Ubuntu Linux has over 12 million users

I love Linux, and i use Linux Mint. Iv'e always been a Windows user and i found out about Linux about 3 months ago, Iv'e experimented with a few distros in that short time and found Mint works well with me, Ubuntu is similar of course but i will never go back to windows again, Linux does what i need and more on my older pc. It cost me nothing, i have all the programs i need which were a piece of cake to install if not already there. I think there are too many out there that are afraid of change, scared that it's going to be too difficult to use Linux, How hard was it for the average Joe when Windows first came on the scene, not many had a clue and a lot still don't.
Each to thier own i say, Linux for me and what ever for anyone else. I won't bag Windows users as i was one for many years, but i do get a laugh when a family member or friend calls me for help removing a virus off thier pc. (windows of course).

i note one thing overlooked by the 'windows conference commenters...

Linux is not on most systems in the world.

It is on most of the backbones, or really big systems that MUST be running 24/7.

More Governments and schools are migrating away from the Microsoft tax.

Many are not running away because of 'Windows' as much as Active X (since Microsoft writes so much of its output in Active X, and more of the Virus attacts and buffer overflows are from that item than 'simple' IE, XP, 7, Me, Office, etc.

Unless you 'build your own' most companies charge you for installing Microsoft's stuff, even if you buy a clean computer. (else Redmond nails them in one of many ways, for not collecting the fee)

So, you find that unlike windows, which is you take what you get and live with it (or deal with customer service as often as you like and suffer that little bit of Dante=esque penance.

I have run Ubuntu through 4 computers I used until it was time, and a few side trips for the fun of it (or hell, how ever you wish to imagine).

But, now Governments are beginning to go to Linux, because they will owe no allegiance or stupidity to Redmond. The bugs get fixed quicker and more often. The can expand or limit at will. They can run faster, longer on older equipment, and enhance the systems with much more optional originality.

Is Linux or Ubuntu or Open Suse or any of them absolutely ready for the desktop...

More so than Microsoft.

Most don't need all the whistles and bells of Redmond's Offerings. (Take the Office Suite.... Most use it for that which can be done with just an RTF write program, far cheaper, and without all the spyware or tattle trail included.

Is Linux 'cracker' attack free?

No.

Is it harder to crack than windows?

A little.

Is it attacked as consistently and continuously as Windows?

No... Not even close.

Nor does anyone pay the reporters to make sure EVERY attack in any Linux of Firefox event gets hammered into the news, to diminish the coverage of the ongoing window problem... Or take a Windows problem and blame it on the software (such as FireFox) so everyone with no computer knowledge thinks the problem is Mozilla's not Redmond's (Yes oh joy of Gates, the last two ones blamed on Firefox required the fixes such as they were to be made in Windows.. or you had to disable something to NOT use a windows function... same thing)

All the Gains to Linux or Ubuntu are not losses to microsoft...

Makes sense.

All the losses to IE are not to FireFox... or Chrome.... Or Opera.... bet they are quickly leaving the IE browser.

And it's call home software.

(It is strange. Microsoft categorically denied having Call home software, said that it was only used in limited applications, and how it kept only non-personal data statistics... in one paragraph recently...tsk...tsk...tsk...)

So, enjoy the meals that Microsoft serves it's conference posters.

I am not a conference poster. I dumped Microsoft after many years of learning how to make it run, with less chance of someone getting in from the outside.

I learned how to make it 'out of the box... user friendly... (a process I got down to about 24 hours...of some neat tricks...)

Then to be blown out of the water by one of their cataclysm updates (load and die, you know)....

I have problems with Ubuntu.

I will not deny that.

I have gone through several Alpha, Beta Gold update cycles...

Learned a few tricks, and am still learning.

But, I am no longer 'fighting' a group of wizards who keep all the problems secret, hidden, or spying on me...

If something goes wrong, I have ways of finding out, openly, what happened, or can simply reload and try again.

I leaned to partition my home file on a separate disk, and lose no real critical data (also have 3 other places to back up, so I have fewer problems, there)...

But, I am working to make MY system MINE, and getting it functioning to what and how I want...

Not how Microsoft says I better like or else too bad.

Your comments are enjoyed, since I know you know what you want.

Mine are mine, because I know a few crackers... and enjoy knowing (sometimes) what is coming to you...

Enjoy.

