Sure, Windows is expected to run on 1 billion devices by 2010. But a loud minority is making its voice heard by moving to Ubuntu Linux. In fact, Canonical’s marketing materials state that Ubuntu now has more than 8 million users.
Alas, measuring Ubuntu’s active installed base can be tricky since a single copy o the operating system can be freely installed over and over again on multiple systems. And in mid-2007 during the Ubuntu Live conference, Ubuntu/Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth estimated the operating system’s installed base at 6 million to 12 million users.
But apparently, Canonical has narrowed down that figure. A marketing handout from the company, focused on training, states that:
“Ubuntu is used by over 8 million people worldwide.”
So far, so good. And that figure will surely rise as Ubuntu is preinstalled on a growing number of Netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).
But Canonical can’t rest on its laurels. After all, Novell is leveraging desktop Linux relationships to land on more servers — including a forthcoming server deal with Lenovo, which will be announced in September. And Red Hat seems to be gaining momentum in the channel.
Still, a growing list of small, midsize and large organizations are running Ubuntu. (Take a look at the Works With U 1000, a fast-growing list of organizations running Ubuntu.)
Things are certainly getting interesting in the Linux market.
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Thanks for the interesting figures.
It should be noted, of course, that there are many more tens of millions devices running Linux (Tivo, Amazon’s Kindle, Motorola and Nokia phones, Garmin, etc.) apart from the Ubuntu ones.
Millions of people in countries like Brazil run Debian and other localised derivatives. This figure represents a minority.
I wonder if the 8 million figure is based on web upgrades? But over 8 million is an impressive figure.
The 8 million is based off of apt updates, I believe. The reasoning being that a single machine is not likely to update from libfoo 2.4.3 to 2.4.5 more than once. They probably have some algorithms to detect crazy downgrade-upgrader guys fiddling with packages, and might have some kind of fingerprint system that allows a machine to say “Hi! It’s me, again. Don’t count me a second time.” or something.
But no, it’s not “web upgrades”, since the web is not involved. There’d be no spiders inflating the number unless there are a significant number of spiders that pretend to be apt and download a lot of updates.
This is very good news. I installed Ubuntu of my PC just days after the release of 8.04. I’ve even helped some friends install it on their PCs. They came over and saw it in action on my PC…as soon as they saw the cube effect they wanted it. I burned them some copies of the live CD and they tried it out on their PCs. Now all my closest friends are running it with XP. I really hope this user base expands and gets noticed, as this will generate even more hardware support in the long run.
Hmm, my only concern with the apt approach is… apt-caches… I know we (at Egressive) have one and I know of several others around New Zealand, which probably service hundreds of machines… So I’d say that Canonical are being quite conservative - the number will almost certainly be higher, but who knows by how much.
add to that another 3-5 million from the EEE PC sales figures and its becoming apparent that there area a lot more linux devices out there in service that people realise. As now there are several hardware manufacturers shipping hardware with flavours of linux pre-installed. The true figure of linux usage will become easier to know.
popcon.ubuntu.com (disabled by default; when enabled, reports anon data on packages installed) reports 691,961 submissions.
What you can do is make a package that’s not in Ubuntu, upload it somewhere you can keep track of, and spread it. Then you can check how many people out of total submissions in popcon have enabled it, using that %, guess how many people are total on ubuntu.
Of course, that breaks down if someone reuploads your package, which’ll probably happen if it’s popular (and if it’s not, numbers will be a bit worthless).
That is good news, but it still makes me ask how many Linux desktop users there are in total. Im betting the number is far higher then anyone expects.
Just installed it 2 weeks ago. I had tried Ubutu 18 months ago, but I wasn’t satisfied. On this second try, I really noticed the improvement. Still some very hard technical stuff that you got to work hard at it, But it’s getting better by leaps and bounds. I’m very impressed.
The trick with Ubuntu — for anyone who’s thinking of trying it — is to stick to the LTS releases, and try it each time one of these comes out (think it’s every two years or so).
If it works for you, yay! If it doesn’t, try to report any issues you had on launchpad.net (or get a geeky friend to do it for you), then go back to Windows/Mac OS.
Try not to be disappointed and remember you haven’t lost anything from trying it out, nor is it essential that you switch *now*.
¿Ubuntu con 8 millones de usuarios? [ENG]…
Aparentemente, según la máquina de márqueting de Canonical Ltd., Ubuntu ya tiene una base de más de 8 millones de usuarios. A mediados del año pasado, en la conferencia Ubuntu Live, Mark Shuttleworth había estimado la cantidad de usarios entre 6 …
I wish they chose KDE instead of GNOME… I can’t see how they will get rid of it now. And if they want to keep on growing, they will have to offer an evolving and modern desktop environment, which GNOME isn’t.
“Dave Double-decks Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 2:06 am
The trick with Ubuntu — for anyone who’s thinking of trying it — is to stick to the LTS releases, and try it each time one of these comes out (think it’s every two years or so).”
I’ve avoided 8.04 (Hardy Heron) because it’s the first release with pulseaudio, which is ‘not quite ready’ in my opinion (i.e. could frustrate new users and put them off Linux).
“Cypher Says:
September 5th, 2008 at 5:13 am
I wish they chose KDE instead of GNOME…”
Have you tried the KDE version of Ubuntu, Kubuntu?
Any solid evidence on how they estimated that? Seems like it would be impossible given virtualization software like Xen that you can spawn an instance and drop it like it’s hot or replicate it without having to patch again..
8 millones de usuarios de Ubuntu Linux en el mundo…
Según Canonical, la empresa responsable de mantener el núcleo de la popular distribución de Linux, Ubuntu, sus datos indican que aproximadamente 8 millones de personas en todo el mundo ya utilizan a diario a esa distribución.
8 millones quizás …
Just for the record. Mark Shuttleworth admitted he just came up with this number off the top of his head. This number isn’t based on any proof.
Thanks for that…I am curious as to what it’s accuracy is.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=11
Linux is growing, but it’s still under 1%
Thanks to Linux, and thanks to Ubuntu. It has certainly create a completely new operating system that makes life easy with a non-Windows operating system. Just meant for the community.
I am not quite sure what to make of that 8 million figure, but round here (Nairobi, Kenya) Ubuntu(KUbuntu, XUbuntu) are gaining traction but most of the people who do use it cannot access the net on it, instead preffering to use cyber-cafes( which DO use Ubuntu ) but since most of these installs are copies( I’ve made about 60-70 since 7.04 ) I do not think that there is a way for Canonical to know about them, so I am guessing that the number is quite under-estimated. and thats not even counting all the knoppix, mandriva, suse and pclinuxos installs i’ve done!