Canonical switched Ubuntu over to the Unity user interface, and a correlation seems to have occurred between this and a slump in its usage numbers. Royal Pingdom has recently compiled data from DistroWatch which seems to confirm what many have been saying about Ubuntus popularity: The number of hits to DistroWatch’s Ubuntu page is down 47% over the last 30 days, where Mint is up 105%. Note that the statistics are based on the normal amount of traffic for 2010, and that DistroWatch itself has doubled in size this year. What it means is that overall there’s been a decline in users searching for Ubuntu Linux, and also a huge rise in those users searching for Linux Mint.
Of course this doesnt necessarily mean that Ubuntu installations are down 47%, just that hits to DistroWatch’s Ubuntu page have reduced significantly. This is especially true in comparison to Mint, which is decidedly on the upswing. Other sources of data (Google Trends included) seem to also show a slump in Ubuntu’s popularity, spiking about the time of the announcement of Unity running on Ubuntu 11.04 (which went live this past April).
What could be causing this decline? The metrics of how DistroWatch records site visits may have something to do with the answer, but it cant accord for it all. Ubuntu has been sailing its ship away from the general Linux community for a while, and crazy exchanges with long-time users and develoeprs, which make Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntus head, look like an iron-fisted ruler who allows no discussion as to the direction Ubuntu is taking, do not help. He says in that bug report, among other things, if you dont like Ubuntus path, €œthen dont use it.€ Its a heated issue, and it seems obvious that Shuttleworth is pushing Ubuntu this way and steamrolling, at least some, criticism.
At the recent Ubuntu Open Week, Shuttleworth steered conversation away (he’s “sabdfl”) from the conflict happening amongst the community and pushed a pretty forward-looking agenda of Ubuntu on mobile devices. When asked specifically about Ubuntu’s slipping popularity, he wrote “kudos to mint for the jump in ratings, i’m glad Ubuntu has great derivatives, and i’m confident unity will remain the top desktop environment for years to come.” Courteous, but not exactly addressing the issue.
The million dollar question is, of course, whether or not Unity really is the number one desktop environment for Linux right now, with Mints meteoric rise. But for the purpose of this story, a more important issue should be raised.
Why Unity? Why the push against the dev community?
Its been said before that “Linux is Linux is Linux” and the only difference between them was the desktop environment and flavor of software packaging tool. With the desktop space in the wake of Windows and OS X being a cutthroat place to try and eke out a profit, distinguishing yourself from the pack is good for business. That being said, Canonicals impetus to make Ubuntu a competitor in the mobile space makes revenue a more likely fulcrum for change. Its plain to see from the various commentary and logs that, outwardly at least, Canonical is 100% happy with Unity and believe in the changes that are driving Ubuntu to look and feel different than the handful of other Linux distributions that are out there.
Also, pushing out a mobile distribution would, in theory, unlock a revenue stream from licensing and support that Canonical could surely use. With the word on the street being the imminent demise of the desktop due to the rise of the tablet, Canonical may just be reinventing itself in order to weather a storm thats going to change the industry. If thats the case, though, there are perhaps better ways to approach such a change and more cooperative methods to incorporate it.
What if Shuttleworth is about to run Ubuntu aground while scanning the horizon for the next big thing? Is Canonical, its user base, and development community strong enough to carry the distribution over these troubled waters?
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