Back in November of 2007, we wrote an article about the popularity of Ubuntu. At the time, it appeared that Ubuntu was the most popular Linux distribution according to many different web metrics. Of course, there’s no way to say for sure which distro is the most popular and to know exactly how many people use Ubuntu. That being said, we thought it would be interesting to take a fresh look at Ubuntu’s popularity. Is Ubuntu gaining in popularity? Is it being used by more people? Are more people searching and talking about Ubuntu?
So, how many users does Ubuntu have? It’s really hard to tell. In October, 2007, Canonical claimed that there were over 6 million users of Ubuntu. Then in October, 2008, in an interview with IneternetNews.com a Canonical spokesman claimed that
“In terms of numbers we’re very confident this is an 8 million plus user base of active users. That is a hard thing to count and there are lots of issues about methodology for counting but I have seen nothing that sheds doubts on that.”
With this in mind, lets look at some indicators and statistics from around the web to see just how popular Ubuntu really is. Has it gained in popularity since 2007, or has another distro come in to take Ubuntu’s place?
Note: this article is in no way a scientific study of Ubuntu’s popularity, it is just a collection of interesting stats from around the net. Have fun with it!
1. DistroWatch.com
Like last time around, we’ll start things out with distrowatch.com. While not the best indicator of a distro’s popularity, it is a traditionally accepted measure of popularity in the Linux community. When we wrote our original article back in November of 2007, PCLinuxOS topped the distrowatch list, but that apparently didn’t last for long, as Ubuntu is once again back on top (and overall yearly stats at distrowatch.com show Ubuntu in the number one position from 2005-present).
DistroWatch.com’s most popular linux distributions for the past 6 months
- Ubuntu
- Fedora
- openSUSE
- Mint
- Debian
- Mandriva
- PCLinuxOS
- Puppy
- Sabayon
- CentOS
This is the list that we’ll use going forward to compare the top distros.
2. Website popularity
There are several companies that specialize in ranking websites. None of these sites are perfect and many people discount them all together. We thought it would be interesting to see how some of the top Linux distribution websites stack up in these net rankings. Here are current rankings for the top 10 distros (from the Distrowatch list). The November 2007 results are included in parenthesis.
Netcraft Rankings
- www.ubuntu.com: 694 (up from 1,649)
- www.OpenSUSE.org: 1,823 (up from 4,622)
- www.debian.org: 1,938 (down from 1,719)
- fedoraproject.org: 2,164 (up from 4,314)
- www.centos.org: 3,054 (not on the list in 2007)
- www.linuxmint.com: 3,150 (way up from 41,331)
- www.mandriva.com: 10,049 (down from 7,691)
- www.pclinuxos.com: 10,479 (up from 11,144)
- www.puppylinux.org: 14,196 (not on the list in 2007)
- www.sabayonlinux.org: 36,494 (down from 28,549)
Alexa Rankings
- www.ubuntu.com: 2,327 (up from 2,445)
- www.debian.org: 4,475 (down from 3,499)
- www.OpenSUSE.org: 10,889 (down from 7,878)
- fedoraproject.org: 12,992 (down from 11,127)
- www.centos.org: 16,198 (not on the list in 2007)
- www.linuxmint.com: 29,146 (up from 69,753)
- www.mandriva.com: 30,945 (down from 18,497)
- www.puppylinux.org: 62,103 (not on the list in 2007)
- www.pclinuxos.com: 80,114 (down from 57,390)
- www.sabayonlinux.org: 120,109 (down from 72,331)
So, it seems that Ubuntu is, according to these sites, the most visited of the distros from distrowatch’s top 10. It’s also interesting to note that Linux Mint’s rankings have dramatically improved since 2007. Perhaps Mint’s popularity has something to do with their focus on being user friendly (and not brown)?
Blogging Trends
Sites like Technorati and BlogPulse allow you to track how often people are blogging about a certain topic. We compared Ubuntu’s blog buzz to other top Linux distros and found that people are writing about Ubuntu far more than any other Linux distro.
BlogPulse
We took the top three distros from distrowatch and compared them on BlogPulse.
Technorati
Technorati shows very similar results when comparing Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE and Debian over the last 180 days.
As you can see, people are blogging about Ubuntu far more often than other distros. (We’d also like to note that a good amount of blog posts that contain the word “fedora” are about the hat and not the Linux distro).
Google Trends
Again we decided to look at Google Trends to see which distros people are searching for. Of course, there is a lot of room for error as someone could be searching for the philosophy of Ubuntu, for a new Fedora hat, or for The Red Hat Society.
First we compare our top 4 distros from above. You can clearly see that from the second half of 2006, there are far more searches for Ubuntu than for Debian, Fedora (including Fedora Core, and Red Hat searches) or openSUSE (including SUSE).
Next we compare Ubuntu to the rest of the top 10 distros combined (including variations of the distro names such as Red Hat). It seems that since mid 2007, Ubuntu is being searched for more often than all the other distros combined.
