We see the nearly 33-year-old OS’s market share growing 31.3 percent from June 2023, when we last reported on Linux market share, to February. Since June, Linux usage has mostly increased gradually. Overall, there’s been a big leap in usage compared to five years ago. In February 2019, Linux was reportedly on 1.58 percent of desktops globally.
We should each create 5 small VMs with a Linux desktop on them and keep them running.
We’ll kick it up to like 5%!
Well, Microsoft is doing everything they can to get people to switch to Linux right now…
Valve and Microsoft working together to get people to switch to Linux and make 2024 the Year of Linux on the desktop.
For those that are stuck with it: https://github.com/LeDragoX/Win-Debloat-Tools
The increase in Linux is actually from Apple. Both Linux and Windows usage increased while MacOS decreased.
I don’t really keep up with Apple stuff, what are they doing for this to possibly happen?
Such as? I love Windows 11 for Auto HDR alone. I never have to think about HDR at all in 11. It just works. In 10 the implementation was wonky at best. It often made things look worse so I literally never used it. Can’t wait for the dedicated Copilot key as well. 'Bout time they retired the useless Menu key. I don’t know of any Linux distro that integrates AI with the OS… Do you? Cause I’m still willing to switch so long as it has AI and a proper HDR implementation.
Ehy would you want “AI” in an OS?
There are very legitimate usecases.
Better offline translation, image descriptions for the less visually able, being able to search for specific images (e.g. going to the gallery app and searching for all your dog pics). This all could be done offline, privately, using ethically-sourced training data.
Is that how Microsoft will use AI? Lmao of course not
It’ll be used as a shitty chatbot that only exists to siphon your data and send it to Microsoft so they can target you with more ads, some of which will be pushed to you via that very same AI “assistant”.
I’m using AI in a very controlled manner, I don’t want somebody else to decide for me where it’s applied.
Also, Windows 11 doesn’t have support for ultrawide monitors, and I happen to have one.
What do you mean it doesn’t support ultrawide monitors? I had an ultrawide for almost a decade and every version of Windows supported it flawlessly.
The new task bar can’t be moved to a short edge, so it obstructs a significant part of the screen.
Windows 11 can be displayed on a ultra wide monitor, but it’s not designed to work on that aspect ratio.
So you technically can move the task bar to the edge in Windows 11, but it requires a registry change. Ludicrous, but if you’re a home user you can do it.
If you’re stuck on an IT-managed install for work like I am, however, you’re out of luck
Hm so you mean the task bar isn’t flexible then? Not quite what I understood by not working with ultrawides but I guess I can see where you’re coming from.
The only thing you can change is whether it’s centered or left justified, it’s not flexible at all.
The problem is that it takes up a significant amount of screen space for nothing.
I hope there’s geometric progression somewhere.
Many Linux distributions suck, and the way many people use Linux sucks too, but it’d still be a bit better world if Linux would be mainstream OS.
Even better if that’d be NetBSD, of course. OpenBSD if performance would be better. FreeBSD - just better.
We should thank Microsoft for rendering Windows absolutely unusable, to the point that many people are just jumping ship and installing a Linux distro.
Yeah, microsoft making outlook worse and worse every year sends me to thunderbird. And thunderbird suck on Windows, so I finally switched back to linux after years of using windows (I switched to windows when Windows 10 released).
I am surprised that linux is pretty usable at this point, much better than 7 years ago. I feel much more productive in gnome than on Windows at this point.
What kind of things got worse with outlook? I still use it for work, and the ui has changed, sure, but still seems to do everything it used to. In fact, the progressive web app even works quite well on linux!
I am referring to the email client preinstalled with windows, not the office 365 version. MS adds ad to it and dramatically changed the UI (I forgot what problem I encountered with the new UI), that drives me towards thunderbird.
Ahh, gotcha. Last I saw it was called Windows Live Mail and was already just suuuper basic. I am kind of impressed they managed to make it worse haha
I am surprised that linux is pretty usable at this point, much better than 7 years ago.
While I’m surprised it’s still usable at this point, with all the enthusiasm about things ending it, but still not as good as 7 years ago for me.
The year of the Linux desktop was 2011.
Statcounter says it gets its desktop operating system (OS) usage stats from tracking code installed on over 1.5 million global websites generating over 5 billion monthly page views.
…
Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 1.5 million sites globally. These sites cover various activities and geographic locations. Every month, we record billions of page views to these sites. For each page view, we analyse the browser/operating system/screen resolution used and we establish if the page view is from a mobile device. For our search engine stats, we analyze every page view referred by a search engine. For our social media stats, we analyze every page view referred by a social media site. We summarize all this data to get our Global Stats information.
