https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/north-america/#monthly-200901-202607
Cloudflare stats also seem to support peaks of 15% usage but around 9-10% on average. In the United States alone, the market share for Linux is nearly 12% now for the whole month and Cloudflare stats suggest peaks of up to 25% (!) Linux desktop usage on certain days and times.
The trendline suggests this is just the start. When will companies realize they cannot ignore Linux anymore?
Honestly, this is too good of a news to be true. There has to be some kind of error somewhere. Not used to this.
I suspect the data is tainted by scrapers claiming to be a Linux desktop because that doesn’t have the same fingerprinting systems.
That’s one of the industries Mozilla announced a while ago they’d go into.
Mozilla is getting into fingerprinting? Do you have a source or something more for me to search with?
Into providing web browsing to LLM agents as a service.
This is truely the year of the Linux desktop.
Why did it spike so much in just the last few months? That is a huge change!
It can’t all be because of the steam machine.
I remember whn Linux hit 4% as if it was yesterday.
Really wish I had my own computer instead of just my work one so I could get running on a proper OS instead of Windows
Used laptops on ebay are still decently cheap if price is the issue, lots of stuff in the $50-100 range
Used corpo PCs can be found inexpensively as well, if portability isn’t needed. Craigslist can be a good source depending on your area
4000 and 5000 series AMD laptops are around the $300 range for a decently specced model. I have a 5825u laptop and it’s fast and efficient.
Here I thought I blocked telemetry.
Gonna need to know what they mean by “Linux” in this context. If it is Ubuntu/Fedora/etc that’s impressive, if it is SteamOS then while cool it is not nearly as impressive.
Nah, SteamOS is a normal Linux. It counts.
Edit2: you actually can get hardware surveys on steam os! Do you even get hardware surveys on steam os though?
Edit: question mark, curious here
It says “desktop use”. SteamOS is not desktop use.
How not? Is the full KDE desktop mode not enough?
It’s a gnu+Linux OS with a default desktop environment. It’s intended to be installed on bare metal where it’s accessed directly by the user.
It’s not for server use. (At least not primarily or by default.)
So I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that it’s not desktop Linux.
It counts if you use it to visit a website participating in stats collection. Maybe excluded if the device has a touchscreen and requests the mobile site (I haven’t used a Steam Deck and don’t know its default browser’s config)
Technicaly steamos is a desktop build on arch basis would love to know what the default User-Agent is for steamos as this is probably that basis of that data.
I kind of love how Mac OS X hasn’t been called that for over a decade and hasn’t been supported by Apple at all since 2018 but people still hang on to it over the childish jellybean-looking squeaky toy that is macOS.
These are American stats. US is generally more Apple minded.
Worldwide Windows is at 71%, Apple at 20% and Linux at 8%.
In Europe Windows is at 74%, Apple at 18% and Linux at 6%
Honestly, at this point I don’t think Microsoft cares about Windows all that much. They make their money elsewhere, and even the control offered by owning the OS can’t be counted on, as the Internet Explorer wars showed.
At the same time, think about the weird coincidence that Windows 11 requires so much extra hardware firepower at the same time as said hardware firepower has become stupid expensive thanks to the same AI the company is pushing.
They made it unaffordable to run Windows 11, and that’s how we get the Year of Linux on the Desktop?
I’ve been saying this since the release of WSL, but Microsoft has everything to gain from switching to the Linux kernel. Even back then senior devs were being laid off, and quality kept backsliding.
Fiscally, why would they want to maintain a whole ass kernel and OS layer when they could probably get away with some sort of custom Atomic Fedora distro?
It’s only exacerbated by AI slop now. Their NT team will continue to shrink, and they’ll be left with no other options.
It would be so funny if they “outsource” their kernel to linux, because it would be cheaper… “Hey, hey, I’ve seen this one. I’ve seen this one. This is a classic!” ~Marty McFly
They also gave up really quick on mandating Windows Server on Azure and are now mightily happy to offer the latest and greatest Linux versions. I think you are onto something there: if it weren’t for compatibility, it would be so much cheaper for Microsoft to just use the Linux kernel.
I seriously predict them contributing to wine, or at least making their own fork. Because their strategy is almost completely OS agnostic at this point. Even offering Dot Net Core on Linux natively.
