Ubuntu seems to have been in decline since 2005~6? does that correlate with the release of unity? It would be interesting to see why the decline has been there for years. Perhaps the main source of these stats, distrowatch, isnt used by people much now that ubuntu has become better know. Are people directly going to the ubuntu homepage instead?

Of course it should be mentioned that DistroWatch is more of a Linux enthusiast website. In my opinion new users to Ubuntu will not discover it from their pages.

I’m glad you included Google results in this report. It helps drive the fact that Ubuntu is by far still ahead of other distributions. However, according to the Google the decline begun in late 2007. Well before Unity showed up.

If anything this shows that as users become more comfortable with Ubuntu they look for new options. Ironically, My first Distribution was Ubuntu followed by Mint then ArchLinux.

Additionally, does this report include Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu? Mint tends to lump all the desktop environments together but Ubuntu prefers to market them separately.

My thought is that people use Distrowatch for disto-specific information, and the latest release news. But, the average student or non-techie will use google and not distrowatch to find information on the “Linux” they have heard about. Google data showing a decline in searches could simply be Linux is no longer for geeks, and that people know ubuntu by name and can then go to ubuntu.com directly bypassing the need to search.

What is needed is to know how many Linux installations pull down updates from their respective repos in a given month. Microsoft tracks sales, not installations. Distros need to track the installations since sales are so far and in between.

Thanks for being concise with the cookie cutter, typically useless statistics that have nothing to do with the actual userbase numbers.

Regardless of what’s popular, the editorial blog hype we’ve been seeing over the last 4 to 5 years needs to die off. No matter how much “desktop linux” is hyped, the quantitative user-base stays about the same. Like Linus says, it’s in the code. But a bunch of needless installation screenshots and regurgitation of opinionated fluff that has nothing to do with real productive work as a workstation is a dead horse that collectively needs to stop being beaten.

i find it funny that whenever someone mentions distrowatch and ubuntu’s obvious decline that is just reflected there, fanbois jump to say that distrowatch doesn’t matter.
it’s funny because i never heard this “argument” while ubuntu was still number 1 over at DW? back then it was relevant?
well, lolz.

I’m not sure I can agree fully with this article. This is using 1 set of data to show a specific outcome. I suspect it’s only showing people who are thinking of switching or are curious.

We really need to be able to compare userbase.

All distrowatch & google are doing is showing how many people click on a link or search for a distro. And Distrowatch doesn’t show how much Mint is alienating KDE users.

As an example, both these stats wouldn’t show I’ve switched from Mint to Kubuntu, because I didn’t use distrowatch or google to get to kubuntu.

If you are already using a distro, you are not going to go to the homepage via Distrowatch. And perhaps not via google either.

The irony of the whole Mint thing is that say Ubuntu died over the next year, goodbye Mint (Ubuntu version anyway) – I argue that Mint should develop their Debian side more for more future stability and forget what Ubuntu is doing.

Ubuntu has a playschool interface sitting upon software that is coming and going on a regular basis and also Wayland will get thrown into the mix too sooner or later – sometimes progress isn’t an advancement.

Not a big surprise. Unity is shit, and if Ubuntu forces me to use it, I won’t use Ubuntu anymore. Same applies to wayland. Ubuntu is destoying standards and made some very bad decisions. Unity, Upstart, Wayland, PulseAudio, Indicators… There once was a time when Ubuntu was a well configured operating system, but now it’s… crap.

Its obvious, but it needs to be said — Linux Mint is not one single distribution but approximately 6 variants. LM has one each for KDE, Gnome, LXDE, XFCE. Those are all Ubuntu based. LM also has two XFCE, Gnome that are Debian based as rolling releases. So it is not surprising that LM has received so much traction. Throw in the fact that Unity has left many cold and your sole respite from the switch is Linux Mint.

What drew me to LM years ago was their rolling the more popular codecs into the release. It was something that I typically did with a Ubuntu upgrade anyway so I made the switch. Saved me time and effort and I have been satisfied with the LM packages ever since.

That 10% gain by Mint in 2 months doesn’t seem credible to me if it’s supposed to actually reflect userbase changes. Looks more like DistroWatch getting gamed.

I am one of those that defected from Ubuntu to Mint earlier this year. I made an honest effort to use Unity – for three months – but the productivity hit was too big. I am a developer and Unity really, really hurts my daily workflow.

