13 ms·

Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide

190 points by benkan 3y ago

frereit 3y ago
This article does not mention the release of the SteamDeck at all. I wonder if this could have had an impackt on Linux usage large enough to see in trends like these or if it's just a drop in the bucket.
- kramerger 3y ago
  This is desktop only. Linux is market leader once you bring in mobile, embedded and so on.
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    > This is desktop only So no laptops? Isn’t Steam Deck really just a generic PC with a different form factor? Could (and should they even) StatCounter easily filter out the data coming from it
    - staunton 3y ago
      Do you put it on a desk? At least I don't...
      - lvturner 3y ago
        But it DOES have a "desktop" mode...
    - russell_h 3y ago
      They're looking at browser traffic. I assume people don't do a lot of web browsing with Steam Decks (maybe I'm wrong, never used one), so they're probably not being counted. Some data I found on the internet suggests Apple ships about 6 million Macs per quarter, and they're at around 15% market share in the stats linked here. Other data I found on the internet leads me to guess Valve has sold around 3 million Steam Decks in the 2 years since they launched. So my guess is that if you factored Steam Decks into this they'd account for about another 1% - very roughly.
      - Hamuko 3y ago
        I've definitely browsed the web on my Steam Deck when I wanted to install a fan patch to a game, but I imagine I am in a small minority. Pretty sure the Steam Deck doesn't even ship with a browser, since I remember manually installing Firefox. And booting into the desktop mode has its own friction, and it's not exactly a smooth experience to use a Linux DE on the touchpads / touchscreen. These days I actually just opt to download everything on my actual desktop computer and just SSH them to the Steam Deck.
    - pmontra 3y ago
      I believe that laptops are counted as desktops for this kind of stats. The split is by UI. Mobile is phone and tablets (same UI), laptops and desktops are desktop (same UI). Servers are a case apart because especially for Windows they have the same UI as desktops even if Microsoft has a no GUI option now. I believe that nearly all Linux servers are command line only.
  - piaste 3y ago
    I suspect that the Steam Deck is considered a desktop rather than a mobile device. Same as laptops.
  - umbra07 3y ago
    steam deck would be included in that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Karliss 3y ago
  According to Steam hardware survey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=linux https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=linux 35% of Steam Linux users have "AMD AMD Custom GPU 0405" (the custom amd chip used by steamdeck). ~1 year ago it was 21%. That gives an upper bound of 35% from those 4% being Steamdeck. Although actual fraction is probably lower because: * not every Linux user plays games or uses Steam, but probably almost all Steamdeck users use Steam. * StatCounter numbers are based on website views. You can browse web on steamdeck but it's not very convenient, so I guess that, unless it's their only computing device and they have connected external monitor and mouse, most steamdeck users do most of their web browsing using their phone or computer instead of steamdeck.
kavalg 3y ago
No wonder with the recent Windows UX degradations.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ant6n 3y ago
  Also privacy degradations. And bugs. And performance issues. Still, office365/onedrive/teams is hard to beat on price for a small business.
  - dijit 3y ago
    TCO of google workspace is substantially cheaper if you factor third party SSO costs. “sign in with Google” is almost always a lower price tier of major SaaS applications.
jbs789 3y ago
I wonder if this is because fewer desktops are being bought (in favour of laptops), and those who remain on desktop are disproportionately Linux users. Largest desktop market is china.
- johnny22 3y ago
  i saw folks suggesting a lot of the growth came from india, but i didn't look into it.
  - umbra07 3y ago
    I believe Linux marketshare in India is somewhere around 15%?
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  I think the categories are "desktop", "mobile", and "server". Perhaps "tablet" as well. So "desktop OS" likely includes actual desktops and laptops.
- flohofwoe 3y ago
  I would assume that laptops count as desktop because they are running desktop operating systems. How would a browser user agent string even differentiate between a desktop PC and laptop?
- solumunus 3y ago
  Laptops are desktops.
  - timbit42 3y ago
    Many people never move their laptop from their desk.
- cykros 3y ago
  More likely it's because fewer desktops AND laptops are being bought in favor of phones and tablets (and Chromebooks). Windows appeals to two groups with any real loyalty: gamers, and enterprises. Everyone else who was just a casual user just used it for decades because it's what came preinstalled on the most systems. If all you're doing is watching netflix, checking social media, and reading email, you really don't care what OS you're using, unless it forces you to care (at which point, you consider another device). Gamer loyalty is getting more and more dubious. I wouldn't necessarily say this means that we'll have a ton of Linux desktops though. We'll just likely be seeing fewer PC's in general, as we already have been. And those of us using Linux will be the last to ditch the form factor, as phones, tablets, and smart tv's are more of an appliance than a tool.
pilaf 3y ago
It's probably obvious to most, but I wish headlines like these would clarify _desktop_ market share. Linux has had majority market share in the server space for decades now.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  and mobile
  - Ygg2 3y ago
    Android's OS isn't Linux. In same way my OS isn't Java. It runs Java, but that doesn't make Java an OS.
    - croes 3y ago
      Android is based on a modified Linux kernel
      - charcircuit 3y ago
        There is not much of a point to pointing that out considering popular server Linux OSs like Debian and RHEL also use a modified Linux kernel
        croes 3y ago
        But you would count Debian and RHEL as a Linux, so is Android.
        vetinari 3y ago
        Debian and RHEL have classic GNU userland (thus, GNU/Linux), Android does not. With normal Linux, it has only common kernel (even though heavily modified) and maybe musl (as an alternative libc).
      - Ygg2 3y ago
weinzierl 3y ago
This is desktop market share! Overall Linux market share is like what nowadays? EDIT: Depending on how you count, its more around 50% according to Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys... Interestingly the highest market share is in supercomputing with 100% of the top 500 since 2017. This is followed by the server market. "Big Iron" Linus said and the biggest iron it was.
- goenning 3y ago
  100% if you exclude Microsoft’s cloud? :-)
  - smartmic 3y ago
    Doesn't Azure Cloud also rely on Linux in the majority of its VMs?
  - Zobat 3y ago
    "More than 60 percent of customer cores in Azure run Linux workloads" https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/linux https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/... So the Linux share would actually decrease if you exclude Azure ;)
    - p4bl0 3y ago
      > So the Linux share would actually decrease if you exclude Azure ;) I think it wouldn't, because that would imply 40+% of windows market share outside Azure, which I strongly doubt is even close to true. But your point that even on Azure, Linux has a large majority is still valid!
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Depends on if you want to file the servers running Office 365 under Azure, which Microsoft does to juice revenue to make Azure look bigger.
- gsich 3y ago
phantomathkg 3y ago
I wonder, is it truly Linux desktop, or embedded device reported as Linux?
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  The percentage is much higher on embedded devices.
rglullis 3y ago
4% starts getting it into the threshold of Nassim Taleb's "intolerant minority" to take effect. It is too big of a market share to be served only by a niche player like System76 or Starlite, so we should start seeing all major manufacturers (beyond Dell and their XPS line) to add Linux-only hardware. And from there, what's stopping them from joining Valve to make Proton work for all the Windows-specific applications that are still used in the enterprise?
- staunton 3y ago
