2000 Readers' Choice Awards

Some database users engage in a war of words when it comes to MySQL vs. PostgreSQL. Our readers, at least the ones that voted, prefer MySQL by a 2 to 1 ratio. Oracle 8i R2 comes in third with almost 11%, making our top-three line-up a repeat of 1999's. None of the other databases received more than 3% of the tally.

Judging by the low turnout for this new category, it seems like most of you use the old standard, manual filtering method: closing your eyes. Those of you who did express a preference choose Junkbuster as your favorite, beating SquidGuard by 40%. The most popular write-in filtering tool is AdZapper. Quite a few indies take the DIY approach and write their own proxies.

Um...that's not quite what we meant. To be fair, though, some of you wrote that you didn't know what we meant by this category, which could explain why less than half of all voters picked a favorite board. Among those who figured us out, Cyclades is the number-one choice, with 50% of your votes. Digi International comes in second and Boca rounds out the top three.

Okay, okay. While “real men don't need backups,” some of our more cautious readers like tar. This easy solution was quite vocal in 1999's write-in votes, so we added it to the official list this year—and it won. tar displaces last year's winner, BRU, by 46%, but BRU still comes in second. Arkeia and Amanda competed for third place, but Arkeia claims it with 11 more votes.

Do any of you guys use anything but XFree86? Apparently not. 93% of respondents choose XFree86 as their favorite X-Server. Accelerated X, in second place, acquires votes totaling 3.5%. The most popular write-in—it only took six votes to get there—is Xpmac.

More information about the Readers' Choice favorites and other Linux-related products and programs is available on our Linux Resources web site, http://www.linuxresources.com/