CodingExperiments.com posted an interesting article by utilizing the Google Trends system to show the trends in the Linux ecosystem. While these trends don’t mean “market share”, they are interesting and pretty accurate in terms of what average users care about. According to it, “Ubuntu” might even overtake the word “linux” in Google’s searches.
Linux Trends Show Ubuntu Overtaking Competition
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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they have a release every six months …ubuntu online activity should be constantly up there because of their frequent release cycles ..
i am not saying ubuntu isnt popular, i am just saying their online activity is inflated because a good fraction of these activities dont come from new users, but from current users looking for info on the new release ..
No, the other distros do 6 month releases too. And if you see carefully, there are spikes when there are releases, and when there are not, ubuntu is still high. The truth is, is the most successful distro with individuals, and that reflects there.
I don’t think so, other distros release 2 versions a year as well (Mandriva, for example).
I think Ubuntu gathered a lot of attention initially because it built a whole distribution out of stock parts. Other distros try to shove down tools like the Drakes or Yast, but Ubuntu uses the tools available in the DEs for configuration, putting efforts on making those tools more powerful.
Instead of creating its own theme (e.g., Red Hat’s Bluecurve), Ubuntu uses Clearlooks with a different color setting. Instead of creating something like Yast, Kubuntu uses systemsettings.
The DEs are now following the Ubuntu standards. The KDE project, for example, tries to keep the default settings of the base programs really close to the Ubuntu settings.
It’s a win-win situation. It’s much easier to ship Ubuntu that way, because there’s much less stuff to change and test. The DE maintainers also win, since their code gets tested with less modifications. The user wins as well, since the standardization that brings makes things simpler and a more stable codebase can provide more innovation.
Obviously, that doesn’t explain why Ubuntu got so popular among the non-tech-savy. There’s a lot of marketing involved, a lot of hype. We live in a Steve Jobs era, where marketing means a lot. The timing was right. Besides, Ubuntu is a valuable product by itself, so all the hype (or most of it, maybe) was backed up by a good product.
I’m by no means an Ubuntu lover, but I gotta admit the Ubuntu guys nailed it.
Some people think Linux IS Ubuntu. Ubuntu is all you hear some people talk about on many technical sites. Many a newb downloads and installs Ubuntu and suddenly thinks he’s an expert in Debian Linux. OSAlert posts dozens upon dozens of Ubuntu related articles; Digg posts dozens upon dozens of Ubuntu related articles; Gnome-look.org is loaded with Ubuntu specific themes (even when they have nothing to do specifically with Ubuntu they’re often posted as for Ubuntu,) etc. Anyone who dares to criticize Ubuntu is ripped to shreds. The point to this? It’s obvious to anyone who has anything whatsoever to do with the tech community that Ubuntu is gaining (has gained) momentum. Let’s stop posting non-news shall we?
People being taken apart for badmouthing Ubuntu? I don’t think the community is that zealous yet. Although there are a few “it just works” types cropping up.
Ubuntu is getting way more coverage than any other distro by far so it makes sense that google has it trending upwards.
Most people using distros other than ubuntu will be doing a lot less searching because we’ve already learn’t how to deal with problems. While online searches trend down the userbase should by all rights be gaining knowledge to fix their own issues without Google.
Over time there will be new users who feel ubuntu talks down to them a bit too much. Everyone has to start somewhere and Ubuntu is helping bring a lot of people to open source so that can only be a good thing.
Ubuntu is a great Debian training manual.
If you think that people aren’t being ripped to shreds over suggesting Ubuntu isn’t the greatest thing since Linus originally released the Linux kernel, then you haven’t paid attention. Talk about fanboyism… Ubuntu is hyped to death all over the internet, and if someone questions the claims of how it’s great for beginners, or its security model (sudo), Ubuntu users will shout them down. It’s almost as if it’s a global warming debate…
I can’t seem to go through a day without some review of Ubuntu somewhere talking it up like it’s some religious cult, or something. There’s nothing wrong with Ubuntu, and it has its strengths, but there are alternatives that are just as good, and suit others just as well. I use a smaller distro, PCLinuxOS, and I’ll use it as long as it’s released as my main desktop, even if only a handful of users even bother downloading it. I’m just not on someone’s bandwagon. Other distros are just as viable an alternative.
Hey…it’s all Linux, so it’s all good!
I have a tendancy to switch off when ubuntu reviews come up. they’ve been the same since 5.xx.
All Ubuntu reviews follow the following method.
-heap praise.
-shout about ease of install.
-say how easily it picks up hardware.
-complain that linux has so much work to do if it doesn’t install drivers for your particle accellerator automatically.
-heap some more praise about just how easy it all is
-say that it might be ready for full time desktop use one day.
-conclude that this version is the best so far and that ubuntu is already the best distro around.
I think recent converts feel that linux is a battleground in itself. being so used to MS vs everyone they don’t realise that as a comminuty nobody really cares why you think Ubuntu is better than Fedora. They just appreciate gaining another linux user.
Bull – people have been taken apart for criticising Ubuntu, myself one of them. This has happened from the earliest days of this distributions arrival.
I dislike the Gnome desktop/philosophy, and Ubuntu concentrating on Gnome, rather than several desktop environments, instead of letting the user choose, does not impress me.
Furthermore, a recent forum issue left an even more bitter taste in my mouth. I was very reluctant to try Ubuntu, and after that incident, I wiped Ubuntu and put Debian Etch AMD64 on my new PC.
