Mark Shuttleworth: 200 million Ubuntu users by 2015

[Emil]

Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Canonical's goal is to get 200 million Ubuntu users in four years. He made the declaration while delivering the keynote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, Hungary. "We've set the bar for disciplined design in free software," Shuttleworth said according to OMG! Ubuntu!.

"We're starting to see real leadership and innovation here in the Ubuntu community. My view on this, and it's just one view, is that we're in the crucible… were the conduit; we're the place where the software lands in users hands. This gives us a unique perspective and gives us responsibility. [Our] goal is 200 million users of Ubuntu in four years. We're not playing a game for developers hearts and minds – we're playing a game for the worlds hearts and minds. and to do that we need to play by a new set of rules."

Ubuntu is currently the most popular Linux distribution, but that's really not saying much. The most recent market share numbers shows that Linux is used by 0.94 percent of Internet users. We know there are somewhere over 1 billion computers online, which would imply less than 10 million Linux users.

Canonical does not provided data on how many users are currently using Ubuntu, although it certainly could figure it out based on connections to the Ubuntu Software Centre. Without the company's help, that number is rather difficult to track, because the number of downloads of Ubuntu do not reflect the number of its users.

Let's be generous and say the number is somewhere near 20 million. This means that Shuttleworth wants Ubuntu's user base to grow 10 times over. That's certainly possible, but we don't see how he can pull it off in just four years. There would need to be a huge incentive for Windows and Mac users to start switching. Although Ubuntu continues to see great improvements, there's still no killer feature to convert the masses.

Last month, Canonical released Ubuntu 11.04. The new version introduced a new desktop shell called Unity, which is the culmination of two years' design and engineering effort by Canonical and the Ubuntu community. For PC users, Ubuntu 11.04 supports laptops, desktops, and netbooks, superseding Ubuntu Netbook Edition for all PC netbooks.

In my opinion, the release had a particular focus on beautifying and simplifying the OS. It's a good step, but it's nowhere near enough to reach the company's goal.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/43709-mark-shuttleworth-200-million-ubuntu-users-by-2015.html

 

[Guest]

Great to see a South African right up there in the tech world!

don't know how he's going to make that a reality but I'm holding thumbs

 

[Zilpha]

They still have a long way to go. A lot of the designs still look like they were made for a computer in the 90's, and as long as they stick with that "Human" color and design scheme, it just won't be pretty enough for people who are used to Windows and Macs. And, they need to make it a little easier for the average Joe to move the maximize.minimize, close buttons back to the right. It's a little silly to have to look up tutorials to configure your computer.

Besides that, it's mostly a battle to get things working on it. I am looking at a linux box I was determined to build for myself, and though vendors like nVidia are making drivers available, Linux devs are reluctant to offer them in the repos. I guess, because they are not considered "free" software? It's free to me. I bought the device to use it, not to fiddle around with mediocre drivers someone in a basement worked out that can barely display pong.

Downloaded my nvid drivers, had to figure out how they (ubuntu) handle dropping out of the x server (init 3 etc), installing drivers, installing deps, etc. People just want hardware to work, and when they have to load drivers they just want to download them and run an installer.

Linux is still the OS for the hobbyist. When Ubuntu focuses on features instead of making things different for the sake of being different (like the min\max\close buttons) and overlooking the basic things that people want to do with their computers, maybe they will get that 200 million they are striving for.

 

[kaonis92]

Until they hide the fact that is Linux (make configuration easier, drivers manager, etc) the userbase will never increase so dramatically, although I have to say they have done a great job over the years to make it more accessible than the average Linux distro. 99% of users want something that can work out of box and do everything that they expect it to without too much know-how.

 

[TorturedChaos]

I would love to see Ubuntu at the 200 Million mark, but that is a huge jump for them. As Zilpha said Ubuntu is still more or less a hobbyist desktop. It still takes a bit too much tinkering with it sometimes to make it run and there are still too many lacking drivers (especially it seems for wireless cards...). I had a hell of a time making x server work with my GeForce GT 430 graphics card. Only way it seems to work is with the 64-bit install.

 

[Guest]

We need *NATIVE* Linux Games !!!

