I know there are some statistics in the Debian Popularity Contest, but you can only search one app at the time. Additionally, you need to know the app you are looking for (which does not allow you to discover those that you do not know), and, you can search only using the name of the package, which might not coincide with the app name.

If you look in /usr/share/app-install/desktop, you'll see a list of .desktop files for applications available in the Software Center.

Each of these .desktop files has a line with a Popcon score. For example, the Audacious music player has this:

X-AppInstall-Popcon=1395

It is possible to scan all the .desktop files, or just a subset, for their Popcon scores. The code in the following example looks at a subset of .desktop files that contain any of the following strings: audio, media, music, or video.

cd /usr/share/app-install/desktop

grep -iE "(audio|media|music|video)" *.desktop | awk -F: '{ print $1":"$2 }' | sort -u | tr '

' '0' | xargs -0 grep -A5 Popcon

• grep is used to get a list of such .desktop files.




• awk extracts just the actual filenames and duplicates are removed using sort -u




• tr makes the output from sort suitable to xargs




• xargs takes the filenames, now separated by null bytes, and appends each filename as an argument to grep.




• grep lists out the .desktop files with their Popcon scores on the first line and, on a subsequent line, you mostly will see the applications common name. There's some ambiguity about which exact line the common name will appear on, because not all .desktop files have exactly the same structure!

Here's are some "successful" samples:

Amarok

amarok:kde4__amarok.desktop:X-AppInstall-Popcon=2313

amarok:kde4__amarok.desktop-X-AppInstall-Section=universe

amarok:kde4__amarok.desktop-

amarok:kde4__amarok.desktop-Type=Application

amarok:kde4__amarok.desktop-Version=1.0

amarok:kde4__amarok.desktop-Name=Amarok

Clementine

clementine:clementine.desktop:X-AppInstall-Popcon=919

clementine:clementine.desktop-X-AppInstall-Section=universe

clementine:clementine.desktop-

clementine:clementine.desktop-Version=1.0

clementine:clementine.desktop-Type=Application

clementine:clementine.desktop-Name=Clementine

gmusicbrowser

gmusicbrowser:gmusicbrowser.desktop:X-AppInstall-Popcon=498

gmusicbrowser:gmusicbrowser.desktop-X-AppInstall-Section=universe

gmusicbrowser:gmusicbrowser.desktop-

gmusicbrowser:gmusicbrowser.desktop-Name=gmusicbrowser

gmusicbrowser:gmusicbrowser.desktop-Comment=Jukebox for large collections of mp3/ogg/flac/mpc

gmusicbrowser:gmusicbrowser.desktop-Exec=gmusicbrowser %F

mpv

mpv:mpv.desktop:X-AppInstall-Popcon=126

mpv:mpv.desktop-X-AppInstall-Section=universe

mpv:mpv.desktop-

mpv:mpv.desktop-Type=Application

mpv:mpv.desktop-Name=mpv Media Player

mpv:mpv.desktop-GenericName=Multimedia player

vlc

vlc:vlc.desktop:X-AppInstall-Popcon=19735

vlc:vlc.desktop-X-AppInstall-Section=universe

vlc:vlc.desktop-

vlc:vlc.desktop-Version=1.0

vlc:vlc.desktop-Name=VLC media player

vlc:vlc.desktop-GenericName=Media player

Once you have this output, you can clean it up further and perhaps stick it into a spreadsheet for further study.

^{I don't know how often the Popcon scores are updated. The .desktop files on my system are dated 20150910!}