I began looking for alternatives after I started to get a feeling that with each new release, Unity was being more forcibly forced down my throat by Canonical.

Leave that bad behavior to Microsoft and Apple — it just doesn’t seem like the right kind of attitude for a Linux organization to have.

Man…man man man..can we PLEASE stop quoting distrowatch numbers? they are ABSOLUTELY meaningless.

http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity

Basically, page hits? Really, that is meaningful? Please, this is 2011, we should know better.

Unity sucked in 11.04. But I am very happy with my Ubuntu 11.10 distro.

I actually didn’t like how I was strong armed into adopting Libre Office over Open Office. That’s something that really upset me. I’m sure it had a list of 100 software programs that it prompted me about whether I wanted it included in the update or not, but I don’t like searching through a big list of apps when there are only a few that I care about.

Ubuntu is the first I tried… but I’ve downloaded Mint and am considering giving it a try on my netbook.

The spike in google trends of mint towards the end is probably due to MGSE

Your anti-Ubuntu fanboism is quite funny.

Firstly distrowatch doesn’t matter. This site is constructed by geeks for geeks. I’m pretty sure that most of Mint users watch Distrowatch but it’s not true to Ubuntu users. Today most Ubuntu users don’t even know what distribution or even Linux is

In google trends you used term “Ubuntu Linux”. Why don’t you just try “Ubuntu”?
We both know why Look at Ubuntu users forums and check how many people use term “Ubuntu Linux”. Yeah – almost nobody!
Check also “Intel”, “cpu”, “Microsoft” and ask yourself why they are also “declining”.

Shame that distrowatch doesn’t count Windows, MacOS and Android. It’s quite possible that Mint will remain on top . And tell me: How many payed developers works full-time for Mint? 0? Maybe 1?

Ubuntu still gains market share and it’s dominance thanks to Unity will be even stronger. Unity is better designed than old gnome and even gnome-shell is known for copying Unity. Most of the hate comes from the outside of Ubuntu community. Not because Unity is bad, but because it’s a threat – Distro changing will be much harder and Ubuntu dominance will be cemented

And Mint is in its current form just Ubuntu platform with old desktop, with no support from commercial applications and OEMs. Mint will rather help to sustain Ubuntu dominance

Unity sucked up until now…Why try to copy the worst feature of MacOSX???This awful menu bar at the top!?!?!?
I like it now but still I think this is one major cause of Ubuntu’s popularity decrease..

Add on the Distrowatch hits for Lubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu and see who is still on top. Remember that Mint also offers these different versions but they are not listed seperately. I personally don’t like Unity or Gnome3 but that is no reason to start writing off Ubuntu.

As some mentioned above, seasoned *buntu users, as well as other distro users, would not be spending much time visit their particular distro’s website. I think a good measure of a distro’s popularity is to find a way to measure: the activity of forums for a particular distro; how active bloggers are writing about a certain distro; how active IRC is; and so on. Server hosting companies should also provide some stats on which distro is widely used. I think Linode, Ubuntu server is the leader (I use CentOS 6 if anybody wants to know).

If somebody can create some sort of algorithm for this, it would be a great way to judge which distro is popular or not. Distrowatch just measures the number of hits, that is all.

It’s not only Unity that’s hurting Ubuntu, it’s the attitude. Mark S makes it very clear these days how he sees Canonical’s relationship with the community and that alienates a lot of people. Add to that the attitude of some of the developers in Launchpad, e.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/netcat-openbsd/+bug/544935 and it’s hardly surprising if some people look for alternatives.

Mint based on Debian looks like an easy switch.

It’s funny to watch Linux distributions fighting to become the one-eyed man in the land of the blind.

Regardless of the argument over the stats, I have moved away from Ubuntu because of Unity which means I no longer promote Ubuntu.

The problem goes further than a Unity issue. I have seen the same problem with Fedora and OpenSuSE. A lot of the key developers don’t listen to end users and much rather prefer to do their own thing which is not necessarily the right thing. As I think now. Fedora sucks because Pulseaudio sucks and the new Gnome Desktop wasn’t as versatile as the old one. Basically it was useless. On the OpenSuSE side, Microsoft might as well just distribute Vista with a Gecko on it. I was a faithful openSuSE/SuSE user for over 10 years. Now, if I see a machine running it, I look at is as Windows Vista with a green interface.