Dave
So did you start a gnome-vs-kde flamewar or a why-does-cannonical-not-support-kde-4 flamewar?
I didn’t start any flamewar – I simply prefer KDE. Ubuntu does not offer that *out of the box*. There is no real reason why Ubuntu cannot offer a DVD which has Gnome/KDE/XFCE on it.
My problems with their forum were related to asking a question about sudo – apparently it’s deemed to be a good enough reason to ban someone for mentioning sudo, or su. The way to get people smarter is to educate them, not friggen dumb them down. Ubuntu (and Gnome imho) is doing things in the latter fashion. I prefer the former. Getting a PM warning from a Mod on their godforsaken forums, for your first post, is ridiculous. Especially when said rule is not clearly stated upon joining the forum (so, how the hell are you meant to know about it?). Especially when said rule is silly.
If a Linux newbie hoses their system because they use su rather than root (very unlikely, since said newbie would probably screw their system using sudo anyways), they will learn. If they don’t learn, they shouldn’t be using a computer imho. Period. We have far too many dumb users who don’t want to learn using computers today, and that is the main reason why viruses and spyware run rampant, and why so much potential bandwidth on the net is bloody well lost. I’m well and truly sick and tired of having to put up with reduced bandwidth because of their brainless idiots. And these are the types of ex-Windows refugees that Ubuntu is attracting.
Each release of Ubuntu becomes more unstable (at least from my research), with more issues upon release, causing more problems for end users. People bitch about Debian releasing every 2 or so years, crikey, Microsoft does a release every 6 or so years, and Apple is about the same as Debian (on average), maybe slightly better.
Ubuntu looks plain ugly out of the box – of course, using Gnome doesn’t help here – it’s one of the ugliest looking desktop environments to have ever graced my eyes (even CDE looks better to be honest). I guess beauty is really in the eye of the beholder
For all those Linux nuts who say ‘choice is great’ – Ubuntu is doing *exactly* the opposite. Reduced choice at time of install, and Ubuntu itself has, and still continues to, kill off many distributions. You might argue survival of the fittest [distribution], and I’d personally agree with you on that point, but many diehard Linux users love choice. Personally, this “choice” is why so many Linux applications are so, well…let’s just say not mature
Dave
You haven’t mentioned kubuntu yet – given that a try?
My experience with ubuntu is that once you get things working, it’s stable (I agree about the last few versions not being up to par, but 8.04 works perfectly for me). Except if you do something stupid… or if nautilus springs a memory leak. I really hate that.
The newbies you don’t like just represent the average computer user. Look on the bright side: Using Ubuntu, they can do less damage.
Choice, now. I don’t know much about that. I do know that I’m not stuck with gnome (and I don’t use it), and that I can put together a custom DTE if I really want to. It’s entirely configurable. You know your way around, so aside from philosophical objections does it really matter what the default setup is?
Edited 2008-07-04 12:15 UTC
To me, yes, philosophically, it does matter (about choice). For years, we put up with Gnome users bitching about Suse being KDE centric. Even though these same people did not once complain about Redhat being Gnome centric. Pot calling the kettle black? I say include the 3 main desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, XFCE) and maybe fluxbox, blackbox, since they are both small in terms of footprint anyways. Give the end user choice to choose. Having to download later on is NOT choice. Evidence shows that people will very very RARELY change from whatever default comes with the system. Ubuntu’s default Gnome is actually damaging the open source development system, by unfairly removing the opportuntity for the KDE [insert alternative desktop environment here] userbase to grow. This in turn effects development, and the number of developers that join that community. It kills competition, and is in fact, anti competitive imho. The proof in that is since Ubuntu has come around, KDE user numbers have severely dropped (last 3 desktop surveys if memory serves me correct). This isn’t survival of the fittest, it’s rigging the event to ensure Gnome finishes ahead at the distribution level. It goes against the very principles of open source. Open. Look the word up.
As to Kubuntu, I’ve tried it, albeit a few years ago, and a P.O.S it was. From what I read, it seems that it hasn’t improved much, and I’m not gain to try it again. Maybe that’s a bit unfair on my end, but…Ubuntu main has made it quite clear that its focus is on Ubuntu, and not Kubuntu, especially with the recent comments about dropping KDE from the LTS releases, because KDE is no longer supposedly actively developing the 3.x series and KDE 4 is not supposedly stable. That would mean no KDE basically for the next 5 years (by which time KDE 4 would be well and truly stable!).
Ubuntu is doing several things – shoving Gnome down your throat. And shoving sudo down your throat, which has a very sordid history of security related issues in the past. sudo is NO safer than su, in fact, I’d venture that it’s less safe, since it has a file with usernames that have elevated priviledges. True, su defaults to the root user, which means that most crackers will target root, whereas with sudo, it could be any name, but I do not believe that that is a real enough issue to make the usage of sudo necessary.
Dave
Hey, I’m beginning to see why people take you apart. What you’re feeling? That’s called entitlement (well, that and a persecution complex), and it’s bad.
Oh, you’re absolutely right. And it should also include mplayer, since not everybody wants to use totem. And songbird, since not everybody wants to use rhythmbox (or whatever), and gnome office in addition to openoffice. In fact, they should include every single open source project ever.
Oh, wait. A CD is limited to 700 MB, and the KDE packages are 200 MB. Which dozen large programs would you like to remove to make way for it, and what entitles KDE to preferential treatment over the twenty gigabytes of other packages that are not included on the CD?
