top | item 44580682

Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

1021 points| marcodiego | 8 months ago |ostechnix.com | reply

614 comments

order
[+] nerdjon|8 months ago|reply
I have to wonder how much of this is people switching to Linux vs the larger trend of people not having traditional computers to begin with.

Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. So is a solid chunk of this the people that would have already had Linux desktops continuing to have theirs since they would likely be the same people (more technical, needing to do tasks not possible on phones and tablets) less likely to be making that switch.

Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate.

Given these numbers are percents I would be very curious.

Now yes there is a clear uptick thanks to the Steam Deck (however with Microsoft pushing their optimized for gaming Windows it will be interesting to see if that continues or goes backwards). But I would be reluctant to call that Linux Desktop anymore than I would call Android an uptick for Linux.

[+] theandrewbailey|8 months ago|reply
I work in the refurb division of an e-waste recycling company. Due to licensing costs and our certifications, we can't sell anything with Windows. My coworkers install Ubuntu, but I install Linux Mint. We don't have any clue if people keep using Linux or install Windows, but it's cool to think we're helping to move this needle.

Edit: might as well link to the merch: https://www.ebay.com/str/evolutionecycling

[+] whizzter|8 months ago|reply
I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that receive these machines? A new machine for an enterprise or gamer will probably retain windows because it's needed but people not using their computers for more than surfing will be happy enough.

On that side-note I would also not be surprised if people are leaving "computers" altogether in favor of phones, it's a capable enough computer today for most lay-people, my ex and her parents don't have computers anymore and my daughter hardly uses her either.

Those that actually need computers such as developers are more prone to use Linux anyhow (especially when Microsoft is pushing annoying features such as forced reboots for those dropping their computers anyhow onto powerusers).

[+] tossandthrow|8 months ago|reply
My intuition is that most people, unless they have specific needs, just keep it.

Most people likely don't have an opinion besides being able to browse the web and will not even be aware that they are not using Windows.

So this is great work! Keep it up!

[+] kristopolous|8 months ago|reply
I've sold linux mint laptops on ebay and I always reach out after sale basically saying "just to be clear, this isn't running windows, it's linux. I'll be happy to cancel if this isn't what you expected"

and 100% of the time the person was like "yes! Linux is what I wanted"

Well alright then, there you go...

[+] exiguus|8 months ago|reply
Actually, as a long time Linux Desktop user, i have at least 4, refurbished bought Notebooks in my place yet. Beside the 4, another 3 new new bought Notebooks.

The reason why I buy refurbished is, that my use-cases don't need the newest hardware and for a long time, older hardware was more compatible with Linux and BSD for me. Also, you get for a small price, high quality hardware.

If you now ask yourself, why that many notebooks? Notebooks are like handbags. They have to match the occasion.

[+] 3abiton|8 months ago|reply
I did something similar back in the before times, an initiative that takes donated devices and give them a second life to people who need it. We had major resistance back then to anything linux.
[+] shaunpud|8 months ago|reply
I thought the Windows license was burned into the BIOS, so a reinstall would pick it up automatically?
[+] sevensor|8 months ago|reply
The link is appreciated! I like the selection of ruggedized laptops.
[+] RALaBarge|8 months ago|reply
Hey, that seems like a cool gig
[+] xnx|8 months ago|reply
Have you considered ChromeOS Flex?
[+] Pxtl|8 months ago|reply
How do you keep them auto-updated? I've just started on Mint and I'm disappointed how the software installer/updater still needs the admin password.
[+] jsnell|8 months ago|reply
The statscounter data is not reliable, and it is just embarrassing how often these posts make it to the HN frontpage.

You even have a demonstration in this very article, with the surge of classic Mac OS to 7% for several months. The data is obviously nonsense, and when it has errors nobody at the company cares about them. But when they have persistent "data reporting issues", why are we supposed to believe any of these numbers?

[+] zokier|8 months ago|reply
Bingo.

Cloudflare has also OS stats available and I'd imagine they are far more reliable. Some silver lining of them having such wide dragnet on the web. They report 4.4% Linux desktop marketshare in the US. Tbh I believe the summer vacation season probably influences the numbers here, but there is some real growth too.

https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&groupBy=o...

[+] danso|8 months ago|reply
Mentioned this in another comment [0], but analytics.usa.gov has the % of visitors on Linux operating systems at 5.7% in 2025, up from 4.5% in 2024. Of course "visitors to U.S. government websites" is not fully representative of all U.S. computer users, but it's worth noting.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44582058

[+] supriyo-biswas|8 months ago|reply
Additionally, with the number of people who use ad blockers on Linux and given that statcounter mostly uses 3rd party JS tags, I highly doubt these numbers are correct.