In short, Mint’s edge is that they are listening to end users and actually doing it right.

“Unity interface to blame” I am not convinced. In the chart of % of total per year it shows that Ubuntu is declining in % since 2005 which Unity is not even shipped. (Though I agree that Unity sucks.) I am more willing to believe that Canonical was too eager to think different, to be different from other distro but cannot deliver. Just my 5 cents.

I think whats happened is that Linux Live CDs make it trivial for Linux newbies to venture past Ubuntu.
I got in at 8.04 and hated it with a passion… my friends thought it was the ugliest UI ever. I then discovered Kubuntu and Xubuntu and making a desktop look how I want. Because thats where the real choice is, not the distro.
Take two distros using the same desktop and you will be hard pressed to see the difference apart the cosmetic (oooooh, look kids… a differetn wallpaper!!)
If you tough it out past a few years on Linux, you are bound to say ‘what the frack and just download another distro or desktop.
You are bound to find a desktop-distro combination out there that you find is more suited to your current needs and it doesnt cost you a thing to test out something new.
Its the beauty of choice, where the user has the final say.
For some, Linux Mint among others has struck a chord that Ubuntu might have missed just like PCLinuxOS did the same with Mandriva. We stand on the shoulder of giants and there is no reason to fear offering free software users what THEY want.
Thats hard to market and leverage but for the user, its just wonderful.

@ Bruce

I’d rather be one-eyed than, like you appear to be, the blind telling me how shiny their bling is.

At the surface Unity is the issue, but the real issue is Ubuntu has lost there connection with the community. The reason is Ubuntu has been ignoring community requests for changes,

While I don’t like Unity and I think many can agree with me, there has been a ton of change requests from the community that have been ignored.

I think this started with the notification system that’s not clickable, there was some bickering about how “Ubuntu is not a democracy. This doesn’t help.
http://www.webupd8.org/2010/03/ubuntu-is-not-democratic.html

Here’s recent servery that was done that really points out some Ubuntu’s issues.
http://ubuntuone.com/1DWnm1bTcZUcmRs8aAaZ6u

There are many Linux community far better than Ubuntu with everything working out of the box, Linux Mint was one of my favorites but when I found Ultimate Edition all that changed because Mint has started to go down hill, Even Ultimate edition is going down hill Over the last couple of months I have downloaded all the latest releases.

Now I have found the one that blows them all away, This release if people get to know about it will be the number one without a doubt everything works out of the box, I never thought I would ever find anything better than Ultimate Edition but I have. I am recommending it to everybody to download it and give it a spin you won’t regret doing so It’s a pity that it’s only for the 64 bit systems

Check out CommodoreOS 64 Vision. It’s mind blowing to say the least and this is only the beta version. I say well done to the Commodore developers team Keep up the fantastic work your doing

check it out here. their website is a mind blaster too
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_OS_Vision.aspx

Ubuntu “Innovation” started by moving the title bar buttons to the right side. Next came the overlay scrollbar. Then the global menu came to the mix, then unity with enormous icons.

Each time, it required a while to adapt and I was not convinced at all that the new interface is better. Or it took time to reconfigure the GUI. Then one day I got fed up and switched all the computers at home to Linux Mint.

i think blamming Unity isn’t going to turn the table around, it was Canonical focusing too much resources on eye-candy and forgotten other aspect of the Linux world needs. that could be a reason why Mint got passed Ubuntu in nature.

if you look at Fedora, they leverage on already existed desktop manager such as GNOME 3 and KDE 4 and focusing deliver stable platform and up-to-date fixes and packages instead.

my 2 cents only since i already switched to F16 both work and home

Mint doesn’t exist without ubuntu distro, right ?

So, what do we learn : “vanillia” ubuntu may be on the same slope as gnome has embraced, and people are going away. This slope is the lack of choice and control. (Yeah, unity, I mean you)

Some other distros ask politely what desktop you want. A newbie will be lost – so a default is relevant.

As mentioned earlier, this study should consider Xunbuntu and Kubuntu as well, because that’s exactly the option choosed by Canonical. It may be simpler for them to ship different desktops, personnally I prefer the Arch way : you have none by default, then you choose one.