And all the distributions that include KDE and not CDE are killing the competition by denying CDE developers. So every distribution which includes a program but not all the alternatives is anti-competitive and evil. Right.
Wait, wrong. Here, I’ll make it real simple: KDE is not entitled to special treatment. The devs can package Ubuntu however they like. Open source means that the source is available for people to use however they want, which they are. It does not say anything about making sure all projects have an equal number of users.
(Pop quiz: How many projects did KDE kill?)
You are right, Ubuntu is removing the opportunity for the KDE user base to grow. But this is the effect. Let’s try to find out the cause. On a certain time of it’s history, the Gnome project decided to direct the development towards simplicity and ease of use. They were severely criticized by the KDE community for being a desktop for dummies. I think this is not fair. Gnome is so configurable that I can transform it on a Mac OSX look. The Mac4Lin project is for Gnome not for KDE. I can choose between different widget engines like Aurora and Murrine. With the arrival of Compiz and Beryl the options grow exponentially. Compiz was supposed to be a Linux stuff like D-Bus but now it is pretty much a Gnome stuff. This is because the KDE project decided, as usual, to reinvent the wheel and create create Kwin composition for KDE4. They could simply integrate Compiz with a nice Qt interface.
So Gnome found a interesting balance between simplicity, beauty and ease of use. The Ubuntu project was created to be Linux for human beings. They choose Gnome because for Gnome the end user is a first class citizen. It was a huge success. The simplicity of Gnome with the user friendliness of Ubuntu create one of the best desktop experience on the market. Today people confuse the concepts of Linux and Ubuntu as it was the same thing.
The KDE project and KDE 4 in special took another approach. It aims a powerful environment with dozens of plasmoids on the desktop, three or four menu levels filled with programs and things like two editors by default (Kate and Kedit). The Dolphin file manager have a BIG red folder icon that is a shortcut for the root directory. What am I supposed to do in the root folder with a graphical file manager? They privileged the power user, the developer, the geek.
Now there is a great opportunity for Linux and open source in general. Microsoft is giving us this opportunity with their incompetence and their exhausted business model. There are many people considering Linux as an alternative to the bloated Vista. Are they geek or programmers? Probably they are power user by now but they will be common people as soon as the ultra cheep nettops with Linux pre installed flood the market.
So why the complain? For human beings preferring Linux for human beings? For the common user prefer not to clutter their desktop with plasmoids? The KDE choose programmers. The Gnome choose common people. There are much more common people then programmers so more people use Gnome. If more people use Gnome more programmers are interested on writing software for Gnome. Simple logic, not an evil or malicious plan. Not shoving Gnome down your throat. They do not have this power.
The KDE people must sit down and admit that huge mistakes were made on the 4.0 series and figure out how to change the course of the project instead of blaming Gnome for its success, for the sake of competition.
I dont really understand all this complaining about ubuntu.
All distributions and operating systems have huge fanboys. It dosent matter if its *BSD debian gentoo redhat or ubuntu. someone will take you down if you complain about their favorite.
If ubuntu have more fanboys it migth be becus they have more users. some points are valid about the statistics not being rigth but ubuntu still has very many users my self included.
Ofcourse ubuntu has it shares of trouble but on my hardware i have never had any problems wich is why i use ubuntu.
for other people feodora migth work better just use what works best for you.
some people complain that ubuntu just take other distrubutions projects and then polish them, well i say that maby other distrubutions should start to focus more on polish then since it does give results.
I share your dislike also about gnome-look filling with ubuntu specific stuff. But then, it shows that Ubuntu is building up a strong brand loyalty, stronger than other distributions I’ve seen (at least on gnome-look).
My feeling from what I see is that Ubuntu’s brandname is built on its pretty good hardware support plus a community that feels “safe” while feeling they’re using something “open and free”. It’s a mixed good of the corporate world and open source communities.
I guess, instead of disliking them, may be other projects can learn something from them.
Also, they have different target audiance. People who “really” support open source tend to be those who like to customize stuff and have their own style. While Ubuntu successfully assorbed a lot of non-tech-people who are more likely to be a fanboy compare to tech-people.
That’s funny, because a few months ago all the cool kids on this site were bashing ubuntu. It seems to be more neutral recently, though
And, everybody? Power users can use ubuntu too. It’s just another distro.
Me? I use it. If I moved to another distro, I would have to find out why tasks X and Y don’t work, then make them work. Then I would use the new distro in exactly the same manner as I used ubuntu. Seems kinda pointless.
Jealousy is so ugly.
And some people think that Linux is an operating system.
?? I thought Redhat is Linux ??
Edited 2008-07-03 13:55 UTC
As someone who’s relatively new to using Linux, I’ve found myself searching for help on various issues quite a lot. If I want some particular help, adding “Ubuntu” as one of the search terms invariably gets me to advice I can use much more quickly than if I just include “Linux”.
This is probably because the Ubuntu forums are good for newbies like me, but if other people are doing this it could also be one of the reasons it’s appearing so much in the Google stats.
This is dead on!
The best part of using a distro that is also used by an army of newbs is that whenever you have a stupid question or you’re too lazy to understand a problem, you just search the ubuntu forums and someone who is a lot more shameless than you has already asked the question.
The sad thing on the Ubuntu forums is that about half of the posts are just people who are clueless about UNIX permissions and don’t understand the basics of things like ‘sudo’ and ‘chmod’. In some sense having such clearly written, step-by-step tutorials for _everything_ might be preventing some of these people from ever learning the basics of their operating system.
