Canonical made its name with Ubuntu on the desktop and is now making a push into the server. Just ahead of its first major server release in two years, the company has released the results of a study on Linux server usage. Linux Planet has the results.
Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, is out with a new study this week looking at how users view and use their server platform.
The Ubuntu Server study comes at an opportune time as the next major release of Ubuntu codenamed the Lucid Lynx is scheduled for release at the end of April. The Lucid release is a major one for Ubuntu as it is the first Long Term Support (LTS) release in two years.
Typical Ubuntu releases come out every six months and have 18 months of support. Ubuntu LTS releases, however, come out every two years and provide three years of support on Ubuntu Desktop, and five years on Ubuntu Server. The last Ubuntu LTS release was the 8.04 release, codenamed the Hardy Heron which made its debut in April 2008.
The new Ubuntu Server study done by Canonical, received responses from 2,650 people and shows the relative importance of an LTS release over a regular non-LTS release. The study found that there were more users of the 8.04 LTS release than there were for the more recent 8.10, 9.04 and 9.10 releases. The most recent Ubuntu 9.10 release, codenamed the Karmic Koala.