Ubuntu /Canonical ignore their users and showed down our throat an UNPRODUCTIVE (windows’s menu is moved away), buggy, unity that cannot even do a proper search !
Many have changed preferred OS, and many more will.
I’ve really tried to use Unity, since it came, but I am more fed up than ever, and will do proper research and shift to another distro ASAP

I switched to Linux Mint Debian Edition since a lot of things haven’t worked on my laptop in Ubuntu 11.04. I thought that 11.10 will fix those issues, but I got even more problems. Then I started searching for alternatives and since I always wanted to try XFCE, I installed LMDE. It did required some tweaking, but at least now I have a stable OS I can work on, with a fast desktop environment.

This only confirms what we already know. Google the phrase “Ubuntu has jumped the shark” and you will see that the overwhelming consensus of Linux users is that we hate Unity and are abandoning Ubuntu because of it. Spaceman Mark is openly hostile towards Unity critics because it’s his pet project, but it’s ugly and unusable and we’re not going to swallow it down like a bunch of Apple users — we’re Linux users and we know how to exercise our freedom of choice.

Ubuntu has had its day in the sun but it’s time to move on.

common guys it’s just a hits and extension..

Help,
I am a long time Mandrake(Mandriva) KDE user, still stable and I am content.
But is there anybody out there who could advice me on “the next step” if I need to jump ship.

Not to be a bearer of bad news, but Unity has been around a lot longer than 11.04. Remember back when they released a Ubuntu Netbook Remix? Circa 8.04 era. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Netbook_Edition – Canonical has been working on this interface for quite some time. The people did not accept it then due to the crashy nature of it and it made seasoned vets feel real stupid using it. I mean… look at this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR

While I have switched most of my home boxes to Xubuntu with Xfce DE, I’m also still running Ubuntu 10.10 Gnome2 my power tower box.

The main distribution of Ubuntu may now be tied to their Unity interface, but there are other spin offs like Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu that utilize other DEs and maintain use of Ubuntu’s repos and developer goodness on Launchpad. There’s also distros like Pinguy and Bohdi that have a Ubuntu base and use lesser used DEs like Enlightenment.

ProTip: Linux is about freedom and choice. Make a good choice and be free!

What these charts say to me is that the combined share of Ubuntu and Mint does not change much. It is just that Mint gains something at expense of Ubuntu.

Also the share of Fedora is stable.

Other than that it seems that combined share of Debian and openSUSE is also constant with openSUSE increasing at expense of Debian.

Elementary OS anyone…?

My tuppence worth; I have been a great great fan of canonical since 2005, which is when I decided to change from AmigaOS to Linux (finally). I thank Ubuntu as the OS for allowing me to have a clean and pleasant change.

Canonical have always been in front with willing to take a risk and try new things. That’s what they have always strived to do. However, like many a good user like myself, I prefer to do things on my computer, not let the computer decide what I’m doing. To me, that’s what Unity is trying to achieve, and with that, I decided to change to Mint. It wasn’t a difficult decision either, as I tried Unity and Gnome3, and pretty much instantly disliked it.

Mint brings the beauty of Ubuntu to us in a way that I adore and enjoy using the computer. Personally, if it wasn’t for Unity and Gnome3, Id still be using Ubuntu. The great thing about the Linux world is we have choice, and lots of it. No one is forcing us to use anything we don’t want to (like other OS’s). Linux lets us create an Operating System subtle and personal for our individual needs. So since Ubuntu IS the core of mint, I will always be interested in new technologies Canonical may present to us.

Saying that, I’ve found Mint more of a joy to use as it feels less “official” and the community appear to keep to the ethics of Ubuntu, and for that, I see no wonder why Mint is (at the moment) the most popular. Join us in http://www.n00bsonUbuntu.net one of the admin seems slightly obsessed with Unity, so there are often tongue-in-cheek discussions on IRC.

Once a ‘Classic’ interface is given as a choice along with Unity I see Ubuntu’s share rising. I don’t know why Team Ubuntu can’t give its users the choice of using either UIs or using both user inter faces. Mark, please step in so Team Ubuntu shows some flexibility.

IMPORTANT QUESTION:

With what software those charts were produced?

Thank you in advance.

Whatever. I don’t care what the stats say. I hate Unity. I’m still using 10.10, but I don’t know where I’m going from here. I suspect lots of people like me are in a holding pattern with Linux.