  > And from there, what's stopping them from joining Valve to make Proton work for all the Windows-specific applications that are still used in the enterprise? If they tried, which I don't expect, I'd guess adoption would stop it. Microsoft is entrenched with the public sectors and companies all over the world. The cost of switching would exceed any potential savings for years...
  - mrktf 3y ago
    With current windows shenanigans and data slurping at least there is some sort discussion about it and switching. In my opinion main blocker which introduces huge switching cost (and even bigger policy problems) is missing group policy alternative.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    There are already directives in some EU countries to choose open source solutions over proprietary ones whenever they are equivalent. There are already plenty of schools and universities that are using cloud based solutions and just run ChromeOS. All I'm saying is that we are closer to the point where the customer will be able to treat the OS as a commodity. That by itself works already as a bargaining chip against Microsoft and in favor of customers when it's time to negotiate their contracts. The switch won't happen overnight, but the trend has been long in favor of Linux. This 4-5% mark is significant and can lead to acceleration.
- PennRobotics 3y ago
  Lenovo also ships Linux laptops, although their Linux team needs the ability to veto hardware choices that were made in support of Windows. (I wonder if the XPS team can choose their hardware; my developer edition XPS was rock solid.) Lenovo's Linux team seems to use up a lot of their QA/support resources because they are handed a dozen new laptop designs each year with (for instance) a MIPI IPU6 webcam having no kernel driver, S0ix suspend broken at the EC-level, new types of forcepads and trackpoints and touchscreens and styli and soldered on Wi-Fi card with a track record of crashing in Linux... and told to figure it out. Plus, I think they occasionally get sidetracked by stupid bullshit like getting the boot logo to not flicker moving from BIOS to Plymouth. Also, they maybe should have pushed really hard on AMD (and possibly Qualcomm and their BIOS supplier) for having _multiple_ kernel releases that reached the stable "updates" on non-Rawhide Fedora that then broke suspend on several ThinkPad models. Bisect. Blame. Revert. If Linus used a newer AMD ThinkPad, some choice words would have landed on the mailing list.
choeger 3y ago
If one considers how desperately Microsoft tries to squeeze additional revenue from Windows (forced cloud account, ads, browser war 2.0) one has to wonder at what point they'll simply shut down OS (i.e., kernel and plumbing-level user-space tools) development completely. I mean yes, it has been a proud piece of Microsoft but the OG NT kernel team probably left by now and from a management perspective it doesn't offer any revenue to develop an OS kernel. Otoh, how big is their OS engineering team? Drivers are usually developed elsewhere. So maybe 100 folks or so? With a relatively low quota of non-devs, I assume? So Microsoft would potentially save what, tens of millions of dollars per year? Maybe they just continue this as some kind of tradition department.
- imiric 3y ago
  Did you miss the 72% market share of Windows on desktop machines? That is still a massive market, and if nothing else, pulls consumers into the rest of the MS ecosystem. So I doubt MS is abandoning OS development any time soon.
  - weweersdfsd 3y ago
    I don't feel like MS ecosystem is that attractive to consumers. In enterprise for sure, everyone uses Teams, Outlook and MS Office, and Azure is popular for hosting. But in most people's personal lives it's smartphones that are most utilized, which naturally draws people to Google's and Apple's ecosystems. Only reasons I even bother to install Windows are gaming and MS Office provided by my university.
- p4bl0 3y ago
  > how big is their OS engineering team? (…) maybe 100 folks or so? From https://devblogs.microsoft.com/bharry/the-largest-git-repo-on-the-planet/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/bharry/the-largest-git-repo-o... : > the Windows team is about 4,000 engineers and the engineering system produces 1,760 daily “lab builds” across 440 branches in addition to thousands of pull request validation builds
  - avar 3y ago
iaw 3y ago
In 1997-ish I failed to install Slackware from 16 or so floppies repeatedly. In 2000 I had a system up and running but could not get connectivity. In 2005 almost everything "just worked" out of the box. In 2013 everything just worked. I have recently started reflecting on how easy it is to do things now for free compared to the proprietary landscape we had before. Virtually every proprietary software has a (or multiple) free open source alternatives. The potential for human intellectual productivity has never been this high.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Interesting that they are counting chrome os separately since it is Linux based. That's another 2%. So 6% of the desktop market is running some form of Linux. There's another 6% unknown, which I bet might include some Linux users that are a bit savvy about configuring their browsers to not leak information. The Unkown line seems to climb faster than the linux line in the graph; which is interesting as well.
- SomeoneFromCA 3y ago
  Unknowns are BSDs.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    For desktop?
    - BSDobelix 3y ago
      Yes, why? Nearly all my Desktops and Laptops have exclusively FreeBSD on it.
    - SomeoneFromCA 3y ago
      In fact I would argue that FreeBSD is better as a desktop than server (where you may want package stability). FreeBSD update policies such as choice between quarterly (much like Ubuntu, but twice as often) and rolling puts its into nice balanced spot between Arch-like and Ubuntu-like system. The problem is however poor hardware support. They still do not support Alder Lake iGPU, you'll need to hack the kernel source to make it working. But once up and running it gives you nicer experience than many distros. Fells like a more stable sid.
      - BSDobelix 3y ago
        >where you may want package stability Oh not you again, i already explained to you that FreeBSD supports old versions ~5 year's of important software like postgresql/php etc. for example postgres 12-16, redis 6.2-7, python 2.7/3-3.9, openjdk 8-22. BTW many rolling and stop-rolling Linux distros do the same. I don't understand why you try to bullshit others.
smartmic 3y ago
It would be interesting to know what the market share is among the HN crowd though... any insights, @dang ?
qwertox 3y ago
Ever since I've upgraded to Windows 11 I am so extremely frustrated with explorer's performance. The shortest time I have to wait for it to react to a double-click is 5 seconds, sometimes it goes up to 30+ seconds when I've used the machine for a couple of hours. I don't mean the time it takes an application to "boot", but the time for explorer to deal with itself until it is able to launch something. Even a simple thing as showing the context menu and then displaying properties if that was selected. That is on a i9-9880H Laptop with 32GB of RAM and a Samsung 970 PRO. It's intolerable and I'm preparing to move to Linux. Since there are some tools I first need to write in order to maintain my workflow, mostly mouse-gesture-related stuff, I'm still waiting for the Wayland transition to get settled. If I could stay on X11 for a decade from now on, I would migrate ASAP, but if the Kubuntu team decides to fully switch to Wayland without using X11 being an option, I'd have a problem.
- slowbdotro 3y ago
  If you wanted, you honestly could stay on X11 for the next decade. I highly doubt it's going anywhere. Also, no matter what your workflow is, you can write a program to do that. I'd guarantee you could write a small script to automate Wayland to do what you need
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Is it technically possible to guarantee program-agnostic mouse gesture support in Wayland? I would sorta expect wlroots to support it, but I don't think that is a safe bet for an arbitrary Wayland compositor.
    - qwertox 3y ago
      This is my main issue, I need full access to input devices and the ability to drop, alter and inject new events. On Windows I fully rely on StrokeIt, it has been a huge improvement for me which I've used for ~15 years. Linux's easystroke [0] is now deprecated (and always was mediocre) and the modern alternative "mouse-actions" [1] is not good at all. I've coded a replacement in Rust+C which works for my simple use-case but it targets X11 and it's unclear for me how I can get low level access to input devices events with Wayland. I've also read something about security getting increased in Wayland so that one does no longer have access to input stuff (unclear to me). Then the nice thing about X11 is the ability to remotely use a X11 session, which apparently isn't possible with Wayland (except for RDP or VNC which isn't what I need). [0] https://github.com/thjaeger/easystroke/wiki https://github.com/thjaeger/easystroke/wiki [1] https://github.com/jersou/mouse-actions https://github.com/jersou/mouse-actions