I do NOT think that we should prevent people who don’t understand the command line from using Linux. But in the case that they are trying to do something that requires the command line, I think copying and pasting commands from a forum is a rather ignorant way to operate a computer.
What is funny is that Noob army has been marching for a long time. They started at mandrake, then moved to gentoo, and are now on ubuntu.
Noob army at Gentoo? This is quite extraordinary statement because as much some Gentoo users seem to use it for silly reasons it does not target new users at all. Gentoo was my first distro but I had to install it using their official Handbook (I have even printed it
) and I did that mostly to jump into deep water so that I could learn swim faster 
Gentoo is not a n00b distro. Gentoo is just another distro. I started out on Mandrake, moved to Debian and eventually went to Gentoo. I got fedup with Debian packages taking too long to update, a problem which unfortunately seems to be affecting gentoo now.(although thanks to overlays and manual packages it’s ok on my system.) ever since the change from Mandrake to Debian I have been convinced of apt/.deb’s superiority to rpm based distributions. I’ve seen way too many database corruptions on Mandrake where the system died for no apparent reason. I’ve encountered similar situations on redhat and other distros. Debian/Ubuntu are by no means perfect, but I do agree with the thought that by using generic distro tools Ubuntu is starting a great move away from proprietary tools/applications. I came to the conclusion that that was how linux should be developed about 3 years ago. I got fedup with having to learn distro specific ways of doing things and I constantly tell people to learn non distro specific tools. It’s cheaper/saves time in the long run. If Ubuntu gains marketshare greaty, that means more software for everyone the trick is to not let Ubuntu lock out other distros with ubuntuisms. I’ve seen some bad stuff in ubuntu like commandline applications being renamed for no good reason. I think it’s bad to rename applications as it breaks a lot of established scripts/code. Just my $0.02
You patronising ignoramus
your posts are making you look stupid all the time.
gentoo is a a noob distro ?
You have Google in your username, but do you know how to use Google ?
if you do know, then use Google to search for gentoo.
Why are attacking me with words such as stupid and ignoramus? Don’t you have nothing more intelligent and constructive to say? Look at my last post and your last post and tell me who look stupid. Sorry bud, I only discuss ideas and it seems that you are out of them.
oooooh lookie here, someone needs more than one account here. I think you sent that post from the wrong account………
I tried to look at you last post in this thread, but I cannot see it. So I agree with that other guy, you are using more than one account here and you have been caught out !
Why are some people that sad that they have to create other accounts to vote themselves up, or vote other people down, can we get this muppet banned please ?
It is not the case now, now they are all on ubuntu. Maybe you didn’t use linux at the time, but there was this horrible noob infusion into the gentoo community that lasted for quite awhile.
This page went down a year or two ago, but you can see a great collection of their quotes here http://tinyurl.com/2sjc8c
The other one that people would link to all the time is here http://www.greenfly.org/mes.html
Since you are unaware of this, my guess is you have passionately fallen in love with linux in the last year or so due to the combination of the power and ease of the use ubuntu. Congratulations. I have been using it since slackware was still pretty new, and a distro consisted of a whole bunch of floppies and some photocopies with an elastic band around them. If you do not have much in way of knowledge of the history of the community, please refrain from the “f–king ignoramus” remarks.
EDIT: OSAlert hates archive.org links, tinyurld it
Edited 2008-07-05 13:57 UTC
where does it say f__king ?
and yes, I have been using Linux since SLS Linux in 1993.
This is (generally) because many of the issues you are running into are, in fact, ubuntu specific – some patching they did/did not do has caused breakage or regression. It’d be the same with any distro. A more specific query generally produces more accurate answers.
Sure, that might be part of the reason, but it’s not normally breakages that cause me to search for help. More often it’s just about getting a quick HowTo.
For example, try typing “samba linux” and “samba ubuntu” respectively into Google and hitting “I’m Feeling Lucky”. In the first case it takes you to the Samba website (which makes perfect sense of course). The second will take you straight to a page explaining in quite detailed terms how to actually set Samba up, and this is often what I’m looking for. Alternatively, try “svn linux” and “svn ubuntu”. It’s the same kind of story.
It’s just my experience, and maybe these are all too Ubuntu specific to be generalizable, but I’ve found the material helpful even when not running Ubuntu.
I have given all distros a change on my desktops and workstations and I have found ubuntu to be the easiest to install and maintain in the IT world of no spare time to waste.
If you have nvidia card then ubuntu restricted drivers program will let you know that they have a driver for you and all you have to do is to put a check mark beside the driver and wait for the program to take care of the rest, so there are not hassles and no dependancy crap.
Also, I have installed Suse, Redhat, Xandros, SLED, CENTOS and other distros and I still test them frequently (at least every 12 months to check on their progress) and I have found they didn’t improve much and in some distros the problems were more.
Ubuntu on the otherhand is improving continously their drivers database, their packages, their forums and other things difficult to count.
One killing feature that made me switch from CentOS to ubunut was the capability of Add/Remove Applications which was able to install Applications for me on the fly, taking care of dependancies and the likes; and more sugar on the cake was the synaptic program which enabled me to install things that was not available on Add/Remove Applications program. I get 90% of my appz form Add/Remove while 8% from synaptic. 2% from web sites which offer also applications for ubuntu; eg from web sites I was able to download Opera browser, Adobe Acrobat Reader and others.
