Wine Usage Statistics

There are a lot of Wine users and this page attempts to estimate how many there are, as well as suggest the growing importance of Wine to developers.

We really do need to start thinking about just who our users are. How many are gamers? How many use Wine for a single application? How many care more about improving performance than getting more apps working? Such questions may help us prioritize development.

Why statistics are hard to get

Many, if not most, people don't get Wine by downloading it from one of our file mirrors: sourceforge, ibiblio, and budgetdedicated.com. Instead, they use the (old) Wine package that comes default with their distribution. It is unknown what percentage of Wine users are using an older version of Wine, however it is likely greater than 90%.

Ubuntu APT repository

Two months before the release of Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10), the WineHQ APT repository hit over 70 thousand users. This represents nearly 1% of the estimated 6 to 12 million Ubuntu users at the time. Usage fell by about 10 thousand users leading up to the Gutsy release, likely due to early adopters upgrading to Gutsy and simply using its (then current) default Wine packages. Two months after Gutsy's release, however, usage climbed back up to its initial state.

Sixteen months later, as of February 2009, apt repository usage has nearly doubled. Combining the Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) and Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10) for the month of February yields 135,100 downloads for Wine 1.1.15. Since we still don't have reliable numbers for the total number of Ubuntu users, this could mean just about anything - Ubuntu usage doubled, Wine usage doubled, users on the beta versions instead of 1.0 doubled while Wine usage remained constant, or somewhere between all 3.

Ubuntu Popcon

The Ubuntu popularity contest (popcon) package reports package install statistics for users who have checked the box to "send anonymous package usage data." http://popcon.ubuntu.com/ As of September 2009, 495283 participants had installed Wine and 32660 had run it within the past week. Comparing this with a package that everyone has and you find there's a total of 1226340 survey participants. This means that Wine is installed on an estimated 40% of Ubuntu PCs, although only about 6.7% of them have used it within the past week.

There is reason to suspect that Popcon substantially undercounts Wine users, however, because survey participation is not offered to users who install Ubuntu directly from Windows using Wubi. Since Windows users are more likely to need Windows applications and thus Wine, this will result in systemic bias against Wine.

Total Wine users

Estimated total users of Wine (all versions of packages, across all distributions): unknown (I've heard ~1.5 million)

Estimated total users of Wine, Crossover, or other Wine-containing products (ie Google Picasa): unknown, but much larger

Estimated total users of anything containing Wine source code (say, Parallels): unknown, but much much larger

Surveys

End of 2007 DekstopLinux.com did a survey about the Linux Market. 31.5% of 38,500 reported using Wine to run Windows applications.

Every Linux user is a potential Wine user

As of October 2007, there are an estimated 6 to 12 million Ubuntu users. Most of these are desktop users. When other distributions are added in, there are even more potential users. Newer distributions are making installation of Wine even easier, such as prompting to install Wine as soon as the user attempts to open an executable file (see UserExperience for more).

Desktop Linux adoption is growing. Desktop Linux usage doubled between 2006 and 2007.

If your application works with Wine, and fills a role they need, then your potential user base has expanded greatly.