It Doesn't Look Like Ubuntu Reached Its Goal Of 200 Million Users This Year

[kingu]

So it turns out that marketshare is made up of actual users, and that we don't want spyware. Welcome back to before you started that nonsense in advance for 2016, which is when canonical plans to stop.

[Kano]

It is simple to support most desktop boards out of the box. Every laptop can be a challenge for Linux. Highend Dell systems are for example configured in RAID mode with PCI-E SSD - if you don't turn that off you never get access to the NVME device. If you change that setting Windows does not boot anymore. Also touchpads can be really tricky, some need overrides for the PS2 port (lots of Fujitsu or Gigabyte), others load in theory the right driver, but the wrong the same time. If you are no hardware specialist with deep Linux knowledge then you could easyly fail to install. I can help Kanotix users to fix those things but if an average Linux user tries a distro he will most likely fail - no matter which one. Ubuntu has certainly millions of users but to get in the 100+ million install range you would need much more hardware with great out of the box support. If you need a special hack for each new system you can forget it. Also there must be a better marketing for Linux - Ubuntu Phone can only fail without apps - to fix that you need Android support - or you sell close to none. Linux has now Steam - but no gamer will switch and leave 75% or more games unplayable. You need to have something like Playstation Now - play games via streaming - then the OS does not matter and a very fast Internet connection for everybody. People want to use what they paid for - if you can do that with any OS then you can switch much simpler.

[mike4]

Linux will win when big Department Stores have it aside Win/Mac on their shelves. I'm confident that to happen more and more in the next years.
Last time I was in Mediamarkt someone came in, said oh I love the Mac Gui and bought the laptop. Even for the double price as Windows aside.-

[mike4]

When we see Linux aside Win/osx on racks in big supermarkets, numbers will climb. I guess that's the only way...

[Alliancemd]

Actually, it might be that Ubuntu reached the goal.
I work at a big company where tens of thousands of developers have Ubuntu installed in their virtual machine.
We do not install Steam on our systems, so your measures by how many Steam users there are don't reflect the actual numbers of Ubuntu users.

[prodigy_]

Is anyone really surprised that Mark "We Have Root" Shuttleworth once again made a complete ass of himself?

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Well on mobile Linux "wins" with Android. It could totally succeed in the same way on desktop, with a company such as Google, Valve or Canonical building an open ecosystem on top of it.

Linux isn't winning. It's garnering nothing of profits outside of Google's ad machine. Android is slowly eating itself in the smartphone market. Each quarter more vendors are dropping out of the overly saturated, low margin markets. Samsung is losing billion on it. In five years Android will be gone.

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

Well, it's not exactly losing either -- http://www.w3cook.com/os/summary/ -- Sure, it's not devices you have sitting at home, but it is devices you're making use of on a daily basis, devices for which Linux is clearly the most commonly used OS. In fact, on that list there are a mere 2 non-Linux OS-es listed and they account for a total of 3.4%. So, even if Android is gone in 5 years as you claim, Linux will still be here, serving you the webpages that you're visiting, helping researches in various ways on supercomputers, allowing you to play online games by running servers, etc.

Oh, and let's not forget the embedded devices; routers and the like. Most commonly also running atop the Linux kernel. Not winning? It already won. There are probably more devices running the Linux kernel than there are running any other kernel and/or OS.

[ElectricPrism]

Is Ubuntu even still the flavor of choice for linux users these days? I ran away from Ubuntu around 2013 and boarded the linux mint ship for a while and then when Mint froze at 17.x I jumped again to Korora which I am loving. The magic of Ubuntu + Gnome2 has long since passed and I thought it has to this day been hemorrhaging its faithfuls since the default transition to Unity.

100% Agree, Left around in 2012? Canonical's focus shifted and their flagship product started to go stale, also the big F-You to users with Mir, Amazon search made users feel like their privacy was violated and now in 2015 they are fixing that 1 oversight lmao.

That's what Canonical gets for ignoring their userbase I guess.

I also think that most points dont matter especialy about photoshop and office and stuff like that.

FTFY - Adobe_Photoshop_CS6 on Linux - works hella good. I hear CC is working too from a friend.

Why anyone would want to use anything later than Office 2007 I have no idea as the App gained about 500 pounds of dead-weight slow-ware.

[pal666]

Microsoft has a very well co-ordinated juggernaut of a machine to ensure market share.

they've lost marketshare war to android long ago