Installed base
Because of a lack of registration, any number provided for Ubuntu usage can only be estimated.
[122] In 2015, Canonical's Ubuntu Insights page stated "Ubuntu now has over 40 million desktop users and counting".
[123]
W3Techs Web Technology Surveys estimated in September 2016 that:
- Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution for running Web servers on, used by 34.1% of "all the websites" they analyze.[124] Linux distributions are used a little more than Microsoft Windows
for websites based on W3Techs numbers, and only Ubuntu and Debian
(which Ubuntu is based on, with the same package manager and thus
administered the same way) make up 65% of all Linux distributions for
web serving use; Ubuntu got more popular than Debian (for such server use), in May 2016.
- Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution among the top 1000
sites and gains around 500 of the top 10 million websites per day.[125]
- Ubuntu is used by 12.4% of all websites analyzed, growing from less than 7% in October 2012.[126]
W3Techs analyzes the top 10 million websites only.
[127] It considers Linux as a subcategory of
Unix and estimated in the same month that 66.7% of the analyzed websites use Unix, under that broad definition.
[128]
According to TheCloudMarket.com, Ubuntu is on at least 57% of the images it scanned on Amazon EC2 (and Windows at 7.8%).
[14]
Wikimedia Foundation data (based on
user agent)
for September 2013 shows that Ubuntu generated the most page requests
to Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia, among recognizable Linux
distributions.
[129][130]
Large-scale deployments
The public sector has also adopted Ubuntu. As of January 2009, the Ministry of Education and Science of
Republic of Macedonia deployed more than 180,000
[131] Ubuntu-based classroom desktops, and has encouraged every student in the country to use Ubuntu-powered computer workstations;
[132] the Spanish school system has 195,000 Ubuntu desktops.
[131] The French police, having already started using
open-source software in 2005 by replacing
Microsoft Office with
OpenOffice.org, decided to transition to Ubuntu from
Windows XP after the release of
Windows Vista in 2006.
[133] By March 2009, the
Gendarmerie Nationale had already switched 5000 workstations to Ubuntu.
[133]
Based on the success of that transition, it planned to switch 15,000
more over by the end of 2009 and to have switched all 90,000
workstations over by 2015
(GendBuntu project).
[133]
Lt. Colonel Guimard announced that the move was very easy and allowed
for a 70% saving on the IT budget without having to reduce its
capabilities.
[133] In 2011, Ubuntu 10.04 was adopted by the Indian justice system.
[134]
The Government of Kerala adopted Ubuntu for the legislators in Kerala
and the government schools of Kerala began to use customized
IT@School Project
Ubuntu 10.04 which contains specially created software for students.
Earlier, Windows was used in the schools. Textbooks were also remade
with an Ubuntu syllabus and are currently used in schools.
[135]
The city of
Munich, Germany, has forked Kubuntu 10.04 LTS and created
LiMux for use on the city's computers.
[136]
After originally planning to migrate 12,000 desktop computer to LiMux,
it was announced in December 2013 that the project had completed
successfully with the migration of 14,800 out of 15,500 desktop
computers.
[137]
In March 2012, the government of Iceland launched a project to get all
public institutions using free and open-source software. Already several
government agencies and schools have adopted Ubuntu. The government
cited cost savings as a big factor for the decision, and also stated
that open source software avoids
vendor lock-in.
A 12-month project was launched to migrate the biggest public
institutions in Iceland to open-source, and help ease the migration for
others.
[138] Incumbent US president
Barack Obama's successful
campaign for re-election in 2012, used Ubuntu in its IT department.
[139][importance?] In August 2014, the city of
Turin, Italy, announced the migration from
Windows XP to Ubuntu for its 8,300 desktop computers used by the municipality, becoming the first city in Italy to adopt Ubuntu.
[140][141]
Critical reception
Ubuntu was awarded the Reader Award for best Linux distribution at the 2005
LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in London,
[142] received favorable reviews in online and print publications,
[143][144] and has won
InfoWorld's 2007 Bossie Award for
Best Open Source Client OS.
