Linux is on more computers both today and all of the computers ever made put together than any other OS. It is on virtually all servers on the Internet, the majority OS on phones, its in many TVs and STBs and streaming sticks, its one of the few OSes ever in space, its one of the few OSes ever on Mars, and it is also the OS behind ChromeOS (which that article mistakenly breaks out as its own numbers; so by their own admission, its at least 7%).
The largest desktop OS on that list? Windows.... made by a company who makes more money off Linux than anything else, is the largest corp contributor to Linux, and has far more Linux machines internally than Windows ones, and hires software developers who do not develop for Windows.
And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it :).
You can conquer the world, dominate every space and yet there's thus little voice inside saying "but you're not good enough. See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling. "
Sure, Linux is on many, many devices which have proprietary UIs. And there it does pretty well, because the kernel just provides generic functionality cheaply. It’s a commodity backend that could be swapped with another commodity backend without any users knowing or caring. Hooray. Linux is the go to choice when you could just as well be using something else that’s really cheap, like BSD.
However, desktop Linux is where the product is 100% OSS. That’s the apples to apples comparison. And that’s where it can’t compete without vendors writing property code to put in front of it to make it actually work well.
Server side Linux gets a lot of support from professional programmers paid by big corps. They have improved it beyond hobbyist level, and it works pretty well. And of course cheap makes up for a lot.
They keep making these articles because your points are irrelevant to the discussion here. People want Linux desktop market share, because they know what the more market share Linux gains, the better the experience will be (more testing, more apps ported, etc.) Nobody who is cheering on the 3% number is going to be satisfied by obscure facts like "Android is Linux" (it isn't to the users of locked-down phones) and "Servers run Linux" (does that matter in the slightest to the person loading the webpage?)
They've been saying it so long it's part of our psyche. It doesn't matter the other places Linux is running, it hasn't conquered that one place they've been trying to conquer since the start. You never get over the one who got away.
When explaining linux to skeptical non-techies, I tell them it's the OS running the nuclear submarines right now. Suddenly they're more confident it can handle their ecommerce dashboard.
You're mostly right, but this is incorrect. MS was the largest kernel contributor for a few days 10 years ago, but overall companies like Intel, Google, Oracle and IBM contribute a lot more.
>Linux is on more computers both today and all of the computers ever made put together than any other OS.
Yes, but that's kind of a moot point.
The decades old dream was "Linux on the Desktop" (not just as some 3% market share or "works for me" - it worked for people in 1999 too), but overtaking Windows as the desktop OS for the masses).
And of course all those billion of Android devices, hide everything about what people meant and wanted from the Linux experience. It's just the kernel and some basic userland stuff, on top of which everything else is totally foreign, closed down, and tied to proprietary services under Google's control (with Samsung and co's own touches).
Linux is so irrelevant to the visible part of Android's functionality, that Google could very well change the backend to Fuchsia when that's ready, and those billion devices would be un-Linuxed within a few years, as they get old, and their owners replace them by new Fuchsia running smartphones.
> made by a company who makes more money off Linux than anything else, is the largest corp contributor to Linux, and has far more Linux machines internally than Windows ones, and hires software developers who do not develop for Windows.
Huh? This is...totally wrong. Software devs at Microsoft are supplied with Windows machines by default, a lot of software is built on Microsoft-specific technologies like C#, and most of the server footprint is Windows Server.
I'm kinda surprised this entirely forgot to mention the SteamDeck. I'd love to know how much of an impact that had, considering apparently 3 million units have been sold (according to Valve). Alas, how many of those users know they are running Linux is another question.
The problem is the desktop situation is such a mess. Do you go with a gtk or qt desktop and which one? And then X11 which is ancient and creaky, or wayland which is fatally nerfed in design (if not it's entire development philosophy) even when it does do what you need which is far from always?
OTOH windows is becoming adware/spyware and macos is becoming big brother lockdown-wear, so maybe it is time for linux to shine.
Personally windows (actually, almost anything microsoft) enrages me anytime I'm unfortunate enough to have to use it, and I'm getting increasingly annoyed at macos limitations and won't be buying apple again, so my next machine will run linux.
