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It's been downhill for Gentoo Linux for some time now, http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22Gentoo+Linux%22

Well, other Linux distributions show a similar trend for "$distroName linux" search terms: http://goo.gl/lTewt

Even "linux" alone seems to have a downward trend by that measurement: http://www.google.com/trends?q=linux&ctab=0&geo=all&...

So it's not the year of Linux? Hopefully there will be more interest after Gnome 3 and Ubuntu 11.04 both released in April

The trends for Ubuntu remain to be stable.

It seems to me, at least as far as my Google Autocompletes and general beginning linux searches, that many people who are new to linux are searching "problem $x ubuntu" not "problem $x linux."

That's just my anecdotal evidence, Linux, when it is adopted by new people seem to run Ubuntu and aren't as much aware of other distros, I for one don't know much about Arc or Redhat or too much about how they differ.

Well, sabayon, the binary derivative, is stuck in the top 6 of distrowatch for a while. I don't think things are going downhill there. Competing with debian derivatives is no joke, considering that the tech skill required to adopt the distro is far higher. Beating Arch on a live CD :)

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