Me and mine run only Linux (OpenSUSE) on the desktop - that's 7 machines + fileserver , very few problems or issues. If someone KNOWS they need Windows then fair enough. I don't and haven't for years.

As for Ubuntu - I use 1 copy of EEEbuntu on a netbook but I'll migrate to OpenSUSE when I get the time - I only use it when traveling.

I agree that Ubuntu-ites do seem rather self-congratulatory but I'm far more concerned that the simple message that Linux for the desktop is perfectly usable for many users gets across.

Heck, my 87 year old mother-in-law uses it for on-line shopping and banking - I certainly wouldn't trust Windows of any sort for that. I haven't had to sort any problems out on that machine in the 2 years since I installed it

A scientist successfully running Linux on the desktop. :)

I'm not saying Linux on the desktop isn't worth supporting. I'm saying it hasn't made any significant difference to what people are actually using that weren't using Linux already, in spite of the hearty, vocal back-slapping that Cannonical are always so keen to give themselves. The latter point being my particular grudge in this case.

I use desktop and server Linux every day but I would argue that an intelligent person understands both its strengths and its weaknesses and chooses the most appropriate OS for the job.

I really can't understand the linux haters in general and the ubuntu haters in particular...
WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?
It is free.
it is open,
it is modifiable,
it is distributable,
it is evolving,
it is better!
STAY WITH YOUR NUMBERS,YOUR VIRUSES
and keep on paying for something you don;t own and you are not allowed to share, windows lovers!

You obviously have very little idea at all. I'm not defending Ubuntu, I'm supporting Linux on the desktop in general which I use now exclusively for every kind of computing with the exception of games. As for performance - before I retired recently I used to use a dual Xeon workstation to do protein modeling, 3D viewing and other extremely demanding scientific tasks. This was on Linux. All over the planet intelligent people are finding they don't need to pay the MS tax and can get their work done in a saner and more stable environment.

You guys crack me up.

Linux as a server OS? +1 and hell yeah, but not Ubuntu. Ever.

Linux as a cheap desktop OS on a sub £300 netbook? Hell yeah, for the most menial, non-demanding tasks that your Mum needs a desktop for providing that you're on 24/7 support duty to fix her system when GRUB inexplicably throws a wobbler or Ubuntu push out a moody update that knackers her network connection.

Live in reality guys and not your holier than though bubble of principle. Ubuntu is gaining more users at the EXPENSE of other distros but it's actual impact on the world of Windows and OSX has barely budged a percentage in the last 5 years.

For the time being Ubuntu is homogenising the casual users of the Linux world, but do not fool yourselves into thinking that it represents any kind of threat to a desktop put to use for anything other than YouTube and Facebook. Shuttleworth knows this, which is why he's playing up the numbers and openly stating that Ubuntu is about to go cloud based net-social and simplified in ways that will soon be having you purists puking into a bucket and running back to Debian.

Hello Keith,

Yes, I agree, most people who use Windows have never had to install it from scratch. But there is another funny thing to this.
If they fail, they will never feel it is because of Windows, they will always feel it is their own fault, and in a way I can understant that.
But it gets really funny when people are creating a large Word document that suddenly gets totally mad and they have this similar feeling that they actually created the mess through some funny error they did bye themselves.
Similarly in the Windows world rebooting and all sorts of viruses are not considered weaknesses in Windows but rather sort of normal stuff and acts of good.
But what the hell, I have a choice, some never understand, they had a choice too.
And we a speaking about the desktop now, not about supercomputers, severs, embedded devices and so on where Linux is unstoppable.
Linus Torvalds once said that "the desktop is the king", and yes, that table is, and has been, occupied bye Windows for a long time.
And it is not only about companies like Dell, HP and similar who do not "want" to deliver Linux on desktops, it is about a very large number of people who know they have no responsibility concerning Windows but active and hard questions about Linux related problems they know nothing about.
When was the year of Linux on supercomputers, well, that was years ago and there have not been to many articles about that.
When was the year of Linux on servers, the internet and embedded devices. I do not know, but I think it was more like yesterday.
When was the year of Linux on smart phones, well, I think it was to day.
And on the desktop, well I think Microsoft has all the reasons to be very worried as they have absolutely no means to expand that part. All that remains for them is a curve which resembles something I do not want to mention here.
And what the hell, do we actually feel it would be fine with any company having a larger market share than say 20%.
Think about cars. The Russian car industry once had a plus 99% market share in Russia, and without trying to be awful or mean, that was a situation and with products very similar to what Microsoft has to offer to day.

