Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide

This is <i>desktop</i> market share! Overall Linux market share is like what nowadays?<p>EDIT: Depending on how you count, its more around 50% according to Wikipedia.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Usage_share_of_operating_systems" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Usage_share_of_operating_sys...</a><p>Interestingly the highest market share is in supercomputing with 100% of the top 500 since 2017. This is followed by the server market. <i>&quot;Big Iron&quot;</i> Linus said and the biggest iron it was.

Ever since I&#x27;ve upgraded to Windows 11 I am so extremely frustrated with explorer&#x27;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&#x27;ve used the machine for a couple of hours. I don&#x27;t mean the time it takes an application to &quot;boot&quot;, 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.<p>It&#x27;s intolerable and I&#x27;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&#x27;m still waiting for the Wayland transition to get settled.<p>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&#x27;d have a problem.

Two scenarios on my part.<p>Recently we wanted to play Minecraft. I had to install fresh windows.<p>I found ISO laying on nas. Installed it. Run update, after fifteen minuts and two reboots update told me everything is up to date.<p>We tried to run several programs, but no luck. Some dll error with missing entrypoints. Installed several cpp runtimes, dotnet frameworks, still no luck.<p>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.<p>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.<p>It took days to correctly install windows. Could have been easier if I used up to date image.<p>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.<p>In the end it was easier just to run it on linux, and put just username and password. No advanced admin account management required.

I can only see this trend continuing in the coming years.<p>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&#x27;d divide it into three big groups: school, corporate and public.<p>The public market for desktops is dying, or maybe it&#x27;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 <i>do</i> 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&#x27;s personal life their desktop operating system just doesn&#x27;t matter. Video games are an exception here, but will they remain that way?<p>Schools are broadly switching to Chromebooks, these are technically Linux machines, but really they are <i>just</i> 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&#x27;t change, the platform of schooling is web browsers now.<p>I&#x27;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&#x27;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 &amp; 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&#x27;t much holding back the transition...<p>Naturally many niches will remain, I&#x27;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 :)

4% starts getting it into the threshold of Nassim Taleb&#x27;s &quot;intolerant minority&quot; 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.<p>And from there, what&#x27;s stopping them from joining Valve to make Proton work for all the Windows-specific applications that are still used in the enterprise?

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.

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&#x27;s just a drop in the bucket.

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 &quot;just worked&quot; out of the box. In 2013 everything just worked.<p>I have recently started reflecting on how <i>easy</i> 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.

Interesting that they are counting chrome os separately since it is Linux based. That&#x27;s another 2%. So 6% of the desktop market is running some form of Linux. There&#x27;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.

It&#x27;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.

4% is probably about right<p>I&#x27;m am a retired old bloke who has used linux for about 20 years since the early releases of ubuntu and linux mint.<p>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.<p>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.<p>It must be brainwashing and propaganda that convinces people that a windows machines are better in some way.<p>I watch my friends struggling with their windows data collecting machines and I cry inside.<p>My old life is so much easier, restful, stress free and I have more pension to spend on myself.<p>Free as in Freedom, too cool!

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

No wonder with the recent Windows UX degradations.

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.<p>I went for Linux Mint because it has the convenience of Ubuntu (and Debian), though doesn&#x27;t make me use snaps, in addition to their Cinnamon desktop just being all around a comfortable choice.<p>So far, all of the tooling just works, the desktop experience (even including audio) seems bug free, though I&#x27;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&#x27;m very happy with it. All of my IDEs and toolchains work, productivity and content creation software doesn&#x27;t have issues either.<p>Even things like gaming seem more and more viable thanks to Steam and Proton, although it&#x27;s not quite where Windows is now and won&#x27;t be there for a while.<p>Either way, I&#x27;m pretty glad with how the OS and its distros&#x2F;desktop environments are progressing.

Dupe:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38853877">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38853877</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39252801">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39252801</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39576200">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39576200</a>

Both traditional desktop and laptop markets have been declining or flat (respectively), and <i>both</i> are anticipated to decline in near future years, if not already. See e.g., &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;convergetechmedia.com&#x2F;laptop-sales-vs-desktop-pc-sales-one-climbs-the-other-drops-whats-ahead&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;convergetechmedia.com&#x2F;laptop-sales-vs-desktop-pc-sal...</a>&gt; for overall markets and &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;29&#x2F;business&#x2F;dell-earnings-ai-server&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;29&#x2F;business&#x2F;dell-earnings-ai-ser...</a>&gt; concerning Dell&#x27;s recent performance.<p>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. &quot;Casuals&quot; increasingly rely on mobile devices --- smartphones and tablets, possibly netbooks. Technical users <i>who are already more likely to choose Linux</i> (or similar alternatives such as the *BSDs) are increasingly concentrated in the desktop market.<p>I&#x27;ll note that I&#x27;m <i>not</i> 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).<p>Whether or not <i>overall</i> 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), <i>and</i> the value associated with usage (especially in professional &#x2F; commercial contexts) isn&#x27;t clear from the Linuxiac article. I suspect that there&#x27;s some absolute growth as computer markets grow modestly overall, but that it&#x27;s less significant than the <i>percentage of desktop</i> top-line figures would suggest.<p>(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.)

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

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 :&gt;<p>But other then that, Linux is good, Emacs can generate simple pdf&#x27;s to print, Perl scripts still able to sum few digits, even git via ssh works like NAS :)<p>Just that mandated by law things are impossible.<p>No monopoly at all...

I don&#x27;t really trust the datasource TBH, according to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;os-market-share&#x2F;desktop&#x2F;worldwide" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;os-market-share&#x2F;desktop&#x2F;worldwide</a> the macOS marketshare went from 21.01% in November 2023 to 15.42% in February 2024. That doesn&#x27;t sound realistic at all.

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.<p>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 &quot;should&quot; be higher.

Most of the confusion would be avoided by simply changing the article to: &quot;GNU&#x2F;Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide&quot;

It has never been easier to install and use Ubuntu on a computer instead of Windows.<p>So why aren&#x27;t more people doing it?

Let&#x27;s look at this StatsCounter data:<p>- In one month, macOS share drops from 21% to 16%<p>- In one month, Linux share goes up 50%<p>- In the same month, ChromeOS share drops 50%<p>None of these things are true. This data is garbage. In the last year, &quot;unknown&quot; peaked at 13%, to boot. Ridiculous.

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

Right when I&#x27;m thinking about switching from Linux to Mac. Not for the software but for the hardware.<p>I just can&#x27;t find any laptop that can even get near the quality of a MacBook (excellent touchpad, sound, battery life).

2024, the year of Linux.

More discussion a few days ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39576200">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39576200</a>

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.

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.

Steam deck must have booster the numbers a lot

it’d be interesting to know the ratio of consumer desktops &#x2F; 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.

It&#x27;s not because Linux got better. It&#x27;s because Windows got worse.

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

Frankly, the chart looks like Linux&#x27;s market share is below the range of errors of the measurments made.<p>Compared to Linux, the famous &quot;Unknown&quot; 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&#x27;t stable at all and can move 4% in one month.<p>So Linux going from 3.9% to 4% should be taken with a grain of salt...

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 <i>for</i> 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!

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&#x27;ll simply shut down OS (i.e., kernel and plumbing-level user-space tools) development completely.<p>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&#x27;t offer any revenue to develop an OS kernel.<p>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.

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.<p>Largest desktop market is china.