When I used to have Suse I wasn’t able to find applications for it on the web sites so I go with the source and build and mostly will fail due to Suse issues, when at that time I did the same on redhat It goes through.
So I sicked with Redhat then I moved to Centos and finally 2 years ago to Ubuntu and probably I will not switch again.
I occasionally run windows emulated in both vmware and virtual box, but I like vmware more.
Ubuntu deserves all this hail to king mania because It addresses what desktop users want.
Thanks ubuntu!
For appreciations, I give problem solutions and tips on their forums.
The simple answer as to why it is popular is because it is a end user orientated distribution. Many distributions that call themselves ‘desktop distributions’ are far to focused on what the ‘power user’ or the ‘geek user’ wants rather than focusing on the small things that make life easier for the Linux new comer.
That isn’t to say that the other distributions are bad; infact, what Ubuntu does is allow those end users who wish to just ‘use their computer’ to use Linux whilst those who want to learn more and dig deeper – can more to more advanced, bare metal, distributions. To Ubuntu can act as a doorway to other distributions as well.
With that being said, however, the Ubuntu community is also alive and well where as many seem to fall by the way side; take Fedora and the extra repositories that used to supply much needed additional packages to provide WMA/WMV etc. support for end users – they’re either dying or falling into disrepair. At the end of the day the distribution is as only as healthy and as vibrant as the community wishes to make it.
I hate talking down about any Linux distro, but I really get kind of put off by Ubuntu. I see a lot of the new technologies going into Linux being developed by Suse and Red Hat through their community distros. Then it seems to me Ubuntu comes along, polishes it up, and takes all the credit. I’m not saying Ubuntu isnt a good distro, but I think it gets a bit too much coverage and praise from the press while those driving innovation are left in the background. Maybe I am wrong though.
No, I’m right with you. IMO, there are tiers of Linux distros, the highest being the innovative ones like Red Hat/Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware… The next rung down are the spins: PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, Sabayon… Then there are the spins of the spins: Mint, DreamLinux, SAM… There’s nothing wrong with not using a first tier Linux distro, as some of those that are based upon those distros improve upon their roots quite a bit. However, credit is due to the main innovators out there.
Slackware innovative? You must be really confused here
Slackware is innovative. Innovation is /not/ just new features. That is what is causing the huge software bloat we see all over the place today. Innovation is doing things a different way, with reason, and pulling it off. Slackware is one the few mainstream distros that still follows KISS, and for people who are looking for that, it is incredibly innovative because nobody else is doing it.
Ever tried Arch, Crux, …? There are countless distros out there following KISS. Maybe not all as old as Slackware, but definitely interesting. And IMHO, more innovative (take Arch for example, which has a more active community, especially upstream).
I’m pretty sure that Arch Linux was originally based off of Slackware. I don’t really follow either very closely any more since my first Linux install of Slackware 6 or 7 years ago, so I’m not sure how close they are. IIRC Arch was an attempt to create a cutting edge distro with Slackware’s KISS principles.
I think they use the same package format .tgz and use the BSD style init scripts.
First of all I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ubuntu try to take credit for anything they haven’t developed.
Secondly this simply goes to show the importance of the much neglected ‘polish’. Where other distros think that having the latest and greatest features is the way to winning customers, Ubuntu seem to realize more and more that having fewer, older, but more polished features is what most people really want. Innovation is of course great, but without the polish it will never reach its full potential.
Thirdly, that much maligned polish is on the whole a lot harder than most people (and especially geeks) give it credit for. Anyone willing to step up and do it should be praised.
Exactly. Polish is subject to 80/20 rule – 20% of features take 80% of time. I see Ubuntu as a Debian polished for desktop use (and the underlying Debian is the reason I use Ubuntu). There was such project in Debian (Debian Desktop project), but Mark Shuttleworth came along and did it. He is an excellent manager, and there are not many people like that.
Also, I would like to point out that Ubuntu innovates “under-the-hood” too. Upstart immediately comes to mind.
Where other distros think that having the latest and greatest features is the way to winning customers, Ubuntu seem to realize more and more that having fewer, older, but more polished features is what most people really want.
What has always struck me about Ubuntu in all its versions is the lack of polish. OK, Gnome uses the color brown a lot, but that’s about it.
OpenSuse puts a lot more effort into KDE than Ubuntu, and it shows. So why do I actually use Kubuntu, while OpenSuse gets relegated to the occasional trial on a virtual machine? Simple. Kubuntu basically works, but is nothing special. For some reason I like that. Debian is the same way. If you like the basic, functional Gnome or KDE interface, then the “improved” versions come across as trying too hard.
Maybe that’s why I tend to use the classic mode in Windows XP, along with the classic start menu…
I believe you do have a point, but not a very strong one.
What you described is just the way Linux and OSS works. If companies didn’t want others to use their technology, they wouldn’t have released it under an open source license. I believe linux is unique in the way that so many distributors share the same code and yet use that to package and sell their own branded product. To some extent, everyone contributes, and everyone wins.
I dont use Ubuntu (I prefer KDE – but dislike kubuntu – much prefer openSUSE) but I have tried it out and can definitely see the attractiveness of it.
You seem to miss the fact that what Ubuntu DOES add is all the polish and bringing all the linux goodness to its users. Thats a lot of work and Ubuntu has brought a lot of people to linux and a lot of good to the linux world.
