According to DesktopLinux.com's just completed survey, the number of Desktop Linux users has more than doubled in the past year, and Ubuntu remains their Linux distribution of choice.See the entire story
30 percent of our survey respondents are using Ubuntu. Next in popularity, after the ever-popular Ubuntu family, comes the SUSE Linux family with 21 percent. In our survey, we found mostly openSUSE users (19.7 percent) with a scattering of SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) users (1.3 percent). This isn't too surprising, since our preliminary analysis of our survey data showed that the majority of our respondents were individual rather than corporate users.
It's also noteworthy that the SUSE Linuxes have taken a major step forward. In 2006 survey, the SUSE family came in a distant second place with only 13 percent of the user base. In terms of year-over-year growth, openSUSE and SLED were the real winners, in fact, with a jump of 8 percentage points. The Ubuntu family, by comparison, built on its lead by only 1.2 percent.
The Linux desktop is gaining quickly in popularity, and it's not because of technology-happy fans. It's gaining users because it's an inexpensive, secure, and efficient alternative to today's mainstream desktop operating systems. After all, 38,000 plus users and two major PC companies can't be wrong.
For the full results of our survey, see the raw data on the DesktopLinux.com survey site.
