Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide

https://linuxiac.com/linux-crosses-four-percent-market-share-worldwide/

by benkan • 2 years ago

190 179 2 years ago

frereit• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

This is desktop only.

Linux is market leader once you bring in mobile, embedded and so on.

ffgjgf1• 2 years 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

piaste• 2 years ago

I suspect that the Steam Deck is considered a desktop rather than a mobile device. Same as laptops.

umbra075• 2 years ago

steam deck would be included in that.

Karliss• 2 years ago

According to Steam hardware survey 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• 2 years ago

No wonder with the recent Windows UX degradations.

ant6n• 2 years ago

Also privacy degradations.

And bugs.

And performance issues.

Still, office365/onedrive/teams is hard to beat on price for a small business.

dijit• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

i saw folks suggesting a lot of the growth came from india, but i didn't look into it.

umbra075• 2 years ago

I believe Linux marketshare in India is somewhere around 15%?

mytailorisrich• 2 years ago

I think the categories are "desktop", "mobile", and "server". Perhaps "tablet" as well.

So "desktop OS" likely includes actual desktops and laptops.

flohofwoe• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

Laptops are desktops.

timbit423• 2 years ago

Many people never move their laptop from their desk.

cykros• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

charcircuit8• 2 years ago

and mobile

Ygg29• 2 years 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.

weinzierl• 2 years 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_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• 2 years ago

100% if you exclude Microsoft’s cloud? :-)

smartmic2• 2 years ago

Doesn't Azure Cloud also rely on Linux in the majority of its VMs?

Zobat• 2 years ago

"More than 60 percent of customer cores in Azure run Linux workloads"

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/...

So the Linux share would actually decrease if you exclude Azure ;)

fragmede• 2 years 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.

gsich2• 2 years ago

Desktop market share is the only important metric.

vincentkriek• 2 years ago

How so? I find it very interesting to see how many servers use windows or what software is used in embedded applications

silisili2• 2 years ago

I don't understand why they even split ChromeOS out. Especially with their VM system, a good number are probably reporting as 'proper Linux.'

I can't speak for worldwide usage, but I've lived in 4 school districts in the last 5 years and all required Chromebooks. I imagine actual usage is higher than reported.

umbra075• 2 years ago

In practical terms, ChromeOS is radically different from every other Linux (desktop) distro. The usecase is very different, and the day to day handling of the system is also very different.

It makes sense to track ChromeOS in it's own category.

blowski• 2 years ago

The whole server metric is meaningless. Do VMs count? Containers? Serverless?

7e2• 2 years ago

The kernel running within Android is meaningless. It's not the GUI or the runtime. It performs commodity functions. It's like saying that PEX has 50% of all indoor plumbing share. It doesn't provide any distinguishing, features and the user doesn't care about it. It's cheap, that's its value.

charcircuit8• 2 years ago

I would agree that the average consumer does not really need to concern themselves with what kernel their operating system. For developers though it does mean that you know your code is written for linux then you know it will work on any operating system using the linux kernel. You can even take your compiled library and reuse it between the operating systems. For people who care about the success of the Linux kernel then keeping track of its market share is nice to know.

BerislavLopac• 2 years ago

I prefer to look at it this way: every fifth desktop/laptop runs a Unix OS.

phantomathkg• 2 years ago

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

jillesvangurp5• 2 years ago

The percentage is much higher on embedded devices.

rglullis2• 2 years 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?

staunton2• 2 years 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...

rglullis2• 2 years 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.

mrktf• 2 years 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.

PennRobotics• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

p4bl03• 2 years ago

how big is their OS engineering team? (…) maybe 100 folks or so?

From 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

avar3• 2 years ago

Only a small minority of those people are going to be working on the core OS under discussion here.

avar3• 2 years ago

Microsoft notoriously has major issues implementing new features or fixing bugs due to their commitment to backwards compatibility.

E.g. I've been told personally by Microsoft developers in the know that certain oddities or performance differences between POSIX and Windows come down to a handful of obscure but tricky test regression failures, and nobody could justify the time spent on bridging the gap. This was in the context of improving Git performance on Windows.

So even if Microsoft made the management decision tomorrow to ditch NT and ship Windows as a Linux distro, it's unclear how they could square that with backwards compatibility in a way that would result in overall cost savings for the foreseeable future.

azeirah• 2 years ago

The weight of that single word "tricky" in tricky test regression failures is very high!

