
More people use Ubuntu than anyone actually knows - rbanffy
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2015/12/more-people-use-ubuntu-than-anyone.html
======
rdtsc
I like Ubuntu and have gotten most of my family to switch. LTS for some who
are far away.

It is also interesting to watch people like my mom, who never used another
desktop before, learn Ubuntu. Then I showed her a Mac desktop and a Windows
one and she said "they are not user friendly" \-- I thought was pretty funny.

But I also hear a lot of hate from developers about Ubuntu lately -- "It is
not really free", "They changed my Gnome desktop, I'll never use this piece of
crap again". "They hate systemd and invented their own thing!. --No, they
adopted systemd now. --Oh... ok, well they still have a stupid user
interface!". Kind of stuff.

What a bunch of whiners and complainers. Before that it was complaints for a
decade -- Linux on desktop. "Year of the Linux Desktop -- such a joke". We had
Mandriva, Redhat, Gentoo, others for years and they couldn't create desktop
usable for average people -- hardware support was bad, interface sucked,
design was bad, still had to use command lines to configure things etc. Then
Ubuntu came, tried to do something about it, and while not perfect, made a
huge improvement. Now it is possible for normal users to use a Linux desktop
and many are using it as such. And because developers use it for development,
the server version also ends up in production often.

~~~
Pxtl
Really? I gave Ubuntu a go as a daily driver a few years back. Getting WiFi
working was a struggle, the constant offers to install apps in normal browsing
flow was irritating, sound died a few times, and over time my boot partition
got filled up with old linux images and had to be cleaned with magical
command-line incantations.

That being said, it had less trouble with my network printer than Windows
does.

I get the appeal of Linux, but I did not have a grandma-friendly experience.

~~~
pekk
I haven't had wifi problems with Ubuntu for literally a decade. When there is
a problem, it isn't Ubuntu's fault as a distribution but rather has to do with
hardware that has no Linux driver or needs a very recent kernel version. But
using very recent kernels will also have its own problems.

The only criticism I can relate to in this is the boot partition filling with
old linux images, it really doesn't make sense that cleaning those out isn't
done automatically by default.

~~~
Pxtl
It was pretty simple to get the wifi working, but still - magical command-line
incantations I'm copy/pasting from fora.

------
eklavya
Despite the focus on cloud in the article, there are a lot of ubuntu desktop
users. I mean it has become rare to see a dev running Windows in my
experience. Could be a regional thing but it seems popular here.

~~~
doktrin
Windows isn't so bad. I had a legit prejudice against it for the longest time,
and did literally everything in my power to avoid it even as my team began
working almost exclusively on .NET projects.

Now I've bootcamped my mac and swapped out my desktop Arch installation in
favor of Windows 10. There are undoubtedly things that I miss - and I wouldn't
be doing this if I wasn't primarily writing C# - but it's not quite the
purgatory I'd imagined / remembered it being.

~~~
frik
You meant _wasn 't so bad_ (Win7). The Win10 privacy issues are a showstopper
on desktop.

~~~
dikaiosune
IIRC, nearly all of that behavior can be disabled during installation (so
before any user activity exists). And if you're talking about backdoors/hidden
privacy behavior, there's been a risk of that since Windows 95. I think that
the defaults of Win10 are bad, but it's not all as bad as the FUD that's
floating around.

~~~
eximius
The worst features can only be disabled on Enterprise editions of Windows.
That is not the attitude I want in the most important piece of software on my
computer.

~~~
doktrin
Does the registry tweak not disable Telemetry?

------
ChuckMcM
I think Dustin makes an excellent point that Ubuntu doesn't really have a way
of expressing 'users' unlike other OS targets.

I also think Ubuntu has successfully hit the 'fat spot' of Linux users, which
is to say appeals to the widest possible set of users given the choices it has
available to make. That is something which is pretty amazing given the
fluidity of Linux users.

I also think Ubuntu has a shot at becoming the "last" operating system. I
think that because I see Windows 10 and MacIOS :-) moving toward more opaque
systems, things you package and app for through a specific toolset and with a
company controlled process. This suits the Microsoft and Apple markets which
are primarily users of the systems as opposed to developers. And that leaves
an opening for Linux to be the primary 'tinkerers' operating system. And of
all the Linux distributions I see Ubuntu as the easiest to just slap on and
get started with.

