From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Stats from this site are not nearly accurate. It is based on web browser user-agent usage from statistics they have.
Real number can be higher, because Linux users tend more than other OSes to native programs, because of better software management. And many privacy browsers change agent to most popular OS to resist fingerprinting.
Or it can be much lower, because Linux is used more in server space, so also in bots and scraping the web.
The most possible answer might be more boring though: this number is increasing because more people are installing Linux in old PCs and Laptops, either out of curiosity or because they want the machine to live more years.
Still, this might make people consider install Linux in their main machine too in the future (after they pass the learning curve).
I guess I'm not in the majority, but my reason for finally switching fully to linux after 20 years is that gaming finally Just Works (mostly) thanks to Wine and Valve. I've been gaming under Linux since Quake III, but always kept a windows install because lots of games ran poorly or not at all under linux.
Last year I finally switched to an AMD GPU, and all the games I've played since then worked either OOTB or required minimal effort to fix (I don't play multiplayer games except for Overwatch, which also runs fine). I haven't booted my windows install in like 6 months, soon I'll wipe it to make some room for more linux games.
@loutr
This ! Wiped my windows install last month, so far so good. Still have some glitches in kde/steam/proton where the window blinks like crazy.
Also agree with previous post: in my early days of IT, my school laptop (thinkpad t42p) was starting to age, and debian gave it a seco d life, out of the box. I was "forced" to use it, but never regretted it, except when at thw time support for xls, doc wasnt so good, not to mention gaming
@tricoro
I also switched because gaming just started to work. Gave Linux a try every 6-12 months for like almost a century but both the desktop and gaming performance always were subpar.
Until 3 years ago when I once again tested Linux and both GNOME and KDE were super snappy to use, gaming worked mostly out of the box via Proton and all the applications I need for work, worked on Linux or had an even better alternative.
Stuck with dual booting for one more year because I couldn't get VR to work properly. Now I'm 100% on Linux since 2 years.
The speed at which things have improved in those 3 years is amazing. Things went from "needs some tinkering" to "just install it". Performance went from mediocre to blazing fast. Software support went from "need to compile from source" to "download the AppImage/Flatpak".
i think its been bouncing around there 3% or so for a while though
No, it was close to reaching 3%. Went to 2.91, now it's beyond that landmark and even gained .08% extra.
It's excellent news because companies are less likely to ignore the market share of Linux.
well that sounds like good news
Year of the Linux desktop, is it?
Every year will be year of Linux Desktop. keep the pie bigger.. and bigger for anyone... Make GNU/Linux grow and Grow and GROW
I switched to Fedora Workstation as my daily use drive this year, so for me sure it is!
Usual question behind this kind of stats: what are the sources? I'm tired of having to believe stuff that appears on the net just by faith.
I think it's browser user agents.
Which have been wildly unuseful for over a decade
Not only that but looks to be via tracking code used on various sites. I suspect a larger percentage of Linux users will be using ad blockers that likely block that further reducing the numbers.
The stack overflow survey puts the various Linux distros at about 58.4%* with windows at 59.72% and MacOS at 32.57% for personal use. This both accounts for people using multiple OSs and gives a much more accurate number - at least among developers. Though I do suspect these numbers will be higher for developers than the general population but 3% to 58% is a huge discrepancy.
The steam hardware survey does put the number at 1.44%, though that is extremely biased towards windows for obvious reasons. And I don't know of any more accurate ways of counting then these two. But they only show two wieldy different domains.
* wonder why they broke that out to different distros this year pushing it down the list by splitting it up 🤔 why not also report on the different versions of windows? 😒
I don't think you can just add the linux percentages, lots of people are probably using several distros. But the 27% of ubuntu still give a much higher lower bound, and while developers are not a very representative subgroup, I'd also estimate the total use percentage a little higher than 3%.
And ChromeOS is even more popular.
It'll be interesting to see if that number climbs once Windows 10 reaches EOL.
Win 10 IOT Enterprise LTSC will be my last Windows. I'm fairly sure Linux will be significantly greater in 2032, so I can avoid this spyware trash. Unfortunately my area of expertise is C#/.NET, so I'm stuck with this trash at work when I will be a working citizen.
.NET 5 and 6 are cross platform, so there is a Linux version. Unfortunately there is no Visual Studio for Linux (yet), only for MacOS.
Yeah luckily some people use C#/.NET on Linux with VS Code or Rider usually, it's just VS Studio is de facto standard in companies,
Wtf is "unknown" that everybody used for 2 months then dropped?!?!
It was mostly in India, which ia quite interesting, imo.
It was probably people not sharing user agnets.
A real "tortoise vs hare" situation it seems.
Pace of adoption also seems to be accelerating , from 2009 to about 2016 it went from 0.5 to 1,5 (+ 1 percent), from 2016 to 2023 it went from 1.5 to 3 (+1.5 percent), the adoption also seems to be at least doubling about every decade (which might indicate a "word to mouth" growth pattern.
The increase is not 1 and 1.5 percent but 1 and 1.5 percentage points
The increase is not 1 and 1.5 percent but 1 and 1.5 percentage points
tbh i don't really see the point in mentioning this.
Because original is incorrect. For the first increase 0.5% to 1.5% is an increase of 200% while the increase in percentage points is 1. The reason it's important is that it can skew the readability of the statistics to a degree where the numbers at best are confusing and at worst are misleading. In your case you accidentally understated the significance of the increase.
Thank you for that explanation!
Steam and CodeWeavers drive this adoption at fast pace with proton and vulkan...
Other are some developer that switch fully from WSL2 to Linux (like me).
Other are finding refuge... welp...
Same here. WSL1 has shown me the ecosystem of Linux, so I decided to switch from Windows to Linux completely.
Well, but now WSL2 with GUI seems threaten a little about Linux DE in the end :/
WSL number is quite high with dev, and sometimes I also think WSL2 is convenient because I don't need to have desktop linux to work with.
Well, if you can live with Windows' UX.
Yeah. Sadly I can't. But I also can't live with.. Gnome bar.. I need native xfce with no CSD. But since gtk4 it's harder 😔
Something to keep in mind with these graphics are that the scales are hugely different and more notably that the numbers do not add to 100%. Also the percent vs percentage point thing mentioned by @VonReposti@feddit.dk.
In personal experience there has been a big rise of Linux on the server and more people being forced to get used to it. Docker is pushing this along even more now. We are seeing the continued rise in osx and improvements in the Linux desktop. Moving away from windows is becoming more acceptable now, even in corporations. This will continue!
This is it, lads! We are in the Year of The Linux Desktop (tm) x3!
India's Linux market share is 13.8%. TF? When I want to talk about it to anyone, they ask wtf is Linux?
Brother they are 1.7B of those little dudes, your sample is negligible
It doesn't say how they measure it. Some browsers identify as using Windows. Many people also use multiboot with Windows. Having Windows preinstalled also doesn't mean you're using it.