How popular is Ubuntu these days?

[zoli62]

I myself have been using Linux Mint for quite a few years after using Debian for a long time. I missed the daily use of Ubuntu, I actually only used it on a virtual machine. And a couple of years ago, I started using Arch-like systems because I noticed that rolling release distributions were becoming more and more popular and mature. I wonder who thinks about this.

[claydoh]

Dunno how one can really determine a popularity level of a distro.
I personally find that the Arch crowd has a certain level of evangelical fans who insert themselves all over the place. Been this way for ages now. This adds to the perception of its popularity, as well as adds to keyword search result hits.

Ubuntu probably has dropped in mind-share since they don't do anything 'special' about the desktop any more. They still seem to be strong in the much larger server sphere.


Rolling release is of course not for everyone. Back in the day it was OK, tinkering and fixing and tweaking things, but since I use my computers for normal every day work and other non-geeky things nowdays, I don't want to deal with that.
I just want a normal OS , but with the latest Plasma, so you can guess what I run.....

[jglen490]

You can pick a popularity site and get one number, pick another and get a different number. So for consistency, I use Distrowatch for a variety of research purposes. Ubuntu, by itself is at #5 today, Kubuntu is elsewhere and has never been as "it" as Ubuntu, but I don't care, either. Kubuntu has been mine for the past 12 - 14 years.

[claydoh]

It is often difficult to remember that Kubuntu *is* Ubuntu, just with a different desktop.
Mint, Pop!, Non, etc et al are still (mostly) Ubuntu as well, along with a decent portion of Distrowatch's popularity list.
I forget this often myself sometimes still, even today.

[Fred47]

I came here from Chakra which was originally based on Arch, but no longer. It is a semi-rolling release and I had few issues with updates. Maybe 1 or 2 over 3 years. The few developers they had ran out of time to support it, so here I am. I'd go back if it gets resurrected. The advantage to a popular distro is that it will have enough people working on it to keep it alive for a long time. Right now there are 2 main factors in choosing a distro, that it well supported and that it is KDE. After that it's all gravy.

[verndog]

Here's an interesting "trends" data, with explanations regarding their authenticity(Distrowatch). This article lists many trends available and what to consider.
Google trends has been my favorite.:
https://medium.com/@bhajneet/what-is...o-ff059d8616c6

[Beerislife]

If I were to use a Gnome 3/Gnome Shell distro, it would probably be Pop!_OS. I've never really been a big fan of Shell though. The boss here uses Linux Mint Cinnamon and even that is too much OS for her. She'd be better off with a Chromebook. I use KDE Neon as my daily driver but have Mint installed on an old Mac Mini as a media player. My old Thinkpad used to run Kubuntu but now it's running CloudReady and is much better for it! I've thought about switching to Manjaro but Neon suits me better.

I'd much rather still be running OS/2 Warp 4.5 but that's another thread! ������

[zoli62]

After a few days of using Kubuntu, I can say that it is a well-used, user-friendly system recommended for beginners and advanced

[GreyGeek]

You can pick a popularity site and get one number, pick another and get a different number. So for consistency, I use Distrowatch for a variety of research purposes. Ubuntu, by itself is at #5 today, Kubuntu is elsewhere and has never been as "it" as Ubuntu, but I don't care, either. Kubuntu has been mine for the past 12 - 14 years.

I've noticed that over the last five years or so Kubuntu has been rated between 35 and 45. I used Distrowatch's OS analysis more often than the PageHit counter.
https://distrowatch.com/awstats/awst....osdetail.html
The two major Linux distros, by browser agent, is Ubuntu and "Unknown"...
40% of Distrowatch visitors are running WinX and 45% are running some flavor of Linux. For Linux users, "Ubuntu" is the distro of choice by a wide margin. That may include Ubuntu derivatives, as Claydoh points out.

It is often difficult to remember that Kubuntu *is* Ubuntu, just with a different desktop.
Mint, Pop!, Non, etc et al are still (mostly) Ubuntu as well, along with a decent portion of Distrowatch's popularity list.
I forget this often myself sometimes still, even today.

