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Ubuntu is growing faster on Windows 11 than on native Linux PCs, says Canonical
(www.windowslatest.com)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
At some point, Canonical became just another corporation.
Other than keeping their desktop FOSS (a requirement) nothing they do follows the core principles of Open Source anymore.
IMO of course.
I agree, they did help Linux 20 years ago, I started using Linux with Ubuntu in 2005, it's sad IMO that they're no longer much of a benefit to Linux. They ruined everything with their dual license shit, and trying to do internally behind closed doors, what other projects were working on, for instance when they made MIR to compete with Wayland. And their Snap package system that is proprietary doesn't help Linux either.
They've made so many bad decisions that have been detrimental to both themselves and Linux as a whole. And since 2010 their popularity has been steadily declining.
I suspect their plan was to dominate Linux and become a de facto standard for using Linux. Instead they aren't even close to the most popular distro anymore.
On Steam survey they rank 7, and on DistroWatch they rank 10 on page hit ranking for 12 months and 1 month. And on a reddit they ranks 8 as of 2025.
DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking:
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
Steam Harware survey:
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
Reddit stat:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1sta2pu/oc_linux_distro_rankings_over_time/#lightbox
It's sad because Ubuntu had a very strong start, But Mark Shuttleworth wanted to maintain control of code that was used to improve Ubuntu, and introduced the dual license for Ubuntu projects, so Canonical could close up further developments any time they wanted. Meaning Ubuntu/Canonical became untrustworthy as maintainers of anything open source.
Luckily we now have other supporters like Valve now. And it is very telling that Ubuntu is no-longer the #1 goto distro for commercial projects.