Last time I checked, I could run Qt apps on my MATE desktop and Gtk+ apps on my KDE desktop. I prefer X11 because it's mature and works perfectly for me. I might try Wayland sometime, but it had better support all of the weird things I do with X11.
More to the point, the choice is a feature, and it comes with a bit of chaos. Would you rather live in an effectively single-party state like Singapore where everything is shiny but you get caned for spitting gum on the street (MacOS), Russia which is a third-world mafia state masquerading as a gas station masquerading as a world power (Windows), or a messy democracy like The Netherlands where everyone has a voice but sometimes the government collapses because they can't agree on everything (Linux)?
I live in The Netherlands and I've run Linux on the desktop for 30 years.
I went KDE Plasma. It works pretty well, it feels close enough to Windows that the transition is as painless as possible, and it's got tons of advanced tweaks for power users. GTK and Qt apps both seem to run fine under it. Most importantly, it gets out of my way and lets me work.
(Other alternatives I enjoy include Cinnamon and Xfce. I cannot stand gnome-shell, it's like a tablet OS or something.)
Lots of popular distributions support KDE out of the box (Kubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora KDE, etc), and it'll install on pretty much anything else with minimal fuss. That's the most fun part about desktop environments on Linux: you don't have to pick just one. You can install a bunch side by side and switch between them when you log in. Once you know this, it becomes fun to experiment :)
If you want a full-fledged modern DE with active development, the choice is only between GNOME and KDE imo.
>GTK or Qt
I used to worry about whether to go full GTK or Qt, these days I don't really care. Both work in either environment and the theming is usually consistent as well unless you have a custom theme, so they don't even look out of place.
>X11 or Wayland
It seems like Wayland is going to be the future, so it's only really a matter of whether it works well enough for your uses yet or not. If it does, great, use Wayland, if not, stick with X11 for a bit longer.
It honestly doesn't seem like that much of a mess to me.
IMHO, this is more a choice overload [1] than a technical problem. You can pick whatever distro (another choice overload) and start using the default desktop environment, which is more than enough. Qt vs. gtk for desktop development? Use whatever you think will work for you, they are stable enough, and you can use almost any (even remotely popular) language under the sun for development. Java/Scala/Kotlin + Swing (or SWT) will also do the job (and let's put aside that Swing looks "old"; when you know what you are doing, you can make a modern looking-app with JVM stack as well, e.g. IntelliJ).
On Windows and macOS, you don't have any choice, so people usually see that as good enough because they can't compare it against alternatives on the same platform.
Been using for 15 years, I've never sat there and worried about gtk or qt, Maybe wayland or X11, but I've just naturally moved to wayland?
Just install something like Fedora, and you won't worry about it, it will just work.
I personally hate Ubuntu btw Canonical is just not for me. I have no idea how it's so popular. Personally Fedora or NixOS are just so superior I don't know why anyone bothers with anything else.
Well for Windows users the only real answer is KDE, since it's almost the same in terms of interface and has a similarly high degree of configurability (imo a baseline requirement for any desktop OS). Kubuntu is pretty good, with only a handful of incredibly annoying things, compared to a never ending river of incredibly annoying things on GDM3.
It doesn't really matter which desktop you pick, they're all the same.
If you went to buy a car, would you be fatally paralysed by indecision at seeing two different makes that looked ever so slightly different parked side-by-side?
The lack of pro-audio software is definitely a thing. Mixxx is pretty good though for DJing. It's better than most of the rest of the pro-audio landscape on Linux. There are now also pretty good DAWs (Bitwig, especially).
Releasing binaries is still a PITA for Linux. That's one of the main reason it has so little support from closed source consumer software. If you care, see my comment history on my company dropping Linux support for a pro-audio app, even though our software works on Linux.
But for development tools, it's you-win-some-you-lose-some. There are some development tools (the Valgrind suite, for example) that I still miss after mostly switching to macOS. Going from Linux to macOS also means losing great tools.
Operating systems have a really high degree of lock-in. Such that while you -can- change OS, there's simply no incentive to do so.
