Submitted 2 months ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/linux-continues-growing-market-share-reaches-4-of-desktops/
We see the nearly 33-year-old OS’s market share growing 31.3 percent from June 2023, when we last reported on Linux market share, to February. Since June, Linux usage has mostly increased gradually. Overall, there’s been a big leap in usage compared to five years ago. In February 2019, Linux was reportedly on 1.58 percent of desktops globally.
LOL this is not the market share of Linux.
This is the share of Linux in one certain market of web surfers.
Yeah, misleading headline. They’re talking about the linux desktop, and based just on browser stats. Marked share of linux as a whole, including all datacenters, servers, cloud infrastructure, and heck, throw in IOT devices, android, routers, etc, I’m pretty sure it’s the dominant OS already.
No doubt it’s the most widely run OS, I think the significance is akin to the difference between ios and android. Android dominates smart phones as a whole but ios still generates far more revenue, giving them arguably more power. So while linux is more widely used, microsoft still dictates computing for the majority of people.
I just realized… Add in every tv sold this decade, the box bought got because the smart TV sucks, and the third one you got because it was cheap. Probably blue ray players too, if you have one.
That’s gotta beat PC sales several times over on its own… We truly live in an absurd world
Yeah, “increasing market share” would be something like Netflix ditching FreeBSD for Linux.
Bro don’t kill the vibe
2% more and they have to let it into the presidential debates.
Mint 2024: Make America Minty Fresh!
You hear it here first.
2024: Year of the Linux Desktop
1991: Year of the Linux Desktop
1992
1993
1994
…
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2023 was officially the year of the Linux laptop for me. The year of the linux desktop for myself may or may not be this year.
Windows 95 lockups drove me to linux. Options are good.
My year was 2007. I stopped caring about the rest of the world following me by about 2015. 17 years since I touched Windows without being paid to do so. feelsgoodman.jpg
*Linux SBC
Year of the Linux desktop babyyyy
Year of the Linux portable gaming handheld?
2 years in a row babyyyy
I always look forward to the penguin images on articles about Linux
It looks like it’s because macos lost a lot for some reason over the last couple of years with Windows and Linux picking up that share. Anyone know why?
My company was pushing MacBooks and iMacs on developers for years, now they’re reversing course. I’m guessing it’s a combination of the upfront cost and the hassle of enterprise administration, tech support, and security having to officially handle 2 different OS’s. It’s much easier to have everyone on similar setups, and Windows is basically the “default” OS for corporate users.
The new arch continues to mess up brew, which is by far what people use for development on the platform. In addition, docker and other custom tools are paid on Mac but free on Linux. With companies tightening their belts, Linux is starting to make financial sense.
I’m going to guess that everything else became so expensive, like food and rent, that people have less money to spend on a computer, and there’s is particularly expensive. But that’s just my guess.
People migrating to iPads maybe? I figured that Mac and Linux both would be making gains. Especially with apple silicon being 3 generations in and windows 11 sucking so much.
Wonder if iPads are cutting into that all. Considering they are cheaper than a MacBook which basically requires you to drop at least a grand for entry level devices
We should thank Microsoft for rendering Windows absolutely unusable, to the point that many people are just jumping ship and installing a Linux distro.
Yeah, microsoft making outlook worse and worse every year sends me to thunderbird. And thunderbird suck on Windows, so I finally switched back to linux after years of using windows (I switched to windows when Windows 10 released).
I am surprised that linux is pretty usable at this point, much better than 7 years ago. I feel much more productive in gnome than on Windows at this point.
What kind of things got worse with outlook? I still use it for work, and the ui has changed, sure, but still seems to do everything it used to. In fact, the progressive web app even works quite well on linux!
I am surprised that linux is pretty usable at this point, much better than 7 years ago.
While I’m surprised it’s still usable at this point, with all the enthusiasm about things ending it, but still not as good as 7 years ago for me.
The year of the Linux desktop was 2011.
Why do I see this link every day on my feed with different thumbnails?
I upvote it every time, sorry
Me too! Just confused.
to the moon 🚀
As long as you can’t see Linux machines in normal computer stores it will not happen. Users never get the opportunity to experience it. Today there is no killer feature really like the other OS have.
The killer features(for me) are: Privacy(by Default), Opensource, Decent performance on old hardware, looks pretty(variable), basic software compatibility(else i would just use TempleOS)
Privacy(by Default)
Not once you get on the Web.
Decent performance on old hardware
I don’t know what you call old. Also not once you get on the Web.
looks pretty(variable),
Yessir, and for me that could be a sufficient reason alone. Sad that conkeror is no more usable for a browser.
People go to computer stores?
here i was thinking i must be doing it wrong my last 5 rrigs from newegg. latest build
I’m people, does microcenter count?
Maybe if framework gets big?
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
How reliable is this actually? There are a millions reasons for me to fake which is and web browser in using.
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.
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.
My grandparents had someone else to install Linux too. It was me btw.
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.
A lot of software developers use Linux on their work computers. That's a lot of page views done during work days.
But also many Linux users at home may have to use windows at work so it balances out I guess?
