Linux Desktop Market share keeps increasing, 3.19% now. +0.07% for August
This graph shows the market share of desktop operating systems worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.
Chrome OS saw a good raise too. OS X(Mac) saw a decrease.
Thanks, Steam Deck.
Most OS statistics come from web usage which is probably pretty minimal for Steam Decks.
It's not so much about browsing on steam decks. It's about the technical improvements Valve has brought to Linux gaming compatibility that has now made full Linux conversion without a Windows dual-boot for gaming (and many other Windows programs) a true reality. Once people don't have to reboot every time they want to start a game they'll stay in Linux full time.
Now just release the damn thing in Australia so I can buy one from someone other than the shady fb market scalpers.
If Steam Deck counts does ChromeOS count? How about Android?
ChromeOS is "sort of linux" but sandboxed and uses it's own user agent string.
Android is the same way- Technically a Linux kernel. But sandboxed to death and uses a separate agent.
Just an FYI that at this rate it's only going to take another 115 years before Linux has 100% market share.
2138 is the year of the Linux desktop!
Market share is usually a curve.
2138, year of the Linux desktop.
Exacting 100years after y2k38
This is the same logic that a right wing ex-president of my country used to criticize the current leftist president while talking about the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
That's for August. And the growth is exponential, not linear.
That's fine, there's no rush.
Why would market share increase linearly?
The critical mass needed to tip the scales is not high. Once Linux has enough market share to matter as a customer base, game studios will switch to developing as cross-platform for it by default, so that they don't lose launch sales. Once this happens, a lot of people won't have any reason to stay on windows anymore as gaming was the only thing holding them back. This will then create a virtuous cycle of users migrating and games (and then apps) switching to it. Along then come hardware vendor supporty and then pre-built PCs and laptops. If the tipping point is reach, the rate of market share gain will be exponential.
The same thing happened with Internet Explorer 6
The only thing that can stop this is outside pressure from software giants like Microsoft through lobbying the Governments, buying out game studios or buying exclusivity, or strong-arming hardware vendors.
steam deck is helping a lot on that front.
MacOS holds a nearly 30% market share and few game developers give a shit about publishing their games on Mac. Why would Linux be any different?
Because linux doesn't have deprecated opengl, doesn't run their own proprietary api for gpu instead of implementing vulkan and last but not least because linux does still have support for 32bit application.
Are you including iPhones in this market share?
Although macOS holds a high market share, it holds a smaller percentage of Steam users than Linux right now. Essentially, there's more people on Linux known to buy games than on Mac (at least on Steam).
Gamers only seem to think that the only reason people have a computer is to game.
30%? Wtf is the source
You can’t build a gaming mac. Or a mac at all. Apple does seem to have better gaming support than Linux does though. The majority of my steam library has macOS support. Only a couple support Linux.
Other than gamers, there's a huge share of enterprise Windows users. And they're not likely to shift OS, because of IT admin issues. Others in this thread have commented on how Apple is struggling to get devs to build native games compared to Windows.
Sure the number of home PC users might decline, one can always hope.
There are also Windows users who rely on niche business applications. Wine isn't great for that sort of software yet. Another big one is the creative industry. While the VFX industry is very Linux-focused, and 3D is very viable, other parts of video production are not. And GIMP needs non-destructive editing before it can even think of competing with Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Inkscape is a viable vector image tool. The many other Adobe programs don't have great alternatives, and if you need to collaborate, that means you all need to switch to a new program. Then there are the retraining costs to consider.
Gamers have the easiest time in switching to Linux. The amount of compromises and sacrifices you need to make in other industries are much greater right now.
However, Adobe is trying to bring some of their programs, like Photoshop, to the web. It's unlikely we'll see stuff like After Effects on the web, but Photoshop, Illustrator, maybe even inDesign could possibly, maybe be there in a few years. Photoshop web is already in beta (though it's garbage). The web continues to be the great equalizer.
Oh yeah
This is the year
People are really late to the party but better late then never....
Linux is awesome.
That was me, I switched my desktop and laptop to ubuntu.
Same here. Switched my laptop to Pop!OS + KDE and planning on doing the same with the desktop soon-ish
Haja you beat me to this comment
Is it actually truly the year of the Linux desktop?
Not until you can actually choose it. Think if you could in the store see Linux Desktop to buy and to try out.
What if EU forced computer manufactures to install both OS, Windows and Linux Desktop, and you had to choose during the first boot what you want to use. Trust me, the that will change the numbers, just because of all who picked the wrong one by mistake.
hint: the wrong one is Windows.
Is it for me this year. Both the main and couch gaming rigs are on Linux now. Glad to be free
Partly my fault - I have that page set to auto open on my browser every week
It's ok, I've never been on that site and I changed windows to tumbleweed nearly 2 months ago on my laptop.
