2000 Readers' Choice Awards

A new category to the Readers' Choice Awards, just under half of all voters picked a favorite IM client. Xchat garners the most votes, picking up 20% of the total. Chomping on Xchat's heels, however, is Jabber; a mere 15 votes separate them. BitchX comes in third with 14. As for write-ins, gnomeicu is the most popular. Will everybody have a favorite next year?

The perennial C/C++ wins 40% of your votes this year. To everyone who took the time to remind us that C and C++ are not the same language, we hear you loud and clear. Second and third place go to Perl and Java, while Python continues to expand its fan base by claiming 8%.

While some of you claim to use it under protest, Intel x86 is the clear winner with 60% of your votes. The clone AMD, a popular write-in last year, made it to the official ballot this year and received just under 20%. Rounding out the top picks are PowerPC and Alpha. As a write-in, Transmeta makes its debut in the platform category—a preview of next year, perhaps?

Bash won? It wasn't even close? You don't say. For the third year, the Bourne Again Shell demonstrates its hold over voters (and users), claiming 78% of your responses. In the distance are tcsh with 10% and ksh with 4.5%. A few write-ins express the preference to use bash for scripting while using another shell for everyday use. As for all the shell pun write-ins, who says geeks can't make a (bad) joke?

Development tool is one of several categories this year where the distance between first and second place is more than substantial. GCC, at 71%, received almost ten times the number of votes as the second-place tool, Code Warrior. And really, where would any of us be without GCC? An up-and-comer, KDevelop, grabbed third place through the power of write-ins. We'll add it the list next year, guys.

Things sure can change in a year. In the 1999 Awards, XMMS appeared a few times as a write-in; this year, it's the clear and away winner. Receiving just under 50% of your votes, it wins by a healthy margin, too. In the closest finish of any category, second and third place were determined by a single vote—Real Audio and mpg123, respectively. And some of you are still gladly using your CD players.

So this new graphics tool came out of nowhere...maybe next year. For now, the GIMP has a strong-hold on this category; this year it wins with 72% of the total votes. The next closest favorite tools are xv with 10% and CorelDRAW with 7%. Voters are pleased by the GIMP's versatility and its ease-of-use, especially for the less artistically gifted among us.