Ubuntu more popular than OS X?

Vai · 24 Oct 2006 at 15:25

Whats up everyone? I was just taking a look at Google Trends and I found out something interesting. Apparently Ubuntu Linux has not only surpassed its major competitor in Linux ( SuSE ) in popularity, as well as the distro it's based off of (Debian) , but it seems to have also surpassed another major competitor. Yes, that's right! Apple Computer's very own Mac OS X has also been defeated in popularity by Ubuntu! Check it out for yourself. Here is a screenshot I took not 15 minutes ago. The blue line you see shooting up to the sky there is Ubuntu itself, while Mac OS, SuSE and Debian seem to all hang around the same general level of popularity. I've purposely left Windows out of this graph because if added, all of these OS's crawl near the bottom of the graph in an almost flat line compared to Windows' wild lead. Just thought this was pretty cool! Free software is definetly making some serious progress.

http://thelinuxadvocate.blogspot.com/

Very interesting, all though it can be argued number of searches on its own isn’t that meaningful, it does make me wonder what the ratio of Ubuntu download’s to OS X sales (including Apple computers) is, and if Ubuntu would still be in the lead

Smit · 24 Oct 2006 at 15:48

I would imagine that Ubuntu has more downloads than OS X has sales, however how many people that have downloaded Ubuntu compared to how many people that have bought OS X might be a different story.

(Reasoning: Many users of Linux wont be afraid to update often and will download a lot of alphas, betas etc which would count in the number of downloads)

freebooter · 24 Oct 2006 at 15:58

Perhaps Mac users don't need to search so often for solutions to problems they are having

FreeStream · 24 Oct 2006 at 16:57

freebooter said:
Perhaps Mac users don't need to search so often for solutions to problems they are having

lol

The user base of OS X has increased over the last two years by quite a lot, and that shows a decrease if anything of OS X searches.

Im not sure thats correct

Fillado · 24 Oct 2006 at 23:03

The people who've downloaded it and continue to use it would be quite a bit smaller compared to the amount of downloads anyway. Since "A Generic Computer User" would most likley get rid of it within a couple of days due to the refresh rate nuking their eyes/their graphics card not using 3D/various other Linux niggly bits.

That's not to say Ubuntu isn't a cracking Linux OS, but that's it, a cracking Linux OS, but not a cracking OS in general...yet.

Al Vallario · 24 Oct 2006 at 23:41

This really doesn't tell us anything about actual operating system usage, it just tells us that there's a lot of buzz surrounding ubuntu linux — which we already knew there was. Although I must say, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more ubuntu linux users than OS X — after all, to take up OS X you have to buy a mac, to use ubuntu linux it's just a quick download.

Then there's the fact that not many people actually refer to MacOS X as "mac os." Most mac users I know refer to the operating system simply as "OS X," and performing the same search with that in place of "mac os" tells us that MacOS X is far more popular than SUSE and Debian, if not anywhere near ubuntu linux. Looking at the language spread it appears the Norweigans are going nuts for ubuntu linux, but "OS X" is by far and away the most popular of the choices in English.

*av