Data Points[edit]

Last update: 2014|09|19

Outdated: No statistics for current versions of Whonix ™ >= 10 available. ^[1]

Whonix ™ Developer Meta Files ^[archive] (on github ^[archive]) may provide interesting data points.

sourceforge shows downloads per week.
sourceforge has allows showing download statistics in custom date ranges. Example: http://sourceforge.net/projects/whonixdevelopermetafiles/files/internal/news_v4/whonix_news.tar.xz/stats/timeline ^[archive]

Whonix ™ News File downloads.
- The internal/news ^[archive] folder shows downloads for deprecated Whonix ™ News Files.
- The internal/news_v3 ^[archive] folder shows downloads for an intermediate, development only version of Whonix ™.
- The internal/news_v4 ^[archive] folder shows downloads of Whonix ™ News Files by users of Whonix ™ 8 and 9.
- → Each time a user runs systemcheck, a download counter will be increased.
- → whonixcheck, unless manually disabled by the user, runs automatically. See systemcheck wiki page to find out how often.

Whonix ™ APT repository (optional; disabled by default; users are asked to enable or leave it disabled on first boot by setup-dist (on github ^[archive]))
- internal/pool ^[archive] folder.
- internal/dists ^[archive] folder.
  - stable folder = Whonix ™ 8 stable repository
  - wheezy folder = Whonix ™ 9 stable repository
  - testers folder (only used by users who choose Whonix ™ testers-only APT repository]
  - developers folder (only used by users who choose Whonix ™ developers-only APT repository]
  - -→ Each time some users that opted in for Whonix ™ APT repository and executed "sudo apt update", a download counter will be increased.

Note, moved ^[archive] to hosting of Whonix ™ News as well as Whonix ™ APT repository to Whonix ™ mirror network (http://mirror.whonix.de ^[archive]). It is also planed to distribute Whonix ™ News Files among multiple servers. Therefore these data points are outdated.

2015-04-19[edit]

Last data point. On 2015-04-19, Whonix ™ news file was downloaded 12586 times. Divided by 2 (not counting gateway and workstation twice) that means, that approximately ~ 6000 users used Whonix ™ on that day.

notes / sources:

Whonix ™ 9
Whonix-Custom-Workstation ™'s are not included in that number.
Manual whonixcheck starts would increase that number.
whonixcheck, unless manually disabled by the user, runs automatically.
If whonixcheck was not manually run by the user before, it runs every 24 hours. (Presupposes using Whonix ™ on that day.)
There is no good data available for Whonix ™ >= 10, because Whonix ™ news file is no longer primarily hosted on sourceforge. Rather on mirror.whonix.de and most mirrors do not keep statistics.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/whonixdevelopermetafiles/files/internal/news_v4/whonix_news.tar.xz/stats/timeline?dates=2015-01-01+to+2015-04-29 ^[archive]
http://www.webcitation.org/6aNvflUXb ^[archive]

2014|09|16[edit]

fortasse ^[archive] (whonix.org webmaster) wrote ^[2]:

We don't have anything like that, but I agree it would be interesting to get some statistics.
However, it is difficult to have statistics without being overly invasive. It is made doubly difficult because our downloads are served by mirrors provided by volunteers. I suppose we could have a simple counting script in front of those download links. Nothing as of yet, but I'll look into an easy / non-invasive way to get some basic statistics.

2014|09|19[edit]

At time of writing, there were 7 mirror IPs.
1 of Whonix ™ download mirrors is creating statistics.
The live url is:
http://tap.rlogin.net/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=whonix ^[archive]
The snapshotted url at time of writing is:
http://www.webcitation.org/6Sh06TUo8 ^[archive]

2013|07[edit]

TBB's Influence on Download Statistics[edit]

Windows might have fewer downloaders than any statistic says, because TBB for Linux and MacOS claims, that it is Windows, which muddles the statistic.

What does "Anonymous Proxy" in sourceforge.net statistics mean?[edit]

Sourceforge support, ctsai-sf on freenode in #sourceforge said, they use GeoIP for country detection and browser agent for operating system and browser. GeoIP, according to its website^[3], detects Anonymizer (they probably mean Tor and such), VPN and Open Proxies, so they everything into the same category of "Anonymous Proxy" - this is what sourceforge logs.

webcited on 2013|07|11[edit]

Before announcing migration to whonix.org.
Old design of download page ^[archive] (Please ignore the "Moved to https://www.whonix.org ^[archive]" part. That snapshot has been forgotten and made later. Nevertheless it gives an impression how the old download page looked like.)
Before using the new colored download table, which indicates, that http downloads without OpenPGP verification is the least secure method.
After blog post announcing experimental BitTorrent downloads.^[4]
Let's see, if after the end of this campaign, more users use OpenPGP verification
Or at least use BitTorrent - although we don't create download statistics for the .torrent files.
Or at least use magnet links - but we probably can not get statistics about them.

signatures ^[archive] http://www.webcitation.org/6I2AuLgUq ^[archive]

965 Whonix-Gateway.ova downloads | 34 Whonix-Gateway.ova.sig downloads → 1 in ~29 used OpenPGP verification
1173 Whonix-Workstation.ova downloads | 37 Whonix-Workstation.ova.sig downloads → 1 in ~32 used OpenPGP verification

webcited on 2013|07|31[edit]

After migration to whonix.org.
Using a colored download table, which indicates, that http downloads without OpenPGP verification is the least secure method, see download page ^[archive].

signatures ^[archive] http://www.webcitation.org/6IWkhkbZZ ^[archive]

1015 Whonix-Gateway.ova downloads | 100 Whonix-Gateway.ova.sig downloads → 1 in ~10 used OpenPGP verification
972 Whonix-Workstation.ova downloads | 85 Whonix-Workstation.ova.sig downloads → 1 in ~12 used OpenPGP verification