Want to see how popular GNU/Linux is? See Linux-Hardware.org, you can find chart showing how many this operating system installed in the world with percentages of distros. Today, it held 100,000 computer hardware collected in this database by contributors world wide and still counting! This article covers using this website as your simple research and hardware buyer reference as well as how to contribute your Ubuntu computer information to this website so everyone can read and benefit from it. Users of OS other than Ubuntu can also practice this tutorial to contribute. Let's start.

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See Distro Popularity Chart

1. Go to Trends page. 

2. Select "OS Family" choice. 

3. Make sure "All Distros" is selected. 

Chart below displays popularity rankings of 30 distros according to Linux-Hardware.org. It ranks 1st Ubuntu, 2nd ROSA, and 3rd Mint.

See Distro Popularity by Country

1. Go to Trends page. 

2. Select "OS" choice. 

2. Change All Distros choice to "Ubuntu". 

3. A chart of countries displayed with percentages. 

Chart below displays Ubuntu popularity by countries. Change Ubuntu choice with other distro to see that other distro's chart.

See Desktop Environment Popularity

1. Go to Trends page.

2. Select "DE" choice.

3. Make sure "All Distros" selected.

See Laptop Vendor Popularity Chart

1. Go to Find Computers page.

2. Select Type: as "Notebooks".

3. A chart of Netbook Vendors displayed. 

Chart below displays rankings of laptop vendors used by GNU/Linux users. By chart below, 1st rank is Hewlett-Packard, 2nd rank is Dell, and 3rd rank is Lenovo.

Is Your Laptop Suitable to Ubuntu?

Suppose you want to know compatibility rate of your laptop, for example, ASUS Zenbook Pro with Ubuntu. Or suppose you know the laptop and want to buy it but not sure whether it will work or not with GNU/Linux. How to know such information? That is what Linux-Hardware.org for.

1. Go to the website. 

2. On the main page, select "Ubuntu" from Select your Linux distro choice.

3. Click "Tested Computer" and you visited Computers powered by Ubuntu page. 

4. Select Type: "Notebook".

5. Select Vendor: "ASUSTek".

6. Select Model "Zenbook Pro".

7. Click a result from the list, for example, "Zenbook Pro 15".

8. The page of that model will open, ASUSTek Zenbook Pro 15, displaying the operating system, Ubuntu. Click the operating system "Ubuntu".

9. Finally, a page with detailed info of all hardware of the laptop model, ASUSTek Zenbook Pro 15, will open. Here you can see each of all hardware devices, such as wifi and GPU, whether they are working or malfunctioning. If you see more "works" and "detected" statuses, it means that this laptop model is generally works and fine with Ubuntu.

Steps above are applicable to the other laptop vendors and models. 

To read the information, as an example:

In this Zenbook Pro 15 with Ubuntu version 20.04 we can conclude that:

• Graphic cards: work (Geforce GTX 1050 works, Intel UHD Graphics 630 works) 
• Audio: works (NVIDIA High Definition works, Intel Cannon Lake works)
  
• Wifi: works (Intel Cannon Lake works)
  
• Bluetooth: works  (Intel Bluetooth 9460)
  
• Touchscreen: works (Elan Touchscreen works)
  
• Webcam: works (IMC Networks Webcam)

These ways to read the information are applicable to the other laptop vendors and models.

How To Submit Your Computer Info

In order to contribute to Linux-Hardware.org, you should install the required program to publish your info to the database. The result will be like my laptop ThinkPad T430, as an example, click the link to see my full hardware info with Ubuntu 21.04 published at Linux-Hardware.org.

1. Open your Terminal. 

2. Install the program named hw-probe[i]. 

3. Run the command with internet access on[ii].

4. Lastly, visit the link given with your web browser.

[i] Command:

$ sudo apt-get install hw-probe

[ii] Command:

$ sudo hw-probe

Just like Wikipedia, the more people contribute the more accurate and better the data will be at Linux-Hardware.org. Please share!