blitzar 3y ago
2024, the year of Linux.
mangecoeur 3y ago
Steam deck must have booster the numbers a lot
bluish29 3y ago
Considering that safari with my ad blockers blocked access to statscounter, I would be very suspicious that this percentage is much higher. The intersection between linux users and users who worry about privacy and know how to block trackers is big enough.
- INTPenis 3y ago
  Good point, Linux users tend to be more privacy conscious. I would probably not be counted by statcounter either. Having used Linux for 25 years I really don't care about stats. The community remains healthy and there will always be a demographic who want to use an OS that provides more control.
nparafe 3y ago
Most of the confusion would be avoided by simply changing the article to: "GNU/Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide"
k4ch0w 3y ago
Once Linux can run all my favorite games and future games I will uninstall windows forever.
- olavgg 3y ago
  This has already happened to me, I only play Dota2 and Civilization. And some cool games on PS5 and Switch. I still have Windows, but everytime I boot it, it takes 3 hours of updates before its usable again.
alastairr 3y ago
it’d be interesting to know the ratio of consumer desktops / laptops to linux servers required to support the consumer internet. I know neither of those things are particularly well defined but it adds another perspective on this which’s be interesting.
renegat0x0 3y ago
Two scenarios on my part. Recently we wanted to play Minecraft. I had to install fresh windows. I found ISO laying on nas. Installed it. Run update, after fifteen minuts and two reboots update told me everything is up to date. We tried to run several programs, but no luck. Some dll error with missing entrypoints. Installed several cpp runtimes, dotnet frameworks, still no luck. The we installed Minecraft, but from a page since app shop was not working. Minecraft said we are missing critical updates and it fetched some. Then windows update was able to find new updates, we had to go through more reboots, and twice i had to select correct privacy settings, because Microsoft likes my data so much. It took days to correctly install windows. Could have been easier if I used up to date image. Second scenario is also about minecraft. On windows it wanted me to create window account for my kids. Required kid account to be working, and there were some issues that it said that windows pin does not work, we could not change it on the machine. I think we managed to change it online by some Xbox online, or other Microsoft page. These pages are just a maze of accounts, setups, game passes. In the end it was easier just to run it on linux, and put just username and password. No advanced admin account management required.
- BSDobelix 3y ago
  >Some dll error with missing entrypoints. Try "sfc /scannow" next time in cmd (as admin) But overall...trow that image on your nas away.
  - renegat0x0 3y ago
    Yeah I did that and it did not solve anything. I think the conclusion I made is that this windows gets more in my way recently than Linux. Newer image could solve some issues, but not all.
    - BSDobelix 3y ago
      >Newer image could solve some issues, but not all. I am happy that you found a less problematic os...sorry kernel then. And who need's the bedrock edition anyway ;) Oh and btw have a look at minetest: https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
koonsolo 3y ago
Right when I'm thinking about switching from Linux to Mac. Not for the software but for the hardware. I just can't find any laptop that can even get near the quality of a MacBook (excellent touchpad, sound, battery life).
KronisLV 3y ago
I installed a Linux distro on a spare SSD that I had this week, to once more try out doing more development in it and daily drive it for a bit. I went for Linux Mint because it has the convenience of Ubuntu (and Debian), though doesn't make me use snaps, in addition to their Cinnamon desktop just being all around a comfortable choice. So far, all of the tooling just works, the desktop experience (even including audio) seems bug free, though I've had issues in the past with my netbook instead of the desktop. Regardless, it uses less RAM than Windows, feels more snappy and for development, I'm very happy with it. All of my IDEs and toolchains work, productivity and content creation software doesn't have issues either. Even things like gaming seem more and more viable thanks to Steam and Proton, although it's not quite where Windows is now and won't be there for a while. Either way, I'm pretty glad with how the OS and its distros/desktop environments are progressing.
- popol12 3y ago
  Congrats for trying Linux again, I'm sure it will end up paying out ! My 2 cents: the best DE when coming from Windows is KDE. Kubuntu (ubuntu + KDE) is joy. It has a windows 7 feel, and is very customizable and stable.
  - KronisLV 3y ago
    The last time I tried letting Windows rest altogether for a week left me reasonably satisfied as well, actually: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-windows https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-... With Windows 11 looming on the horizon as an inevitability, maybe I'll just need to rip the band-aid off and jump to Linux as my daily driver, since my containers and servers both use it already. KDE has a pretty good reputation from what I've heard, though honestly my previous choice was XFCE because it runs on pretty much everything (my old 4 GB netbook included).
peter_retief 3y ago
This is 4% of Desktop, Linux is most of installed systems if you include routers, servers and devices. I have used Linux Desktop for decades.
yesco 3y ago
I can only see this trend continuing in the coming years. I know people love to get cynical about Linux desktops being niche, but the reality is that desktops in general are becoming niche. Really consider the audience here, in broad strokes I'd divide it into three big groups: school, corporate and public. The public market for desktops is dying, or maybe it's already dead? The average person, especially the ones on the younger side, will just use their phone or tablet for all their general computing needs. If, for whatever reason, they do need to use a desktop, it will be for work or school, and most of their time on that desktop will be spent inside a web browser. For most people's personal life their desktop operating system just doesn't matter. Video games are an exception here, but will they remain that way? Schools are broadly switching to Chromebooks, these are technically Linux machines, but really they are just terminals to a web browser. The underlying OS exists purely to prevent students from do anything else with them. Even the cases where schools stick to Windows, this reality doesn't change, the platform of schooling is web browsers now. I'll admit, none of this is particularly new, but I naively assumed that the legendary stubbornness of corporate IT would be what keeps Windows dominant indefinitely, and that's quite a big audience right? Yet despite working at a big boring Fortune 500 company in an industry uniquely entrenched with Windows, they are now officially offering Linux laptops to developers who want them. Apparently Lenovo officially supporting Ubuntu was a big deal, and since all of our development targets embedded & cloud systems anyway, it was kind of a no-brainer decision for management. We still need Outlook, Teams, Office, and such, but we can do so via Office 365, so there isn't much holding back the transition... Naturally many niches will remain, I'm not saying Windows will go away here, nor am I saying a web dominated world necessarily equals a world dominated by Linux desktops. But rather than Linux Desktops becoming a niche within a niche, I think that Windows will join Linux, and they both will become equally niche together :)
- vetinari 3y ago
  I would argue, that the dividing line lies elsewhere: between creation and consumption. The average person does not create much, so for consumption, mobile devices are fine (though it is amazing, what a teenager can do to the photos with just a phone). For any creation, be it media, engineering, science, or even just plain old bureaucracy, you still need either desktops, or workstation, and it is going to stay that way for a while. But the market will be a lot smaller than in 90's or 2000's, since all just-consumers moved elsewhere.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