I can't imagine the obscure craziness you'll be encountering when working on a codebase that's easily over 25 years old, supporting billions and billions of devices.

iamcurious• 2 years ago

They are taking steps in that direction with Windows subsystem for Linux

iaw• 2 years 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.

jillesvangurp5• 2 years 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.

SomeoneFromCA4• 2 years ago

Unknowns are BSDs.

resolutebat• 2 years ago

For desktop?

jillesvangurp5• 2 years ago

BSD is counted separately at a minuscule 0.1%. I imagine the proportion of that 6% unknown might be similar.

boneitis2• 2 years ago

I'd imagine it's only as much Linux as Android and FireOS are, which might be argued aren't desktop OSes. But for that matter, ChromeOS might in turn be arguably closer to Android than what would be considered desktop Linux.. (disc: have not used ChromeOS)

jillesvangurp5• 2 years ago

It runs a linux kernel, which makes it a Linux based OS. It probably integrates a lot of linux stuff too, and it of course comes with virtualization support (leveraging the support for this in linux) to run proper linux applications and development tools, etc.

It's big enough to be worth counting separately though. Interesting that regular linux now has twice the market share of Chrome OS.

Moldoteck• 2 years ago

thing is, on chrome os you can enable debian app support(in two different ways), you basically get both linux apps and android apps, on android it's not that straightforward. Idk how is this done under the hood, but from an user POV chromeos is closer to a windows with wsl2 support with friendlier experience

davidgerard• 2 years ago

ChromeOS started as a very weird thing, but increasingly they're moving toward being a reasonably normal GNU/Linux as we know it, with Wayland. And of course a good Android environment.

theanonymousone• 2 years ago

I use ChromeOS (Flex on a Lenovo). I believe not counting it as "proper" Linux is more ideological than technical.

Regarding WSL, I have used that too, and happily so. But it's more understandable to count it as not-linux, because of many factors including the Kernel and the file system.

smartmic2• 2 years ago

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

qwertox4• 2 years 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• 2 years 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

roenxi3• 2 years 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.

kamov• 2 years ago

Right about now KDE is moving to Wayland. KDE Plasma 6 released a week ago will use Wayland by default, with X11 being an opt in mode. I think that X11 while it might exist for the next decade, it will at best be a second class citizen, at worst a buggy and unsupported mess

jimlikeslimes• 2 years ago

Yes things that were broken for me by default are explorer, notepad (using it with files over a network), calendar pop up, and start menu. And don't get me started on the UI of the sound/battery/network widget.

Every day I'm reminded of something I think Jo Armstrong said in a talk, paraphrased "Ah, an update! Maybe they made it better ;)".

IntelMiner• 2 years ago

To paraphrase Foone

"The year on the Linux desktop won't be because Linux got better"

zabzonk2• 2 years ago

i think there is something wrong with your machine, probably malware of some sort, or whatever this "gesture" stuff is doing. clean install probably indicated.

lionkor• 2 years ago

i agree, however windows does have a way of locking you in to explorer with no practically viable alternative

qwertox4• 2 years ago

You'd feel at home at answers.microsoft.com as one of their expert "Independent Advisors".

No malware. Clean install is not an option.

moritonal• 2 years ago

Explorer seems to have always been plagued by some original sin around how it's event model works. Blocking the main thread until every app involved can feed back which can often require network lookups. You can see them trying to move to an intent system but there's too much legacy for them to move past.

vman81• 2 years ago

RHEL 9 should give you a guranteed X11 experience until 2032 at least.

BSDobelix7• 2 years ago

If I could stay on X11 for a decade from now on

I think they all talk about that move but i make a bet no one will actually do it. Remember Nvidia?

And i think anything archlinux/gentoo will stay with x11 AND Wayland for at least the next 10 years.

oliwarner2• 2 years ago

no one will actually do it. Remember Nvidia?

It's surprisingly usable these days. GSync/VRR has a bit of a frame order problem but the desktop feels really zippy.

It's just snagging at this point. They fix a few more bugs, improve nvidia-settings, maybe sprinkle on some HDR and that's a lot of complaints ameliorated, at least until we all move to Yutani, or whatever the next graphics server's called.

vetinari7• 2 years ago

I think they all talk about that move but i make a bet no one will actually do it.