(I wonder if this was submitted twice)
(or at all)

Hi Lars, I agree that some people have problems with some distros although I haven't since ~1997. I've usually stuck with SUSE although I've installed lots of other distros as VM. Certainly no modern distro need any compiling or even use of the CLI to install. I guess if most people had to install Windows from scratch many would get into a mess.

That's fine and good but I have work to get done and only so much time to get it done. It's more effective to use Windows which isn't overly sensitive to different hardware. Linux doesn't work well on the desktop because kernel developers don't care enough about the desktop.

Linux distros are very seldom pre installed, which means that the situation for somebody trying out a Linux distribution is quite different, well, we all know that.
I have used different distros for more than ten years, and tried, lots of them for some time, occasionally, only for some hours.
Now, I know that it can be frustrating and sometimes it does not work at all.
So, I do not doubt, that there are those who have "failed".
I have failed with Kubuntu twice, first with a Nokia CRT and then with a FLATRON.
The thing that annoys me is that there are always people who think, because they did not "fail" nobody else should fail.
So my advice for anybody who "fails" is just, try some other distro.
In fact some of the fun with Linux is that there are so many possibilities.
There was this comment about somebody who had to compile something.
I have compile programs for 35 years but never anything Linux related.
So I would consider the case as a "fail" if for some reason any compiling is needed to get a Linux distro to work.

Can't agree with your choice of bike - on the other hand everything else is spot on.

Don't use Ubuntu myself except on netbook with EEEbuntu, but have 5 other machines with OpenSUSE 11.2 - all have been EASY to install.

One thing that seems to be forgotten in the argument about usage is that vast numbers of PCs are either corporate or bought by consumers who have little option but to have Windows installed. The often quoted figure of 1% for Linux probably represents 20% of those who are willing and able to change and don't want Macs.

Twelve million. I suspect that was the purpose of releasing the numbers. Maybe you can't understand 12 million. Think about trying to put those 12 million in your front room of your home. Or rather, try to provide water to those 12 million people? I think you can understand from that that 12 million is a huge number of people. So is a billion, which many will claim use Windows. That's neither here nor there as we aren't talking about Windows.

Fedora claims 24 million unique users. Those two combined bring it up to 36 million world wide. That doesn't count the other distros. It is likely that 50 to 100 million users use linux for their day to day jobs.

I use Linux as I have for years on most of my computers. I only have Windows installed for gaming and one other application. Otherwise I don't use it at all, even Win7, which though looks nice just doesn't have what I like about Linux. Linux has a raison d'etre where Windows just, I don't know, has very little reason to be other than to play those couple games. My point is that I just don't need Windows anymore. I suspect most people that have tried Linux understand that.

And to the silly person claiming problems with Linux. Every computer has problems. That's like saying I have problems with my Harley and so due to that I should switch to a Honda. Because I had problems with my Harley doesn't mean I should give up what I consider to be the best motorcycle out there.

I'm interested to know how they derived this figure. They'd better not count me. I tried for six hours to get everything to work right. I had to manually shut down the window manager, compile drivers for the nVidia video card and unlike the Windows drivers which will allow me to pipe whatever I want over HDMI the Linux drivers downscale to 720p and as a result the image is fuzzy. The configuration dialogue only retains settings if opened using sudo via terminal; no warning is given and you're supposed to guess I suppose? Six hours and I still haven't got it usable. I give up. Great idea. Still nowhere near usable. W7 installed in 20 minutes with minimal input and inherited my desktop settings from XP even recognizing that I have my primary monitor on the right. Whereas Ubuntu requires far too much manual tweaking and adjustments and still doesn't work. Not that the software centre isn't awesome. The rest of the OS... not so much.

"Ubuntu Linux has over 12 million users"

"Ubuntu Linux has over 12 million losers"

there I fixed it for you...

...the day it will run what the other 6,485,697,060 computer users on the planet want we can talk.

Who uses Microsuck Winbloze anyway? Ubuntu is for the kewl doods and doodeses of the planet. Rock on we shall in the free software world!