[145] In early 2008
PC World
named Ubuntu the "best all-around Linux distribution available today",
though it criticized the lack of an integrated desktop effects manager.
[146]
Chris DiBona, the program manager for open-source software at Google,
said "I think Ubuntu has captured people's imaginations around the Linux
desktop," and "If there is a hope for the Linux desktop, it would be
them". As of January 2009, almost half of Google's 20,000 employees used Goobuntu, a proprietary, slightly modified version of Ubuntu.
[131] In 2012,
ZDNet reported that Ubuntu was still Google's desktop of choice.
[147] In March 2016, Matt Hartley picked a list of best Linux distributions for
Datamation; he chose Ubuntu as number one.
[148]
In 2008,
Jamie Hyneman, co-host of the American television series
MythBusters, advocated Linux (giving the example of Ubuntu) as a solution to
software bloat.
[149] Other celebrity users of Ubuntu include science fiction writer
Cory Doctorow[150] and actor
Stephen Fry.
[151]
In March 2013, Canonical announced that it had decided to develop
Mir,
[152] reversing an earlier plan to move to
Wayland as the primary Ubuntu display server
[153] and causing
widespread objection from the open source desktop community.
[154][155][156][157]
X.Org contributor Daniel Stone opined: "I'm just irritated that this
means more work for us, more work for upstream developers, more work for
toolkits, more work for hardware vendors....".
[158]
In September 2013, an Intel developer removed XMir support from their
video driver and wrote "We do not condone or support Canonical in the
course of action they have chosen, and will not carry XMir patches
upstream".
[159][160][161]
In January 2014, the UK's authority for computer security,
CESG, reported that
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was "the only operating system that passes as many as 9 out of 12 requirements without any significant risks".
[162]
Ubuntu's developers acknowledged battery life problems from version 10.04
[163] and sought to solve the issues of power consumption in the 12.04 LTS release.
[164][self-published source?] The 14.04 release improved the situation, but still lagged other operating systems in the battery life metric.
[165]
Amazon controversy
One of the new features of Unity in
Ubuntu 12.10
was the shopping lens—Amazon search results displayed in the Unity
dash. It was alternately described as the "Amazon controversy",
[166][167] "privacy fiasco"
[168] and "spyware".
[169]
From October 2012, it sent the user's queries through a secure HTTPS connection from the home lens to productsearch.ubuntu.com,
[170] which then polled
Amazon.com
to find relevant products; Amazon then sent product images directly to
the user's computer through HTTP. If the user clicked on one of these
results and then bought something, Canonical got a small fraction of the
sale.
[171]
In 2012, many reviewers criticized it: as the home lens is the normal
means to search for content on the local machine, reviewers were
concerned about the disclosure of queries that were intended to be
local, creating a privacy problem.
[170] As the feature is active by default instead of opt-in, many users could be unaware of it.
[170][171][172][173]
Some users chose to turn it off or to remove the feature using a patch.
[174]
An April 2014 article by Scott Gilbertson stated that the online search
components of Ubuntu could be turned off with a couple of clicks in
version 14.04.
[165]
For the move, it was awarded the 2013 Austria
Big Brother Award.
[175]
Since Ubuntu 16.04, the setting is off by default.
[176]
Conformity with European data privacy law
Soon after being introduced, doubts emerged on the conformance of the shopping lens with the European
Data Protection Directive.
[177][178]
A petition was later signed by over 50 Ubuntu users and delivered to
Canonical demanding various modifications to the feature in order to
clearly frame it within European law.
[179][self-published source?] Canonical did not reply.
In 2013, a formal complaint on the shopping lens was filed with the
Information Commissioner's Office
(IOC), the UK data privacy office. Almost one year later, the IOC ruled
in favour of Canonical, considering the various improvements introduced
to the feature in the meantime to render it conformal with the
Data Protection Directive.
[180][self-published source?]
According to European rules, this ruling is automatically effective in
the entirety of the European Union. However, the ruling also made clear
that at the time of introduction the feature was not legal, among other
things, since it was missing a privacy policy statement.