matthewfelgate 3y ago
It has never been easier to install and use Ubuntu on a computer instead of Windows. So why aren't more people doing it?
- timbit42 3y ago
  Because of SNAPs. Linux Mint is better as it doesn't have SNAPs.
lifeinthevoid 3y ago
I don't really trust the datasource TBH, according to https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide the macOS marketshare went from 21.01% in November 2023 to 15.42% in February 2024. That doesn't sound realistic at all.
- timbit42 3y ago
  You can't know whether to trust it until you know why it happened.
jsnell 3y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38853877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38853877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39252801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39252801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200
M95D 3y ago
It's not because Linux got better. It's because Windows got worse.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  I dispute this notion. The truth is that "Linux" improved a lot over the years. My first attempt at it was in 2002. At the time I was a kid that tinkered a bit with his own PC, not a technical user proper. I tried to install Mandrake Linux, and it was difficult to get it running. Ultimately I failed to get my mouse to work and gave up. Many years later, at around 2015, I made a second attempt. My workplace supported both Windows and Linux, and I opted for Linux, as testing locally in an environment similar to what was found in Production was better. No shenanigans with line endings, casing on file names, etc. Ubuntu this time around. It was a joy to use. Installing it on the computer was extremely easy. I eventually dual-booted at my home computer too. My only real issue was that some software I wanted to use (games mostly) didn't run on Linux, which was a shame. My dual boot setup lasted for a few years, but it was a hassle to switch in between both when I stopped coding and wanted to play games. And eventually I dropped it for Windows 10 + WSL. Then I made my final attempt around a year ago. Linux Mint this time. I read how WINE/Proton had made huge strides into providing Windows compatibility, and thought it was time go give it another go. It has been an amazing experience. I can run the vast majority of my gaming library without any issues (really only one exception so far, a somewhat obscure game at that). After more than a year, there was not a single moment where I thought I needed to be on Windows for anything. And the OS is a joy to use. It has no right being this good for free. I even donated 20 bucks as appreciation. Will probably do it again this year. So yeah. Things actually improved a lot. I agree that Windows has been getting worse, but that is not the full story
reify 3y ago
4% is probably about right I'm am a retired old bloke who has used linux for about 20 years since the early releases of ubuntu and linux mint. I do my best to advise and promote linux to all my elderly friends and have even installed linux as a replacement to windows for a few of them. Once they get used to Linux they are forever smitten. The increased speed and ease of use is nothing like windows complexity. Even I struggle with windows, that damn search box, what is that really about but to confuse. Windows is supposed to be a personal computer not a time travelling machine, so whats the issue with updates taking a millennium. I got better things to do than wait for that unnecessary waste of time. It must be brainwashing and propaganda that convinces people that a windows machines are better in some way. I watch my friends struggling with their windows data collecting machines and I cry inside. My old life is so much easier, restful, stress free and I have more pension to spend on myself. Free as in Freedom, too cool!
coffeeninja 3y ago
I think these numbers are quite strong. I consider myself a Linux user as that is my preferred OS, but my browser usage is from different OSs: Phone, my work laptop which is Windows and from my Macbook Air. I think less than 25% of my browsing is from Linux. I would think many could be in a similar situation, so in a way it is possible that the numbers "should" be higher.
d--b 3y ago
Frankly, the chart looks like Linux's market share is below the range of errors of the measurments made. Compared to Linux, the famous "Unknown" OS has a market share of 10%-ish, a spectacular come back from its steep decline between May and June 2023 where it went from 12% to 3%. Windows and OSX market shares aren't stable at all and can move 4% in one month. So Linux going from 3.9% to 4% should be taken with a grain of salt...
dredmorbius 3y ago
Both traditional desktop and laptop markets have been declining or flat (respectively), and both are anticipated to decline in near future years, if not already. See e.g., <https://convergetechmedia.com/laptop-sales-vs-desktop-pc-sales-one-climbs-the-other-drops-whats-ahead/ https://convergetechmedia.com/laptop-sales-vs-desktop-pc-sal...> for overall markets and <https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/business/dell-earnings-ai-server/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/business/dell-earnings-ai-ser...> concerning Dell's recent performance. To the extent that Linux has always represented an advanced technical subset of the market, the desktop market is effectively shifting further to technical users. "Casuals" increasingly rely on mobile devices --- smartphones and tablets, possibly netbooks. Technical users who are already more likely to choose Linux (or similar alternatives such as the *BSDs) are increasingly concentrated in the desktop market. I'll note that I'm not one to lump Android in with Linux, as the overwhelmingly prominent Android UX does not include Linux applications or environments, even if those are in theory available (e.g., through Termux). Whether or not overall Linux usage is increasing, as in total interactive users and time-in-OS (that is, for those using multiple environments, including virtualised environments, what is the split of time between OSes), and the value associated with usage (especially in professional / commercial contexts) isn't clear from the Linuxiac article. I suspect that there's some absolute growth as computer markets grow modestly overall, but that it's less significant than the percentage of desktop top-line figures would suggest. (Written as a Linux user for well over a quarter century, and an Android user for a decade and a half, along with numerous other platforms.)
Woodi 3y ago
Here seriously looking for alternative to Win 11 for small family company becouse buying old computers with Win 10 Pro gives just few years. Best thing I found is invoicing app written in Java LOL. Need to call that company and ask do they support non Oracle Java :> But other then that, Linux is good, Emacs can generate simple pdf's to print, Perl scripts still able to sum few digits, even git via ssh works like NAS :) Just that mandated by law things are impossible. No monopoly at all...
sotix 3y ago
I switched from MacOS to Arch Linux with KDE Plasma 3 years ago and couldn’t be happier. It’s so nice to have Pacman (and the AUR) as a built-in package manager. My experience with multiple monitors is better than on MacOS. My experience with gaming is surprisingly better than on Windows. Elden Ring worked day one on Linux but was almost unplayable on Windows for me. The entire experience feels to the point and working for me. Windows was littered with ads and weird driver issues. MacOS would constantly yell at me for trying to do things on my own computer. On Linux, I could simply plug in a printer and print documents. Finally, life as a developer is so much higher quality all around. Linux just works. Never thought I would see the day!
penjelly 3y ago
everytime i boot a Linux based disco on hardware for the first time im always blown away that some of the greatest multitools of mankind are free and available in minutes
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
More discussion a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200
daft_pink 3y ago
Essentially Windows sucks. I’ve been using MacOS, but I really wish I could get a generous amount of RAM and HD at a reasonable price.
7e 3y ago
Let's look at this StatsCounter data: - In one month, macOS share drops from 21% to 16% - In one month, Linux share goes up 50% - In the same month, ChromeOS share drops 50% None of these things are true. This data is garbage. In the last year, "unknown" peaked at 13%, to boot. Ridiculous.

