Questions about GrapheneOS userbase size

Brainrot

First of all I must say this that I'm no trying to attack GrapheneOS. I am just curious about the number. How does GrapheneOS estimates that there are 200k users worldwide? Do you guys have a list of 200,000 different ip addresses? Becsuse Even the Qubes have only 60k userbase without a limit on the device model. And your social media dont have a lot of followers too. Also is 200k a reasonable number compared to the users and visitors on this forum?

raccoondad

Brainrot "Since there is no telemetry in the os we can only really approximate by looking at how many updates are pushed through the update servers, the current estimate is over 250k" -spring onion

fid02

Brainrot GrapheneOS might be easier to install than Qubes, and might be easier to use for most folks. Arguably by quite a large margin.

Dumdum

Brainrot And your social media dont have a lot of followers too.

As plenty of Graphene users are privacy-conscious, I imagine a lot won't use social media. Not every GOS user is even interested in the social media accounts (a number of users don't even pay attention to the OS release changelog). If they're following the social media accounts at all, it would probably be through RSS feeds which obviously won't add to the follower count.

DeletedUser203

Brainrot If you make a desktop security OS and its a pain in the ass to use as a daily driver, the uptake will be small. Security and privacy has to be easy or people won't use it.
GrapheneOS user base is quite good considering the lack of advertising etc and the somewhat secretive nature of some its users to keep the use of GrapheneOS to themselves. I happily promote GrapheneOS to anyone.

gra123d

Dumdum

This.

Brainrot

Dumdum (a number of users don't even pay attention to the OS release changelog).

Seriously who does that

DeletedUser203

Brainrot
And your social media dont have a lot of followers too.

Social media.... Isn't than when a user provides damning evidence against themselves to be used years down the line. Never used it, never will!

Xtreix

Brainrot As has been explained, an operating system that's difficult to install and use is more detrimental to its adoption than the limitation on the number of devices supported, most people want something that works without having to put effort into using it, QubesOS, as interesting as this project is (I'd love to try it out), is rather a niche tool, as QubesOS is older than GrapheneOS, one might assume that more people know Qubes by name and reputation, but very few use it in the real world, whereas for GrapheneOS, there may be fewer people who know about the project, but those who do are more likely to use it thanks to its ease of use.

The number of subscribers on social media isn't an indicator either, we can assume that many GrapheneOS users don't use social medias.

Brainrot

How many users/visitors are on this forum?

Xtreix

Brainrot How many users/visitors are on this forum?

It's not indicated, so we don't know.

Dumdum

Brainrot
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/22248-request-for-a-battery-charge-limit-in-order-to-reduce-ware

User since August, requesting a feature that has existed since December (2024123000).

other8026

It's not obvious, but there are IDs on the forum, so it is possible to get an idea of how many users have registered so far. The IDs can be found by using developer tools and poking though JSON sent from the server. Looks like the latest accounts' IDs are around 21000. Keep in mind that many users have requested their accounts deleted, have had their accounts anonymized, some people have had multiple accounts or test accounts, so there are definitely not 21000 active accounts. Still, the number might be interesting to some people here.

JollyRancher

Brainrot

GOS has that most critical, and far too often overlooked, trait; it's easy to install and use.

It also offers a fairly compelling use case and is effectively the third smart phone OS (Google Android, iOS, GrapheneOS).

Qubes is great for certain use cases but it is not beginner friendly or easy to set up and use.

Honestly, it is the same failure of so many decent FOSS and/or security/privacy services.

Take Signal, it is the best secure messenger app around not because of its technical abilities but because it is incredibly user friendly and can basically be a drop in replacement for SMS. It's so user friendly that you can give it to some 70 year old tech illiterate and they will still probably be able to use it without issue.

GrapheneOS

Brainrot

200k users is unbelivable

That's a low estimate of the number of users we have. Not clear what about it you think is unbelievable and there are multiple ways of measuring it which indicate we have more than that many users.

First of all I must say this that I'm no trying to attack GrapheneOS.

You could have simply asked how the number was obtained.

How does GrapheneOS estimates that there are 200k users worldwide?

There are over 200k fresh downloads of updates via the official update client download method days after new releases are out. That doesn't including resuming downloads when the connection breaks. It also doesn't include people downloading it with a browser or bots downloading it.

Do you guys have a list of 200,000 different ip addresses?

IP addresses are not a valid way to measure users. Many people use shared IP addresses due to VPNs, Tor and CGNAT. People also frequently move across different IP addresses. There are far more than 200k IP addresses being used to use our services within a month and that's not a way to measure users.

And your social media dont have a lot of followers too.

What are you talking about?

Going with your own comparison:

QubesOS account on Mastodon was created in December 2022 and has 1673 followers.
GrapheneOS account on Mastodon was created November 2022 and has 17829 followers.

QubesOS account on X was created in July 2015 and has 27749 followers.
GrapheneOS account on X was created in March 2019 and has 66082 followers.

Our account on X would have far more followers if it was our original account created in December 2014. We had to build it up from nothing again in 2019 so we didn't have all of the network effects of our initial follower base to spread our posts and grow the account.

GrapheneOS is much easier to install and use than QubesOS. It's also something more people know they want to begin with and is aimed at a more general audience. It has compatibility with the vast majority of apps people use on mobile out-of-the-box vs. many people wanting to run lots of Windows applications including games on a laptop or desktop.

Also is 200k a reasonable number compared to the users and visitors on this forum?

This forum is only one of the ways people use to talk about GrapheneOS. We have Matrix rooms where our Matrix Space created several years ago recently reached 25k members but we're in the process of migrating to a new one since the old one has state resolution issues. We have 11636 members on Discord and 9960 members on Telegram. There are 16613 non-deleted accounts on this forum and over 21001 in total.