There's a discussion in a peer thread about how people never notice its Linux and keep using their refurbished machines as-is. This too, is surprising to me, as my own experience as well as the ones I've heard in person from IT folks and IT-related forums online, people immediately notice that the UI looks different and panic as to how to achieve their current tasks. I'm skeptical of that entire thread too.

In general, I just wonder how much of any popular forum is just people LARPing. I do wish that it didn't occur here, though it's undoubtedly difficult to moderate.

[+] oefrha|8 months ago|reply
Pretty sure OS X and macOS should be combined, not doing that feels like amateur hour, very puzzling. But even with that in mind, you see wild ups and downs as large as 3.5% a month from 10/24 to 11/24 to 12/24 to 01/25 and there’s no way in hell actual deployments are fluctuating like that. Error bars like that make a number of 5% pretty meaningless, however feel-good it is.

Also, for people unfamiliar with the Apple ecosystem: the OS X => macOS rebranding happened back in 2016, IIRC the Safari user agent never ever included macOS (Safari on M4 Macs running latest macOS 15.5 reports itself as “Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7” in its UA), so absolutely no idea where they’re getting this new “macOS” category. Maybe they publish technical details of their methodology somewhere? I can’t bother to check.

[+] arp242|8 months ago|reply
> the surge of classic Mac OS to 7% for several months

I'm not sure what's up with listing both "OS X" and "macOS", but I'm quite confident it's not classic Mac OS.

[+] elsjaako|8 months ago|reply
Note that OS X goes down for the same period. I believe Apple is calling it MacOS now.

So that looks like it might be some change in how Apple computers are reporting their OS.

[+] phendrenad2|8 months ago|reply
I wonder what a more reliable measure would be. Maybe something like the "Crane Index" where we count the number of new software packages for Linux. Particularly, it makes sense to focus on paid software, because there's actually some bar to entry there (setting up an LLC, accepting payments, etc.) I haven't actually looked into this, but I think the initial data for this figure is zero, and we're projected to reach zero by next year.
[+] danso|8 months ago|reply
For another anecdata point, https://analytics.usa.gov tracks user device demographics to all visitors of U.S. government websites. Which of course might skew in ways different than the general U.S. population. But checking out the numbers right now for Linux users:

Last 30 days: 6%

2025 so far: 5.7%

2024: 4.5%

edit: analytics.usa.gov includes iOS and Android in its operating systems breakdown — e.g. Windows has a 32% share vs OP's 63%. Assuming most of Linux users are on desktop, it could be the case that Linux share in desktop users is a bit higher than 6%

[+] JadoJodo|8 months ago|reply
I am in this category, but I'm growing increasingly frustrated with the state of the market for OS's:

I've used macOS for work for many years and Arch-based derivatives for personal desktop. The challenge with that has always been gaming: Gaming on Linux _mostly_ works, but third-party launchers (e.g., Battle.net, Origin, etc.) HATE it. I also don't love the Proton shuffle (i.e., "Which version of Proton do I need to use to get this to work?"), but it's tolerable for me. I'll tell you for whom it _isn't_ tolerable: my wife (who mostly uses a different system running Windows 10, but sometimes wants to use the more powerful gaming PC running Linux). And thus the only remaining choice for the home system has been Linux + Windows (in some capacity).

Now, I've not used Windows full-time since 7, but I recently installed Windows 11 (via QEMU using LookingGlass) and it is simply TERRIBLE. There are full-blown ads in the Start Menu, the built-in search ignores your default browser/search engine settings, and (critically) __you can no longer put the Start Menu bar at the top of the screen__ (It's less common, but I've done this my entire life).

I think it comes down to the following wishes:

A. I wish Windows 8/10/11 didn't suck so much.

B. I wish Linux was widely-supported by ALL game platforms.

C. I wish macOS gaming wasn't so expensive.

[+] palata|8 months ago|reply
I think that there are multiple things at play:

1. The statistics only show Desktop usage relative to each other. But I could totally imagine that macOS "loses" users to iPadOS. Similarly, Windows could be losing users to smartphones in general (I see more and more people who don't actually have a personal computer anymore).

2. Valve (and others, surely) is doing an incredible job with video games on Linux. 20 years ago, I needed a dual boot just to play games. I dropped Windows when I stopped playing, and I started playing again thanks to the Steam Deck. I am convinced that many people today "need" an OS on which they can play video games, except that today they have a choice (thanks to Valve and others).