Dont write them off just because you dont see any big changes. In fact they do contribute a lot of stuff too – one that comes to mind is the “upstart” bootup system – also now used in fedora (AFAIK).
I agree even thought ubuntu may not add many new features they do make bug fixes galore and that is important. I disagree about Mint though they throw a lot of custom gui stuff into gnome it may not be low level but it is code.
I have to say my spin of a spin is really stable and has some pretty new software I think that having brand new sofware written months ago and saying it’s very stable is a heck of an accomplishment for all the developers.
interesting, hardly anybody from the US are searching for linux distros, that explains why the most popular linux comes from South Africa, what exactly are people from the US searching for? professional athletics,actors?
Boobs.
After searching “boobs” in google trends
yup, the US ranks third.
Couldn’t some of those searches of ‘ubuntu’ be people looking for information on the philosophy? Does the data from Google trends take that into account?
Well, hopefully, the law of large numbers would take that into account. Besides, comparing distro mindshare through Google trends isn’t exactly an accurate methodology. It’s just meant to be interesting. You will also note that few of the search terms are compared directly against each other; only their relative -changes-. That is, Ubuntu seems to be growing while distros seem to be shrinking.
Besides, a lot of the major distro names have something else associated with that term. ‘Gentoo’ is a penguin, ‘Sabayon’ a dessert, ‘Suse’ short for Susan, ‘Red hat’ can be not only a red hat but a club for middle aged women and a type of Buddhism, and so on.
Oh, this could be fun. We could make a game out of it! Serious points to anyone who might be able to think of something that ‘Debian’ also stands for!
Debian (IMHO) stands for “Deviant”.(Only Joking)
There is the Debian and thus by implication, the Ubuntu way of doing things and there are other ways.
The other ways in many cases are more logical and advanced (I’m not talking about user level stuff here btw). Try getting the Debian/Ubuntu crew to take these ideas on board is difficult or well nigh impossible.
I too get turned off by the plethora of “Isn’t Installing Ubuntu Wonderful” articles. So what if the installer is easy to use. Installing the system is what 5% of what you do with a system.
If Ubuntu would change and conform to the LSB then I might give it a second chance.
My 4yr old Dell 8600 fails(H/W recognition) miserably with the latest Ubuntu LTS whereas even Debian(stable) finds all the hardware OOTB. So exactly what is so cool about this mess of Brown & Orange.
I’ve been a Linux user since Slackware 1.1 and its multitude of Floppies, and a Unix user since 1982.
You have a point, but if a non-technical user can’t install the system, it ends there. It doesn’t matter if the world’s easiest-to-use system is on the other side of that installer, if the installer is text-only or if it’s confusing, the non-technical are less likely to continue or will make errors that will require starting over. Obviously, a lot of things have changed and all of the installers are better but they still vary in knowledge requirements, don’t you think?
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is probably the worst installation I’ve had from them and the “How did you installation go?” thread on their forums is full of trouble, but it’s still likely the easiest to use.
Most of the distributions have great merit and individuality, but that only works once they’re installed.
A lot of the computer science majors at my school seem to use Ubuntu. I’m not a computer science major, but I tend to gravitate toward minimalistic distributions like DSL and PuppyLinux; they both have pretty good hardware detection and fly when running X.
So just because openSUSE knocked Ubuntu off the top marker in distrowatch for a while, the community needs a new ambiguous metric to continue to validate it’s popularity?
D’OH! Did I say that out loud?
/me hides.
There was a poll about the most popular distribution on Czech server related to linux. Here’s the link:
http://www.abclinuxu.cz/clanky/ruzne/vysledky-ankety-o-nejoblibenej…
The result is that Ubuntu has clearly the largest market share on the desktop.
The number may be unreliable, but I guess that more experts will tend to vote in this poll than non-experts.
It’s back on top on Distrowatch. Basically all these articles are Canonical’s grass roots marketing campaign.
They want to say something, but they don’t have proof (it’s hard to get when talking about Linux distributions market share). So they get these reviews/analyses “for free” (I’m curios as to how many are paid/sponsored), so they can point at them.
Oh well, at least it seems to work, and they’re part of the few promoting Desktop Linux (main promoter is Novell, and then Linspire/Xandros, Red Hat has officially backed away from it: http://practical-tech.com/operating-system/red-hat-and-the-linux-de… – consumer desktop).
Edited 2008-07-03 07:03 UTC
Delusion is never good.
Linux as a buzzword is plumetting and so are are the main free distros that came up when you asked for a Linux, please. Some, such as fedora, are able to buid some hype for new releases, but it is clear from the search patterns that many people are just not using it after downloading or not even downloading it. Ubuntu may not be the most innovative, but it is the first Linux for the masses. It leverages the existing technologies to make a product that someone might actually want to use over windows to browse the web and type some documents with. It comes bundled with new computers and someone is actually buying them instead of Windows machines.
This ain’t no marketing magic, this is the free market and the consumer voting with his money and time in google. And I am one of the voters. I still use OpenBSD most of the time since I discovered it but now I dualboot with Ubuntu instead of Windows XP and it supports all my hardware out of the box because it was bundled with it. Something is actually changing.
i wonder whether you care of your health or not, people who care of their life all like to go Fitness Loving DO tCom to share their experience. that’s the heaven of fitness singles and sports lovers.
this muppet needs a banning
There is a Cola drink called “ubuntu”.
Maybe the result get polluted by other people who search for ubuntu cola instead.