That's why you're still running the same OS you always have. [1]
You accumulate software yes, but you also accumulate habits and knowledge. Changing OS means discarding all the accumulated knowledge, which 0% of "normal users" want to do.
Throw in the change in software, ending up with at least some proportion of worse software, and the desire to change is 0.
[1] where "you" applies to a rounding error away from 100%
Re: debugger. It's the opposite for me. rr is the best debugger period, so I am miserable whenever I need to debug on Windows or macOS where rr doesn't work.
Me, too. I tried to use Linux on the desktop since 2000. I can't run the software I need like Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, 3ds Max. I don't care free/libre about alternatives as they are not doing the same. The OS takes time to be configured, managed, there are always things breaking and needing a fix. I still have a linux distro installed on a spare drive but haven't booted it in more than an year.
Whatever Linux specific stuff I need to run (mostly for development), WSL2 and Docker takes care of that.
I want an OS that just runs and doesn't stay in my way.
You also can't use uBO if you want to help get it to 4% as this data comes from statcounter which is blocked in many filter lists. I run linux but my browser useage won't count towards it.
It does not have to be all black and white. You could use GNU/Linux for everything else. Or you could have it on a separate machine to try workflows on or just to be able to use both separately.
Probably 70 or 80% of cloud workloads are Linux, and like 60% of embedded devices, of which there are billions.
And of those embedded/mobile devices, the rest will either be running iOS, vxworks, freertos or zephyr.
I think the joke has always been "this is the year of Linux", but in all honesty... it's the decade of Linux. It's probably one of the few areas where there is growth in computing capacity and by far most of the net new is running Linux.
For over 20 years Linux has been my main desktop OS and also my profession. And I hope the year of the Linux desktop never comes. Why? Because I've seen what happened with other niche hobbies of mine that went mainstream. Once the money started pouring in and the race for market share took over the priorities changed drastically from enthusiast hobby to whatever brought one more ounce of commercial success. This already happened to the server side of Linux which has become a pile of over-complicated unstable undocumented mess.
Desktop Linux has reached perfection IMHO. People complain about too many distros, package formats, desktop environments, init managers, audio servers and so on. I just love it, I pick and choose whatever I like and I like pretty weird things. I have excellent support and QA from community disto packaging - my Arch install is over 10 years old and I never had to do anything to it besides tinkering for fun. My Debian private server requires 30 minutes every 2 years to switch to the new release. The documentation is heavenly. The commercial offerings (that run on Linux) that pay my bills aren't even in the same league. Neither is Windows or Mac.
I want Linux to remain an enthusiast OS. It's not good for my parents, my non-tech friends, and maybe it's not good for you either. That's not a bad thing and I do not want it to change.
Seems that this website blocks any access from HK completely through cloudflare...
Cloudflare making it easy to block entire countries, allow people to be lazy in protecting their websites and goes completely against the open web. Of course I could use a vpn but it's getting tiring that I have to do so more and more often.
As observed by StatCounter, a web analytics company...
I guess this is accurate for people who are in the web ads business, but otherwise obviously it's a bad proxy and seems likely it's undercounting a lot since Linux users tend to be savvy enough to block analytics and probably do less web browsing on StatCounter monitored sites.
I am fairly confident that the best days of the linux desktop are ahead of us. 3% might become 30% in a few years.
Technology adoption takes strange paths but the history of linux is one of remarkable resilience and capability which augurs well for the future.
My guess is that a key driver of growth will come from power users that will make best use of local AI and data science tools, preserving privacy and commercial secrecy.
While many many casual users will continue using thin clients, effectively outsourcing their digital lives to the "cloud", this is unlikely to continue being the 97%.
The opportunity is, e.g., for all the apps of the linux desktop to start making use of the python ML tools to empower users with unprecedented functionality. There is no reason that all of that new universe must be ceded to a small number of actors.
This opportunity was there for a long time now, ML is not new, but the broader FOSS community is quite reactive. Emulating proprietary / closed tools to a fault (eg the libreoffice suite) rather than exploring the unique opportunities of alternative paths has been the norm.
Luckily the AI hype will work as a kick in the butt. The future is for linux to lose.
