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."

Comments

Well, they screwed up with 11

[Colin Smith]

aint gonna be drinking that koolaid.

gonna look for an alternative.

Re:Well, they screwed up with 11

[muuh-gnu]

Shuttleworth is obviously attempting to leverage Ubuntus existing popularity to somehow branch off the main Linux species. Like when a queen bee leaves one colony and takes a large number of worker bees in order to form her own hive. He doesnt want to be associated with Gnome any more, and wants his own distinctive look and feel, no matter whether he alienates a number of existing Gnome users. Its a gamble, he is speculating that a large enough number will follow his lead and switch to Unity, and then keep pushing, hyping and defending it like loyal Apple users do. He wants Unity to bring the (Linux based) desktop where Android brought the (Linux based) phone.

The problem with that, at least from my perspective, is that Shuttleworth is at war with options. In a recent blog post, he made the bizarre statement that in his view, every option you can set differently, divides users who set it differently, so they can't talk to each other any more. So his goal seems to be to allow as few different settable options as possible, i.e. a massive Gleichschaltung in order to build a strongly focused brand. He thinks that iOs like interfaces will be the future of the mass market, and wants to get there better sooner than later.

I dont know where he plans to get his 200 Million users from, but I doubt many of them will originate from Ubuntus current user base. It is a massive farewell to the 90's Linux tinkerer and a hello to the 2011's Apple affictionado.

User Experience

[literaldeluxe]

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.

Re:One right here!

[x*yy*x]

I personally find this good solution. You get the stability of Ubuntu, eye-candy of Mac and the security of Windows.

Kubuntu or xubuntu

[Culture20]

That's a realistic goal for kubuntu or xubuntu, but not with Unity ubuntu.