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Ubuntu Aims For 200 Million Users In Four Years
dkd903 writes "Delivering the keynote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit at Budapest, Hungary, Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Canonical's goal is to have 200 million Ubuntu users in four years. Canonical has not officially provided any data on how many Ubuntu users there currently are — in fact, the number is quite difficult to track. However, according to Prakash Advani, a partner manager for Central Asia at Canonical, there are an estimated 12 million Ubuntu users."
Considering PSN is apparently 75 million users, if the numbers for Ubuntu keep growing then we will hopefully see more developers who consider it worthwhile to port their games over. The first to get there stands to do well out of a niche market like us. I've bought Linux games that I still haven't even played, just to encourage the developers. The reason I've not played them is that my only PC right now is a netbook. I'd build a gaming PC again if there was a vibrant Linux gaming scene. As it is, I do all my gaming on consoles just now.
which is totally what she said
aint gonna be drinking that koolaid.
gonna look for an alternative.
Deleted
If Canonical wants Ubuntu's user base to grow substantially, they need to integrate usability testing into its design cycle. That's not the only thing that matters, but there's just no way to beat Microsoft or Apple's software without improving the user experience.
I personally find this good solution. You get the stability of Ubuntu, eye-candy of Mac and the security of Windows.
It seems as though more and more people are trying other distros, and with plenty of good reasons. When I began using Linux, Ubuntu was where I started. I ran it for many years. When they decided to integrate PulseAudio by default, I started considering other options. I now use Debian Squeeze and am happy with it, but for example:
The other day I built a USB stick with Ubuntu for troubleshooting purposes. While I was in the live system, I tried to listen to some music on my local hard drive. I was then subjected to occasional skipping/stuttering in the sound... in 2011... on a six-core machine... with EIGHT gigabytes of memory. There is no excuse for this. It never happens on my native Debian system, so don't blame the drivers. I then had to rip PulseAudio out of the live-USB that I had made and re-route everything to use ALSA just to get stable sound that would play continuously without issue.
Now they're completely changing the desktop environment too, with Unity and all. We just want a stable operating system where the devs concentrate on fixing *problems* and not changing a bunch of things just for the sake of change. I can only imagine how many games will stop working/have problems when they switch to Wayland.
In short, if your goals are to have 2 million users, you should probably try and keep existing users first.
The problem for me though is what to tell other newbies to Linux. My cousin just asked what flavor of Linux I recommend. Do I tell him to use Ubuntu and give him the impression that Linux can't play a music file without occasional stutters? Do I tell him to use Debian and have a slightly more difficult time setting things up, but a better system in the end?
I've downloaded two different versions, wrestled with them for a while (first on dual-monitor support, later on sound card issues), and ultimately went back to Windows. I'm a geek, but even I'm not THAT much of a geek to stick with Linux apparently (though Ubuntu definitely was the most user-friendly Linux distro I've seen to date).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That's a realistic goal for kubuntu or xubuntu, but not with Unity ubuntu.
Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth’s roadmap for Unity. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘Gosh, I’d really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I’m using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can’t think of a better user experience.’ We’re not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way.”
http://rocknerd.co.uk
To this day, the only thing I find lacking is multimedia players (and I especially miss Winamp).
Which winamp? The newer versions with all that library management crap, or the old simple "player?" (I ask because I'm definitely a fan of the latter, as it doesn't feel the need to mess with my tree-based organization)
Audacious does the latter, and is almost a clone of the old winamp v2. I can't judge the former because I don't like them even when they do work "well," but I hear praise for Amarok a lot.
For videos, VLC lives on all my machines, Linux and Windows alike (but for some reason, it's a really CPU hog when simply trying to play MP3s, thus, audacious).
HTH
Which is about six more months so far as I can tell...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
He was smart enough not only get spread out his experience, but to ditch Ubuntu?
You should be proud!
Ubuntu could have become the de-facto linux system for phones and tablets, but Android was faster.
I run Ubuntu for the "Benetton" experience.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Tried CentOS, installer quits hard if you select at the end the wrong packages together, no warning or anything.
Fedora? Can't accept a HD formatted without partitions. Ubuntu can and under Linux it is perfectly valid. Why use MS-DOS partitions on a modern system?
Like it or hate it, Ubuntu is the mover and Shaker. Red Hat has gone corporate. Mandrake (or whatever its name is) has tried going commercial and is limping.
Countless others are gone or near gone.
Is Ubuntu next now it has gone for Unity? Maybe. As said, others have fallen from the leader of the pack before. Ubuntu for now remains the easiests to install for, the onewith the most active user base. Don't like Unity? 11.04 ain't a LTS so you don't have to switch yet. And KUbunutu is an easy switch as well as a switch to Gnome3 or any of the other options.
But Unity I think shows a worrying sign. What does it solve? One of the powers of linux is the ton of "add-ons" that are available for free and all of a sudden you have a desktop that can do nothing. Gnome3 ain't a solution, that piece of software seems determined to remove all options until nothing is left. Here is a hint Gnome team, when Unity is the more capable and customizable compared to Gnome3, YOU SCREWED UP!
KDE4? Don't even get me started.
Yes, there is room for improvement but you make it a LOT easier if you give us at least the basics. Alt-tab, was it such a horrific solution? Task bar? Why do you hate it such? App panel, what did it ever do to you?