190 points by benkan 3y ago

This article does not mention the release of the SteamDeck at all. I wonder if this could have had an impackt on Linux usage large enough to see in trends like these or if it's just a drop in the bucket.

kramerger 3y ago
This is desktop only. Linux is market leader once you bring in mobile, embedded and so on.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  > This is desktop only So no laptops? Isn’t Steam Deck really just a generic PC with a different form factor? Could (and should they even) StatCounter easily filter out the data coming from it
  - staunton 3y ago
    Do you put it on a desk? At least I don't...
    - lvturner 3y ago
      But it DOES have a "desktop" mode...
  - russell_h 3y ago
    They're looking at browser traffic. I assume people don't do a lot of web browsing with Steam Decks (maybe I'm wrong, never used one), so they're probably not being counted. Some data I found on the internet suggests Apple ships about 6 million Macs per quarter, and they're at around 15% market share in the stats linked here. Other data I found on the internet leads me to guess Valve has sold around 3 million Steam Decks in the 2 years since they launched. So my guess is that if you factored Steam Decks into this they'd account for about another 1% - very roughly.
    - Hamuko 3y ago
      I've definitely browsed the web on my Steam Deck when I wanted to install a fan patch to a game, but I imagine I am in a small minority. Pretty sure the Steam Deck doesn't even ship with a browser, since I remember manually installing Firefox. And booting into the desktop mode has its own friction, and it's not exactly a smooth experience to use a Linux DE on the touchpads / touchscreen. These days I actually just opt to download everything on my actual desktop computer and just SSH them to the Steam Deck.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    I believe that laptops are counted as desktops for this kind of stats. The split is by UI. Mobile is phone and tablets (same UI), laptops and desktops are desktop (same UI). Servers are a case apart because especially for Windows they have the same UI as desktops even if Microsoft has a no GUI option now. I believe that nearly all Linux servers are command line only.
- piaste 3y ago
  I suspect that the Steam Deck is considered a desktop rather than a mobile device. Same as laptops.
- umbra07 3y ago
  steam deck would be included in that.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Karliss 3y ago
According to Steam hardware survey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=linux https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=linux 35% of Steam Linux users have "AMD AMD Custom GPU 0405" (the custom amd chip used by steamdeck). ~1 year ago it was 21%. That gives an upper bound of 35% from those 4% being Steamdeck. Although actual fraction is probably lower because: * not every Linux user plays games or uses Steam, but probably almost all Steamdeck users use Steam. * StatCounter numbers are based on website views. You can browse web on steamdeck but it's not very convenient, so I guess that, unless it's their only computing device and they have connected external monitor and mouse, most steamdeck users do most of their web browsing using their phone or computer instead of steamdeck.

kavalg 3y ago

No wonder with the recent Windows UX degradations.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ant6n 3y ago
Also privacy degradations. And bugs. And performance issues. Still, office365/onedrive/teams is hard to beat on price for a small business.
- dijit 3y ago
  TCO of google workspace is substantially cheaper if you factor third party SSO costs. “sign in with Google” is almost always a lower price tier of major SaaS applications.

jbs789 3y ago

I wonder if this is because fewer desktops are being bought (in favour of laptops), and those who remain on desktop are disproportionately Linux users. Largest desktop market is china.

johnny22 3y ago
i saw folks suggesting a lot of the growth came from india, but i didn't look into it.
- umbra07 3y ago
  I believe Linux marketshare in India is somewhere around 15%?
mytailorisrich 3y ago
I think the categories are "desktop", "mobile", and "server". Perhaps "tablet" as well. So "desktop OS" likely includes actual desktops and laptops.
flohofwoe 3y ago
I would assume that laptops count as desktop because they are running desktop operating systems. How would a browser user agent string even differentiate between a desktop PC and laptop?
solumunus 3y ago
Laptops are desktops.
- timbit42 3y ago
  Many people never move their laptop from their desk.
cykros 3y ago
More likely it's because fewer desktops AND laptops are being bought in favor of phones and tablets (and Chromebooks). Windows appeals to two groups with any real loyalty: gamers, and enterprises. Everyone else who was just a casual user just used it for decades because it's what came preinstalled on the most systems. If all you're doing is watching netflix, checking social media, and reading email, you really don't care what OS you're using, unless it forces you to care (at which point, you consider another device). Gamer loyalty is getting more and more dubious. I wouldn't necessarily say this means that we'll have a ton of Linux desktops though. We'll just likely be seeing fewer PC's in general, as we already have been. And those of us using Linux will be the last to ditch the form factor, as phones, tablets, and smart tv's are more of an appliance than a tool.

pilaf 3y ago

It's probably obvious to most, but I wish headlines like these would clarify _desktop_ market share. Linux has had majority market share in the server space for decades now.

charcircuit 3y ago
and mobile
- Ygg2 3y ago
  Android's OS isn't Linux. In same way my OS isn't Java. It runs Java, but that doesn't make Java an OS.
  - croes 3y ago
    Android is based on a modified Linux kernel
    - charcircuit 3y ago
      There is not much of a point to pointing that out considering popular server Linux OSs like Debian and RHEL also use a modified Linux kernel
      - croes 3y ago
        But you would count Debian and RHEL as a Linux, so is Android.
        vetinari 3y ago
        Debian and RHEL have classic GNU userland (thus, GNU/Linux), Android does not. With normal Linux, it has only common kernel (even though heavily modified) and maybe musl (as an alternative libc).
    - Ygg2 3y ago

weinzierl 3y ago

This is desktop market share! Overall Linux market share is like what nowadays? EDIT: Depending on how you count, its more around 50% according to Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys... Interestingly the highest market share is in supercomputing with 100% of the top 500 since 2017. This is followed by the server market. "Big Iron" Linus said and the biggest iron it was.

goenning 3y ago
100% if you exclude Microsoft’s cloud? :-)
- smartmic 3y ago
  Doesn't Azure Cloud also rely on Linux in the majority of its VMs?
- Zobat 3y ago
  "More than 60 percent of customer cores in Azure run Linux workloads" https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/linux https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/... So the Linux share would actually decrease if you exclude Azure ;)
  - p4bl0 3y ago
    > So the Linux share would actually decrease if you exclude Azure ;) I think it wouldn't, because that would imply 40+% of windows market share outside Azure, which I strongly doubt is even close to true. But your point that even on Azure, Linux has a large majority is still valid!
- fragmede 3y ago
  Depends on if you want to file the servers running Office 365 under Azure, which Microsoft does to juice revenue to make Azure look bigger.
gsich 3y ago

phantomathkg 3y ago

I wonder, is it truly Linux desktop, or embedded device reported as Linux?

jillesvangurp 3y ago
The percentage is much higher on embedded devices.

rglullis 3y ago

4% starts getting it into the threshold of Nassim Taleb's "intolerant minority" to take effect. It is too big of a market share to be served only by a niche player like System76 or Starlite, so we should start seeing all major manufacturers (beyond Dell and their XPS line) to add Linux-only hardware. And from there, what's stopping them from joining Valve to make Proton work for all the Windows-specific applications that are still used in the enterprise?

