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Ubuntu Claims 12 Million Users — Before Lucid
darthcamaro writes "It's always a challenge to try and figure out how many users a particular Linux distro has — but Canonical is now providing a new figure for Ubuntu that is 50 percent more than what they were claiming just 18 months ago. 'We have no phone home or registration process, so it's always a guesstimate. But based on the same methodology that we came up with for the 2008 number, our present belief is that it's somewhere north of 12 million users at the moment,' Chris Kenyon, vice president for OEM at Canonical, told InternetNews.com. Just in case you were wondering, Fedora still claims more — actually almost double, at 24 million."
how many of those are dual boot systems with Windows?
You're saying a dual boot system shouldn't count as a user?
I own a wii. It's been unplugged for over a year and I play the 360 every day, but I am still a wii owner. Similarly, it seems to me if you have a dual boot system with ubuntu and windows, you're still an ubuntu user. Maybe there are ubuntu purists out there who would look down on you for that and would care to distinguish between the two, I don't know.
I'd wonder more about the second part you hinted at:
I have three machines like that. I'm not sure of any reliable way to differentiate dedicated stand alone desktops.
Would you count as 3 users for this number? This article mentions that fedora counts unique IP addresses, if it said how the ubuntu number was found, I missed it.
"'We have no phone home or registration process,"
Actually, there is an "opt-in" phone home process. Ubuntu has an option to participate in a software popularity contest thing. Those who opt in not only can be counted as using *buntu, but the poll tracks which software packages are installed.
And, it is really "opt-in" because you are asked if you WANT TO participate or not. I'm almost certain that it defaults to "no", you have to click the "yes" button to participate.
So, if this popularity thing tracks "x" million computers, it's pretty simple to double or triple that number, and claim "x times 3" installations.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Based on estimates, I have had meaningful relationships with many, many hot ladies.
*Estimates based on downloads.
crazy dynamite monkey
Sure, if your attackers will never try to crack any of your users' passwords...
A username could be anything, but root is always root. Disabling the root password means a cracker needs to take the additional step of identifying a valid user account to target. Not a particularly large step, perhaps, but a step nonetheless.
This comment is for entertainment purposes only. Any similarity to real insight or information is purely coincidental.
Here is the hit count for operating system from Wikimedia:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm
Linux has a 1.65% market share and of that share Ubuntu has 0.71%. Ubuntu has approximately 43% market share among Linux users, which by a very large margin makes it the most popular distro.
I tried Ubuntu, But I just can't.
I wanted to install my favorite niche physics package. I couldn't even figure out how to set the files to 777 through the GUI, I had to 'sudo chmod' them.
Oh and no 'su'? really? I mean 'sudo bash' isn't that hard but jeez I don't know if this is more secure, but it sure is harder to use. I think I'll install centos before going back to fedora.
you can tell ubuntu is getting pretty good when the trolls have to try this hard to criticize it.
or did I miss a whoosh somewhere?
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.