Ten years of Ubuntu: How Linux’s beloved newcomer became its criticized king

> Today, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, estimates that there are 25 million Ubuntu users worldwide. Those users span 240 countries, and they make Ubuntu the world's third most popular PC operating system. By Canonical's estimates, Ubuntu has roughly 90 percent of the Linux market.

OK, I'm willing to grant that Ubuntu may be the most used version of Linux. I even willing to grant that it may have as many as 25 million users (me being one of them, as it's installed on my Dell Mini-9). But 90% of the market?

Let's do the math. If Ubuntu has 25 million users and has 90% of the market, that means the rest of the Linux market consists of less than 3 million users. Since Red Hat alone has more users than that....

I think your maths is slightly faulty ;)

25M / .9 = 27.7M

27.7M - 25M = 2.7M

If anything, JD was being generous by saying 3M

Well, I'm going to take a wild guess that they are only talking about the Linux desktop market. I'm also going to guess that they are including at least all variations of Ubuntu that use the trademark (i.e., Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, etc.).

Even with these concessions I still have trouble believing their numbers.

Perhaps they used the 'logic' that if it's not an Ubuntu based install, there's only a ten percent chance it's a desktop. ;-)

Additionally, I suspect that the "*buntu" numbers are inflated by the fact that the main solid data point is the number of (unique ip) hits on the Ubuntu repositories. So Linux Mint, for example, and other 'buntu derivatives that make use of the Ubuntu repositories are going to be counted as "Ubuntu" systems in Canonical's stats.

(I don't recall just where I saw this estimate, so take it with a suitable amount of seasoning salt -- but supposedly, Mint has about 1/5th the number of users that Ubuntu does.

"Those users span 240 countries, and they make Ubuntu the world's third most popular PC operating system."

Neat trick, since there are only 196 countries in the world. But then in 240 countries, maybe the number of users is correct. But knowing Canoracle, I doubt it.

You can find some usage numbers for Fedora, which I believe most people would consider to be a desktop version of Linux, at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics

Short version, 54,944,818 unique IP addresses getting updates for Fedora.

@lcafiero:

I dunno... maybe the author is counting 'unofficial' countries.

http://geography.about.com/cs/countries/a/numbercountries.ht...

**** Recognize that there are dozens of territories and colonies that are sometimes erroneously called "countries" but don't count at all - they're governed by other countries. Places commonly confused as being countries include Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Greenland, Palestine, Western Sahara, and even the components of the United Kingdom (such as Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England - they're not fully independent countries, states, or nation-states). ****

Perhaps the EU is also counted ;)

EDIT: Looked at the story again. Seems the number of countries is now AWOL.

Hmmmm... I wonder how many unique machines are utilizing the Debian "Popularity Contest"?

Huh? 173,000? That's IT?

http://popcon.debian.org/

Gee, I was right. Hardly anyone uses dselect but me.

Cannot believe no one has pointed this out yet.

88.6% of statistics are made up seconds before they are stated.





(Yes. It was.)

Quoting:Cannot believe no one has pointed this out yet.

88.6% of statistics are made up seconds before they are stated.

And 52.3% of those are within 2 standard deviations of the correct value ;)

37.238%, +-.03%, use artificial accuracies to convince the unwary.

Research showed, statistically speaking, 1 out of 10 people have 9 other people around them.

hkwint wrote:Research showed, statistically speaking, 1 out of 10 people have 9 other people around them.

Here we are talking hard science and you chime in with BS. Sheesh!