More people use Ubuntu than anyone actually knows


This article was last updated 7 years ago.

People of earth, waving at Saturn, courtesy of NASA.

It Doesn’t Look Like Ubuntu Reached Its Goal Of 200 Million Users This Year”, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix, in a post that it seems he’s been itching to post for months.

Why the negativity?!? Are you sure? Did you count all of them?

No one has. And no one can count all of the Ubuntu users in the world!
Canonical, unlike Apple, Microsoft, Red Hat, or Google, does not require each user to register their installation of Ubuntu.

Of course, you can buy laptops preloaded with Ubuntu from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Asus. And there are millions of them out there. And you can buy servers powered by Ubuntu from IBM, Dell, HP, Cisco, Lenovo, Quanta, and compatible with the OpenCompute Project.

In 2011, hardware sales might have been how Mark Shuttleworth hoped to reach 200M Ubuntu users by 2015.

But in reality, hundreds of millions of PCs, servers, devices, virtual machines, and containers have booted Ubuntu to date!
Let’s look at some facts…

  • Docker users have launched Ubuntu images over 35.5 million times.
  • HashiCorp’s Vagrant images of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit have been downloaded 10 million times.
  • At least 20 million unique instances of Ubuntu have launched in public clouds, private clouds, and bare metal in 2015 itself.
    • That’s Ubuntu in clouds like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine, Rackspace, Oracle Cloud, VMware, and others.
    • And that’s Ubuntu in private clouds like OpenStack.
  • And Ubuntu at scale on bare metal with MAAS, often managed with Chef.
  • In fact, over 2 million new Ubuntu cloud instances launched in November 2015.
    • That’s 67,000 new Ubuntu cloud instances launched per day.
    • That’s 2,800 new Ubuntu cloud instances launched every hour.
    • That’s 46 new Ubuntu cloud instances launched every minute.
    • That’s nearly one new Ubuntu cloud instance launched every single second of every single day in November 2015.
  • And then there are Ubuntu phones from Meizu.
  • And more Ubuntu phones from BQ.
  • Of course, anyone can install Ubuntu on their Google Nexus tablet or phone.
  • Oh, and the Tesla entertainment system? All electric Ubuntu.
  • Google’s self-driving cars? They’re self-driven by Ubuntu.
  • George Hotz’s home-made self-driving car? It’s a homebrewed Ubuntu autopilot.
  • Snappy Ubuntu downloads and updates for Raspberry Pi’s and Beagle Bone Blacks — the response has been tremendous. Download numbers are astounding.

Drones, robots, network switches, smart devices, the Internet of Things. More Snappy Ubuntu.

Kicking PaaS with Cloud Foundry? App instances are Ubuntu LXC containers. Pivotal has lots of serious users.

 

How many “users” of Ubuntu are there ultimately? I bet there are over a billion people today, using Ubuntu — both directly and indirectly. Without a doubt, there are over a billion people on the planet benefiting from the services, security, and availability of Ubuntu today.

  • More people use Ubuntu than we know.
  • More people use Ubuntu than you know.
  • More people use Ubuntu than they know.
  • More people use Ubuntu than anyone actually knows.

Because of who we all are.

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