It's curious that there seemed to be a 6% classification shift between Windows and Unknown in April, and that was reverted for the June data. I wonder what UA string caused that, and it honestly doesn't inspire confidence in their methodology if they don't double check a 6% shift.
> While someone may seem the figure modest, it signifies a growing acceptance and recognition of the power and versatility of Linux.
Does it? It’s 3%. If it was 15% or 20% maybe you could say that.
It’s less than “unknown” and less than ChromeOS which is just over 4%. If it wasn’t a round number, I don’t think anyone would ever write this article because the number is just too small.
It’s nice that it seems to be growing. I just don’t think this is a big achievement.
Somewhat recently, OpenBSD binaries for Chromium and Iridium were changed to identify as Linux instead of OpenBSD in the useragent, I think to pass dumb "security" webapps that refuse to talk to unknown clients. Firefox still identifies as OpenBSD.
I think that is an important milestone.
An OS whose hardware support is largely closed source on one side and painfully reverse-engineered on the other. Thisnk about the graphics hardware.
For years, during the desktop boom in the 2000s, most of the support for networking hardware, wired and wireless, was based on binary blobs coming from Windows OSs and "imported" into a Linux system. How could you dare to use Linux as a desktop?
As of today still most of the PC hardware comes with Windows preinstalled. It would be like offering people pink cars which they can paint in a different color, more or less.
Nope. I think 3% is a lot if you take into account the amount of efforts needed for people to contrastate the so-called "market push".
Linux world is "fragmented" by definition: each main tool and even desktop environment has a number of variants, developed by smallish (fragmented) teams in the name of freedom and choice. Windows, on the other side, has a basically monolithic environment in the name of ... dunno what. Normal (non-techie) people are scared by Linux. Because they have never tried the blue pill. They have never seen how deep the rabbit hole can be.
I once installed an Ubuntu 17 on an old desktop and my mother used it just fine. Most people don't need Windows. It's just that it comes with anything you buy and most people won't learn something new unless forced to. And to be fair why should they? They don't mind the extra cost and couldn't care less about our oss. We need to get them when they're young and impressionable and turn them into little linux evangelists.
I'd venture to say 99% of people don't give a damn on what their os is. All they care is to run their apps without the os getting in their way or breaking. They don't feel the need to and don't want to be forced to tweak, customize, fine tune and manage that os a lot.
I'll go even further and say that most people, even younger people, still think in terms of "computer" and not OS, like it's an appliance. It's about as sophisticated an understanding out there as it was in the 90s. When I'm asked for computer buying advice, they ask me "Mac or PC?" or maybe "Mac or Dell?" For phones it's, "iPhone or Samsung"? Eyes would glaze over if I tried explaining that Dell, Lenovo, HP machines etc all run Windows, except the ones that are Chromebooks... and I would never EVER recommend Linux to a normie unless I wanted to forever be their tech support.
That's nice. Currently in my house I have 11 machines with a linux kernel, including 3 running a desktop gui (xfce), 1 android tablet, 1 chromebook, couple of pis, and the rest being routers and APs. I've also got a windows 10 enterprise laptop I use for testing things at work, a macbook (same purpose).
That's ignoring the "iot" vlan with god knows what on (printer, plugs, speakers, even a bulb), but most of that's linux.
I wish more devices ran "not-linux" really.
For most people, a desktop OS is just a platform to run a web browser on. Chrome's dominant state in that area concerns me more than the dominance of linux in computing.
if they really start to shove ads in the start menu of windows 11 then Linux will have a real chance on the desktop.
Also you don't need windows for office - you can have it in the browser, and google docs is enough for most users.
Only the "Unknown" category has decreased in market share, which leads me to believe that the linux market share has not increased at all. Just that the data is more complete.
I would say that Linux is the second desktop for development (behind MacOS, in front of Windows), however...
I wonder if any of you tried to develop C/C++ on MacOS. It seems that it's impossible to find leaks and misbehavior, while on Linux there is this valgrind that does everything for you. MacOS have some `leaks` tool but it does not really do half of the things valgrind does. So probably I would say "Linux is in the first place". /Writing this on my company's mac/
Interesting: looking at Statcounter data, Linux has been gaining traction in India[0] since 2022 and now accounts for almost 14% of desktop operating systems (it's the 2nd most used OS already).