 

[Guest]

Here is an idea....how about make it easy enough you don't need to goto school to learn the OS. I really wanted to like it..But I felt like I was back in the DOS days and I'm not about to go back their again.

 

[lawfer]

Hey, a man can dream. But Ubuntu? 200 million users? Right....

 

[gwailo247]

They're going to need to waaaay dumb down Ubuntu if they want to gain users. Lock down most of the options and tweaks, and essentially make it another version of OSX or Windows. Considering that this goes against their principles, I don't see this happening.

Its way too easy to screw something up and require shell commands to restore it. The average user does not want to do this. I thought I was deleting a weather icon in my taskbar and ended up deleting the taskbar itself. Rebooting didn't do anything, I had to follow a 20 step tutorial using shell commands to restore it, and any semblance of functionality to my Ubuntu system.

They're basically going to have to copy everything that Google did with Android in order to reach those levels of success. People, counterintuitively enough, want to have the freedom of choice, not the actual choice itself. Give people too many options and they freeze.

 

[Guest]

Ubuntu and Linux have come a long way and its much more user-friendly now. It does indeed run out-of-the-box(I had no problems installing my NVIDIA drivers for an old 8600GT) without much effort.Heck it even installed the sound drivers which Windows 7 could not install(SigmaTel audio on an Intel motherboard).There are many good alternatives to most software people use on Windows, its a fast OS and there's nothing wrong with the GUI(though the move to Unity is something which I did not like).

Its a solid OS, and and most people should not be having any problems adopting it, except for the odd piece of hardware which might not work, but blaming Linux solely for that is not fair.

 

[Xclusiveitalian]

I mean it's possible Linux can get 200 million users but not with 11.04 version. They would need to make it much prettier and flashy. They wouldn't need to remove hardcore features, but rather utilize secondary ways that are extremely simple for a windows, or mac user who don't know commands, or just want quick changes to thing without having to worry about packages. It would help if it would natively support both windows and mac programs(including games.) If it remained free and did this i'm sure it would boom.

 

[Guest]

While I applaud Ubuntu's efforts,me thinks they should do a tablet OS instead of desktop OS. Maybe make one that runs on nook color/samsung galaxy tab/ARM tablets; An Ubuntu tablet OS with Ubuntu Tablet market would be a great opportunity for developers. I'd love an alternative to Android OS/Honeycomb on tablet platforms. Mobile/SlatePC is where the action's at right now.

 

[Trillionsin]

Does this count for everytime I've installed Ubuntu and realized it couldnt do something I wanted and re-installed windows? Count me as 12 of those "users" at least. lol

 

[Trillionsin]

Guest said:
While I applaud Ubuntu's efforts,me thinks they should do a tablet OS instead of desktop OS. Maybe make one that runs on nook color/samsung galaxy tab/ARM tablets; An Ubuntu tablet OS with Ubuntu Tablet market would be a great opportunity for developers. I'd love an alternative to Android OS/Honeycomb on tablet platforms. Mobile/SlatePC is where the action's at right now.

Arent all tablet OS's linux based? or are you specifically talking about the Ubuntu flavor of linux?

 

[bakape]

FYI Ubuntu already supports ARM and there are plenty of tablets running it.

 

[tonylukac]

The problem I see with linux, particularly Ubuntu, is that they change it so much too often. They come out with a new release every 6 months, going from gnome to unity this time. That's why microsoft doesn't change windows much from release to release, I think. I was just about to implement the last version (i don't remember what it was--Maverik Merkat or something), and I'm already old. Let the user get used to something and keep it that way.

 

[neonxy]

We need to understand Ubuntu is not Linux. Linux is a kernel it's not a complete OS like windows. Various vendors use Linux kernel to package a distribution like Ubuntu using GNU software.

Talking of Os native game support on Linux distribution like Ubuntu, it's not gonna happen in near future. Direct X is a Microsoft thing and they aren't going to give it to Linux. Forget it.

Ubuntu is not the only Linux distribution around. Try some kde base distribution like suse 11.4. It's real cool and kde plasma desktop is awesome in graphics quality. It's nothing sort of shock to those who have only used bland gnome desktop given in Ubuntu.

I install Nvidia drivers for my Asus 560 ti card quite easily. I use something called Gentoo.