Unity sucks, Ubuntu’s new softer-center is very slow.
Fedora 16 with gnome shell is Great!
now using Mint in gnome shell mod, but the softer-center is slow too.

What sunk Ubuntu for me was Shuttleworth’s Love it or Leave it attitude about Unity. So I left it for Linux Mint, who seems to be listening to their customers complaints.

In my case, I started in the Linux world, as a lot of people with Ubuntu, and then switched to Linux Mint because I liked its design and look & feel.
Using it as my daily and working desktop, I decided to try LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) to be “closer” to the “root” of linux spirit, but without to many disadvantages (compared to full and native Debian desktop).
But, Gnome 2 started to look really old and not up-to-date, not stylish compared to modern applications.

So, I switched to Fedora 16 with Gnome 3.2, and I honestly don’t regret at all my choice. It’s “work efficient”, nice, modern and not as buggy as Unity ! (at least on my hardware)

I now feel closer to Fedora spirit than ubuntu one’s, and even more after reading that Canonical don’t share and participate to community as others do.

When you SLAM the door closed on the ubuntu community as shuttleworth has done, his message is loud and clear. Being trapped in his little grey box was not for me, i since moved on to Mint. Unity has brought down shuttleworths ubuntu to the point if he does not open his eyes and realize just what has happened its over. The biggest indicator of his narrow mindedness is the fact of the 5 year LTS now. Ubutnu could have stayed at the top with the support from its community and as with any marriage there is compromise to be successful, but its quite clear shuttleworth has filed for divorce.

Distrowatch shouldn’t be used to judge a distros popularity. Even says that on the website. ” They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.” My source http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity . Next time dig a little deeper before making a comparison.

As someone already pointed out, you used “ubuntu linux” instead of “ubuntu” in google trends. If I make a chart of “ubuntu”, “ubuntu linux” and “linux mint”, I get a chart where the latter two seem almost equal because “ubuntu” soars so high.

Like this: http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=ubuntu+linux,linux+mint,ubuntu&date=all&geo=all&graph=weekly_img&sort=0&sa=N

As for distrowatch, it’s so inaccurate I won’t even dig into it.

Well… Add me into this camp.

Just did an install of Linux onto a virtual machine for a project; after loading/deleting the latest Ubuntu (yecch), I have switched to Mint for the time being… Was always happy with Ubuntu til now.

These guys are pulling a RIM (bad) move here. I have work to do and want the interface I am familar with to work against, period.

Why not allow their new (crappy) interface as an install option vs. the default. They are brain-dead if they think they will make any traction against Android in the tablet space.

Just my 2 cents.//GH

Unity as a desktop is a COMPLETE FAIL shuttleworth knows it … and he knows it because he never intended it to be a DESKTOP interface … canonical is working out the bugs for their upcoming tablet and telephone interface and forcing their loyal followers to suffer through the failures and bugs … ubuntus goal is to monetize it’s customers … i can’t blame them , they are running a business … but what they will be essentially doing is watering down the OS reducing the amount of usable programs in it , then giving you an easy way to get to an APP store to purchase apps that will bring back the functionality that they broke on purpose so they could get paid for it …. i personally will NEVER again use a ubuntu based distro , Mark can suck it

I got Xubuntu running on the laptop and Ubuntu 10.4 LTS on the desktop. I’m grabbing a copy of Mint 12 now to see how that is once the 10.4 LTS support is dropped. Good bye Unity and any other tablet/phone type OS being shoved on the desktop without thinking. (I’m looking at you Gnome 3 and Windows 8!)

I have used various Linux Distros solemnly since 1998. But Ubuntu was the best. There have been many frustrations during these years but anything was better than windows for me. My problem with the Linux Distros was the feeling that as a desktop os it never really delivered, always something missing or not working, and maybe the worst thing for me was that when something worked on an previous version and then did not work on the next, though I was using the same hardware was continually frustrating and not really serious. In the end it is not about the desktop, it is not about KDE, Gnome or Unity, they should be in the background it is about a desktop with exiting softwares or apps that just simply functions and does the job. I bought a MacBook Pro in June 2010 and never ever looked back on Linux any more. For everybody still believing in Linux, I have only one word for you “ANDROID”.

Ubuntu really missed it with Unity. They need to take a hard look at their test market. From what I have read, it is made up of mostly developers and not daily users including the business user market which I think they totally ignored.