While I am gratified to see Ubuntu is enjoying a user base of 12 million users, they still need to stay focused. They cannot afford to kick back since M$ still has many many more end-users and market penetration. IBM's OS/2 operating system also had between 10 and 12 million users but see what happened to that OS ? In other words when I travel around to different professional offices I don't see Linux I see M$ Windoze. So significant porting and software development needs to be done for Linux so it can achieve the level of market share in parity to M$ Windoze. I hope the Ubuntu developers keep focus and resist the urge to relax.

The year of the Linux desktop! For real this time! Stop laughing at me!

Reply to: SHOUTER, 08 April 2010

Sorry to see your keyboard only works in capitals. I used to have one of those... Was an old teletype type system with punch/paper-tape output for high speed loading into a very large small computer.
(It was advanced stated of the art, at the time)...

About your problem: There are computers that will not load some OSs. I had that trouble with Linux Distros, until Ubuntu first worked. I know the Lucid version is far better than previous ones, at recognizing the worst of the problems (nVidia cards). You might try that. Since you didn't mention the computer type/age/other details...

There is little I can surmise other than it is not one of the more generic ones I have loaded many different systems with Ubuntu, and have had several friends convert...

So, you might try other versions of linux (Damn Small Linux should work, and build from there)... Or, (sorry to use such abhorrent (to me) phraseology...)

You might try running windows until something safer that works on your system comes along...

And, windows is NOT safer... Flame me all you wish.. It has nigh on 20 year old faults they know about, and have not fixed.. (Kind of like the patch that Intel was going to come out with, to fix the drivers that slowed non-Intel processors on most boards...

Gonna fix was last I heard in January...

Some of the 'holes' in Windows are older than a fair fraction of the number of user users.

I'm One of them, use it to do my freelance job

Sorry to hear you confess you are too much of a MS troll run Linux. I am no GURU but have been running Ubuntu since 8.04 and no Windows. Tried many others but Ubuntu seems to work best. I did download and image OpenSuse 11.2 but will wait and give it a spin once I have Ubuntu 10.04 on disk.
No dual boot here. As soon as I created the restore disks for my laptop I let Ubuntu have the whole drive. Windows is only used in my house for games.

I dare to dream. This is the last source of true superiority for Microsoft when it comes to the Windows OS. Let's totally destroy the dishonest and BSy(not sure if that's grammatically correct) once and for all.

I understand this one will have the new gnome?? Last laptop I purchased I chose all intel chipset/grapics/etc for their better linux support. Laptop before had the x400 ati graphics that broke after the upgrade to ubuntu 9.10 I think because ATI decided it was too old to release a new driver so ATI lost my purchase on my 2nd laptop.

Fact is that the ubuntu base is growing relatively faster than the computer base and it is by far the most popular linux distro.
As for me, I have an acer 6530 and I completely removed the vista and never looked back.
Since last year that this happened, I converted 12 other persons to ubuntu and they forgot about the windows nightmare very quickly!
Well,all these are cases of ubuntu monoboot and not dual boot!
So windows lovers start to realize this:
UBUNTU IS HERE TO STAY AND EVENTUALLY BEAT THE MS!

PS @SHOUTCAST
You could visit the ubuntuforums and ask for help.
I have tested ubuntu in myriads of computers and the problems were few if any!

I LOVE THE IDEA BUT I NEVER GOT THIS UBUNTU TO WORK, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. I HACXORD AND SLASHORD WINDOWS 7 AND EVEN LEOPARD 10.5.6 TO WORK ON MY BOTTOM-OF-BARREL EVEREX MODEL SA2053T, EVENTUALLY, BUT ABSOLUTELY NO SUCCESSORX WITH UBUNTU. I SUGGEST IT IS A HOAX - THE CRAP DONT WORK!

12 million users, 10 million servers, 1.8 dual booting with their windows installs, .2 complete nerds / ms haters

I think it's intentional. Seems like a dig. These boys are clever like that.

It's not like 'o' is anywhere near 'e'.

...home of Mozzarella, non-military employed boffins, social notworking etc. (Gee "boffin" isn't in my spill chucker). It is how some folks around here raise a 'stinq'.

On a serious note, I am also looking forward to the latest Ubuntu as I have been using it since the Dapper Drake days.

It's coming soon! I'm holding my breath until the official release.

By the way..
"Social notworking"? Is it broke? Funny typo. :)