RHEL 10 is going to be Wayland only. You will be able to run X11 apps via Xwayland, but not full-blown Xorg server and X11-only session.

yesguidance• 2 years ago

Somehow my windows taskbar crashes... And alt tabbing doesn't work properly, I have to manually click on the windows in the overlay. My taskbar is always on top of windows, and they don't respect it's space so they just go under it and hide important stuff. Except firefox, which does respect the taskbar's space on a non-primary monitor, obviously leaving the space, but on the main screen it overlaps the taskbar entirely.

hnben• 2 years ago

If I could stay on X11 for a decade from now on

why is that?

I am asking, because so far I have seen old linux users refusing to move because they require some specific x11 feature that is not (yet) supported on wayland. I thought that new linux user wouldn't have such requirements.

KETHERCORTEX• 2 years ago

Personally for me such migration-blocking X11 feature is "not crashing".

fifticon• 2 years ago

A way this used to be possible, also before win11, was misbehaving custom extensions to the explorer shell. IE, some applications install extra menus and handlers as part of the windows shell. Particularly, some such extensions may fight with each other - you can have one installed, or the other, but not both. I use the tortoiseGIT extension to integrate git into explorer, and a lot of the bugs it has seen over the years, have really been work-arounds to survive OTHER broken explorer extensions. My point being, the problem may come from one of your staple applications, not from the fresh window install(?).

qwertox4• 2 years ago

I have several tools installed, also such which hook into explorer, but not more than I had with Windows 7, which I replaced last year with Windows 11 on a much more modern machine.

Two weeks ago I had to boot into the Windows 7 on the old machine (it now boots into Linux by default and I use it occasionally) and almost tears came to my eyes when I saw how fast that 13 year old machine is.

Windows 7 was pretty good as an OS.

caeril• 2 years ago

What exactly is your problem with Wayland? It works fine.

blitzar• 2 years ago

2024, the year of Linux.

mangecoeur• 2 years ago

Steam deck must have booster the numbers a lot

bluish29• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

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

k4ch0w• 2 years ago

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

olavgg• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

renegat0x03• 2 years 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.

BSDobelix7• 2 years 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.

renegat0x03• 2 years 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.

koonsolo• 2 years 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).

KronisLV2• 2 years 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• 2 years 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.

KronisLV2• 2 years 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-...

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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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 :)

vetinari7• 2 years 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.

dredmorbius2• 2 years ago

A/K/A "generative computing", which has been under attack for a long time. I believe Jonathan Zittrain's written specifically on the topic, though the closest match I'm currently finding is about the generative Internet:

<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=847124>

Also "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It" (2008): <https://futureoftheinternet.org/>

Response: <https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2010/09/do-we-need-new-ge...>

Cory Doctorow on the war against general purpose computing: <https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html> (2012)

daeros• 2 years ago

I'm not going anywhere because I still shudder at the idea of accessing the internet with such a tiny screen.

tim333• 2 years ago

Looking at the data if you include laptops that doesn't really seem to be the case - more holding steady / rising a bit https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/pc-sales-bottomin...

https://canalys.com/newsroom/global-pc-market-Q4-2021

Looking around the Pret where I am I see eight people using laptops and two on phones.

If by desktop you mean something stuck on a desk then yeah everyone has laptops.

everforward• 2 years ago

When I worked at a F500 a decade or so ago, I asked about a Linux laptop and was basically told they would like to support them and were working on it, but couldn't because vendors we used didn't support Linux.

I wonder if that's why support for Linux laptops is finally landing. All the endpoint protection and license auditing and what not finally supports Linux.

matthewfelgate• 2 years 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?

timbit423• 2 years ago

Because of SNAPs. Linux Mint is better as it doesn't have SNAPs.

lifeinthevoid• 2 years ago

I don't really trust the datasource TBH, according to 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.

timbit423• 2 years ago

You can't know whether to trust it until you know why it happened.

jsnell• 2 years ago

Dupe:

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

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

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

M95D• 2 years ago

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

surgical_fire• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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...

dredmorbius2• 2 years 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-sal...> for overall markets and <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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years 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• 2 years ago

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

daft_pink• 2 years 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.

7e2• 2 years 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.

Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide

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