I have been a fan of Ubuntu for years but not pinguy and mint have my attention.

I think the new interface is the next thing, and you would have to be a total idiot not to be able to change it.
Although you could get one of those other operating systems and just deal with the crap programs available and all kinds of cost and virus’s
Ubuntu Rocks!!!! if you don’t like it….. don’t use it.

The fact is from new linux user (I am trying linux in august 2011), i search in google and found distrowacth website. First try is ubuntu 11.04 , but unity make very confuse. I try Mint 11 , and very comfort with that.
You must know the the most OS use to view distrowacth is MS windows ( about 46 %, source :http://distrowatch.com/awstats/ ). Be number 1 is attracting new linux user who swicth from MS to try that distribution.

IMHO it’s complete nonsense to compare the popularity and total usage of different distributions by looking at meaningless statistics from a useless website like distrowatch. I’m using linux for 5 years now, from opensuse, ubuntu, opensuse, debian, fedora to finally ubuntu again. In this whole time I’ve been ONE SINGLE TIME on distrowatch.com, namely when this whole discussion about the sinking popularity of ubuntu started. And, when visiting this site I have not visited the ubuntu page at distrowatch.com, because.. why should I? Instead I visited pages from other distributions I’m not familiar with. I doubt the usefulness of this whole discussion and especially the rankings at distrowatch. Or is anybody out there, saying “hey, I’m using distribution X, so let’s motherf***ing click the shit out of its distrowatch page!!”

Are these bogus anti-Ubuntu campaigns machined by Microsoft..?

By the way, Microsoft is also “declining”:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=microsoft

I have been using Linux from ~1997, starting with slakware and ending up with Ubuntu as my main distribution somewhere around 2005, in between trying a few including Mandrake/Mandriva, Fedora and CentOS (Mandrake and CentOS for quite a length of time for serious work). Did I ever been to Distrowatch? Naah. I have been more than happy with Ubuntu, ever since, often feeling withdrawal pains when the official work forces switching to Windows and/or CentOS for tool compatibility (EDA tools etc.). Did I try Mint? Yes, when 11.04 came out and with all these hew and cry, and coupled with the unfamiliarity of the new interface, I did install the Mint. But did I stick with Mint Big No. I didn’t see enough there, except the hype! Why? Once I got my basic launchers and shell short cuts setup, it really didn’t matter what distro was there! Not to mention Cairo Dock which I chanced upon on the way. Then 11.10 came out. With a little tinkering (a 9 virtual desktop and some mouse gestures for desktop switching, Cairo) and Unity, I never had a more functional desktop. I did install all the Mint goodies from the Mint by adding Repo including Mint Desktop. How many times I logged into Mint desktop? 4.

Yes. Lots of little annoyances with Ubuntu, then the Unity thing. So I was stickign with the 10.04 LTS release. Then had some issues w/ a web app I wanted to use… and ditched it. Went back to plain old Debian (stable/squeeze here at work and testing/wheezy at home). Wheezy at home just “upgraded” to Gnome 3, so I’ve purged that and gone to KDE …

I love linux, it’s fast, secure, stable, etc. I’ve been using for years. I’ve gone from Yggdrasil, to Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, to Ubuntu with some in between. I HATE, friggen HATE unity. I’m trying Mint 12.1 right now. Die UNITY, DIE!

Please support this petition!!!

Give us back the Classical Ubuntu Gnome Desktop!

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/ubuntu

Part of it also may be that Mint is just more user-friendly. Mint doesn’t make it a pain in the ass to install proprietary software, which can include fully functional video and wireless drivers that are essential to a complete computing experience. That’s not to mention Java – the proprietary version of the JRE still outperforms the open-source version substantially and that’s come to matter thanks to the new wave of cross-platform Java games (Minecraft, most notably).

These things aren’t impossible to set up in Ubuntu, or even that hard for a savvy user, but Mint is completely painless and otherwise sports most of what makes Ubuntu great (by way of deriving from it). Any time someone asks me which distro to start off with as a new user, I tell them Ubuntu if they care about open-source, otherwise Mint; predictably, most go with Mint, and love it.

Unity turned off a lot of long-time Ubu fans, yes, and that matters too. Personally I left it for Arch last year, but that’s primarily because I was ready to ditch the training wheels and secondarily because I wanted to play with Gnome 3 and Ubuntu didn’t support it properly (which is tangentially related to Unity). I’m not looking back, but I am still fond of Ubu.