Is it?
Among my friends it’s more like 30%
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.
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.
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.
You can thank me later - I literally installed Linux back as my primary OS after being back on Windows for ages on the day before this report came out the first time.
Same! Just did it last Friday
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… because I am blocking and all trackers, I won’t count towards this at all. Presumably the same is true of many Lemmy users.
And probably most Linux users, generally.
We should each create 5 small VMs with a Linux desktop on them and keep them running.
We’ll kick it up to like 5%!
It is really nice to see an alternative to US corporate tech making in roads. But to get the numbers even higher the US needs to ban the Chinese and Russians from using Windows and I hope they do.
That’s a significant bump since June.
I’m eagerly optimistic about the future of Linux smartphones, as well. I would have already jumped ship if phones like the Librem 5 or the Pinephone had better cameras. Exciting times for Linux folks.
Air passes 10% market share.
It is hard and kinda pointless to talk about something that isn’t sold.
why is this such a big deal when it’s still such a small number? I get that it’s “increasing” but still
What would people recommend if the main reason you use windows is gaming? I have an AMD CPU and a Nvidia GPU, if drivers are good etc, which OS would you use
I hope there’s geometric progression somewhere.
Many Linux distributions suck, and the way many people use Linux sucks too, but it’d still be a bit better world if Linux would be mainstream OS.
Even better if that’d be NetBSD, of course. OpenBSD if performance would be better. FreeBSD - just better.
thank router firmwares
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Linux reached 4.03 percent of global market share in February, according to data from research firm Statcounter.
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.
Since June, ChromeOS adoption took a bit of a dive, representing 2.27 percent of the worldwide market last month.
Windows dominance, meanwhile, mostly increased between June and February, when the Microsoft OS was reportedly on 72.17 percent of computers.
Ultimately, the big OS players are still, by far, Windows and macOS, which represented 87.59 percent of desktop OSes in February.
Still, it’s interesting to watch usage of the open source OS grow, especially as fragmentation and app discovery improve.
The original article contains 675 words, the summary contains 124 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
anlumo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well, Microsoft is doing everything they can to get people to switch to Linux right now…
cestvrai@lemm.ee 2 months ago
They are succeeding!
I’ve used Linux for years, certainly for all servers, but preferred the Windows desktop environment until last year.
So many shitty, slow updates. Hassle me to give MS my data or switch to Edge half the times I boot up…
I have fully embraced Gnome Shell and love my Debian setup. Feels great to be in control again!
Also, baseline CPU load is way lower and it’s much more rare to have my fans throttle up.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Valve and Microsoft working together to get people to switch to Linux and make 2024 the Year of Linux on the desktop.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Like for real. Ad ridden OS 11 with no support for a ton of processors that are still in use. My system I built in 2015 still runs fantastic, but my AMD 1600x processor didn’t make the cut. No loss there. As soon as OS 10 support stops it’ll just be a Linux PC.
Valve has also been a huge help with the constant push for Linux gaming and the Steam Deck.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 2 months ago
The increase in Linux is actually from Apple. Both Linux and Windows usage increased while MacOS decreased.
swordsmanluke@programming.dev 2 months ago
To be horribly pedantic… Not necessarily!
It could be Apple users -> Windows users -> Linux users – with larger numbers of Apple -> Windows conversions than Windows -> Linux conversions…
You know.
Maybe.
Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I don’t really keep up with Apple stuff, what are they doing for this to possibly happen?
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Let me show you how with this PowerPoint! The new Windows11 PowerPoint, while shared in teams is both readable…the ant reading needs DLP fast eyes to shake its head at 130FPS so that the 4 available pixels can be translated into full 4K for the ant. That’s when the magic happens that some people are not aware, because if you got an ant farm, it will sometimes arrange the top sand into the current 4k frame. Yes, there’s a little loss of you use builder’s sand vs playground sand. Also there’s only one color…sand. and it freezes a lot!.. but do you know how hard it is to translate 4k pixel by pixel? The good news is that if everyone is sharing their cameras you get an absolute awesome view of their faces!.. everyone squinting trying to see if that little squiggly thing is the updated bracket you’re working on or if it’s an ant.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 2 months ago
For those that are stuck with it: github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools
Psythik@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Such as? I love Windows 11 for Auto HDR alone. I never have to think about HDR at all in 11. It just works. In 10 the implementation was wonky at best. It often made things look worse so I literally never used it. Can’t wait for the dedicated Copilot key as well. 'Bout time they retired the useless Menu key. I don’t know of any Linux distro that integrates AI with the OS… Do you? Cause I’m still willing to switch so long as it has AI and a proper HDR implementation.
PlexSheep@feddit.de 2 months ago
Ehy would you want “AI” in an OS?
anlumo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m using AI in a very controlled manner, I don’t want somebody else to decide for me where it’s applied. Also, Windows 11 doesn’t have support for ultrawide monitors, and I happen to have one.
PlexSheep@feddit.de 2 months ago
Everything they can? They just need to kill off windows, they’re not doing that.
anlumo@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They have a lot of existing contracts they can’t simply annul.