As 2015 ends, Ubuntu Linux misses its 200 million user goal

With the end of 2015 imminent, Ubuntu appears to have fallen far short of the 200 million user goal it set back in 2011.

“[Our] goal is 200 million users of Ubuntu in four years,” Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth said at a developer summit in May 2011. “We’re not playing a game for developers’ hearts and minds—we’re playing a game for the world's hearts and minds, and to achieve that we’re going to have to play by a new set of rules.”

As Linux site Phoronix points out, reports on Ubuntu server and desktop installations have yet to even pass 100 million. Ubuntu’s own website says the desktop operating system has more than 40 million users. Linux as a whole accounted for 1.61 percent of desktops accessing the Internet last month, according to NetApplications. By comparison, Windows 10 hit 9 percent of that market in November, the same month that Microsoft announced 110 million users of its latest OS.

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