Here we compare Ubuntu to Linux, Unix, FreeBSD and Solaris. Clearly Linux has the lead, but Ubuntu gets really close around release dates. In 2007, we thought this trend would lead to “Ubuntu” overtaking “Linux” as a search term, but this clearly has not happened.
Finally, for some perspective, we compare Ubuntu, Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Since our original article was published, searching Twitter trends has become an interesting way of finding out what people are talking about. We used Twist to compare the same top 4 distros. Here is a graph comparing tweets over the last 30 days. (Once again, a whole lot of the “fedora” tweets are about the hat, not the Linux distro).
And finally, we compare Ubuntu with Linux, Mac and Windows.
Conclusion
It appears that Ubuntu is still the most popular Linux distribution. According to some stats, it’s more popular now than ever. Of course, these stats don’t really tell us how many people actually use Ubuntu. They do, however, give an interesting insight into Ubuntu’s relative popularity on the internet. They also re-emphasize just how far Ubuntu (and Linux in general) have to go to catch up with Mac and Windows.
Remember, this was all just for fun, no need to get upset if you don’t like something you see here (or if we left out your favorite distro). Whatever your favorite OS is, the most important thing is that it works for you and that you can be productive using it. So, until next time, happy computing!
You forgot the actual measurement of unique IP addresses that are connecting to Fedora repositories: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Stats
According to this, 13,572,092 unique IP addresses (which may represent many more machines, as a result of NAT) are connecting to Fedora.
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let’s face it, linux mint is just ubuntu with a green theme. It should count as ubuntu.
We all know that unlike Windows where license sales provides the numbers, in Ubuntu we’ll need to change some basic mechanism in order to get worldwide usage figures.
My proposal would be for Ubuntu to create a special ID code for each installation, which could be done during the first update at the repository. When the machine logs in to the repository, a number could be assigned to the installed OS, which then persists and is subsequently used for each repository update, transparently.
I know lots of people will start complaining of privacy invasion but that’s pure nonsense. Here we are using free software and we want to impose our crap on top of that. I’m sure many people would be positive for this. The numbers gathered would certainly help Linux numbers grow and throw light on the actual situation.
Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with this as the source is open and anyone can look at the code to see if the checking in with the registration ID does create any cause for concern.
I can’t think of anything else right now as to how those numbers can be obtained in an exact manner.
Don’t know why, but ubuntu “works” for most people, when i decided to get into linux i test ubuntu, debian, mandriva, fedora and Slackware (i was feeling hardcore that day), then i didn’t know the technical diferences (yast or apt, deb or rpm, and so) i just stay with what i liked and what i found easier, and ubuntu was THE choice. Now two years later, i tested debian lenny, and i went back ubuntu again, because of composite problems with my hd3200, i was figthing two days with diferent propietary and free drivers, figthing xorg.conf and i went back to ubuntu hardy that configured my card almost automaticlly (ubuntu jaunty don’t works fine with hd3200), so that’s my story, and i think ubuntu is popular for that kind of details. And of course, Still is popular. Saludos desde México.
I’m assuming that all the other ‘buntus (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edbuntu, etc.) were not included in most of these stats.
To be fair I feel that they should be included, as for other distro’s such as; openSuse, Fedora, LinuxMint, and many others, KDE & Gnome users are all pooled together under one distribution name, so in reality the Ubuntu statistics are artificially lower due to their naming strategy.
Ive been using Ubuntu since the fall of 2004, I have burnt and tried hundreds of different OP’s. They all have there strong points and weak ones too. But i do have to agree with the one reply and the good Ol saying that Ubuntu has and that is IT JUST WORKS. Unlike where ever the WINBLOWS is, or was. or will be in the future, but never again will the winblows family control any of my equipment, I have also got to say that I have personally converted aprox 200 individuals to Ubuntu over the years and the spin off from them passing such a system along who really knows how much I hope Ive costed the Binbo Bill Bunch. Dang there I go bashing again …sorry winblowers lol
Using Ubuntu and loving it.
Simple and easy to use yet protects against internet ticks{viruses,spam, malware}.
using connections to a repository is not an indication of the number of people USING Fedora. I download a copy just to check the hype against reality. I might be tempted to go back to windows before using Fedora.
I teach Linux and have 24 OS mounted on the Virtual Server. Given a choice my students will chose Ubuntu first, Mint second and Kubuntu third. Nobody seems all that interested in SuSE since they became a part of Microsoft and Fedora is down to 14th choice.
There is no doubt that Ubuntu is more popular but I think that if you are a developer or power user openSuse is better.
@Mace Moneta: or more probably part of it are users with a dynamic IP (e.g. it resets every day or so).
Why can’t they just count how many times a certain update was downloaded and installed from apt-get or something. It won’t be exact but would be close.
@anon
I wonder that too but then I realized that connecting to the Internet without the user’s permission is a problem with Windows.