[+] [-] DiabloD3|2 years ago|reply
Linux is on more computers both today and all of the computers ever made put together than any other OS. It is on virtually all servers on the Internet, the majority OS on phones, its in many TVs and STBs and streaming sticks, its one of the few OSes ever in space, its one of the few OSes ever on Mars, and it is also the OS behind ChromeOS (which that article mistakenly breaks out as its own numbers; so by their own admission, its at least 7%).
The largest desktop OS on that list? Windows.... made by a company who makes more money off Linux than anything else, is the largest corp contributor to Linux, and has far more Linux machines internally than Windows ones, and hires software developers who do not develop for Windows.
[+] [-] bruce511|2 years ago|reply
You can conquer the world, dominate every space and yet there's thus little voice inside saying "but you're not good enough. See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling. "
Welcome to the human condition.
[+] [-] 7e|2 years ago|reply
However, desktop Linux is where the product is 100% OSS. That’s the apples to apples comparison. And that’s where it can’t compete without vendors writing property code to put in front of it to make it actually work well.
Server side Linux gets a lot of support from professional programmers paid by big corps. They have improved it beyond hobbyist level, and it works pretty well. And of course cheap makes up for a lot.
[+] [-] phendrenad2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddieroger|2 years ago|reply
> 20XX will be the year of Linux on the desktop
They've been saying it so long it's part of our psyche. It doesn't matter the other places Linux is running, it hasn't conquered that one place they've been trying to conquer since the start. You never get over the one who got away.
[+] [-] nomilk|2 years ago|reply
When explaining linux to skeptical non-techies, I tell them it's the OS running the nuclear submarines right now. Suddenly they're more confident it can handle their ecommerce dashboard.
[+] [-] borissk|2 years ago|reply
You're mostly right, but this is incorrect. MS was the largest kernel contributor for a few days 10 years ago, but overall companies like Intel, Google, Oracle and IBM contribute a lot more.
[+] [-] coldtea|2 years ago|reply
Yes, but that's kind of a moot point.
The decades old dream was "Linux on the Desktop" (not just as some 3% market share or "works for me" - it worked for people in 1999 too), but overtaking Windows as the desktop OS for the masses).
And of course all those billion of Android devices, hide everything about what people meant and wanted from the Linux experience. It's just the kernel and some basic userland stuff, on top of which everything else is totally foreign, closed down, and tied to proprietary services under Google's control (with Samsung and co's own touches).
Linux is so irrelevant to the visible part of Android's functionality, that Google could very well change the backend to Fuchsia when that's ready, and those billion devices would be un-Linuxed within a few years, as they get old, and their owners replace them by new Fuchsia running smartphones.
[+] [-] lopkeny12ko|2 years ago|reply
Huh? This is...totally wrong. Software devs at Microsoft are supplied with Windows machines by default, a lot of software is built on Microsoft-specific technologies like C#, and most of the server footprint is Windows Server.
[+] [-] electricduck|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacknews|2 years ago|reply
OTOH windows is becoming adware/spyware and macos is becoming big brother lockdown-wear, so maybe it is time for linux to shine.
Personally windows (actually, almost anything microsoft) enrages me anytime I'm unfortunate enough to have to use it, and I'm getting increasingly annoyed at macos limitations and won't be buying apple again, so my next machine will run linux.
[+] [-] thanatos519|2 years ago|reply
More to the point, the choice is a feature, and it comes with a bit of chaos. Would you rather live in an effectively single-party state like Singapore where everything is shiny but you get caned for spitting gum on the street (MacOS), Russia which is a third-world mafia state masquerading as a gas station masquerading as a world power (Windows), or a messy democracy like The Netherlands where everyone has a voice but sometimes the government collapses because they can't agree on everything (Linux)?
I live in The Netherlands and I've run Linux on the desktop for 30 years.
[+] [-] zeta0134|2 years ago|reply
(Other alternatives I enjoy include Cinnamon and Xfce. I cannot stand gnome-shell, it's like a tablet OS or something.)