So… because I am blocking any and all trackers, I may not count towards this at all? Presumably the same is true of many Lemmy users.
And probably most Linux users, generally.
LOL this is not the market share of Linux.
This is the share of Linux in one certain market of web surfers.
Yeah, misleading headline. They’re talking about the linux desktop, and based just on browser stats. Marked share of linux as a whole, including all datacenters, servers, cloud infrastructure, and heck, throw in IOT devices, android, routers, etc, I’m pretty sure it’s the dominant OS already.
Year of the Linux desktop babyyyy
Year of the Linux Desktop! 1999-2035!
What happened in 2036?
Year of the Linux portable gaming handheld?
2 years in a row babyyyy
That’s a significant bump since June.
I’m eagerly optimistic about the future of Linux smartphones, as well. I would have already jumped ship if phones like the Librem 5 or the Pinephone had better cameras. Exciting times for Linux folks.
As long as you can’t see Linux machines in normal computer stores it will not happen. Users never get the opportunity to experience it. Today there is no killer feature really like the other OS have.
People go to computer stores?
here i was thinking i must be doing it wrong my last 5 rrigs from newegg. latest build
Yes, non-linux users
I don’t think I remember the last time I heard about someone, Linux user or not, going to a computer store. In fact, I don’t even know if there are computer stores around here anymore.
Plenty of big box stores here carry computers. There are also also electronics megastores like Mediamarkt, Saturn, and others.
I don’t know about where you live, but in Switzerland there are still stores where you can buy computers. In fact, all computers my parents ever bought are from computer stores.
Sweden. People, including my parents, buy computers (and everything else) online over here. Someone mentioned Mediamarkt, and we do have those around here as well, although I’ve never heard of anyone actually buying a computer there. But I’m sure some do.
Most likely Best Buy, Office Depot, or Wal Mart for the typical brick and mortar. Apple Stores too, but that’s a bit beside the point.
Office Depot gets benefits like a workspace where “hey, a laptop broke, we’ll get it warranty repaired, but in the mean time hop over to Office Depot and charge whatever because we need a replacement right this minute”. Strangely, even after all this time, there are folks that still need to touch and poke and ask questions before they settle.
Online is great if you are very particular and know what you want and can afford to wait a day or two because you want a somewhat less popular model. If you aren’t too particular, want some in person reassurances, or in a great hurry, then brick and mortar still wins.
I’m people, does microcenter count?
The killer features(for me) are: Privacy(by Default), Opensource, Decent performance on old hardware, looks pretty(variable), basic software compatibility(else i would just use TempleOS)
Privacy(by Default)
Not once you get on the Web.
Decent performance on old hardware
I don’t know what you call old. Also not once you get on the Web.
looks pretty(variable),
Yessir, and for me that could be a sufficient reason alone. Sad that conkeror is no more usable for a browser.
Atleast i am acutely aware of what is phoning home(Unlike M$), I avoid G services like the plague, but whenever i am forced to use them they sit in a separate FF profile, I know what links what and who are in kahoots with whom: If you take the approach that going on the web is equivalent to waltzing in a big public market square, and apply the appropriate precautions, you can ensure you’re late night pillow searches are never linked back to your G account.
My hardware is atleast 13 Yr old at this point, and it runs the latest Linux kernel and the Gnome DE just fine, Video playback and the general Internet is just ‘fine’; you can equate it to providing a mobility scooter to an old grandma who is mentally fit
Going on the web is equivalent to waltzing into big port city’s cheapest and biggest brothel.
OK, so it’s 13 years, I was imagining c2d.
I would equate the darkweb to that moniker and not the general clear web (that is at this point running on the infrastructure of just 3-4 companies, so its more like a choice between malls than individual vendors)
I was imagining c2d.
What?
No, “the darkweb” is actually cleaner.
Core 2 Duo
agree to disagree
I once nagged my friend to install Zorin Os lite on his c2d laptop with 2gb of RAM, he still uses it to this day
Maybe if framework gets big?
You can thank me later - I literally installed Linux back as my primary OS after being back on Windows for ages on the day before this report came out the first time.
What would people recommend if the main reason you use windows is gaming? I have an AMD CPU and a Nvidia GPU, if drivers are good etc, which OS would you use
Gaming support on Linux is in a really nice place right now. However, if gaming is the only reason you use a laptop, you should stick with Windows, at least for the time being.
