Ubuntu was awarded the Reader Award for best Linux distribution at the 2005
LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in London, received favourable reviews in online and print publications, and has won
InfoWorld's 2007 Bossie Award for
Best Open Source Client OS. In early 2008,
PC World named Ubuntu the "best all-around Linux distribution available today", though it criticized the lack of an integrated desktop effects manager. Chris DiBona, the program manager for open-source software at Google, said "I think Ubuntu has captured people's imaginations around the Linux desktop," and "If there is a hope for the Linux desktop, it would be them". , almost half of Google's 20,000 employees used
Goobuntu, a slightly modified version of Ubuntu. In March 2016, Matt Hartley picked a list of best Linux distributions for
Datamation; he chose Ubuntu as number one. In 2008,
Jamie Hyneman, co-host of the American television series
MythBusters, advocated Linux (giving the example of Ubuntu) as a solution to
software bloat. Other celebrity users of Ubuntu include science fiction writer
Cory Doctorow and actor
Stephen Fry. In January 2014, the UK's authority for computer security,
CESG, reported that
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was "the only operating system that passes as many as 9 out of 12 requirements without any significant risks", though it was unclear if any other Linux distributions were tested.
Installed base As Ubuntu is distributed freely and historically, there was no registration process (still optional), Ubuntu usage can only be roughly estimated. In 2015, Canonical's Ubuntu Insights page stated, "Ubuntu now has over 40 million desktop users and counting". W3Techs Web Technology Surveys estimated in November 2020 that: • Ubuntu is by far the most popular
Linux distribution for running
web servers; of the websites they analyse it is "used by 47.3% of all the websites who use Linux", and Ubuntu alone powers more websites than
Microsoft Windows, which powers 28.2% of all websites, or 39% of the share Unix has (which includes Linux and thus Ubuntu). All Linux/Unix distributions in total power well over twice the number of hosts as Windows for websites based on W3Techs numbers. Ubuntu and Debian only (which Ubuntu is based on, with the same package manager and thus administered the same way) make up 65% of all Linux distributions for web serving use; the usage of Ubuntu surpassed Debian (for such
server use) in May 2016. • Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution among the top 1,000 sites and gains around 500 of the top 10 million websites per day. W3Techs analyses the top 10 million websites only.
Wikimedia Foundation data (based on
user agent) for September 2013 shows that Ubuntu generated the most page requests to Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia, among recognizable Linux distributions. , Ubuntu 22.04 is used in Microsoft NDv5, a
Microsoft's Azure cloud computer, its fastest one (of 7 Azure supercomputers, all running on Ubuntu), still fastest ever Microsoft computer, currently 5th fastest, previously in November 2024, 3rd fastest
supercomputer on the
TOP500 list (only then beaten by the then only two exaflop computers; is itself half an
exaflop, only the then top 3 were that powerful). Other supercomputers running Ubuntu also rank high on the list e.g. NVIDIA's Selene supercomputer still ranks highly, and was fifth-fastest one in the world in November 2022 after an upgrade from seventh place, where it entered the list in June. Another Nvidia-based supercomputer using Ubuntu previously topped the
Green500 list (it and the next one was also Ubuntu-based), a list which is a reordering of former list, ordered by power-efficiency. On the TOP500 list, that supercomputer was ranked 170nd (and many Ubuntu-based rank higher than that).
