Yesterday the Ubuntu development team released their first public beta of an Ubuntu Installer for Windows! You are really capable of thinking differently, and this will be one of the real “killer apps” out there. It has never been simpler for people that want to test or run Linux, to get it downloaded and installed. You impress me!

Be aware of this being a beta. If you want to test it, make sure to backup all your data first!

Yesterday I also read an interview with Mark Shuttleworth at Red Herring, where he claims that Ubuntu has about 8 million users. This surely doesn’t fit well in to the numbers I wrote in “How the OS market changed in 2006“. But then again, it fits better with this:

In a speech in December 2004, Steve Ballmer put the number of Microsoft users at 600 millions. In that same year, the Gartner Group estimates the number of PC users at around 661 millions (according to an CNet article in August 2004), growing to 953 millions by the end of 2008, and a billion in 2009. So that puts us at around 825 million PC users around now, late 2006.

According to the w3schools web site, in November 2006 the OS market share of Windows was 86.1%, 3.3% for Linux, and 3.5% for Mac (and for July 2004 , it was 90.5% Windows, 3.1% Linux and 2.4% Mac). Remember that previously in 2004 we found that there were 600 million Windows users out of 661 millions? So that gives us a market share of 90.7% of Windows computers in 2004.

That 90.7% is close enough to 90.5% for 2004, and both numbers were obtained from two totally different sources, so that I would think that this estimate of w3schools of a 3.3% market share of Linux in November 2006 is a solid figure (solid enough for this rather unscientific blog post).So we now have 3.3% of 825 million PC users. That give us 27.2 million Linux users today. Interestingly the Linux Counter was estimating 29 million Linux users in March 2005. So we are probably within the error bar of both this blog and their analysis.p> To return to Mark Shuttleworth, 8 million Ubuntu users out of 27.2 million Linux users gives Ubuntu a 29% market share of the Linux pie, and a 1% market share of the total number of PC users worldwide. Pretty impressive numbers considering how old the Ubuntu project is.  

It is always fun to play numbers, especially as huge ones as these. No doubt Mark Shuttleworth and his community have done a very good job with Ubuntu and promoting Linux. Will they reach 12 million users with their upcoming Feisty Fawn and the new installer?

Some more information about the Ubuntu Installer for Windows can be found here.