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Ubuntu has big ambitions, but how will we know if it achieves them? One of the great things about Linux, and free software in general, is that it doesn't suffer the hyperbole that you find in other parts of the computer industry.
At least not in the user-community-developer sphere that we live in.
Our inbox rarely filters notifications of an imminent security disaster, for example, or messages marked as important because there's a new virus that's going to spread from our phones to our netbooks through our fridges.
If one of these emails does make it through, we enjoy replying by asking what impact this might have on Linux users. The response is nearly always: "What's Linux?"
The software, distributions and hardware emerging from the world of open community development often prefer to float on their own merits rather than those of a PR company. One exception might be the discussion on whether 2012 will be the year of Linux on the desktop, but that was a joke, and one long past its best.
But there's another exception, and that's the perennial Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is breaking away from the tradition of a free software company by ramping up both expectation and anticipation for its own products in ways usually associated with its proprietary competitors.
In some aspects, this is brilliant. The slick and professional HTML5 demo site that accompanied the release of 11.10, for instance, was a wonderful taster of what the Ubuntu desktop feels like. It fulfilled a genuine purpose by helping the uninitiated realise that Linux isn't just the command line or a wasted weekend trying to get audio to work.
It can actually be a slick desktop that looks as good as the latest release of OS X, and far better than that version of Windows where you can't even change the desktop background image. No other Linux distribution puts that amount of effort into trying to win new users, and Ubuntu deserves plenty of new ones as a result of that initiative.
Talkin' loudUbuntu has every right to shout about its success. It's still the most popular Linux distribution, and takes great pains to create a user experience that's different from other distributions.
But the team behind Ubuntu is also getting more proactive and shouty about its own largess and self-perpetuating prophesies - and it starts at the top. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's benevolent dictator for life, wrote on his blog that he wants to see "Ubuntu on phones, tablets, TVs and smart screens everywhere" by the time 14.04 is released (in just over two years).
This statement comes only months after he told the Ubuntu Developer's Conference in Budapest that he wanted to see 200 million users within four years. A good plan, and some nice big numbers, but we have difficulty believing Ubuntu will come close.
Without any question, if either of those goals were realised, we'd be ecstatic. We want Ubuntu to win. But we don't want its advantages and achievements to be lost in a cloud of moon-gazing rhetoric.
Numbers gameIf, in 2015, Ubuntu has 200 million users, let's all have a party and we'll say sorry. Ubuntu would be an unprecedented success. But when the Ubuntu team can't even give you an accurate measure of how many people are using the distribution today, or how they're estimating their numbers, how can we trust predictions for the future?
Mark also mentioned, for example, that there are currently around 20 million Ubuntu users, up from their estimate of 12 million in 2010. That's a very healthy result, but why the secrecy in how these numbers are formed?
Why not open up how these figures were calculated and let us see the 10 times growth predicted for Ubuntu over the next few years ourselves. That way we can all celebrate.
This is something the Fedora project does, for example. The Fedora wiki statistics page lists as much data as it can, including unique IP access to the downloads in a week-by-week table, complete with percentage comparisons against the previous release and updates through the package repository.
This page also includes the important disclaimer about how the exact number of users can't be derived from these statistics alone.
But you can't argue against the openness in the statistics or the growth in Fedora's popularity from one release to the next. The numbers are in front of you, and we think the Ubuntu team should be prepared to do the same, especially when they're making such bold predictions for the future of their distribution.
Openness and transparency is what makes open source software development as brilliant as it is, and it's something our competitors can't touch. They should be our weapons of choice when it comes to marketing, not hyperbole.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------First published in PC Plus Issue 316Liked this? Then check out How Ubuntu is built: the inside storySign up for TechRadar's free Week in Tech newsletterGet the top stories of the week, plus the most popular reviews delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up at http://www.techradar.com/registerFollow TechRadar on Twitter * Find us on Facebook * Add us on Google+ Tags: Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux, open source, operating systemsTweetreddit!Stumbleupon Your comments (1) Click to add a new commentoracle
1. No your wrong Ubuntu and almost all the other distros suffer from a kind of inverse hyperbole that being “that Linux is so much better” than the dreaded MS alternative! Which is in itself an untruth.
What Ubuntu actually needs to do is stop worrying about how many people use it, lose the stupid name and get with the program that does away with command line instructions! And it can be done Android and iOS being two successful & notable examples!
THEN and only THEN will Ubuntu and dozens of other Linux “distro’s” make a genuine break into the mainstream.
At the moment most Linux is for those who either hate MS so much that they cannot allow its usability into their lives OR need or want to save money so badly that they will waste any amount of time "playing with the OS and trying to sort out corrupt syntax advice from the real thing " rather than doing any actual work! (Those and wannabe systems administrators of course!)
In an effort to embrace the world of open OS I chose Ubuntu initially but after realising “noobs” had to rely upon support forums, full of people who actually cannot help because in their hast to answer and show off their “knowledge” they type so quickly they get the all important syntax wrong! And woe betide any “noob” who dares to point that out!
So I gave up on Ubuntu and paid for a copy of SUSE only to find even then I was spending more time getting it to work than doing any work! An inability to get something as basic as a sound card working was the final straw for me and I went back to a product that “Does exactly what it says on the tin” Windows and Office!
The point of this post? Simply to say it really does not matter how many users Ubuntu has now, because for all the reasons I point out above I am prepared to bet there are far more EX Ubuntu and Linux users in the word than current ones!
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