200 million users? sure, if there are 200 million people for who a iPhone is just to complex and they want an interface with ZERO buttons, no touch screen, no interaction.
Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu Server edition but their desktop took a massive nosedive. aptitude is the best package management but what is the point if the package is unity or gnome3?
Stop fucking around with the desktop. Realize that a LOT of users switch of Aero on windows and have the same desktop they had 10 or more years ago. It works. Some improvements are possible but for god sakes, make sure the old proven and working elements still work.
Really, we went from a time applet that no longer can display the weather, no any weather option (both unity and gnome3) and needing to hold a key to turn off the computer. (Alt turns suspend into power off).
STOP REDUCING THE USABILITY!
But at its core, Ubuntu still is the most capable, see the earlier HD install option.
Just the desktop is pants but that is pants on Fedora 15 as well (Gnome3).
The real secret to developing a popular system is to remember that newbies are a very transient audience. A newbie won't be a newbie for long. It would be like marketing a condom for virgins. There are a lot of virgins in the world, especially here on slashdot, and they are bound to have sex sooner or later, except here on slashdot, but once they had sex they will need far more condoms then that one time "virgin" branded one.
Your OS user won't remain a newbie for long. You don't see many motor cycle companies aiming high at the learner market do you? Despite that a learner bike can be far more fun, the money is in the "experienced rider" market (the succors who think bigger is better)
Damn, guess motor cycle analogies aren't as good as car analogies.
Anyway, once the newbie linux user has started using it and figured out how to setup a dual monitor, he is going to be disappointed he can't set to different ones. That the login screen can no longer be themed.
It would be like Fisher Price deciding that their "My first XXX" line sells so well it will be easy to sell to adults and partner with Sony for a range of electronic devices. Nope.
Newbies becomes experienced users and then don't want anything to do anymore with a newbie only product.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The other distros will probably be happy to get all those new users. By the time Ubuntu 14.x rolls out they should have alienated almost all of their userbase. Their half baked releases combined with the 6 month release cycle give everyone just enough time to get things stable right before they break it all again. From swapping audio subsystems to experimental unconfigurable GUIs, they make sure to cover all their bases.
The counting issue is sticky. I for example don't consider myself an ubuntu user, but my work desktop, and 4 or so servers at work run ubuntu. My home machines are all gentoo. I think that most long time linux users are multi-distro in this sense. Of course there are always the stats from as a base to work from. With some stats you could possibly extrapolate.
In nearly EVERY metric I can use, end users prefer Linux Mint. It's easier to use, cleaner, faster, has better default apps, a better default layout, and a better color scheme.
This is a completely realistic goal for Linux Mint.
Not for Ubuntu.*
*That is, unless they completely replace all of their leadership and clone the Mint philosophy, which doesn't seem likely.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
This last version of Ubuntu caused me some serious grief during the upgrade. Once installed I was unimpressed with Unity. I tried Gnome 3.0 a couple weeks back and I upgraded several machines to 4.6.x of KDE. My comparison of Unity is based on the design goals and functionality of those other products.
Gnome 3.0 and Unity appear to be targeting the GUI toward those same people that held back computers in the late 80s and early 90s. Those people were happy with the DOS menu systems where they typed a number or letter corresponding to a menu entry that launched a given program. Unity (and Gnome to some degree) is that represented in GUI form. It is NOT the answer and it will NOT contribute to those 200 million target users.
I have used Ubuntu for many years now. I have used computers since the early 80s. Ubuntu runs my primary machine. I have almost 20 Ubuntu machines in my shop. I use it for everything you can imagine and I don't find it difficult to learn nor to use. When Windows users come into the shop I sit them down in front of an Ubuntu machine. I simply direct them in the same way I would direct a Windows user--click here, select that, drag and drop there--without much resistance from the user.
But recently I have been thinking that Mark Shuttleworth needs to give Ubuntu away to some other group of people to manage. Canonical's direction just isn't cutting it, and dumbing it down isn't going to cure any woes. The problems are with the under-pinnings, not the GUI. For instance, I had a problem that pointed to the /var/lib/dpkg/status file had an error at or near a given line. No hint on what was wrong, no hint as to what that file was for, but an error that stopped the install and that wouldn't let me continue with the upgrade. I found an obscure reference to the error message, edited the file, and continued on. Then another error was generated and I needed to resolve it. Then another error, and another, and finally a reference to the same type of error in another file similar to the first one. Upon correcting that I was able to get the upgrade going again. Then after that I received even more errors making it was not possible to get to the GUI desktop -- on a computer that had been successfully running 10.10 for 6 months. After starting in recovery mode (safe start) I was able get into the desktop and download the updated nVidia drivers. I installed those drivers and continued till I was at the desktop. All in all, correcting those errors, cost me 6 hours of my day.
Whatever they are doing it isn't working and dumbing it down with hopes of attracting 200 million people won't succeed.
Some time ago they stated that Ubuntu had 12 million users with Fedora having 24 million. The other distros combined could easily bring that number between 75 million and 100 million users of Linux (not just Ubuntu).
I have the whole cadre of OS installs on various machines because that's what I do for a living. I don't think either the Macintosh nor Windows has the future potential of Linux. Let's just not let one man dumb down the OS interface to the point of it just being dumb.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.