Idk, I’m a woman approaching my senior years who had to have someone else install it. My whole household is on Linux. None of us are in IT.
Comment on [deleted]
mindlight@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I’ve been a regular user of Deboqn and Ubuntu for the last 20 years and even though I love the idea of Linux taking market share from Windows the article doesn’t in any way analyze the reliability of the statistics.
Statcounter says it gets its desktop operating system (OS) usage stats from tracking code installed on over 1.5 million global websites generating over 5 billion monthly page views.
So… How reliable is this actually? There are a millions reasons for me to fake which is and web browser in using. Some sites actively sabotage the user experience and usability if the OS is not identified as Windows or the web browser is not Chrome/Edge.
I’ve been working IT since the 90’s and there’s not a 4% market share of Linux when I look at my friends and colleagues that works IT. The ones I know that doesn’t work IT definitively don’t use Linux. Att least not in other things than Steam Deck and Android (Linux as in “modified kernel”) and maybe some premade img for RPi
RainfallSonata@lemmy.world 8 months ago
uis@lemm.ee 8 months ago
My grandparents had someone else to install Linux too. It was me btw.
Diplomjodler@feddit.de 8 months ago
That’s the point. As long as you can’t buy a laptop with Linux on it at your local computer store, the average user will stick with Windows. And MS will do everything they can to keep it that way.
GreatDong3000@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Down here in Brazil desktops/laptops with Linux are a thing on most mainstream electronics stores. Have been for at least two decades b/cs I remember seeing those as a kid in the 2000s. Because poverty so the stores always have the cheaper options and the ones with Linux are cheaper than windows. Sometimes you can find the exact same configuration but the Linux version is like 200-400 BRL cheaper.
But what most people would do here is buy the Linux desktop to then install pirated versions of windows.
Diplomjodler@feddit.de 8 months ago
Damn! You really have me hope they’re and then smashed it with your yeast sentence.
troed@fedia.io 8 months ago
A lot of software developers use Linux on their work computers. That's a lot of page views done during work days.
GreatDong3000@lemm.ee 8 months ago
But also many Linux users at home may have to use windows at work so it balances out I guess?
mryessir@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Is it?
rbos@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Among my friends it’s more like 30%
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Some sites actively sabotage the user experience and usability if the OS is not identified as Windows
Never heard of this and highly doubt it, but if it were true that’s 100% not a website I want to use, so they’d be doing me a favor.
mindlight@lemm.ee 8 months ago
You’re free to whatever opinion you might have but it’s not a secret that Google used to change their search page to a more limited one if you were using Firefox.
Hence people created add-ons to change the User Agent to mimic Chrome when accessing Google.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m well aware of that. Browser and OS aren’t the same thing. Weird.
mindlight@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I had to check if I was alone on this…I want. First hit on a quick Google:
reddit.com/…/me_every_time_a_web_page_doesnt_work…
So yeah, not alone… this is the hill I’m dying on😁
octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Never heard of this and highly doubt it
A quick google search will probably turn up lots of discussion forum results where Linux users were talking about the best way to change their user agent and removed about sites that force them to.
In most cases it wasn’t anti-linux, it was the site being programmed to go “the user agent has to match these things or tell the user it’s not compatible with their browser” - but in MANY cases if Windows wasn’t one of the matched things you received that message. Off the top of my head I specifically remember having to change it to pay my cable bill and get to my bank website.
There were also some more subtle cases where shit would not work (most famously the web interface for Office365 when it was new).
So you can doubt, but this is what it was like to run Linux in the 2000s.
More recently (for sure post 2016) I recall having to change it to get the Netflix website to let me play content.
mkwt@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Shouldn’t this effect cause Linux use to be under reported? That is, the real percentage would be higher than 4%?
I would pretty strongly expect significant correlation between people who spoof their user agent and Linux users.