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If you click through to the link, you'll see that the results add up to 150%. That should be a sign that something odd is going on with this survey result and w

If you click through to the link, you'll see that the results add up to 150%. That should be a sign that something odd is going on with this survey result and we need to interpret it with caution. The question was "What is the primary operating system in which you work." (Emphasis mine.) The question itself implies that we should only be able to pick one, and yet the results clearly indicate that more than one was allowed. Most likely, people were listing the OSes they use a lot. A great many of us developers use a commercial OS locally, but also interact with Linux servers or containers on a regular basis. That said, there's no simple interpretation of that "40% use Linux" number that passes the smell test. It's implausibly high for the number of people who use it as their primary workstation OS, and it's implausibly low for the number of developers who regularly work in Linux. More likely, what this number represents is that different respondents interpreted the question, which appears to have been ambiguously framed, in different and incompatible ways, and so the result is statistically meaningless.

dmix 4y ago
Yep, Previous years = 100%, so the question has changed somehow https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#technology-most-popular-technologies https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#technology-mo... I guess you could use Windows at work and Linux at home (or viseversa). I'd bet some people also say Linux becayse they have homeservers and other secondary uses besides their primary driver.
- notwokeno 4y ago
  Where I work our laptop runs OSX but we're not allowed to do any work on it (and it's heavily locked down to prevent it.) Instead all of our actual work is done on a machine we ssh into. If you use Windows at home I wonder if it would be wrong to list all three popular OSes.
echelon 4y ago
Now that I'm no longer forced to use a Mac at work, all of my work happens on Linux. I only marginally touch Windows and Mac for testing and builds. If I can find a good MDM solution for Linux hardware and software, I'll let the employees at my startup use Linux too. I get a sense that corporate MDM is all that's holding Linux back.
- sarnowski 4y ago
  Microsoft just released Linux support (Ubuntu) in their MDM Intune. It’s very barebones yet but provides first fundamental capabilities. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/fundamentals/supported-devices-browsers https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/fundamentals/su... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-help/enroll-device-linux https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-help/enrol...
  - hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    Not even Ubuntu, Ubuntu + gnome. Everyone is different but for me gnome feels like osx ui, both of which I dislike immensely.
  - azalemeth 4y ago
    Isn't MDM very much anathema to the Linux user's philosophy? I've avoided it pretty sternly.
    - echelon 4y ago
      For a personal device. Corporate devices are subject to a whole host of regulations. PCI, HIPAA, etc. You can't even touch fintech unless your engineers work on MDM'd devices. You can't trust every single employee to always keep their machine up to date or be on the up and up. Statistically speaking, you'll need it eventually.
      - betaby 4y ago
        Are they? First time I hear that users' desktops are subject to PCI in fin-tech companies.
        CoolCold 4y ago
        start with password complexities, prevention of unauthorized access (i.e. screen locks), full disk encryption, so on, for those users who are close to cards/data management. Using Linux not making people automagically smarter and setting simple passwords or not enabling disk encryption - that kind of stuff I can easily imagine to happen without external curation.
layer8 4y ago
Also, “the primary operating system in which you work” doesn’t necessarily imply desktop. People could be using a Windows or Mac desktop and then primarily work in Linux via remote terminals and/or VMs.
solraph 4y ago
> It's implausibly high for the number of people who use it as their primary workstation OS This might just be the bias of the circles I move in, but over the last five years me running Linux on the desktop in a development work environment has gone from a weird oddity, to uncommon, to boringly normal. I've had a few non-work tech-adjacent friends ask for opinions on running Linux on Thinkpads for example. I strongly suspect there's a multitude of factors including the rise of the cloud, the maturation of Linux desktop distros, Linux being the default/only options for things like Raspberry Pi's, developer software being multi-platform, etc. While some hardware issue still remain, getting Linux compatible hardware of any type is pretty easy. It's not 100% guaranteed situation like Windows is, but you'll have multiple options for whatever you are looking for, which is a massive difference compared to years passed where some hardware categories simply did not have a fully fledge Linux compatible option.

dmix 4y ago

Yep, Previous years = 100%, so the question has changed somehow https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#technology-most-popular-technologies https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#technology-mo... I guess you could use Windows at work and Linux at home (or viseversa). I'd bet some people also say Linux becayse they have homeservers and other secondary uses besides their primary driver.

notwokeno 4y ago
Where I work our laptop runs OSX but we're not allowed to do any work on it (and it's heavily locked down to prevent it.) Instead all of our actual work is done on a machine we ssh into. If you use Windows at home I wonder if it would be wrong to list all three popular OSes.

echelon 4y ago

Now that I'm no longer forced to use a Mac at work, all of my work happens on Linux. I only marginally touch Windows and Mac for testing and builds. If I can find a good MDM solution for Linux hardware and software, I'll let the employees at my startup use Linux too. I get a sense that corporate MDM is all that's holding Linux back.

sarnowski 4y ago
Microsoft just released Linux support (Ubuntu) in their MDM Intune. It’s very barebones yet but provides first fundamental capabilities. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/fundamentals/supported-devices-browsers https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/fundamentals/su... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-help/enroll-device-linux https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-help/enrol...
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  Not even Ubuntu, Ubuntu + gnome. Everyone is different but for me gnome feels like osx ui, both of which I dislike immensely.
- azalemeth 4y ago
  Isn't MDM very much anathema to the Linux user's philosophy? I've avoided it pretty sternly.
  - echelon 4y ago
    For a personal device. Corporate devices are subject to a whole host of regulations. PCI, HIPAA, etc. You can't even touch fintech unless your engineers work on MDM'd devices. You can't trust every single employee to always keep their machine up to date or be on the up and up. Statistically speaking, you'll need it eventually.
    - betaby 4y ago
      Are they? First time I hear that users' desktops are subject to PCI in fin-tech companies.
      - CoolCold 4y ago
        start with password complexities, prevention of unauthorized access (i.e. screen locks), full disk encryption, so on, for those users who are close to cards/data management. Using Linux not making people automagically smarter and setting simple passwords or not enabling disk encryption - that kind of stuff I can easily imagine to happen without external curation.

layer8 4y ago

Also, “the primary operating system in which you work” doesn’t necessarily imply desktop. People could be using a Windows or Mac desktop and then primarily work in Linux via remote terminals and/or VMs.

solraph 4y ago

> It's implausibly high for the number of people who use it as their primary workstation OS This might just be the bias of the circles I move in, but over the last five years me running Linux on the desktop in a development work environment has gone from a weird oddity, to uncommon, to boringly normal. I've had a few non-work tech-adjacent friends ask for opinions on running Linux on Thinkpads for example. I strongly suspect there's a multitude of factors including the rise of the cloud, the maturation of Linux desktop distros, Linux being the default/only options for things like Raspberry Pi's, developer software being multi-platform, etc. While some hardware issue still remain, getting Linux compatible hardware of any type is pretty easy. It's not 100% guaranteed situation like Windows is, but you'll have multiple options for whatever you are looking for, which is a massive difference compared to years passed where some hardware categories simply did not have a fully fledge Linux compatible option.