{ I’m a openSUSE user
, and prefer openSUSE over ubuntu }
Edited 2008-07-03 07:35 UTC
I prefer Mr Pibb and Mountain Dew
It’s no accident. Ubuntu were very careful and thoughtful in the way they set themselves up, and it shows. We now take for granted a lot of what they did, but it was always so. They launched with a strong brand, easy to recognize, and they promoted it around the world, not just in a few Western countries. They started the single install disk gig and they gave it away to all-comers (and still do). They started a really thorough, vibrant website with the accent on users and user feedback in their forums. And as others have said, they placed their focus on the desktop user, the fairly non-technical one not the hardcore geek. As for branding, Ubuntu continue that with their “animal names” system. Many write this off as cheesy or even camp but in fact it’s an extremely shrewd move.
So it should be no surprise that all this work and planning have paid off. For example, if I am googling for the solution to a problem or a bug, chances are I’ll find it covered on the Ubuntu forums before I find a mention anywhere else.
In some ways this is a triumph of style over substance since so many of the ingredients in the substance are straight from Debian. I’ve never got on well with Ubuntu as a distribution. Either it hasn’t installed well on my hardware or subsequent bugs have spoiled the experience. I get better results with pure Debian or with SuSE (depending on how well SuSE fix the worryingly high count of bugs and infelicities in their distros these days).
So credit where it’s due. I don’t think it’s all perfect, though. The emphasis on the latest and greatest means that Ubuntu is poor at bug-fixing their existing stuff, imho; all the effort seems to be put into the next iteration. Personally I think that’s crap and prefer Debian’s rolling update system. Still, Linux was never going to grow on the desktop until it broke out of its roots in hardcore geekdom. One indication of that is the ease with which multimedia (ie encumbered formats) can be installed. Ubuntu have that cracked. Many other distros still don’t. The ones that don’t are doomed on the desktop, I think. This is 2008 and it’s been clear for a long while that users just don’t buy the usual excuses/explanations or palming the stuff off to underfunded third-party servers.
Ubuntu is the best start yet for Linux on the desktop, in my 2 cents.
Data is impressive. I wish there would be a day when “Ubuntu” would overtake “Windows”. That will be a headline! But to “holier-than-thous” among us just a thought: If there was no Ubuntu linux would still be just a dot on the fringes of desktop world. Thanks to it, it is on a path to stardom. Good for all. For me, it is simple. I use Ubuntu because I have to work to earn money, I like to spend, the pop psychologist’s favorite, “quality time” with my family, and really enjoy reading books. I can do all that and use linux at the same time. Amazing! Before Ubuntu it would be almost impossible as i really, really do not have time to spend hours finding solutions to problems cropping up all over the place because this or that would not cooperate with my ideas. It is getting better, true, but it still took me half an hour to update anything with Yast while in Ubuntu one can do it in less than a minute …
That’s what you get when you don’t listen to the elders: “GNU, is a recursive acronym meaning: GNU’s Not Unix – a way of paying tribute to Unix”.
It says TRIBUTE folks. We’d like to deliver a free Unix like platform to the people. The Linux kernel is a tiny part of this movement. Stuff started by hippy intelligentsia at Berkeley has the same course. Please join hands, or you’ll end up in the cold water again!
Edited 2008-07-03 09:18 UTC
There are very little comments about the statistics involved. While it is clear that Ubuntu is doing very well compared to other distributions, but the article suggests that other distributions are in decline. This is not necessarily true, because the graph displays the search volume index. Take into account that there is probably a huge amount of searches: more people get an internet connection, and people who have an internet connection use the net more and more. So, a declining line could just mean as much that the growth in some term is not as much as the growth in the total number of terms that were searched. So, it’s only popularity relative to the total number of searches, not the absolute number of users.
Added to that, there are probably two more effects:
– Newer net users a on average probably less tech proficient.
– Users of ‘expert distributions’ can probably fix most problems by themselves, or by reading manual pages, etc.
Not to trying to nullify Ubuntu’s thunder, it’s certainly doing well. But it all probably says less than the author is making out of it.
Edited 2008-07-03 09:16 UTC
The article concludes that other distributions has to become as user friendly as Ubuntu. I read such statements quite often but i don’t think that they are always true.
Sure, Ubuntu is a great distribution and Ubuntu is user friendly but others are too.
It always depends on the tasks you look at. E.g. Fedora has for all common tasks a user friendy tool available.
Let a normal user open the port for his p2p app on Ubuntu and on Fedora. On Fedora i has a nice small tool to adjust his firewall. On Ubuntu you have nothing like that. So for this task Fedora would be more user friendly than Ubuntu.
My conclusion: The quality and the user friendliness is quite good on all major end user GNU/Linux distributions. The big advantage of Ubuntu in my eyes is marketing. They have a great “end user friendly” website, helpflul forums etc. and they can communicate their message really good.
It’s marketing where other distributions has to catch up. On the technical side (user friendly, tools,…) everyone can learn from everyone, even Ubuntu can learn in this area from it competitors like shown with my firewall example.
It’s Shipit.
Traditionaly, GNU/linux distros were distributed freely: buy a CD and burn GNU/linux on it. Canonical greatest inovation is: we give you the CD with Ubuntu already burnt on it and we send it to you for free, and when you order 1 CD, we ship 10 to you so you can distribute to friends.
Mark had the funds to do it and it worked.