staunton 3y ago
> And from there, what's stopping them from joining Valve to make Proton work for all the Windows-specific applications that are still used in the enterprise? If they tried, which I don't expect, I'd guess adoption would stop it. Microsoft is entrenched with the public sectors and companies all over the world. The cost of switching would exceed any potential savings for years...
- mrktf 3y ago
  With current windows shenanigans and data slurping at least there is some sort discussion about it and switching. In my opinion main blocker which introduces huge switching cost (and even bigger policy problems) is missing group policy alternative.
- rglullis 3y ago
  There are already directives in some EU countries to choose open source solutions over proprietary ones whenever they are equivalent. There are already plenty of schools and universities that are using cloud based solutions and just run ChromeOS. All I'm saying is that we are closer to the point where the customer will be able to treat the OS as a commodity. That by itself works already as a bargaining chip against Microsoft and in favor of customers when it's time to negotiate their contracts. The switch won't happen overnight, but the trend has been long in favor of Linux. This 4-5% mark is significant and can lead to acceleration.
PennRobotics 3y ago
Lenovo also ships Linux laptops, although their Linux team needs the ability to veto hardware choices that were made in support of Windows. (I wonder if the XPS team can choose their hardware; my developer edition XPS was rock solid.) Lenovo's Linux team seems to use up a lot of their QA/support resources because they are handed a dozen new laptop designs each year with (for instance) a MIPI IPU6 webcam having no kernel driver, S0ix suspend broken at the EC-level, new types of forcepads and trackpoints and touchscreens and styli and soldered on Wi-Fi card with a track record of crashing in Linux... and told to figure it out. Plus, I think they occasionally get sidetracked by stupid bullshit like getting the boot logo to not flicker moving from BIOS to Plymouth. Also, they maybe should have pushed really hard on AMD (and possibly Qualcomm and their BIOS supplier) for having _multiple_ kernel releases that reached the stable "updates" on non-Rawhide Fedora that then broke suspend on several ThinkPad models. Bisect. Blame. Revert. If Linus used a newer AMD ThinkPad, some choice words would have landed on the mailing list.

choeger 3y ago

If one considers how desperately Microsoft tries to squeeze additional revenue from Windows (forced cloud account, ads, browser war 2.0) one has to wonder at what point they'll simply shut down OS (i.e., kernel and plumbing-level user-space tools) development completely. I mean yes, it has been a proud piece of Microsoft but the OG NT kernel team probably left by now and from a management perspective it doesn't offer any revenue to develop an OS kernel. Otoh, how big is their OS engineering team? Drivers are usually developed elsewhere. So maybe 100 folks or so? With a relatively low quota of non-devs, I assume? So Microsoft would potentially save what, tens of millions of dollars per year? Maybe they just continue this as some kind of tradition department.

imiric 3y ago
Did you miss the 72% market share of Windows on desktop machines? That is still a massive market, and if nothing else, pulls consumers into the rest of the MS ecosystem. So I doubt MS is abandoning OS development any time soon.
- weweersdfsd 3y ago
  I don't feel like MS ecosystem is that attractive to consumers. In enterprise for sure, everyone uses Teams, Outlook and MS Office, and Azure is popular for hosting. But in most people's personal lives it's smartphones that are most utilized, which naturally draws people to Google's and Apple's ecosystems. Only reasons I even bother to install Windows are gaming and MS Office provided by my university.
p4bl0 3y ago
> how big is their OS engineering team? (…) maybe 100 folks or so? From https://devblogs.microsoft.com/bharry/the-largest-git-repo-on-the-planet/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/bharry/the-largest-git-repo-o... : > the Windows team is about 4,000 engineers and the engineering system produces 1,760 daily “lab builds” across 440 branches in addition to thousands of pull request validation builds
- avar 3y ago

iaw 3y ago

In 1997-ish I failed to install Slackware from 16 or so floppies repeatedly. In 2000 I had a system up and running but could not get connectivity. In 2005 almost everything "just worked" out of the box. In 2013 everything just worked. I have recently started reflecting on how easy it is to do things now for free compared to the proprietary landscape we had before. Virtually every proprietary software has a (or multiple) free open source alternatives. The potential for human intellectual productivity has never been this high.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Interesting that they are counting chrome os separately since it is Linux based. That's another 2%. So 6% of the desktop market is running some form of Linux. There's another 6% unknown, which I bet might include some Linux users that are a bit savvy about configuring their browsers to not leak information. The Unkown line seems to climb faster than the linux line in the graph; which is interesting as well.

SomeoneFromCA 3y ago
Unknowns are BSDs.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  For desktop?
  - BSDobelix 3y ago
    Yes, why? Nearly all my Desktops and Laptops have exclusively FreeBSD on it.
  - SomeoneFromCA 3y ago
    In fact I would argue that FreeBSD is better as a desktop than server (where you may want package stability). FreeBSD update policies such as choice between quarterly (much like Ubuntu, but twice as often) and rolling puts its into nice balanced spot between Arch-like and Ubuntu-like system. The problem is however poor hardware support. They still do not support Alder Lake iGPU, you'll need to hack the kernel source to make it working. But once up and running it gives you nicer experience than many distros. Fells like a more stable sid.
    - BSDobelix 3y ago
      >where you may want package stability Oh not you again, i already explained to you that FreeBSD supports old versions ~5 year's of important software like postgresql/php etc. for example postgres 12-16, redis 6.2-7, python 2.7/3-3.9, openjdk 8-22. BTW many rolling and stop-rolling Linux distros do the same. I don't understand why you try to bullshit others.

smartmic 3y ago

It would be interesting to know what the market share is among the HN crowd though... any insights, @dang ?

qwertox 3y ago

Ever since I've upgraded to Windows 11 I am so extremely frustrated with explorer's performance. The shortest time I have to wait for it to react to a double-click is 5 seconds, sometimes it goes up to 30+ seconds when I've used the machine for a couple of hours. I don't mean the time it takes an application to "boot", but the time for explorer to deal with itself until it is able to launch something. Even a simple thing as showing the context menu and then displaying properties if that was selected. That is on a i9-9880H Laptop with 32GB of RAM and a Samsung 970 PRO. It's intolerable and I'm preparing to move to Linux. Since there are some tools I first need to write in order to maintain my workflow, mostly mouse-gesture-related stuff, I'm still waiting for the Wayland transition to get settled. If I could stay on X11 for a decade from now on, I would migrate ASAP, but if the Kubuntu team decides to fully switch to Wayland without using X11 being an option, I'd have a problem.

slowbdotro 3y ago
If you wanted, you honestly could stay on X11 for the next decade. I highly doubt it's going anywhere. Also, no matter what your workflow is, you can write a program to do that. I'd guarantee you could write a small script to automate Wayland to do what you need
- roenxi 3y ago
  Is it technically possible to guarantee program-agnostic mouse gesture support in Wayland? I would sorta expect wlroots to support it, but I don't think that is a safe bet for an arbitrary Wayland compositor.
  - qwertox 3y ago
    This is my main issue, I need full access to input devices and the ability to drop, alter and inject new events. On Windows I fully rely on StrokeIt, it has been a huge improvement for me which I've used for ~15 years. Linux's easystroke [0] is now deprecated (and always was mediocre) and the modern alternative "mouse-actions" [1] is not good at all. I've coded a replacement in Rust+C which works for my simple use-case but it targets X11 and it's unclear for me how I can get low level access to input devices events with Wayland. I've also read something about security getting increased in Wayland so that one does no longer have access to input stuff (unclear to me). Then the nice thing about X11 is the ability to remotely use a X11 session, which apparently isn't possible with Wayland (except for RDP or VNC which isn't what I need). [0] https://github.com/thjaeger/easystroke/wiki https://github.com/thjaeger/easystroke/wiki [1] https://github.com/jersou/mouse-actions https://github.com/jersou/mouse-actions

blitzar 3y ago

2024, the year of Linux.

mangecoeur 3y ago

Steam deck must have booster the numbers a lot

bluish29 3y ago

Considering that safari with my ad blockers blocked access to statscounter, I would be very suspicious that this percentage is much higher. The intersection between linux users and users who worry about privacy and know how to block trackers is big enough.