Definitely an interesting development from my perspective.

~~~
wink
What I am missing is the "I begrudgingly use Ubuntu for my servers because of
$reason".

Of course I am a user, but maybe it wasn't my decision or it was a very close
call with another distro where it's plus or minus a few hundred instances...

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is an excellent point, and precisely why I think Ubuntu is where it is.
There are are enough "reasons" to use it for a larger group that even though
some members would prefer a different distro they begrudgingly go along.

The impressive thing is that they can pull that off. Because back in the day
you got SunOS or Ultrix or IRIX and by golly you had to use it, there really
wasn't a remixed flavor that you might even consider liking better. So with
Ubuntu there are _lots_ of remixed flavors and yet they have pulled together
enough of the puzzle, whether its package management, system configuration, or
hardware support that makes it the least bad choice of all the flavors.

------
alpb
> Docker users have launched Ubuntu images over 35.5 million times.

Doesn't he know that it's mostly CI systems and deployment scripts launching
containers in automated fashion? Moreover you can't count how many containers
are launched, you can just count pulls.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
Came here to essentially say the same thing you mentioned in your second
sentence. In terms of how many Ubuntu containers have been launched, it could
easily be in the billions. Docker makes OSes so ephemeral that any statistic
on launched Ubuntu instances is meaningless.

The down side of containerization for Canonical though, is that as engineers
get more sophisticated with microservices and Docker in general, container
images are built from much smaller distros such as Alpine, Busybox and even
from Scratch.

(disclosure: I work for Docker)

~~~
curryst
It's going to be a problem for all of the current commercial distributions.
For a long while now, their focus has been on ease of use and administration.
Docker (and containerization in general) is changing that dynamic by shifting
the ease of use and administration up to the hypervisor level. From Scratch
and other micro-implementations were a pain in the ass to manage not only
because of the difficulty in using them, but also because it's very difficult
to replicate across a large number of servers. Now Docker can exactly
replicate those results across a large number of servers, with not much more
work than it would take using something like Puppet.

It's going to be interesting to see whether Red Hat and Canonical try to make
the shift to being the OS inside containers, or if they'll be content with
being the container host.

------
sroerick
I installed Ubuntu for two non-technical people I know.

There's a bug in Ubuntu where old kernel packages are kept on the boot
partition and not uninstalled. These accumulate, and quickly (<6months) fill
up the boot partition.

This is such an easy fix, and it's frustrating that it is still a problem.
Both users have come to me saying "I don't know how to make Ubuntu work"
because of this.

~~~
eugenekolo2
Have you reported the bug?

------
personjerry
This seems like a pretty weak argument. If the whole argument is to say "No
one knows" rather than to actually dig and get more data, that seems like an
expectation of defeat.

I'd argue that as much as we think Linux is getting more popular, we (as
perusers of HN) are naturally part of the tech bubble, the small segment of
people that are likely to use Ubuntu. Outside this group, I've yet to see
Ubuntu recognized by many people.

~~~
CephalopodMD
Did you read the article? The author does this to a reasonable level of
effort.

~~~
personjerry
I understood the author gave some examples where the number of ubuntu users
would be higher than expected, but didn't really try to get a level of
accuracy in conclusion. The difference, say, between 10,000 and 1,000,000
users is pretty high. A comparison relative to other OS users would be
helpful.

------
jlgaddis
The NSA uses RHEL so that means pretty much everybody in the world ("directly
or indirectly") uses RHEL.

~~~
cmurf
Apple does also, so iOS users are also RHEL users per the articles logic. But
yours is funnier (creepy too but funny).

------
sremani
I get the point, people are using Ubuntu without knowing much about. I will
have to shout out to Linux Mint Rebecca. One awesome Desktop environment, I do
much of my learning of C#/F#(thanks MonoDevelop) on it. Its one of the few
Linux desktops that did make me feel welcome and focus on what I am trying to
get done, instead of getting in the way.

------
akerro
I always say that BSDs are the most popular operating systems... everyone uses
them thousands times per day... Even you windows users, your updates are
served from FBSD server.

------
draw_down
Feels awfully defensive. And I'm tired of people saying things like "why the
negativity?" Just because you don't like what someone says doesn't mean it's
negative, but besides that it should be okay to say negative things.

~~~
usrusr
Right, Ubuntu running autonomous stuff feels kind of like the opposite of "a
user".

And if watching Netflix on their smart TV makes people Ubuntu users, then
having a bank account makes them users of any number of exotic IBM letters-
slash-digits operating systems. (though ironically, Netflix is just about the
only thing I run on my old Ubuntu laptop, and superior compatibility with that
Ubuntu laptop was the primary reason why I switched from the silverlight-only
Netflix clone I used before to Netflix, so for me personally, they are very
much related)

~~~
justincormack
Watching Netflix also makes them FreeBSD users, as that actually streams the
video.

------
buro9
There's quite a few people at CloudFlare who run Ubuntu on Macbooks.

I run it on my home systems and my work laptop (a Lenovo, I'm one of the few
who prefers it over Mac hardware it seems). My wife runs it on her work
computer, she's a film academic and finds it just works well enough given most
of her time is in web apps or watching films (though she does keep a Windows
machine for creating Powerpoint slides).

