here is the way it turned the most well-liked anyway
Ubuntu was my first distro. I began with 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa and am nonetheless working it to at the present time, making an attempt out each long-term assist model alongside the way in which. The motive why I selected Ubuntu? It was in all places.
I’ve additionally used a number of different distros. From the traditional Debian to the area of interest Kali Linux for safety of us. And on the finish of the day, I return to Ubuntu every time I must get the job executed. It works nearly all of the time.
Now, whereas browsing on-line communities, I’ve seen a variety of hate for the distro as effectively. In most circumstances, these are legit criticisms. Despite all that, it is secure to say that it nonetheless stands as one of the most popular Linux distros of all time. Today, I’d wish to unfold the story of how Ubuntu reached that peak.
Ubuntu made Linux simple to get earlier than it made it nice
Free CDs within the mail and a cheeky “Bug #1” put it in folks’s palms in 2004
When Mark Shuttleworth introduced Ubuntu 4.10 “Warty Warthog” on October 20, 2004, he provided to ship you the CD at no cost. You might even ask for a handful to offer to your pals or your faculty. They known as it the ShipIt program. If you are from that point, you understand how tedious it was to get Linux in your machine on account of gradual web.
Unfortunately, the ShipIt program came to an end in April 2011. They nonetheless distributed CDs in Ubuntu Local Communities and at occasions. By this time, Ubuntu had unfold by miles, having despatched hundreds of thousands of copies of CDs. Moreover, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, nonetheless permitted you to repeat and redistribute CDs by yourself.
You even have to think about who Ubuntu was competing towards on the time of its launch. It was Windows. Two months earlier than that first launch, Shuttleworth filed Bug #1 on Launchpad, with the title: “Microsoft has a majority market share.” With a promise of free software program for everybody and to unshackle them from the palms of massive software program firms, Shuttleworth’s pitch resonated with the neighborhood.
Once software program focused Ubuntu, new customers saved touchdown on it
Tutorials, instructional establishments, and even Steam assumed you ran Ubuntu
So, that was folks’s gateway to get into Canonical’s software program system. But what made them keep or adapt? That’s one other story to discover. Gradually, Ubuntu did not simply acquire recognition; it turned the default selection in lots of locations. When folks talked about Linux, they kind of considered Ubuntu.
Developers needed to goal the place customers had been hanging out. Users, then again, needed to observe the builders to obtain most assist. It was like a snowball impact.
Steam is a well-liked instance of that. When Valve released Steam for Linux on February 14, 2013, it arrived via the Ubuntu Software Center with a easy tagline: greatest skilled on Ubuntu. During the beta, Ubuntu 12.04 was the one model Valve formally focused. If you wished to sport on Linux again then, Valve was principally telling you to install Ubuntu.
Ubuntu’s largest wins occurred away from the desktop
Cloud servers, Windows, and CentOS’s exit saved it in all places
In April 2017, Shuttleworth ended Canonical’s investment in Unity8 and its telephone ambitions, and moved Ubuntu again to GNOME for 18.04 LTS. He even admitted he “was incorrect on each counts” about convergence. In the identical submit, he pointed the corporate at cloud and IoT, claiming most public cloud workloads already rely upon Ubuntu.
According to Canonical’s latest accounts filed with UK Companies House, its earnings grew 18% to $345 million in 2025. The majority of it comes from recurring software program and assist subscriptions. You can assume from this that Ubuntu’s primary target might not be desktop users within the first place.
When CentOS was retired, Linux became fragmented into alternatives. The CentOS Project shifted its focus to CentOS Stream in December 2020, and CentOS Linux 7, the final model, reached finish of life on June 30, 2024. In OpenLogic’s 2025 State of Open Source survey, Ubuntu was the highest deliberate vacation spot for CentOS customers in all places besides Europe.
Now, you may argue that it was solely deliberate, and might’t measure the true migration end result. Still, when servers wanted a free and predictable new house, Ubuntu was the simple reply.
Ubuntu loses the place folks select, and wins the place they do not
Gamers moved to CachyOS and SteamOS, however builders and firms nonetheless default to Ubuntu
Here’s the place it will get much more fascinating. When it involves Linux fanatics selecting their distro, Ubuntu will not be on the high. In the September 2026 Steam survey, CachyOS got here out on high, with 18.12% utilization amongst Linux techniques. SteamOS ran on 17.37%. Add up all three Ubuntu entries, and also you get simply 8%. That’s lower than plain Arch Linux at 10.67%.
However, whenever you have a look at the skilled situation, issues are totally different. In Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, 27.7% {of professional} builders named Ubuntu as their major OS. That’s far forward of another named distro. On servers, OpenLogic’s survey tells the identical story, with Ubuntu nonetheless essentially the most used enterprise Linux distro. Funnily, Microsoft can be an enormous assist right here. If you arrange the Windows Subsystem for Linux with the wsl –install command, Ubuntu is what you get by default.
So, Ubuntu is not actually profitable the recognition contest. It wins when another person, reminiscent of a company, an employer, an educator, or a cloud host, makes the decision as an alternative of the regular Linux user.
Ubuntu would not must be one of the best to be the place everybody begins
I went from 20.04 to 22.04, then 24.04, and now 26.04. Along the way in which, I attempted many different popular Linux distros. Some of them positively outperform Ubuntu. Yet, I’m nonetheless right here working it as a result of, effectively, it is the default selection. And when you’re caught in your first decide, Linux Mint vs Ubuntu is an effective start line.