Moved away from Ubuntu because of Unity.

Whoah, hat’s a lot of comments… Many relevant things already have been pointed out by others — though IMHO not strongly enough.

I hardly need to mention as well how little meaning the Distrowatch numbers convey. They aren’t even *close* to being representative — all they tell is which distribution is most hip as of late; and while this certainly has some relation to trends in uptake, it tells virtually nothing about actual market share. (BTW, the difference between 3 months an 1 month data is mostly because Fedora and OpenSUSE usually release somewhat later than Ubuntu, so there was more buzz there this last month…)

The Google numbers are a bit more telling. As people pointed out, the numbers are heavily skewed though, because of “Ubuntu Linux” as a search term — hardly anyone uses that. This effect also exists for most other distributions, but less pronounced: leaving out “Linux” in the terms produces quite a different picture. While Mint is indeed strongly on the rise, the total number hardly shows up at all compared to Ubuntu, or even Debian and Fedora. What’s more, if you compare against the general trend for “Linux”, you will see that Ubuntu hasn’t really declined at all over the past few years. Perhaps even more importantly (and more to the topic), there is no significant drop since Unity…

For yet more useful numbers, take a look at Alexa rankings for the project sites. Pretty much the same picture: Mint strongly on the rise, but at an extremely low level; Ubuntu and other major distributions hardly changed. The only remarkable observation is that Fedora has a visible increase since last year. So maybe there is indeed a number of defections from Ubuntu to Fedora, which makes a significant difference to Fedora’s low share — but hardly having an impact on Ubuntu’s numbers…

Also note that this upward trend for Fedora started before Unity. What’s more, if the trend was due to a preference of Gnome3 over Unity, why is there no comparable rise for OpenSUSE, which also ships with Gnome3 AFAIK?…

All in all, Ubuntu’s loss of dominance seems very small (so far at least — the change in mindshare could of course have a larger impact with time…); and it doesn’t really seem like Unity is a major factor there either.

Jubilado con 65 años, hace quatro que no sabia abrir un ordenador. Banesto me regaló un Portátil Compac de 15″ de 1 GB RAM y 100 GB d.d. con Windows Vista. Me volvía loco y al medio año compre un sobremesa con Windows 7. Al medio año, empecé a experimentar con el viejo W-Vista, y fuí probando diferentes distros GNU/Linux, al final dudaba -como principiante- entre LinuxMint y Ubuntu. Me decidí finalmente por Ubuntu al que he seguido hasta 11.04 Gnome Clasic. He probado tres veces el Unity, y lo siento, no lo trago. He probado LinuxMint 16 Lisa y Fedora 16, pero no me acaban de convencer, y es que mientras, he usado Xubuntu con escritorio Xfce original y me encanta, cada día me gusta más, ademas tengo todo el repositorio Ubuntu, y el viejo cacharro, corre que se las pela. El Xfce original, es mucho mas claro y limpio que el de Xubuntu. Es lo ma parecido a “mi” clasic, ¿será por qué seré un clásico? Seguro, me encantan los Ferraris….aunque sea para salir a pasear. No me hce falta competir para disfrutarlo…como disfruto con mi Xubuntu con Xfce original, pero este corre mas que el Ferrari.

Long time Ubuntu user who recently gave up and switched to Linux Mint. Unity has been a major failure. Ubuntu should change back the UI to 9.x standards; I would be back in the camp then.

I’ve been with Ubuntu since ‘Dapper Drake’, but like many other people I switched to Mint as a result of the Unity interface – but not so much because of the interface itself (which is easily changed) but because of Canonical’s ‘you’ll take it and damn well like it’ approach to their users. In how Mint is going about preparing for Gnome 3 they show themselves to have a genuine interest in their users.

Mint has not surpassed Ubuntu. How ridiculous. And no I am not even an Ubuntu fan.

Confirms my experience. I’ve tried them all. Stability, since 6.04, has gone down and problems that didn’t exist, started appearing. Some fixes were quick, but the none-fixable “bugs” keep growing. Then they’re on to the next SIX MONTH version.Some bugs go away, replaced by many new ones. Really stupid release cycle. Micro Soft takes years, and still the most wildly used OS is TEN YEARS OLD -(XP)!
Just think about it for a moment, six months development vs six years.
Canonical just does not get it. People complain, but they do not listen. They are too busy making the next version even worse.
THERE IS NO WAY TO BUILD SOMETHING SO COMPLICATED IN SIX MONTHS AND HAVE IT WORK WELL!