In my opinion, it’s not about being the first distro to be newbie-friendly. Mandriva was and is friendlier. The problem with Mandriva is that they don’t have deep pockets to invest in those kinds of promotion. They just have enough money to sustain their development team.
With time, Ubuntu get more and more users and will improve and eventually canonical will make big money and we will all gain from it. Thank you Mark Suttleworth.
Edited 2008-07-03 10:20 UTC
Great deal you’ve got there.
I requested 2cd’s and only got 1. Then I requested 1cd and got none!
This was in 2006. Now they don’t need to promote Ubuntu that aggressively. Ubuntu is a well known distro. They can’t throw gold away until the end of time. Now that they have a big userbase, they count on their users to promote the distro. This was a good investment at the start, but now they receive more requests than they can pay for.
I started off using Mandrake about 5 years ago. I stayed with it for a year, but just hated the interface. I was a newb to Linux at the time, and felt that I would have to struggle to get software installed. I switched over to Red Hat for about 2 – 3 months. I thought it was a really slick looking distro, but it just didn’t feel “right”. Granted, this wasn’t anything technical, but the user experience seemed awkward. It could very well be because I had come from a KDE distro to a Gnome one. If I were more familiar with Gnome, then I might have stayed. But, I went with SuSE afterwards (with Gnome), and the user experience was different. It felt more polished, and was much smoother. I stayed with SuSE until a couple years ago. I was hoping Novell would have done something with Yast, as it was just horribly slow. And, after each new release, the distro itself would become more sluggish.
That brings me to Ubuntu. I was resistant because I thought all of the stuff about it was just hype. But, I went ahead and tried it. And, for two strong years, I couldn’t be happier. All of my hardware worked right out of the box, the layout was beautiful (after changing the colors to the standard Clearlooks), multimedia was easy to set up, and most importantly – the Ubuntu community. With the previous distros, whenever I had a problem, I would have to deal with a bunch of arrogant arses who would talk down to me and not really try to offer any help. The Ubuntu forums are VERY friendly, and people are more than willing to help you out. And, it’s that community, in my worthless opinion, that makes Ubuntu so popular. If you need help, you can get it easily. And, the people are not going to talk down to you while helping you out.
It was the little things that kept making me switch from one distro to the other. Something didn’t feel right with one, too many problems and not any solutions for doing X on the other. One of the biggest assets to Ubuntu is the community that is willing to support it and offer help, instead of criticism.
I can understand why people get tired of the hype – I was tired of it. But, as it turned out, there is legitimate reason for it.
Edited 2008-07-03 14:03 UTC
If you really want a comparison of the popularity of Ubuntu vs the other distros, have a look at http://trends.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+debian%2C+opens…
That’s a pretty stark contrast.
Not really disagreeing with the article… but searching for “Linux” doesn’t really help the average user that much (as in “linux install softwarename package”)… in the other hand, searching “gobolinux edit x.org location”, “red hat xxx webcam brand work”, “ubuntu 8.xx tablet brand gimp” or “xandros yyy install softwarename” may actually help them… basically, if Ubuntu is the most popular distro, this Ubuntu vs Linux ‘trend’ isn’t that impressive, but actually expected… We don’t see too much “NT kernel 5.1 driver” searches either…
The most searches are “ubuntu+grub+problem” like.
Maybe I’m not getting something here, but if I install a Linux distro, I’m not going to go google stuff about it.. Unless I have a problem with it.
I am not saying that everyone who googles his distro has a problem with it, but it should make a pretty big chunk of the data.
When I started with Linux in 2003, people were voicing the concern that Red Hat might become “the microsoft of Linux”. Now, five years later…
Yeah, I was about to say something along the lines of that. When I started with Linux, Redhat & Suse where the ‘best thing out there’, after that Mandrake gathered momentum for a while and so on. A lot of smaller/bigger distros will come along and contribute their share of ideas/bugfixes/philosophies to the bigger picture, advancing (desktop) Linux as a whole.
Edited 2008-07-07 06:54 UTC
http://trends.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+windows+xp&ctab=0&h…
Ubuntu almost as popular as xp
http://trends.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+windows+vista&ctab=…
Ubuntu Lording over Vista
http://trends.google.com/trends?q=ubuntu%2C+windows+7&ctab=0&hl…
Ubuntu more popular than windows 7
If I word it right I can get all sorts of questionable results fun but pointless.
It’s that simple. It’s focused on end-users, not servers, and it’s filling a niche that Red Hat and others explicitly decided to abandon, so more power to ’em.
It is rather ironic/amusing to think that, if trends toward Ubuntu continue, the term “Ubuntu” could actually displace “Linux” as a brand. I’m guessing that that would probably really piss Stallman off — even more so than everyone’s failure to brand Linux as “GNU/Linux”.
Mandriva?
I’m not knocking Ubuntu, I think it’s an excellent distro, but it’s not for everyone, and in my experience isn’t the best fit for a lot of PCs. I’ve had a number of PCs that refuse to install it.
In fact, taking that one step further, if people think Ubuntu is “the” Linux and they don’t like it (or it won’t work for them), it’s more likely to turn people away from Linux.
Personally I prefer PCLinux OS. I used to use Xandros which is also KDE and a distro that’s being noticed because it’s pre-installed on several “high profile” computers now.
I sincerely hope that Ubuntu does NOT become “the” Linux. it’s just one of many excellent distros and it would be a tragedy if the others suffered because of this incorrect perception.
As to Gnome vs KDE, there’s a place for both, and for other desktop environments.