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Ubuntu User Count Pegged At Over One Billion (phoronix.com)

Posted by timothy on from the depends-how-you-count dept.

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.

22 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. When you miss a metric... by Wdomburg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you miss a metric, redefine the metric.

    1. Re:When you miss a metric... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 4, Insightful

      His claims get even more absurd than that:

      Did you enjoy watching The Hobbit? Hunger Games? Avengers? Avatar? All rendered on Ubuntu at WETA Digital. Among many others.

      You're an Ubuntu user from watching a movie? LOL this is prime trollbait.

    2. Re:When you miss a metric... by ranton · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Heh... Both are right. If you're talking overall desktop users, no, they didn't meet that metric. If you're talking users wherein the usage matters little...the engineer is also right on that score- and they sledgehammered the numbers.

      They are not both right. Counting tablets or even IoT devices that use Ubuntu is a reasonable redefinition of a Ubuntu user. Counting everyone who uses a service that a user of Ubuntu provides is ridiculous. It would be like saying I shop at Walmart because I bought a hamburger from a cashier who bought her shoes at Walmart.

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    3. Re:When you miss a metric... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:When you miss a metric... by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Funny

      I didn't watch any of those movies, but I think I once read a book which was printed on paper from a tree which was cut by a logger who uses a phone whose OS contains sourcecode partly written on a computer running Ubuntu.

      So I guess 2015 IS the year of Ubuntu on the desktop afterall.

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    5. Re:When you miss a metric... by NormalVisual · · Score: 4, Funny

      My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris using Ubuntu at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

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    6. Re:When you miss a metric... by geoskd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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    7. Re:When you miss a metric... by pr0fessor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    8. Re:When you miss a metric... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      packaging of the Debian kernel, the Gnome UI,

      the standard ubuntu release, which most people use, hasn't used gnome as default desktop since 2010 (maverick 10.10).

    9. Re:When you miss a metric... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

      Which of those do you think is bigger and/ or more important?

      Mobile by far. It's why Apple makes 10s of billions of dollars a year selling iPhones while Canonical still hasn't show it's even profitable.

    10. Re:When you miss a metric... by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

      Oh, it was.

      It sat on the top of my desk after I bought it.
      It lay on top of my lap when I read it.
      It was put in a big rack of other books after I finished it.
      Once, I even had it balanced on top of my TV set, just for laughs.
      I moved that book around so much, one might have called it mobile.

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    11. Re:When you miss a metric... by Vlijmen+Fileer · · Score: 2

      Yup. Ubuntu is hardly more than glorified Debian.
      Except they use their homegrown UI now I think, not Gnome.
      Gnome became impossible to use after Gnome devs insulted the world by dumbing it down to a wallpaper with three buttons or so.

    12. Re:When you miss a metric... by chipschap · · Score: 2

      You're kind of proving the point that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. People who buy a Windows desktop generally get things working. People who end up with Linux are geeks, or being hand held by a geek.

      Is all of this true? I ask this as a genuine question.

      1) Is Linux ready for the desktop? Depends whose desktop. It's certainly ready for mine. But I won't argue the point that it isn't mainstream.

      2) The big claim you make, that people who buy a Windows desktop generally get things working (sans being/being guided by a geek). Is that really the case? Granted there are fewer driver issues, etc., since manufacturers target Windows platforms, and the above cited case of the TV, some devices simply don't support Linux ... but does the average Windows user really "get things working" most of the time?

      3) Yes, behind a Linux installation there is usually a geek somewhere. My wife uses Linux, but I set it up and maintain it. That's true of a lot of people. They are quite able to use Linux, but can't support it. (Although I doubt they could support Windows, either.)

    13. Re:When you miss a metric... by swillden · · Score: 2

      a phone whose OS contains sourcecode partly written on a computer running Ubuntu.

      FYI, most Android source code is written on computers running Goobuntu, which is a Google-internal customized version of Ubuntu.

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  2. Re:Math by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

    No, he's trying to claim silly things like watching The Hobbit makes you an Ubuntu user:

    Did you enjoy watching The Hobbit? Hunger Games? Avengers? Avatar? All rendered on Ubuntu at WETA Digital. Among many others.

  3. Re:Awful, specious reasoning by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Fine. Pedant. by malditaenvidia · · Score: 2

    Windows 10 alone has over 70 million installs, and people are resisting it.

    That's pathetic compared to Ubuntu's >1 billion. Seriously, is Micro$oft even trying?

  5. Re:Childish excuses by RicktheBrick · · Score: 2

    I was given a windows 7 laptop because the hard drive was not working and it would not boot. So I purchased another hard drive but I than needed to install an OS. The problem was that the sticker for windows 7 was worn and the code was unreadable. I suspect they put the code there so it would get worn. I installed Ubuntu on it since the laptop was not even worth the price Microsoft would have charged for a clean installation of any of its operating systems. It has been working now for more than a couple of years. Ubuntu is the savior of hardware and windows is a active destroyer of hardware. There are other reasons but for that reason alone Ubuntu is far better than Windows.

  6. Umm by DougOtto · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ubuntu users pegged?

    I hope that's an optional thing.

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  7. Re:Windows Users by geoskd · · Score: 2

    So does this mean that Microsoft should now count anyone who has looked through a window as a Windows user?

    With the failure to force Windows 10 on "customers", that tactic can't be long in coming...

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  8. Audit them by freeze128 · · Score: 2

    If these "users" are in fact true, then they will have a user ID on the systems they used. No user ID, you're not a user. Pretty simple, really.

  9. Maybe not 'users' by gaelfx · · Score: 2

    While clearly this is a gross misuse of the word 'users,' arguing the semantics of it is kind of rhetorical (you may as well put on an orange toupee).

    We could pick him apart for using the word 'users' in an inappropriate fashion, but the heart of what he says *is* something significant: Ubuntu touches the lives of far more people than actually realize that it exists. Sure, watching the movie doesn't make me an Ubuntu user, but the fact still remains that Ubuntu has influenced my life in some fashion by being a part of that movie being made. It's a sign that Linux has gained some sort of foot-hold in the world and won't likely be dying anytime soon.