Large-scale deployments The public sector has also adopted Ubuntu. , the Ministry of Education and Science of
North Macedonia deployed more than 180,000 Ubuntu-based classroom desktops, and has encouraged every student in the country to use Ubuntu-powered computer workstations; the Spanish school system has 195,000 Ubuntu desktops. By March 2009, the
Gendarmerie Nationale had already switched 5,000 workstations to Ubuntu. In 2004, the city of
Munich, Germany, started the
LiMux project, and later forked Kubuntu 10.04 LTS for use on the city's computers. After originally planning to migrate 12,000 desktop computers to LiMux, it was announced in December 2013 that the project had completed successfully with the migration of 14,800 out of 15,500 desktop computers, but still keeping about 5,000 Windows clients for unported applications. In February 2017 the majority coalition decided, against heavy protest from the opposition, to evaluate the migration back to Windows, after Microsoft had decided to move its company headquarters to Munich. Governing Mayor
Dieter Reiter cited lack of compatibility with systems outside of the administrative sector, such as requiring a governmental
mail server to send e-mails to his personal
smartphone, as reasons for the return, but has been criticised for evaluating administrative IT based on private and business standards. In May 2020, the recently elected
Alliance 90/The Greens party and the
Social Democrat party negotiated a new coalition agreement, stating: "Where it is technologically and financially possible, the city will emphasize open standards and free open-source licensed software". In March 2012, the government of Iceland launched a project to get all public institutions using free and open-source software. Already, several government agencies and schools have adopted Ubuntu. The government cited cost savings as a big factor for the decision, and also stated that open-source software avoids
vendor lock-in. A 12-month project was launched to migrate the biggest public institutions in Iceland to using open-source software, and help ease the migration for others. US president
Barack Obama's successful
campaign for re-election in 2012 used Ubuntu in its IT department. In August 2014, the city of
Turin, Italy, announced its migration from
Windows XP to Ubuntu for the 8,300 desktop computers used by the municipality, becoming the first city in Italy to adopt Ubuntu. Starting in 2008, the
Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization behind
Wikipedia, switched from multiple different Linux operating systems to Ubuntu (in 2019, it switched again, from Ubuntu to
Debian). During the 2010s, some Tesla
Model S owners, discovered via little hack that the
touchscreen computer for entertainment and navigation assistance, runs on an adapted version of Ubuntu.
32-bit "deprecation" controversy In June 2019, Canonical announced that they would be deprecating support for
32-bit applications and libraries in Ubuntu 19.10. Because
Steam's Linux client depends on these 32-bit libraries,
Valve announced that they would no longer be supporting Ubuntu. After uproar from the Linux gaming community, Canonical backtracked on this decision and decided to support select 32-bit libraries. As a result, Valve decided that Steam would support Ubuntu 19.10 again.
Wine needs most of the same 32-bit library packages that the Steam package depends on, and more, to enable its version of
WoW64 to run 32-bit Windows applications. The parts of Wine that would continue to function without 32-bit libraries would be limited to the subset of Windows applications that have a 64-bit version, removing decades of Windows compatibility. In Canonical's statement on bringing back the libraries, they mentioned using "container technology" in the future to make sure that Wine continues to function.
Conformity with European data privacy law Soon after being introduced in 2012, doubts emerged on the conformance of the
shopping lens (a feature that displays Amazon suggestions in the searching tool
Unity Dash) with the European
Data Protection Directive. A petition was later signed and delivered to Canonical demanding various modifications to the feature to clearly frame it within European law. Canonical did not reply. In 2013, a formal complaint on the shopping lens was filed with the
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK data privacy office. Almost one year later, the ICO ruled in favour of Canonical, considering the various improvements introduced to the feature conformed with the
Data Protection Directive. According to European rules, this ruling is automatically effective in the entirety of the European Union. However, the ruling also made clear that at the time of introduction the feature was not legal, among other things, since it was missing a privacy policy statement.
System terminal advertising controversies Ubuntu has integrated increasing quantities of advertising into the operating system's terminal, leading to multiple controversies with its user base. In 2017, Canonical placed a message regarding HBO's Silicon Valley in the
MOTD file, causing the message to be shown whenever a terminal session started. Over the following years, more messages would be placed into the MOTD. In 2022, ads for Ubuntu's premium service, Ubuntu Advantage, were introduced into the apt system update utility. This move caused controversy in the user community, with some users considering advertising a fair business model to support development, while other users found the inclusion inappropriate and annoying. == Local communities (LoCos) ==