Over the last few years, various figures have been put forth as measures of Ubuntu’s desktop market share, with some sources contradicting themselves and most sources contradicting the other ones. Below, we take a look at different attempts to put a number on Ubuntu’s popularity, and explore the various shortcomings and ambiguities involved in all of them.

It goes without saying that there are a lot of difficulties inherent in attempts not just to measure Ubuntu’s market share, but to define what “market share” itself means. For example, are you an Ubuntu user if you install it on an old PC and use it once in a while, or does it need to be your main operating system? What if you dual-boot? Since Ubuntu doesn’t cost money, can it be said to have a share of the operating-system market at all, or does it fit in somewhere else?

What Canonical says