Wow, if it keeps going at this rate, it'll be the year of Linux on the desktop (50% share) in 2079.
Idk, mass adoption is usually slow at first, and then gets faster as it goes on.
Proud to be one of them. I tried to disable the job that runs windows update, they said I don't have permission, so I switched to Ubuntu on every single computer except the one that runs VR games.
As a bonus, as an enthusiast for artificial intelligence stuff, more programs run on Linux than they do on Windows
On the VR PC you may find O&O ShutUp 10. It has a collection of settings for privacy and generally control over your PC that microsoft didn't make really accessible.
Powershell as admin then type set-service wuauserv -startuptype manual; stop-service wuauserv
This will disable the windows update service. If you do want to run updates again (and you should do that regularly), just type start-service wuauserv and use the windows update page in settings.
Linux is still way better though.
Is Linux actually growing, or are other users simply buying fewer computers because their phones have reduced the need for personal computers?
I didn't crunch the numbers, but as far as I see, most of the linux growth comes from the Steam deck, which runs a Linux OS.
This could also be the reason for the decrease of OSX, because more other, non classical computer, devices are included, which automatically reduces the share of Laptop and PC devices.
So there is a similar percentage of users in the desktop and laptop space as before but more Linux-based handheld systems. Overall market share has become too broad nowadays for at a glance look at percentage of users for each platform as different sectors of systems will have different market share percentages.
I swapped to Linux in the last month. But honestly being able to use my phone as a backup made me not worry about needing a computer right then.
Glad to be part of the trend. Literally just yesterday, I got rid of Windows and installed Pop OS instead.
Nice! I ran Pop OS on my laptop for over a year to get the hang of things before I decided to fully commit. I've been running Pop OS on desktop for about 2 months or so with minimum problems, transitioning to GIMP from Photoshop has been harder for me than switching to Linux. Eager to learn though.
transitioning to GIMP from Photoshop has been harder for me than switching to Linux.
Same, but Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop.
What took you so long?!
Seriously tho it's always good to see people switch over
I've often dabbled in Linux, mostly dual-booting, but now I'm fully committing. I mostly kept with Windows because Affinity Designer and Photo don't work on Linux, and having quality graphic design software is important to what I do. It just got to the point with Microsoft endlessly advertising to me, changing my defaults, trying to force me to use Edge, and forcing updates that I had enough and even having access to quality graphic design software wasn't enough for me to stay.
I wish librewolf had a toggle for its user agent. The default user agent is windows and you can't change it without extensions
Welp I'm of those "windows" users then 😉
What I want to know is how many people are using Librewolf on Linux. I imagine it isnt't a small number
One of the things i give my privacy up to, representing Linux to make a change.
I'm in the same boat. I'd like to leave Windows but since installing POP!_OS I've had issues with ending up with two versions of Firefox installed (yes snap and yes I've fixed that now). My Yubikey can't be detected until I found a post by another user with a fix. I am still yet to find a way to get VRR working.
There's no doubt that a lot of issues are user related but honestly I don't have this much trouble with Windows. This isn't the first time I've tried Linux and each and every time I find issues that I normally just give up on and revert back to Windows. I am trying though, I even purchased a second SSD dedicated for Linux.
I gotta say though Valve's proton software is amazing and without it I probably wouldn't be trying so hard to leave Windows as my primary game doesn't have native Linux support.
My Dad has a cheap laptop he uses just for banking, and he asked me to put Linux on it so he wouldn't have to upgrade to Windows 10. It's not much - for my Dad, or for the greater Linux market share - but it's something!
technical problems
Like what, exactly? I can only imagine drivers and even drivers aren't a really huge deal anymore
niche software
Again like what? Most softwares either have perfectly fine alternatives or if not, may even run transparently in Linux. A lot of times it's just "slightly different" and requires a person to just stick with it for a while.
Also, try KDE desktop. It's more a windows look and feel whilst being plain better and prettier and won't scare people off so easily
Edit: why the downvotes? I'm sincerely curious to what the problems are
I'm a fairly technically savvy person. And yet, since the drivers do not support the fingerprint sensor and the windows hello camera on my laptop. I am trucking along without.
But, not everyone is going to have the same leniency for tech they bought. Also the bluetooth is ridiculously flaky. Sure I could change the driver/software and all from CLI but the layperson is not going to be adept at that.
I helped! I installed Linux Mint on 2 of my friends aging laptops.
There are no longer just 5 of us! There are now 6 of us, YES!
Clear victory
wow i didn't expect that would be the case for us lol
Didn't think that the difference would be way lesser in India!
I wonder what unknown is.
Glad to be part of the trend! Recently converted my 12 year old MacBook Pro to Fedora and it's running incredibly well. Have used command line Linux for work for years, but have really been enjoying it with a GUI in a desktop setting.
