In all seriousness it's very exciting, I just don't need to see the same information worded 20 different ways from random clickbait sites lol
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Look....I use Linux. I love Linux. But let's be honest. That 4 percent is largely due to the steam deck; a gaming handheld where the vast majority of users don't know (or care) what operating system it uses as long as they can play their steam games on the go.
That's not "year of the Linux desktop", because it's not a desktop. It just has one hidden under the hood if you want to dig past the steam layer (which, as I said...the vast majority of users never will)
The year of the Linux desktop won't arrive until there is sufficient market share that software manufacturers are inclined to support us natively. That won't happen with a gaming handheld because no one would want to use a gaming handheld as a daily driver.
Sorry to be a wet blanket, folks. Downvote away....
Thats like calling MacOS and Playstation rises the "year of the BSD desktop"
Change my mind.
Android devices are the true year of the Linux desktop.
Ok, compile some code on your PlayStation
Most computer users don't even know what an operating system is
I agree Steam Deck played a role, but they didn't sell enough to make that large of an increase. That'd be insane. However, it did cause the appearance of gaming on Linux to change, which is the thing that was holding back a large number of users.
I had used Linux several times over the past decade or so. It was never my main OS, and I had actually stopped using it completely for probably 5 years, maybe more. This is exclusively because gaming on Linux was an issue and I didn't want to swap OSs just to play a game. Last year I went 100% Linux. I know I'm not the only one, and I'm extremely confident that the increase is mostly this, not the Steam Deck. The number of Steam Decks sold seems to be maybe 6m on the high end of estimates, which is not enough.
The Steam Deck was a catalyst, but it is not the source of the change.
That is not really true as far as I can tell. Linux is growing because it is maturing as a ecosystem. We don't need a bunch of proprietary software to have a good experience
Only 1.63% of Steam users were using Linux in 2023. Since pretty much all Steam Deck users are going to be using Steam, we can't attribute Linux's increase in market share to the Steam Deck alone.
It's the year of the Linux phone! Oh wait that happened like 15 years ago and now they make up like 70% of the global market!
You sure? Not proton?
India, the country with the largest population, has a 15% desktop Linux marketshare.
Additionally, these surveys are highly inaccurate. They are at best a "conservatively low balled figure". Linux installations don't send a ping to a server anywhere to count the install, and there's no other facility to gauge or count through the Linux ecosystem itself. Most computers used for Linux are also sold with Windows pre-installed, which means there's no clean way to use sales figures either.
All that leaves is the browser user agent when visiting select websites that track and share the number of unique visitors that identify as Linux.
I did the math a few months ago in a different discussion (not on Lemmy) and my math at the time came up to about 50 million desktop Linux users, and that was using the "official" reported numbers of 3.x% at the time.
That also ignores that the Stack Overflow developer survey puts desktop Linux at over 50% for personal use, and (IIRC) about 47% for professional use.
You can't be honest if you look at a single boiled down percentage of a very large, very diverse and technical landscape with more variations and caveats than the English language.
Also, in case anyone is wondering, the Stack Overflow numbers didn't include WSL. If you do include that then desktop Linux usage was over 70% for personal use.
It is actually a good thing because "I need windows for gaming" is the biggest reason why compsci and IT people still have windows.
You're still right that it won't win over non tech people though.
I'm pretty sure that this specific statistic leverages internet-user-agents. So a Steamdeck probably wouldn't be counted in as they aren't really used for browsing.