12 Millions Ubuntu Users

Canonical reported that there are 12 Millions active users for their Linux distribution, Ubuntu. In 2008 Canonical estimated 8 Millions users, this means a grow of 50% in the last two years.

Chris Kenyon, vice president for OEM at Canonical said: "We have no phone home or registration process, so it’s always a guesstimate. But based on the same methodology that we came up with for the 2008 number, our present belief is that it’s somewhere north of 12 million users at the moment".

(CC-BY sfllaw)

The users population is small if compared with recent statistics of Red Hat's Fedora, estimated to 24 Millions installations.

Linux distributions like Red Hat's Fedora use the Smolt system which counts the users based on the number of unique IP addresses that get updates.