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Ubuntu User Count Pegged At Over One Billion (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In response to an article claiming Ubuntu didn't reach its goal of 200 million users this year — a goal set out by Mark Shuttleworth in 2011 to surpass 200 million users by 2015 — a Canonical engineer has come out to say the opposite. Dustin Kirkland, a member of Ubuntu Product and Strategy team, has come out to say there are more than one billion Ubuntu users. His billion tally though does include cloud/container instances as well as those shopping online at Wallmart, watching popular movies where the studios used Ubuntu servers, streamed from Netflix, rode with Uber, and other businesses that rely upon Ubuntu servers.
The guy is probably just butthurt that Android made "desktop Linux" irrelevant. Canonical has spent more than a decade in the game and can't even scrape together 200 million users without inflating the count, yet Google passed that in just a couple of years with Android.
No, both are not right. You are not an Ubuntu user by watching a movie rendered on Ubuntu or because some headless Ubuntu server sends you a video stream. That's just bullshit trying to inflate user numbers.
In his roundabout way, what he is saying is that although Ubuntu did not achieve its original goal of 200 million desktop users, it did achieve a much greater success as the OS of choice on many times that number of embedded and server devices, a purpose for which Ubuntu is an excellent choice. IOS and Android have the mobile market, Microsoft has the desktop market, and Ubuntu is quickly nailing the embedded and server markets. Which of those do you think is bigger and/ or more important? Desktop use cases are slowly being replaced by more mobile platforms with cloud servers backing them up. Embedded devices are quickly growing in complexity, quantity and capability. At the end of the day, Microsoft's stronghold is of fading relevance. Android and IOS are at the height of their popularity, and have nowhere to go but down (damn near everyone has a cellphone, and tablet. There really isn't anywhere to grow those markets). The IoT has only growth ahead of it. A typical household has maybe a half dozen embedded devices capable of running an OS. By 2050, that number will be over 100 per household, and you can be damn sure that none of those device will run Windows, IOS or Android, much as Microsoft wishes otherwise.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
My not so tech savvy brother had me build a pc for him. He decided to go for Ubuntu instead of windows because his phone and tablet didn't need to run windows and use the money he saved not buying windows to max out the ram. I helped him rip his dvd collection and setup Kodi, he had gimp and open office to make fliers for his band, and was really happy with it for a little over a year. Then he bought a new TV we just couldn't get to work right and instead of taking the time to figure out the issue with drivers he got frustrated and bought win 10 he still uses Kodi, gimp, and open office. Had he asked prior to purchasing the TV I would have recommended something else and he would still be on Ubuntu.