for any term. That being the case, it's amusing to see what the oracle has to say about our beloved Linux.

The good people over at Pingdom — when they're not checking the status of servers and keeping the 'net online — like to have a look into the odd and interesting ends of the web. Their latest bit of detective work has been to probe the "state of Linux" according to Google Trends. So what did they find? Apparently, Ubuntu is the term-of-the-decade when it comes to Linux, growing astronomically over the past few years. The KDE vs. Gnome debate comes out pretty close, with plenty of back-and-forth for the top slot, and despite a decline, Linux is beating the pants off Vista as a search term.

What does it all mean? Well, probably not much, in a scientific sense. But never let it be said that we here at Linux Journal don't value taking a little bit of time off to trod the road less traveled.

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