It just works, and has done for a long time.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Doesn't PowerPoint work in Wine?

~~~
tiatia
Yes it does (with one tweak). I use Softmaker Office Suite for Linux

~~~
MrTonyD
Thanks for that suggestion of Softmaker. I've been trapped using Windows just
because of MS Office. I just tried using their "freeoffice" and I was able to
stay in Ubuntu while editing Word and Powerpoint. Libre Office had always
messed up both my Word and PPT files - but freeoffice seems to work (well, so
far at least.)

~~~
tiatia
As a word of caution:

I am super happy with Softmaker since many years. But recently I had to work
on an investment pitch presentation with a buddy who uses word. The ppt file,
made by Softmaker, that I sent him did not look very good when opened with
Powerpoint. (I send the file to their very good support service, they are
always improving)

I guess if you are interested you start with the previous version, which is
free:

[http://www.freeoffice.com/en/](http://www.freeoffice.com/en/)

------
l1feh4ck
I have made a lot of user switch to Linux. My first recommendation will be
either Ubuntu or Mint.

I have tried many distros over the time and I liked Arch Linux for quite some
time. But the problem was reliability. I spend my productive time fixing an
issue or trying to isolate the issue or fixing PKGBUID to install a package.

Ubuntu on the other hand was my backup in case Arch crashed.

My Linux experience can be titled 'From Ubuntu to Ubuntu'.

Now I believe using a stable distro is really productive unless you have lots
of time in your hand.

I like Ubuntu except the Unity part. No problem. Install Xfce and live
happily.

------
Ologn
The report mentions Wikipedia.

Wikipedia, the 7th most popular site in the world according to Alexa, reports
(
[http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera...](http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm)
) that Ubuntu clients were 0.48% of Wikipedia's web traffic in June 2015
(0.49% in May 2015, 0.49% in April 2015).

------
dangerpowpow
Quite a lot of govt computers in india now run ubuntu.

------
bdavisx
I've had dual boot on my laptop for a while (Win7 and Ubuntu), but a few
months ago I wiped the Ubuntu and reinstalled the latest Ubuntu desktop and
forced myself to use it for several weeks. So much better for development
purposes, even though I still get frustrated with some things (a Win7 alt-tab
switcher would be nice for example).

~~~
mod
I don't know exactly what you're looking for, but Ubuntu has a ton of window
management hot keys. Moving windows to virtual desktops, resizing, alt-tab,
etc.

------
no_gravity
Webserver statistics might give some estimation on OS usage.

Not sure how reliable Ubuntu identifies itself in the user agent of web
browsers. But just for fun, I counted requests on my webserver via a simple
grep:

grep Ubuntu access.log | wc

grep Windows access.log | wc

Looks like I get 1 request from Ubuntu for about 100 hits from Windows.

~~~
jeena
At our (Linux focussed) most people use Linux on their machines, but almost
nobody uses Ubuntu. Instead there is a mix of Debian (stable, testing) and
Arch Linux users. Two years ago we had more Ubuntu users but most of them
either left or moved to Debian because of Canonicals politics.

------
sixbrx
I guess Ubuntu's popularity may result in Mir winning out over Wayland? Or
upstreams supporting Wayland primarily but most users actually using
Canonical-patched Mir adaptations of upstreams? Things could get weird.

~~~
tbrock
It would be so much better if Canonical focused their efforts on Wayland. Mir
is just such an awful thing for Linux in general.

I use Linux and OSX desktops every day and catching up to OSX or Windows in
terms of everyday usability via reasonable graphics performance is basically
impossible without the ecosystem working together.

That being said, Ubuntu can do whatever they want, it's their money and
resources and they can sink it into Mir if they choose but wow, what a waste.

~~~
roninb
You've said that Mir is an awful thing, but you never explained why.

------
frik
16.04 LTS planned release date 2016-04-21, will be the next great release.

------
djyde
More people use Windows XP actually... At lease in China, the ATM, metro check
in, etc. are using Windows XP.

------
shmerl
Same goes for many other Linux distros. I'd argue that Ubuntu isn't even the
most used one.

------
jack9
All of our infrastructure is CentOS (or derivative) in every single place I've
ever worked. I used a mix of Mac and Windows at home and work. I don't want a
linux distro with UI overhead.

~~~
tossableaccts95
Not sure if serious or trolling...?

Ubuntu server's default UI is a bash shell.

[http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server](http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server)

Not saying you should be switching over now because of this, but come on.

~~~
jack9
Other than a GUI, there's no compelling reason to use Ubuntu, so linking to
"yet-another-server-distro" isn't helpful.

~~~
frik
LTS isn't a compelling reason for servers? Troll!