Lots of popular distributions support KDE out of the box (Kubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora KDE, etc), and it'll install on pretty much anything else with minimal fuss. That's the most fun part about desktop environments on Linux: you don't have to pick just one. You can install a bunch side by side and switch between them when you log in. Once you know this, it becomes fun to experiment :)
[+] [-] izoow|2 years ago|reply
If you want a full-fledged modern DE with active development, the choice is only between GNOME and KDE imo.
>GTK or Qt
I used to worry about whether to go full GTK or Qt, these days I don't really care. Both work in either environment and the theming is usually consistent as well unless you have a custom theme, so they don't even look out of place.
>X11 or Wayland
It seems like Wayland is going to be the future, so it's only really a matter of whether it works well enough for your uses yet or not. If it does, great, use Wayland, if not, stick with X11 for a bit longer.
It honestly doesn't seem like that much of a mess to me.
[+] [-] dig1|2 years ago|reply
On Windows and macOS, you don't have any choice, so people usually see that as good enough because they can't compare it against alternatives on the same platform.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice
[+] [-] ChatGTP|2 years ago|reply
Just install something like Fedora, and you won't worry about it, it will just work.
I personally hate Ubuntu btw Canonical is just not for me. I have no idea how it's so popular. Personally Fedora or NixOS are just so superior I don't know why anyone bothers with anything else.
[+] [-] jamil7|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moffkalast|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gordonjcp|2 years ago|reply
If you went to buy a car, would you be fatally paralysed by indecision at seeing two different makes that looked ever so slightly different parked side-by-side?
Of course not. That would be idiotic.
[+] [-] ntfAX|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] laserbeam|2 years ago|reply
- My DJ software (which I pay for) is not supported at all on Linux (likewise true for most common music production software).
- The Affinity suite (which I paid for) is not supported on Linux.
- The best debugger I can find (remedybg, which I paid for) doesn't work there.
- and there are a few more niche ones.
I just can't give up on half of my productive tools and trade them off for much jankier alternatives. I sadly cannot contribute to get to 4%.
[+] [-] wheels|2 years ago|reply
Releasing binaries is still a PITA for Linux. That's one of the main reason it has so little support from closed source consumer software. If you care, see my comment history on my company dropping Linux support for a pro-audio app, even though our software works on Linux.
But for development tools, it's you-win-some-you-lose-some. There are some development tools (the Valgrind suite, for example) that I still miss after mostly switching to macOS. Going from Linux to macOS also means losing great tools.
[+] [-] bruce511|2 years ago|reply
That's why you're still running the same OS you always have. [1] You accumulate software yes, but you also accumulate habits and knowledge. Changing OS means discarding all the accumulated knowledge, which 0% of "normal users" want to do.
Throw in the change in software, ending up with at least some proportion of worse software, and the desire to change is 0.
[1] where "you" applies to a rounding error away from 100%
[+] [-] stodor89|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanxiyn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeathArrow|2 years ago|reply
Whatever Linux specific stuff I need to run (mostly for development), WSL2 and Docker takes care of that.
I want an OS that just runs and doesn't stay in my way.
[+] [-] ashton314|2 years ago|reply
- MoneyWell
- Omnigraffle
- Keynote (I like my glossy presentations)
I know I’m missing a few.
I love and monetarily support free software, but man… some of these apps get a lot of love and it’d be hard to leave.
[+] [-] aembleton|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelphirkalt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] genmud|2 years ago|reply
And of those embedded/mobile devices, the rest will either be running iOS, vxworks, freertos or zephyr.
I think the joke has always been "this is the year of Linux", but in all honesty... it's the decade of Linux. It's probably one of the few areas where there is growth in computing capacity and by far most of the net new is running Linux.
[+] [-] trabant00|2 years ago|reply
Desktop Linux has reached perfection IMHO. People complain about too many distros, package formats, desktop environments, init managers, audio servers and so on. I just love it, I pick and choose whatever I like and I like pretty weird things. I have excellent support and QA from community disto packaging - my Arch install is over 10 years old and I never had to do anything to it besides tinkering for fun. My Debian private server requires 30 minutes every 2 years to switch to the new release. The documentation is heavenly. The commercial offerings (that run on Linux) that pay my bills aren't even in the same league. Neither is Windows or Mac.