How easy would it be for them? “Hey Copilot, convert these NT calls to Linux Calls” and your done.
to be fair the internet explorer debacle is behind us, and we are way past the zeitgeist of holding them accountable for antitrust.
they can pump windows full of ads no problem and that should count to something but it’s never enough for them is it?
i think microsoft just doesn’t know what to do with windows and it shows (and it’s for the best, really)
To be fair they released 11 before the latest price surges, might have been during the graphics cards price hikes though, can’t remember when that happened.
Very true, but they also caused some of the price hikes with their Copilot push, no?
Also true, yes. I guess we can agree that Microsoft sucks lol. But seriously, what Microsoft division is actually doing good things? Windows is bad, xbox is horrible, corporate tools like teams are widely hated… What, their azure thing is doing okay I guess?
As an OpenBSD user I find it funny how they list OpenBSD as 0%. Like, they could’ve just omitted it.
How do you like openBSD?
Thought the same. I think it’s a pun. Could become a meme even. Just put “OpenBSD 0%” in any statistics report.
When your market share is a rounding error.
It’s just you, @pmjv@lemmy.sdf.org and some of the other !unix_surrealists
sweet, there’s 3 of us now!
there are (not even) dozens of us!
It’s a small club, and you ain’t in it!
– George Carlin
Weird that Apple has renamed OS X to Mac OS, my first thought opening the link to statcounter was NO WAY 8+% use an OS that was discontinued 25 years ago.
WTF Apple?
Opening Wikipedia it says Mac OS was introduced in 2001!?!?!!??
WTF? That’s the year it was discontinued!!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS
macOS (previously OS X and originally Mac OS X
Mac OS X succeeded the classic Mac OS, the primary Macintosh operating system from 1984 to 2001.
For fucks sake! No it’s not “classic Mac OS”, it’s Mac OS. It was never named classic. Just because Apple fucks up doesn’t change the name of the original Mac OS.
And no OS X did not maintain the same version number for decades. It was introduced as OS X 1.0, 10 is not a version number, it’s part of the name like with OS/2 where the number is also not a version number but is part of the name, and describes something completely different, namely that it was meant as the default OS for IBM PS/2 computers.Sorry for the rant, but the stupidity of Apple removing the X from the name and not distinguishing properly between the original Mac OS and the new macOS is just such a piss poor decision IMO.
For instance Mac OS does not have multitasking! But macOS does.I have to disagree on side details: OS X did have version numbers starting with 10. I used it between Panther and Yosemite and I can remember Tiger being called version 10.4; it was literally printed on the installation disc.
Yes, that means “Mac OS X 10.0” had two tens right after one another. Apple aren’t Microsoft silly when it comes to names but they can be silly.
Also, it wasn’t introduced as OS X. It was “Mac OS X” until 10.7, then “OS X” until 10.11, and “macOS” since then.
I think its intended to line up with the iOS and iPadOS naming scheme. They pooped out an update earlier this year to bring all three OS’s up to the same version number as well.
apple naming schemes are getting almost as bad as AMD’s
How is chrome os so low when millions of kids use it in school?
They aren’t using desktops, if this can tell the difference between desktop/laptop
I took that to mean the difference between server and consumer 🤷♀️
Looking at https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/ it looks like they only have categories for desktop, tablet, mobile, so presumably laptops are included
If I had to guess, some ChromeOS browsers masquerade as Linux PCs
Way back in 2010 I made a prediction to my best friend using Windows: In 10 years we will have reached 10% market share. The catch with this prediction is, it was purely a wish without ANY understanding of the market whatsoever. Obviously 10 years passed and in 2020 I was wrong. We got COVID instead… Buuuuuut… only 6 years later we have already reached 10%!
Besides all the efforts that are going in into the Linux operating systems and eco system, we got two major companies supporting Linux with a huge impact: Valve, with all their gaming related efforts and Microsoft, with their free advertisement through Windows 11. Thank you to both companies and all other parties involved making this possible!
With that said, I make a new prediction: 10 years later, we (Linux) reach 20% market share AND OS X+macOS together reach 42%! Yes I even make a prediction for Apple. Also why is even macOS and OS X not a single graph, while everything Linux related is and even all Windows versions are a single graph? That makes the Apple line smaller than it is.
Also macOS and iOS are basically the same OS under the hood at this point. They’re closer than many Linux distros are to each other