It seems that the majority of commenters here are Linux desktop users. I personally don’t care for Linux on the desktop, since that’s not where it shines. I say, use the right tool for the job. Linux is a great server OS, and that’s what it’ll always be for me. Enough with the debates about window managers and whatnot, because those things don’t matter. What matters are the lower-level OS enhancements, the support for software development, stability, and ease of administration. Which translates to the kernel and user-space libraries; which languages and versions thereof are supported; availability and recoverability; and of course the maturity of the tools available for configuring and maintaining an installation such that it’s secure, easy to manage, and easy to update/upgrade. Script kiddies get out of my way.

I don’t understand why people hate (or claim to hate) Unity so much. It is the best linux interface I’ve seen, yet. It had problems initially, and is still incomplete, but I think it has the most potential. It is consistent, simple, and given a few tweaks could become elegantly powerful.

The family together, with Debian (the father) and the “big” brother Ubuntu and “little sister” Mint, take all the lion’s share in linux distros. My wish is that these three distros interact in much better and productive ways, as to they can be improved, according to the needs of users. There are many efforts being repeated, it’s like re-inventing the wheel or like wasting efforts. I hope that all the best features get re-united into one great distro, including stability, beauty, functionality.

Unity sucks. It made a very good full-fledged computer interface into a cell-phone screen. Irritating to navigate and get around and do work. Don’t know what button to push and what option will pop out. Seems like a mysterious mess.

It is very good for netbooks (and small notebooks) but on others, it sucks. Better switch to Ultimate edition linux 3.0. It uses good old Gnome 2.32.

Ubuntu should release Gnome CD too.

Compare the two graphs showing the percentage distributions of the various distros, one containing Ubuntu (Gnome) and another containing all the flavors of Ubuntu combined. The graph containing Gnome has fallen down to almost nothing, but all-flavor graph was still decent, the others’ percentage more or less stagnant. Only Ubuntu Gnome fell because it used unity. See for yourselves.
Graph 1:
http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ubuntu-mint.0022.jpg

Graph 2:
http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ubuntu-mint.003.jpg

I don’t agree at all that Mint or Fedora will overcome Ubuntu. After all Mint was built on Ubuntu. I have Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora and Debian all on my Notebook in addition to Windows. Of all, I like Ubuntu most even with Unity. I don’t think latest GNOME interface was at all better received by users than Unity. All what you need to do is to install CAIRO or DOCKY and add the shortcuts for your preferred programs. A distribution is not about interface, but is rather about stability, speed, availability of packages (programs), ease of installation and availability of updates. Now is your turn to tell me who is best in all of theses? Bliss Canonical.We have to show appreciation and gratitude!

I’ve been using Ubuntu since 6.04 and always enjoyed when a new release came out, at least until 11.04. I found it to be to buggy, and not customizable enough. I didn’t have time to find a suitable replacement so I stuck it out until 11.10. After using 11.10 I switched to Mint, and that is where I am now. My main concern now is what am I going to do with the friends computers on which I installed the last long term release of Ubuntu. When it no longer is supported after April this year I am probably going to have to do a clean install of Mint rather than try to force them to use this radically redesigned crap.

The major exodus from Ubuntu to Linux Mint is because Mint has working projects to keep Gnome 2 alive as long as possible and to make Gnome 3 a more reasonable DE. All flavors that are heavy into Gnome are having pains because the new Gnome 3 is lacking, putting it mildly. Ubuntu is making matters worse by turning its flagship desktop distribution into a small appliance operating system with its default Unity desktop.

It’s bad enough that the linux community, in general, is in turmoil because of the new and “declining” Gnome 3 DE. Ubuntu, turning it’s flagship desktop release into the joke of the linux world only makes matters worse.

The top Ubuntu developer believes the home desktop and the office workstation is going the way of the kiwi and is doing his share to make that happen … at our expense. They can have their OS and philosophy. This is linux. There will always be an alternative to everything and the current desktop scenario is not going to disappear. Both Ubuntu and Gnome will pay for their insistence that it will.