6 ms·

> Every month more and more people switch to Linux We've been hearing this for decades and yet the home Linux userbase is microscopic and somehow even smaller

• dralley 9mo ago
  I mean, this is literally false? Desktop Linux userbase is growing, it's bigger than it has ever been even without including ChromeOS, and more OEMs are shipping devices with desktop linux than ever before (Valve's suite of devices, multiple laptop vendors including major ones like Lenovo, a few SteamDeck competitors)
• vikramkr 9mo ago
  I mean - steam deck was a pretty significant inflection point quite recently. Making gaming viable on linux via a popular consumer product is a huge deal and starts to kill one of desktop linux's single biggest barriers to adoption.
• bobsterlobster 9mo ago
  Calling 4-5% marketshare microscopic is not fair. I get it if it was still stuck at 1%, but it's growing, and the rate of growth has been increasing too.
  • rudhdb773b 9mo ago
    Is the desktop/laptop linux market share really over 4%? What is that based on?
    • jsheard 9mo ago
      The Steam survey has it at 3.6%, although that's obviously skewed towards gamers, and counts Steam Decks in addition to desktops.
      • lambdaone 9mo ago
        According to Statcounter, Linux's share is 3.86% and rising; but I'd imagine that quite a bit of the almost 16% 'unknown' is also Linux. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide Not insignificant at all.
        • godelski 9mo ago
          Maybe more interesting is that if you switch to looking at just America Linux jumps to 5.25% (unknown 7.4%) (Similar numbers for all of NA), and for Europe it is 4.32% (9.75% unknown). Again, not huge numbers but also not insignificant. But they are quickly growing and taking share from Microsoft. If we look back at (Dec) 2021 the numbers are 1.8% and 2.2% respectively. Those gains are meaningful.
      • havblue 9mo ago
        You can see that while Windows 10 numbers are going down over the past few months, the Windows 11 numbers aren't making up for it. About 2/3 of that gap are going to Linux with the other third going to Mac. So Mac is getting more market at the expense of Windows as well. There are a significant number of disgruntled Windows users leaving over the past year.
    • GeneralMaximus 9mo ago
      At least according to Statcounter, Linux is currently at 3.86% worldwide: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide. It's slightly larger in the US at 5.28%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st... In India, where I live, it's surprisingly at 6.51%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india Take this with a grain of salt, because numbers from Statcounter are not fully accurate. However, none of those numbers are small. 3.86% of the entire PC market is not something to scoff at.
      • PurpleRamen 9mo ago
        The high amount of "Unknown" is interesting. Especially as it doubled in the last 6-8 months.
        • marcosdumay 9mo ago
          "Unknown" is always mostly some version of Windows that they couldn't classify for one reason or another.
          • shmeeed 9mo ago
            Probably. But part of it might also be something else entirely. I'm not saying it is, but how's anybody to tell? Statcounter is just not a good way to research Linux market share. Unfortunately, what they lack in statistics, they seem to make up for in SEO... everybody's landing there.
      • seanw444 9mo ago
        There's also the people like me that couldn't historically run certain games well directly on Linux, so we have Windows virtual machines with GPU passthrough. Which would read as me being a Windows user in the Steam stats, but a Linux user in other stats. The state of gaming has improved drastically since I started doing it that way, though, and I'm considering ditching the VM entirely. Multiplayer games seem to be getting the hint about anticheat exclusion on Linux. ARC Raiders, for example, is a competitive game and runs flawlessly directly on Linux.
    • benjiro 9mo ago
      Its not ... The problem is that people do not realize that devices like Steam Deck are also considered Linux desktop devices in those numbers. Chrome tends to also inflate those numbers. Yes, they are Linux desktops but not in the way people are comparing Windows to Linux. The real number is closer to 2.5% somewhere. What is still growth but nowhere the "year of the Linux desktop". You tend to see a rather vocal minority that makes you feel like there is some major switch but looking here in the comments, people that switched 8 years, 12 year, 20 years ago are people that are part of the old statistics. There are some new converts but not what you expect to see despite Linux now also being more gaming compatible. It still has minor issues (beyond anti-cheat), that involve people fixing things, less then the past. But its still not the often click and play, works under every resolution, has no graphic issue etc etc. That is the part people often do not tell you, because a lot of people are more thinkers, so a issue pops up, they fix it and forget about it. Ironically, MacOS just dominates as the real alternative to Windows in so many aspects. If Apple actually got their act together about gaming, it can trigger a actual strong contender to Windows.
      • tokai 9mo ago
        Steam Deck is a Linux desktop device. It is literally a thin laptop with a build-in screen and joystick running linux. Does my linux system stop being that when I turn on big picture mode in steam? You can run the steam deck as your daily driver hooked up to a keyboard and a monitor.
        • benjiro 9mo ago
          The Steam Deck is not a Desktop ... That is like saying that every Android smartphone is a desktop. Sure, you can use it as a desktop but 99.99% of the people are using it as a handheld console. And nice downvotes... Typical in Linux Desktop topics.
          • shmeeed 9mo ago
            I didn't downvote, but it might have to do with the fact that you appear to be just inventing numbers like 2.5%. If Steam Decks are only used for gaming, why would they make up for 1.38% of the Statcounter numbers?
  • jajuuka 9mo ago
    A growth of 4% over 20 years is not an increasing rate. And yes, 4% marketshare is microscopic. macOS has a bigger share but you wouldn't say macOS is massive. Posts like this are cheerleading OS's because everything needs to be a zero sum competition.