INTPenis 3y ago
Good point, Linux users tend to be more privacy conscious. I would probably not be counted by statcounter either. Having used Linux for 25 years I really don't care about stats. The community remains healthy and there will always be a demographic who want to use an OS that provides more control.

nparafe 3y ago

Most of the confusion would be avoided by simply changing the article to: "GNU/Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide"

k4ch0w 3y ago

Once Linux can run all my favorite games and future games I will uninstall windows forever.

olavgg 3y ago
This has already happened to me, I only play Dota2 and Civilization. And some cool games on PS5 and Switch. I still have Windows, but everytime I boot it, it takes 3 hours of updates before its usable again.

alastairr 3y ago

it’d be interesting to know the ratio of consumer desktops / laptops to linux servers required to support the consumer internet. I know neither of those things are particularly well defined but it adds another perspective on this which’s be interesting.

renegat0x0 3y ago

Two scenarios on my part. Recently we wanted to play Minecraft. I had to install fresh windows. I found ISO laying on nas. Installed it. Run update, after fifteen minuts and two reboots update told me everything is up to date. We tried to run several programs, but no luck. Some dll error with missing entrypoints. Installed several cpp runtimes, dotnet frameworks, still no luck. The we installed Minecraft, but from a page since app shop was not working. Minecraft said we are missing critical updates and it fetched some. Then windows update was able to find new updates, we had to go through more reboots, and twice i had to select correct privacy settings, because Microsoft likes my data so much. It took days to correctly install windows. Could have been easier if I used up to date image. Second scenario is also about minecraft. On windows it wanted me to create window account for my kids. Required kid account to be working, and there were some issues that it said that windows pin does not work, we could not change it on the machine. I think we managed to change it online by some Xbox online, or other Microsoft page. These pages are just a maze of accounts, setups, game passes. In the end it was easier just to run it on linux, and put just username and password. No advanced admin account management required.

BSDobelix 3y ago
>Some dll error with missing entrypoints. Try "sfc /scannow" next time in cmd (as admin) But overall...trow that image on your nas away.
- renegat0x0 3y ago
  Yeah I did that and it did not solve anything. I think the conclusion I made is that this windows gets more in my way recently than Linux. Newer image could solve some issues, but not all.
  - BSDobelix 3y ago
    >Newer image could solve some issues, but not all. I am happy that you found a less problematic os...sorry kernel then. And who need's the bedrock edition anyway ;) Oh and btw have a look at minetest: https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

koonsolo 3y ago

Right when I'm thinking about switching from Linux to Mac. Not for the software but for the hardware. I just can't find any laptop that can even get near the quality of a MacBook (excellent touchpad, sound, battery life).

KronisLV 3y ago

I installed a Linux distro on a spare SSD that I had this week, to once more try out doing more development in it and daily drive it for a bit. I went for Linux Mint because it has the convenience of Ubuntu (and Debian), though doesn't make me use snaps, in addition to their Cinnamon desktop just being all around a comfortable choice. So far, all of the tooling just works, the desktop experience (even including audio) seems bug free, though I've had issues in the past with my netbook instead of the desktop. Regardless, it uses less RAM than Windows, feels more snappy and for development, I'm very happy with it. All of my IDEs and toolchains work, productivity and content creation software doesn't have issues either. Even things like gaming seem more and more viable thanks to Steam and Proton, although it's not quite where Windows is now and won't be there for a while. Either way, I'm pretty glad with how the OS and its distros/desktop environments are progressing.

popol12 3y ago
Congrats for trying Linux again, I'm sure it will end up paying out ! My 2 cents: the best DE when coming from Windows is KDE. Kubuntu (ubuntu + KDE) is joy. It has a windows 7 feel, and is very customizable and stable.
- KronisLV 3y ago
  The last time I tried letting Windows rest altogether for a week left me reasonably satisfied as well, actually: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-windows https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-... With Windows 11 looming on the horizon as an inevitability, maybe I'll just need to rip the band-aid off and jump to Linux as my daily driver, since my containers and servers both use it already. KDE has a pretty good reputation from what I've heard, though honestly my previous choice was XFCE because it runs on pretty much everything (my old 4 GB netbook included).

peter_retief 3y ago

This is 4% of Desktop, Linux is most of installed systems if you include routers, servers and devices. I have used Linux Desktop for decades.

yesco 3y ago

I can only see this trend continuing in the coming years. I know people love to get cynical about Linux desktops being niche, but the reality is that desktops in general are becoming niche. Really consider the audience here, in broad strokes I'd divide it into three big groups: school, corporate and public. The public market for desktops is dying, or maybe it's already dead? The average person, especially the ones on the younger side, will just use their phone or tablet for all their general computing needs. If, for whatever reason, they do need to use a desktop, it will be for work or school, and most of their time on that desktop will be spent inside a web browser. For most people's personal life their desktop operating system just doesn't matter. Video games are an exception here, but will they remain that way? Schools are broadly switching to Chromebooks, these are technically Linux machines, but really they are just terminals to a web browser. The underlying OS exists purely to prevent students from do anything else with them. Even the cases where schools stick to Windows, this reality doesn't change, the platform of schooling is web browsers now. I'll admit, none of this is particularly new, but I naively assumed that the legendary stubbornness of corporate IT would be what keeps Windows dominant indefinitely, and that's quite a big audience right? Yet despite working at a big boring Fortune 500 company in an industry uniquely entrenched with Windows, they are now officially offering Linux laptops to developers who want them. Apparently Lenovo officially supporting Ubuntu was a big deal, and since all of our development targets embedded & cloud systems anyway, it was kind of a no-brainer decision for management. We still need Outlook, Teams, Office, and such, but we can do so via Office 365, so there isn't much holding back the transition... Naturally many niches will remain, I'm not saying Windows will go away here, nor am I saying a web dominated world necessarily equals a world dominated by Linux desktops. But rather than Linux Desktops becoming a niche within a niche, I think that Windows will join Linux, and they both will become equally niche together :)

vetinari 3y ago
I would argue, that the dividing line lies elsewhere: between creation and consumption. The average person does not create much, so for consumption, mobile devices are fine (though it is amazing, what a teenager can do to the photos with just a phone). For any creation, be it media, engineering, science, or even just plain old bureaucracy, you still need either desktops, or workstation, and it is going to stay that way for a while. But the market will be a lot smaller than in 90's or 2000's, since all just-consumers moved elsewhere.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

matthewfelgate 3y ago

It has never been easier to install and use Ubuntu on a computer instead of Windows. So why aren't more people doing it?