After many years of thinking about it i finally gave Linux a try on my main PC and was met with the unfortunate realization that HDR support was non existent for NVIDIA cards and had to switch back to Windows.
HDR will probably be supported in a year or two, so you might want to give it a try again at some point. There's ongoing work to enable HDR.
What's with the big spike in "unknown" at the same time as Windows market share going down a bunch?
I heard rumors that the Indian government switched to some specific Unix like that has accounted for a lot of that, but I have zero experience on the matter aside from someone saying that could be it.
That shouldn't be uknown as its ubuntu based. The previous ones Ive used was debian based. It was pretty much stock with some wallpaper and basic customization. Also in most cases never updated.
did they fully adapt into this?
Unlikely. Different Indian govt departments use different distributions, but they are usually forks of Debian, Ubuntu or Red Hat.
I remember once reading here that there was a bug that made Windows show up as "unknown"
I don't know, buf I remember seeing all of that change had originated from India. So something happened there, I think
Isn't India developing their own Linux-based OS for all of their government's computers to use?
Do you all think that if the market share gets high enough we'll see ports of professional software like autocad or adobe?
Maybe.
The investment vs payoff is all they care about
We would probably have to go way beyond 3%
Ye most definitely
Bricscad runs on linux- a lot of professional work could be moved over, but its the hack'n'patch stuff that's holding a lot of things together that won't work.
Of all devices are steam decks probably no
Curious, but good news. Hopefully it doesn't reverse. We could do with less macs and windows machines.
If I wasn't a noob gamer I'd have no use for Windows. Unfortunately I'm too dumb to figure out how to make games work, even on Mint.
In order of easiness:
I suggest to install all of them with Flatpak to avoid messing up your system different with Wine versions, prefixes and whatnot
It takes less than you think. It's not always windows-easy but a little troubleshooting and googling is usually all it takes. The biggest sticking point is anti-cheat, if the kind of games you like require it.
Wine, lutris and steam are your best friends on linux in terms of gaming
For me, the Year of Linux on the Desktop was 2021. There's literally only one computer in the house running Windows anymore, and that's simply to run some of the pro-level software I use for gig work (and so I'll never be entirely rid of it).
Proton's improvements were a big step in transitioning my PC gaming to Linux. There are still a lot of games that won't run on Linux, but... there are so many that do, so I don't feel like I'm missing out.
The revolution is coming!
That is very little and propably due to steam deck.
Which is not a desktop.
That looks like a pretty solid base before microsoft attempts to decommission millions of computers that have many years of useful life left. I wish I could say that's great for me, but more of that hardware is going to end up in local landfills than resold.
At that rate market share will double after about four years. Since it took a hell of a lot more than four years to get to this point then that means that growth is accelerating.
You say that like it's a bug, not a feature.
I don't really want Linux to become the dominant OS. I want Microsoft to release Windows under a free software license. Windows is actually not that bad an OS from a purely technical standpoint.
Of course this won't happen. The day they release it, world will collapse because of the newly discovered vulnerabilities and stuff. Security over obscurity is major player in securities of closed source programs.
Is this actually Linux gaining any significant new mindshare, or is it just that the use of desktops is in relative decline, and the holdouts are going to be the more linux-inclined?
Are steam decks included in this because Im pretty sure valve has sold a LOT of them.
Doesn't the inclusion of other platforms make Linux mindshare look even better?
They could probably add android and ios tablets to desktop stats
I kind of don't want Linux to become mainstream tbh because then corporate enshittification becomes a much more real threat.
That's why you just use a community run distro. Also if the kernel it self gets enshittified then I'm sure there will be a fork someone will make. Heck right now there's the libre kernel that is just the Linux kernel with no proprietary blobs
These corporate interests are the reason it works so good. If you read into the Linux mailing list, major lifting is done by these companies.
Intel, AMD, Suse, Red Hat to name a few, all they follow are their corporate interests.
Some things just need money to be thrown at, i don't have a problem with benefiting from money of corporations. It also makes it more accessible for people who are not able or willing to pay.
There are paid distros already out there, but there will always be the option to ignore them.
You cannot enshittify the GPL 🥹
They've already tried. Ever heard of Ubuntu?
Honestly, given that there are many flaws in desktop Linux security, awareness of people about desktop Linux need to be parallel with better security practices : https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html https://privsec.dev/posts/linux/linux-insecurities https://privsec.dev/posts/linux/desktop-linux-hardening/ I just hope that when people are more aware of desktop Linux, developers then need to be more aware of security and use available platforms or components with security in mind such as Flatpak, Wayland, MAC, Pipewire,... and kernel developers should have cared more about industry security practices, and please don't give ideological reasons there.