3. Privacy. I think it's becoming a lot more important outside the US (it's actually now a national security concern there), but I'm convinced that people are slowly learning about that. TooBigTech pushing to train their AIs with everything the users do surely has an impact on that.

[+] BLKNSLVR|8 months ago|reply
I had a Teams meeting for an outside of work topic this morning. Since all my personal machines are Linux based I was kinda happy I had my work laptop available with Windows and Teams installed.

Booting it up about half an hour before the meeting... Installing updates...

After rebooting twice and only five minutes before the meeting started I reverted to my Linux desktop, opened the email with the link to the Teams meeting and was a minute early using the web version of Teams.

Phew, saved by Linux.

Kudos to Microsoft for making Teams web version operating system and browser agnostic. But fuck what they've done with Windows updates. Numerous coworkers also saying their computers decided to reboot of their own volition the last couple of days in order to install updates.

Maybe it's a worthwhile trade off for security, but I'm glad I had an alternative option this morning.

I'm the five-odd years since switching to Linux exclusive at home, my decision is only ever reconfirmed as correct.

(I'm a reformed gamer from a long while ago, but the very few games I do play I have gotten to work on Linux).

[+] osigurdson|8 months ago|reply
After installing Arch / Gnome on my laptop last week, I can see why. Everything works completely fine and feels 3X faster than Windows 11. I have Linux on my desktop machine but always hesitated for laptops due to past bad experiences with power management (i.e. something always eventually went wrong when closing the lid). So far, all of that is working perfectly.
[+] andyferris|8 months ago|reply
I have to ask - what OS do AI-training web scrapers tend to report? (A mixture? One with > 5% linux market share? Sorry, being a sceptic, otherwise I think this is fantastic news if accurately measured).
[+] dosinga|8 months ago|reply
If you zoom out to say the last 10 years you can see that those graphs go up and down like crazy. The error bars on these numbers must be huge.
[+] ryandv|8 months ago|reply
Based on the history of the tech industry, Linux adoption should be kept at this level and advanced no further. This is already the sweet spot for the "year of the Linux desktop," which should be celebrated by experts, technical users, and the sufficiently motivated.

Once the unwashed masses start coming in, the software and its interaction patterns pander to the lowest common denominator and the quality of the medium degrades.

[+] mark-r|8 months ago|reply
A year ago I decided to upgrade my 10 year old motherboard and get something faster. I was hoping my existing Windows 7 SSD would boot up, but alas it would get to the coalescing window display and crash. I never figured out why.

My choices were to spend $200 on a new version of Windows that was worse than the one I lost, or switch to Linux. Guess which I did?

[+] donatj|8 months ago|reply
Windows 11 not working on otherwise perfectly good PCs I imagine is at least a small part of it. I've got an 8-core Ryzen system I think from 2016 that's still very powerful and more than good enough for my needs, but Microsoft is insisting I "throw it away and buy a new one", in this economy no less!

I also think a number of influencers like PewDiePie moving to Linux has to have moved the needle at least a little as well.

[+] Workaccount2|8 months ago|reply
Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love Linux are the ones making Linux.

You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal. No faster way to scare off users than give them a CLI heavy OS and have the trip over the very first copy+paste command they try to run (once they figure out the circa ~1982 cursor)

I really cannot say enough about the total fumble of Linux distros in an age when people are more desperate than ever to leave Windows.

[+] const_cast|8 months ago|reply
The reason Linux won't take off is because Windows users have unrealistic expectations. They define "intuitive" as "works like Windows".

But Windows is not intuitive - it's, possibly, the least intuitive operating system to ever exist. It's just familiar.

But it's a Catch 22. If Linux is like Windows, then there's zero reason to use it. Just use Windows. But if Linux is not like Windows, then it's not familiar.

The solution is to reframe your expectations. If you expect Linux to work like Windows, you will be disappointed - and rightfully so. Nobody expects MacOS to work like Windows, no, you adapt.

[+] Gormo|8 months ago|reply
> Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love Linux are the ones making Linux.

Why is 5% a magic number? Why not 4% or 6% or 10%?

> You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal.

Try Shift+Ins. CLI and GUI conventions have always been different, and the sort of users who work in the terminal are the ones who know the difference. Overloading Ctrl+V, and breaking applications that run in the terminal, just to make two completely different paradigms use the same hotkeys seems a bit ridiculous to me.

BTW, this applies across OSes, and isn't specific to Linux.

[+] resource_waste|8 months ago|reply
I imagine you have only used Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/outdated linux.