I want Linux to remain an enthusiast OS. It's not good for my parents, my non-tech friends, and maybe it's not good for you either. That's not a bad thing and I do not want it to change.
[+] [-] sersi|2 years ago|reply
Cloudflare making it easy to block entire countries, allow people to be lazy in protecting their websites and goes completely against the open web. Of course I could use a vpn but it's getting tiring that I have to do so more and more often.
[+] [-] fulafel|2 years ago|reply
I guess this is accurate for people who are in the web ads business, but otherwise obviously it's a bad proxy and seems likely it's undercounting a lot since Linux users tend to be savvy enough to block analytics and probably do less web browsing on StatCounter monitored sites.
Eg they show Firefox as having too small to see (< 2%) market share here: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share - other data sources show 7-ish %.
[+] [-] nologic01|2 years ago|reply
Technology adoption takes strange paths but the history of linux is one of remarkable resilience and capability which augurs well for the future.
My guess is that a key driver of growth will come from power users that will make best use of local AI and data science tools, preserving privacy and commercial secrecy.
While many many casual users will continue using thin clients, effectively outsourcing their digital lives to the "cloud", this is unlikely to continue being the 97%.
The opportunity is, e.g., for all the apps of the linux desktop to start making use of the python ML tools to empower users with unprecedented functionality. There is no reason that all of that new universe must be ceded to a small number of actors.
This opportunity was there for a long time now, ML is not new, but the broader FOSS community is quite reactive. Emulating proprietary / closed tools to a fault (eg the libreoffice suite) rather than exploring the unique opportunities of alternative paths has been the norm.
Luckily the AI hype will work as a kick in the butt. The future is for linux to lose.
[+] [-] jeffchien|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MBCook|2 years ago|reply
Does it? It’s 3%. If it was 15% or 20% maybe you could say that.
It’s less than “unknown” and less than ChromeOS which is just over 4%. If it wasn’t a round number, I don’t think anyone would ever write this article because the number is just too small.
It’s nice that it seems to be growing. I just don’t think this is a big achievement.
[+] [-] Panino|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notorandit|2 years ago|reply
For years, during the desktop boom in the 2000s, most of the support for networking hardware, wired and wireless, was based on binary blobs coming from Windows OSs and "imported" into a Linux system. How could you dare to use Linux as a desktop?
As of today still most of the PC hardware comes with Windows preinstalled. It would be like offering people pink cars which they can paint in a different color, more or less.
Nope. I think 3% is a lot if you take into account the amount of efforts needed for people to contrastate the so-called "market push".
Linux world is "fragmented" by definition: each main tool and even desktop environment has a number of variants, developed by smallish (fragmented) teams in the name of freedom and choice. Windows, on the other side, has a basically monolithic environment in the name of ... dunno what. Normal (non-techie) people are scared by Linux. Because they have never tried the blue pill. They have never seen how deep the rabbit hole can be.
[+] [-] elektrontamer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DeathArrow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oldandboring|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iso1631|2 years ago|reply
That's ignoring the "iot" vlan with god knows what on (printer, plugs, speakers, even a bulb), but most of that's linux.
I wish more devices ran "not-linux" really.
For most people, a desktop OS is just a platform to run a web browser on. Chrome's dominant state in that area concerns me more than the dominance of linux in computing.
[+] [-] robbyking|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] resolutebat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelMoser123|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctenb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p0w3n3d|2 years ago|reply
I wonder if any of you tried to develop C/C++ on MacOS. It seems that it's impossible to find leaks and misbehavior, while on Linux there is this valgrind that does everything for you. MacOS have some `leaks` tool but it does not really do half of the things valgrind does. So probably I would say "Linux is in the first place". /Writing this on my company's mac/
[+] [-] grive|2 years ago|reply
I have a Mac provided by my company. None of my development tools are available there, profiling, debugging is a hassle.
The only way I can work on it is by booting up linux VM, or connecting to my servers to compile there.
Mac is just terrible for development. It's barely better than Windows.
[+] [-] leonidasv|2 years ago|reply
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india/#mo...