    • Hasnep 9mo ago
      But it's also not not an increasing rate, there's not enough information to know if the rate is increasing or not.
• fundatus 9mo ago
  Somehow I think the stars might be aligning this time though. People are genuinely fed up with Windows and governments around the world are loudly thinking about how to reduce dependence on US tech. And then there is Proton which makes it much easier for Gamers to jump ship. To me it feels like there is more momentum than ever for this. On the other hand I am also a realist and I don't think that Linux will take over the Desktop, but it will certainly have its biggest growth year ever in 2026.
  • nosianu 9mo ago
    > Somehow I think the stars might be aligning this time though > governments around the world are loudly thinking about how to reduce dependence on US tech I am definitely sympathetic, after all, I worked for a major Linux company for quite a few years, started using Linux RH) in 1994, and even wrote some network related kernel modules. However, this switch to Linux is not going to happen (apart from where it is already used heavily, from servers to many non-PC systems). I have been in projects for large companies but also government on and off. Now, I manage the IT of a small (<50 employees) non-IT business with people in several countries. People who actually comment in these discussions seem to be entirely focused on the OS itself. But that is what matters the least in business. Office is another, and even there most people who don't deal with it at scale are way too focused on some use case where individuals write documents and do some spreadsheeting. It's almost always about a very small setup, or even just a single PC. However, the Microsoft stack is sooooo much more. ID management. Device management. Uncountable number of little helpers in form of software and scripts that you cannot port to a Linux based stack without significant effort. Entire mail domains are managed by Office 265 - you own the domain and the DNS records, you get licenses for Office365 from MS, you point the DNS records to Microsoft, you are done. Sure, MS tools and the various admin websites are a mess, duplicating many things, making others hard to find. But nobody in the world would be able to provide soooo much stuff while doing a better job. The truth is, they keep continuously innovating and I can see it, little things just conveniently showing up, like that I now have a Teams button to create an AI script of my conversations, or that if more than one person opens an Office document that is stored in OneDrive we can see each other inside the document, cursor positions, and who has it open. Nobody in their right mind will switch their entir4e org to Linux unless they have some really good reasons, a lot of resources to spare, and a lot of experience. Most businesses, for whom IT is not the be-all-end-all but just a tool will not switch. But something can be done. The EU could, for example, start requiring other stacks for new special cases. They cannot tell the whole economy to switch, not even a fraction of it, but they could start with new government software. Maybe - depends on how it has to fit into the existing mostly Microsoft infrastructure. They could also require more apps to be web-only. I once wrote some code for some government agency to manage business registrations, and it was web software. The focus would have to be to start creating strong niches for local business to start making money using other stacks, and to take the long road, slowly replace US based stacks over the next two or three decades. At the same time, enact policies that let local business grow using alternative stacks, providing a safe cache-flow that does not have to compete with US based ones. The EU also needs some better scaling. The nice thing about the MS stack is that I can use it everywhere, in almost all countries. The alternative cannot be that a business would have to use a different local company in each country. I read a month ago that EU travel to the US is down - by only ~3%. Just like with any calls for boycott of this and that, the truth is that those commenting are a very tiny fraction. The vast majority of people and businesses are not commenting in these threads (or at all), and their focus is on their own business and domain problems first of all. Switching their IT stack will only done by force, if the US were to do something really drastic that crashes some targeted countries Microsoft- and Cloud-IT.
• deaux 9mo ago
  Go and download the archives of Reddit, there are plenty of torrents out there. Filter to a sub like r/gaming. Relative frequency graph of Linux mentions. You'll see a magnitude increase over the last 12 months compared to years before. It's real. Must admit, not sure if the data torrents are uptodate now that Reddit anti-scrapes so hard to raise their premium on the exclusive contract to the highest bidder, OpenAI.
• ManlyBread 9mo ago
  According to the Steam Hardware Survey (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...) only ~3.6% Steam users use Linux and these statistics include the Steam Deck users. SteamOS accounts for ~26% of Linux users, which in turn brings down the count to ~2.6%. For comparision, MacOS is ~2.1% of the market share at the moment. Wake me up when Linux gets to 10%.
• HendrikHensen 9mo ago
  More and more desktop apps are just becoming websites. More and more desktop apps are using Electron rather than some native app. Windows is slowly becoming a dumpster fire in terms of usability and issues. Most games these days Just Work on Linux without any tinkering. While I hardly think that this year will be "the year of the Linux desktop" or whatever, but if these trends keep going, I really foresee Linux market share growing, slowly, each year, until it's not so microscopic anymore.
• GoatInGrey 9mo ago
  As phones replace desktop computers for non-technical users, leaving a concentration of "skilled" users, my suspicion is that the pattern will resemble the quote "Slowly, then all at once."
• tempaccsoz5 9mo ago
  Have a look at the Steam Hardware [and software] Survey [0] results. Linux has been trending upwards whist Windows has been trending down for a wee while. And the population this looks at is primarily interested in gaming, which means that this is despite a compatibility layer being needed for a large amount of the software used. I imagine in other communities (software, old people) it's trending much faster. E.g. I recently installed Linux Mint for my grandma so she could use email and an up-to-date web browser on her old laptop that can't run (secure) Windows anymore. The UI differences are marginal for her, and she can do everything she needs to much better than she could before (which was not at all). [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/