Fedora is a different level completely. With Fedora, I remember installing nvidia drivers via terminal, and that was essentially it.

Sometimes I open up ports for my kid doing minecraft, but that was it. Its not like when you use Ubuntu or Mint and you need to manually update something just to get Netflix to work on Chromium.

Fedora is so good, I won't call it linux. Linux has the Debian/Ubuntu baggage. Fedora stands alone. Its easier to use than Windows, I don't think I'm exaggerating. Windows 11 has ads, unresponsive search, UI/theme issues that make it impossible to read text, it has fake paths to files. Fedora just works.

[+] c0balt|8 months ago|reply
> You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal

The more poignant issues might be that there's inconsistencies around UI here. Some terminals allow that directly (Kitty), others require Ctrl+shift+v (Gnome shell, iirc Powershell and Konsole).

To be fair, the best non-windows OS likely is MacOS. It has software support for a lot of commercial prosumer stuff, e. G., Adobe, and has a convenient and stable 3rd Party offering for Windows VMs (Parallels).

As a Linux user it seems like there is a lot to learn in regard to UI consistency from both though (maybe less from Windows). Gnome and KDE are probably moving in the right direction here but it is still a bit off sometimes.

[+] atemerev|8 months ago|reply
Ctrl-C means something different in the terminal. Always has been. And if it doesn't make sense to use Ctrl-C, there is no sense in Ctrl-V either.
[+] umanwizard|8 months ago|reply
It’s not a “fumble”, because “Linux” is not a company trying to sell as many units as possible.

As you said, it works for the people who make it. Why does it need to do anything else? Linux desktop conquering the world is just an old Slashdot trope, it’s not something anyone is actually working to achieve in real life.

[+] dmantis|8 months ago|reply
You can't do ctrl-c and ctrl-v in MacOS too, that's doesn't break their marketshare.
[+] palata|8 months ago|reply
> Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love Linux are the ones making Linux.

This makes no sense. There are so many different ways to use Linux, there is not a single profile of "people who love Linux".

[+] AuthAuth|8 months ago|reply
>I really cannot say enough about the total fumble of Linux distros in an age when people are more desperate than ever to leave Windows

How is it a fumble? Linux is doing very well to scope up users from people looking to leave windows. Its not a monolithic company. There is no marketing budget only users to spread the word.

[+] cjfd|8 months ago|reply
I think it is very unfortunate that Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V works for some programs in Linux. This makes the environment inconsistent. These programs should be adapted to the environment they are in and only support selecting using left mouse button highlight followed by middle mouse button press.
[+] mmphosis|8 months ago|reply
Coming from decades of using a Mac, I swap left alt and left ctrl. I remap the Terminal using AutoKey so that ctrl+c and ctrl+v are copy and paste, and alt+c effectively sends a ctrl+c to terminate a program.
[+] fuck_AI|8 months ago|reply
Microsoft <3 Linux so much, they ruined Windows so people would switch to Linux. Thank you Microsoft!

Seriously though, I switched to Linux late last year and haven't looked back. It has everything I need for a computer and a lot of the "problems" people say is holding them back from switching full-time are greatly exaggerated. Like if you're not willing to make some small compromises so you can have a computer that respects you as a human and not a metric then I don't know what to tell you.

[+] sschueller|8 months ago|reply
I hope we get to a point where enough "professionals" are using it to force companies like Acrobat to offer Linux versions of their software (cough Fusion 360). It is the only thing keeping me from completely ditching my windows VM. Using CAD in a virtulabox VM is torture. FreeCAD is sadly not a viable replacement (maybe in the future but a lot of work is needed). I was able to switch to other tools for other things like KiCAD for PCB work, Blender and DaVinci Resolve also work great.
[+] taf2|8 months ago|reply
I play all my video games on linux - heros of the storm, sc2, warcraft 2, counter strike... very stable much nicer then what i remember from windoze...
[+] mousethatroared|8 months ago|reply
For me, Linux became a viable desktop OS when Steve Jobs killed flash and browsers could render any page independently of the OS.

Then Office 365 came around and I could do quick work w/out a windows machine.

[+] pessimizer|8 months ago|reply
Linux now has a bigger desktop marketshare than firefox. I never would have imagined history would turn out like this. Firefox had the easy job and desktop Linux had the hard one.

This will lead to a virtuous circle for Linux unless someone does something; privacy issues are leading people to the OSes where you get to freely choose your level of privacy. Anybody have any more weird old unix patents to throw at them and slow it down?

edit: maybe the way to stop Linux is heat up the war against all general purpose computing. Linux could be used to run unauthorized AI.