timbit42 3y ago
Because of SNAPs. Linux Mint is better as it doesn't have SNAPs.

lifeinthevoid 3y ago

I don't really trust the datasource TBH, according to https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide the macOS marketshare went from 21.01% in November 2023 to 15.42% in February 2024. That doesn't sound realistic at all.

timbit42 3y ago
You can't know whether to trust it until you know why it happened.

jsnell 3y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38853877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38853877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39252801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39252801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200

M95D 3y ago

It's not because Linux got better. It's because Windows got worse.

surgical_fire 3y ago
I dispute this notion. The truth is that "Linux" improved a lot over the years. My first attempt at it was in 2002. At the time I was a kid that tinkered a bit with his own PC, not a technical user proper. I tried to install Mandrake Linux, and it was difficult to get it running. Ultimately I failed to get my mouse to work and gave up. Many years later, at around 2015, I made a second attempt. My workplace supported both Windows and Linux, and I opted for Linux, as testing locally in an environment similar to what was found in Production was better. No shenanigans with line endings, casing on file names, etc. Ubuntu this time around. It was a joy to use. Installing it on the computer was extremely easy. I eventually dual-booted at my home computer too. My only real issue was that some software I wanted to use (games mostly) didn't run on Linux, which was a shame. My dual boot setup lasted for a few years, but it was a hassle to switch in between both when I stopped coding and wanted to play games. And eventually I dropped it for Windows 10 + WSL. Then I made my final attempt around a year ago. Linux Mint this time. I read how WINE/Proton had made huge strides into providing Windows compatibility, and thought it was time go give it another go. It has been an amazing experience. I can run the vast majority of my gaming library without any issues (really only one exception so far, a somewhat obscure game at that). After more than a year, there was not a single moment where I thought I needed to be on Windows for anything. And the OS is a joy to use. It has no right being this good for free. I even donated 20 bucks as appreciation. Will probably do it again this year. So yeah. Things actually improved a lot. I agree that Windows has been getting worse, but that is not the full story

reify 3y ago

4% is probably about right I'm am a retired old bloke who has used linux for about 20 years since the early releases of ubuntu and linux mint. I do my best to advise and promote linux to all my elderly friends and have even installed linux as a replacement to windows for a few of them. Once they get used to Linux they are forever smitten. The increased speed and ease of use is nothing like windows complexity. Even I struggle with windows, that damn search box, what is that really about but to confuse. Windows is supposed to be a personal computer not a time travelling machine, so whats the issue with updates taking a millennium. I got better things to do than wait for that unnecessary waste of time. It must be brainwashing and propaganda that convinces people that a windows machines are better in some way. I watch my friends struggling with their windows data collecting machines and I cry inside. My old life is so much easier, restful, stress free and I have more pension to spend on myself. Free as in Freedom, too cool!

coffeeninja 3y ago

I think these numbers are quite strong. I consider myself a Linux user as that is my preferred OS, but my browser usage is from different OSs: Phone, my work laptop which is Windows and from my Macbook Air. I think less than 25% of my browsing is from Linux. I would think many could be in a similar situation, so in a way it is possible that the numbers "should" be higher.

d--b 3y ago

Frankly, the chart looks like Linux's market share is below the range of errors of the measurments made. Compared to Linux, the famous "Unknown" OS has a market share of 10%-ish, a spectacular come back from its steep decline between May and June 2023 where it went from 12% to 3%. Windows and OSX market shares aren't stable at all and can move 4% in one month. So Linux going from 3.9% to 4% should be taken with a grain of salt...

dredmorbius 3y ago

Both traditional desktop and laptop markets have been declining or flat (respectively), and both are anticipated to decline in near future years, if not already. See e.g., <https://convergetechmedia.com/laptop-sales-vs-desktop-pc-sales-one-climbs-the-other-drops-whats-ahead/ https://convergetechmedia.com/laptop-sales-vs-desktop-pc-sal...> for overall markets and <https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/business/dell-earnings-ai-server/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/29/business/dell-earnings-ai-ser...> concerning Dell's recent performance. To the extent that Linux has always represented an advanced technical subset of the market, the desktop market is effectively shifting further to technical users. "Casuals" increasingly rely on mobile devices --- smartphones and tablets, possibly netbooks. Technical users who are already more likely to choose Linux (or similar alternatives such as the *BSDs) are increasingly concentrated in the desktop market. I'll note that I'm not one to lump Android in with Linux, as the overwhelmingly prominent Android UX does not include Linux applications or environments, even if those are in theory available (e.g., through Termux). Whether or not overall Linux usage is increasing, as in total interactive users and time-in-OS (that is, for those using multiple environments, including virtualised environments, what is the split of time between OSes), and the value associated with usage (especially in professional / commercial contexts) isn't clear from the Linuxiac article. I suspect that there's some absolute growth as computer markets grow modestly overall, but that it's less significant than the percentage of desktop top-line figures would suggest. (Written as a Linux user for well over a quarter century, and an Android user for a decade and a half, along with numerous other platforms.)

Woodi 3y ago

Here seriously looking for alternative to Win 11 for small family company becouse buying old computers with Win 10 Pro gives just few years. Best thing I found is invoicing app written in Java LOL. Need to call that company and ask do they support non Oracle Java :> But other then that, Linux is good, Emacs can generate simple pdf's to print, Perl scripts still able to sum few digits, even git via ssh works like NAS :) Just that mandated by law things are impossible. No monopoly at all...

sotix 3y ago

I switched from MacOS to Arch Linux with KDE Plasma 3 years ago and couldn’t be happier. It’s so nice to have Pacman (and the AUR) as a built-in package manager. My experience with multiple monitors is better than on MacOS. My experience with gaming is surprisingly better than on Windows. Elden Ring worked day one on Linux but was almost unplayable on Windows for me. The entire experience feels to the point and working for me. Windows was littered with ads and weird driver issues. MacOS would constantly yell at me for trying to do things on my own computer. On Linux, I could simply plug in a printer and print documents. Finally, life as a developer is so much higher quality all around. Linux just works. Never thought I would see the day!

penjelly 3y ago

everytime i boot a Linux based disco on hardware for the first time im always blown away that some of the greatest multitools of mankind are free and available in minutes

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

More discussion a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200

daft_pink 3y ago

Essentially Windows sucks. I’ve been using MacOS, but I really wish I could get a generous amount of RAM and HD at a reasonable price.

7e 3y ago

Let's look at this StatsCounter data: - In one month, macOS share drops from 21% to 16% - In one month, Linux share goes up 50% - In the same month, ChromeOS share drops 50% None of these things are true. This data is garbage. In the last year, "unknown" peaked at 13%, to boot. Ridiculous.