Tectonic attracts thousands of visitors each month and while we don’t always know who you are we do, thanks to Google Analytics, have a pretty good idea about your tech preferences. So here for the bean counters are some numbers on Tectonic for the past month.

Browsers
Firefox reigns supreme in this area and has done so for a good year or so now. In September 57.8 percent of our readers were running Firefox followed by Internet Explorer at 31.9 percent.

1 – Firefox 57.77% (57.08% in August)
2 – Internet Explorer 31.93% (32.83% in August)
3 – Opera 3.74% (3.41% in August)
4 – Mozilla 2.84%
5 – Konqueror 1.69%
6 – Safari 1.55%
7 – Camino 0.16%
8 – Mozilla Compatible 0.09%
9 – Galeon 0.07%
10- Netscape 0.07%

Operating systems
When it comes to operating systems Windows still claims top spot although there is a more than credible showing from the various flavours of Linux. In June this year Linux accounted for 28 percent of the traffic on Tectonic.co.za but since then has consistently hovered around the 30 – 35 percent mark. Windows is equally consistent at around 55 – 65 percent each month. In fact, if anything, Windows has been stronger in the last year than previously. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that Tectonic has traditionally had a strong Linux reader base and as free software news grows in prominence there is a growth in Windows-based readers.

1 – Windows 62.12% (62.98 in August)
2 – Linux 33.10% (31.71% in August)
3 – Macintosh 3.59% (3.89% in August)
4 – Unknown 1.01%
5 – FreeBSD 0.06%
6 – SunOS 0.05%
7 – Playstation3 0.03%
8 – OpenBSD 0.01%
9 – Playstation Portable 0.01%
10 – Nintendo Wii 0.01%

Browsers and operating system
Put the two previous counters together and you have a metric for browser-operating system combinations. Windows/Internet Explorer does well here although closely followed by Windows users using Firefox. Interestingly in June this year the Firefox/Windows combination was at the top of the list (35.60%) and Internet Explorer/Windows second with 27.45%.

1 – Internet Explorer/Windows 31.90% (32.78% in August)
2 – Firefox/Windows 27.80% (27.80% in August)
3 – Firefox/Linux 27.37% (26.59% in August)
4 – Mozilla/Linux 2.45%
5 – Opera/Windows 1.91%
6 – Firefox/Macintosh 1.88%
7 – Opera/Linux 1.63%
8 – Konqueror/Linux 1.58%
9 – Safari/Macintosh 1.43%
10- Firefox/(not set) 0.62%

While there appears to be an incremental increase in Linux/Firefox over the past month it is interesting to look back at the start of the year. Numbers for January show that a greater percentage of readers were using Firefox at the start of the year than in the past month: Firefox was used by 64% of readers in January 200 while only 24% were using Internet Explorer. Similarly, in January the numbers of Windows users was noticeably smaller (57%) and Linux higher (37%) than in the past month.

Of course there could be a number reasons for this, the most obvious being that the numbers reflect a growing Tectonic readership with the earlier stats dominated by a core group of early adopters. The most recent stats perhaps reflect that Tectonic is now attracting a broader audience many of whom may not yet have adopted free software. I certainly hope this is the case because it suggests a growing audience for free software news.

The other factor, of course, is that the numbers of readers on Tectonic have grown over the year. So in January this year we had 41 878 readers. In September we had almost 45 000 unique readers. Which is not a significant gap but perhaps enough to shift the balance.