I mentioned in another thread that I used MX Mint KDE to test Freenet. MX Mint is at the top of the PageHit rankings for the last two years. I was underwhelmed by the MX Mint version of KDE. I missed sudo, systemd and BTRFS. Controlling services through a single point, instant snapshots and subminute rollbacks are, IMHO, much too important advancements of Linux to ignore or abandon. That said, Linux is about choice, not group think or worse ... so far.

[Don B. Cilly]

Yearh well. Distrowatch. #1 in "popularity" there is... MX Linux. The KDE version of which uses Plasma... 5.14
So much for "popularity" on DW, ey.

I've been playing quite a bit with distros lately. Not impressed with any.
But then, I'm an Ubuntu(base) boy. I have all my aliases, scripts, tweaks and kickers for it.
For me - for what I do - neon User is the best of possible worlds.
Stable base, newest tested Plasma. I use User ;·), play with Unstable. Mainly too see if they get Wayland to work with nvidia drivers - they don't, yet. Unstable has Plasma 5.21.8 (which is basically a preview of 5.22) - compared to 5.20.5 of User.
It still doesn't work. I have the "Sweet" theme on Unstable btw. What Garuda Dragonized has by default. It's... sweet ;·), but sort of a bit hard on the eyes.

So - personally - semi-rolling, Ubuntu based is my thing.
The rest is... silence ;·)

[exploder]

I have Ubuntu installed on a couple of systems, for Gnome Shell it's not bad at all. Gnome Shell seems a little less graphics card intensive and my best graphics card right now is just an NVidea GTX 1050 Ti...

[jglen490]

I have a desktop unit that until Dec 25th was my go to box. It's sitting in the closet right now, but is still very usable, but I have nice shiny new laptop given to me by people who care more about me than their wallets.

Anyway, that desktop unit runs Kubuntu 20.04.1 LTS. It has a 9th gen i5, and a GTX 730. It runs VERY well. KDE is a much lighter user interface than it used to be and than "everybody" thinks it is.

[GreyGeek]

Yearh well. Distrowatch. #1 in "popularity" there is... MX Linux. The KDE version of which uses Plasma... 5.14
So much for "popularity" on DW, ey.

Indeed!
When I was using PCLinuxOS (started a few months before a Hurricane hit Huston and used it for the year while Textstar was on hiatus repairing his home) a campaign was started on the PCLinuxOS forum to click on the PCLinuxOS to drive up its ranking. It worked for about 7 months, keeping PCLinuxOS at the #1 position. Meanwhile, less effort was put into the distro and factions started fighting for control. That's when I left. Shortly after that Textstar came back and the pagehit hitting stopped and the distro began to be improved back to its former glory, but I had already moved on. Besides, after I experienced the dpkg package manager I didn't want to return to the RPM package manager.

PageHit rankings don't mean as much as people think they do. MX Mint doesn't even generate a blip on the Distrowatch OS detail page.

[oshunluvr]

IMO distro watch is a poor indicator. Besides, most of the point of Linux is that we can control our choices. I don't care what distros others use or why, it's actually not a competition - it's variety. I am free to wander as I like and so are you. Our paths will intersect many many times and usually for our mutual benefit, Long Live Linux! lol

[verndog]

I've noticed that over the last five years or so Kubuntu has been rated between 35 and 45. I used Distrowatch's OS analysis more often than the PageHit counter.
https://distrowatch.com/awstats/awst....osdetail.html
The two major Linux distros, by browser agent, is Ubuntu and "Unknown"...
40% of Distrowatch visitors are running WinX and 45% are running some flavor of Linux. For Linux users, "Ubuntu" is the distro of choice by a wide margin. That may include Ubuntu derivatives, as Claydoh points out.

I mentioned in another thread that I used MX Mint KDE to test Freenet. MX Mint is at the top of the PageHit rankings for the last two years. I was underwhelmed by the MX Mint version of KDE. I missed sudo, systemd and BTRFS. Controlling services through a single point, instant snapshots and subminute rollbacks are, IMHO, much too important advancements of Linux to ignore or abandon. That said, Linux is about choice, not group think or worse ... so far.

I remember this post and wanted to comment later. I searched Distrowatch and could not find the 'awstats'. Very interesting stats.