To add, if you are on the fence for this reason I’d do an 80/20 dual boot. Buy a second hard drive it doesn’t have to be very big, then move your personal files to Linux and use that as a daily driver and have the second drive to just use for nothing but games that won’t run on Linux but you really want to play/friends want to play with you. You’ll find that you rarely have to use the second boot but the second drive will cover your bases for the edge cases, 256gb or even less should be just fine for the second drive since you should only have 1-2 games that won’t play nice with Linux. I wouldn’t partition unless you have a massive drive with space to spare it’s just really annoying to get the space back into one portion if you decide to go back to a single partition.
I use Linux daily within my job, it’s just I’m curious which OS people find the best for gaming (I run servers etc but want to see what people find is the least painful for gaming).
Basically, come the evening after work, I CBA to spend ages configuring stuff to then be able to play as time is precious in the evening
I use mint and barely had to do much trouble shooting and once everything was working how I wanted it didn’t break for me I just boot up and play, the things I had to trouble shoot were getting my headphones to work and my Logitech mouse keybindings but they were both 5min searches to find programs to install and fix the problems, if you use Linux for work it will probably be even easier.
I’ll have a play later as I have a partition ready for dual boot. I only got windows 11 for cheap to see how it was but the constant bringing up of bing is irritating
It looks like it’s because macos lost a lot for some reason over the last couple of years with Windows and Linux picking up that share. Anyone know why?
My company was pushing MacBooks and iMacs on developers for years, now they’re reversing course. I’m guessing it’s a combination of the upfront cost and the hassle of enterprise administration, tech support, and security having to officially handle 2 different OS’s. It’s much easier to have everyone on similar setups, and Windows is basically the “default” OS for corporate users.
The new arch continues to mess up brew, which is by far what people use for development on the platform. In addition, docker and other custom tools are paid on Mac but free on Linux. With companies tightening their belts, Linux is starting to make financial sense.
What’s this about Docker not being free on MacOS? I have it installed and use it for dev work and it didn’t cost anything.
Docker desktop has a license that restricts commercial use depending on the size of your company/employer.
Use Colima to be on the safe side.
You heard it here first.
2024: Year of the Linux Desktop
1991: Year of the Linux Desktop199219931994…
201920202021202220232024
My year was 2007. I stopped caring about the rest of the world following me by about 2015. 17 years since I touched Windows without being paid to do so. feelsgoodman.jpg
Windows 95 lockups drove me to linux. Options are good.
2023 was officially the year of the Linux laptop for me. The year of the linux desktop for myself may or may not be this year.
I’ve been a regular user of Debian and Ubuntu for the last 20 years and even though I love the idea of Linux taking market share from Windows the article doesn’t in any way analyze the reliability of the statistics.
Statcounter says it gets its desktop operating system (OS) usage stats from tracking code installed on over 1.5 million global websites generating over 5 billion monthly page views.
So… How reliable is this actually? There are a millions reasons for me to fake which is and web browser in using. Some sites actively sabotage the user experience and usability if the OS is not identified as Windows or the web browser is not Chrome/Edge.
I’ve been working IT since the 90’s and there’s not a 4% market share of Linux when I look at my friends and colleagues that works IT. The ones I know that doesn’t work IT definitively don’t use Linux. Att least not in other things than Steam Deck and Android (Linux as in “modified kernel”) and maybe some premade img for RPi
Idk, I’m a woman approaching my senior years who had to have someone else install it. My whole household is on Linux. None of us are in IT.
My grandparents had someone else to install Linux too. It was me btw.
That’s the point. As long as you can’t buy a laptop with Linux on it at your local computer store, the average user will stick with Windows. And MS will do everything they can to keep it that way.
Down here in Brazil desktops/laptops with Linux are a thing on most mainstream electronics stores. Have been for at least two decades b/cs I remember seeing those as a kid in the 2000s. Because poverty so the stores always have the cheaper options and the ones with Linux are cheaper than windows. Sometimes you can find the exact same configuration but the Linux version is like 200-400 BRL cheaper.
But what most people would do here is buy the Linux desktop to then install pirated versions of windows.
Damn! You really gave me hope there and then smashed it with your last sentence.
Some sites actively sabotage the user experience and usability if the OS is not identified as Windows
Never heard of this and highly doubt it, but if it were true that’s 100% not a website I want to use, so they’d be doing me a favor.
You’re free to whatever opinion you might have but it’s not a secret that Google used to change their search page to a more limited one if you were using Firefox.
Hence people created add-ons to change the User Agent to mimic Chrome when accessing Google.
Edit: I just reread your comment and noticed that you only quoted the part about Windows.
I’ll just let my comment remain but it’s okay that you’re having an opinion that spoofing OS when accessing websites is not needed.
I’m well aware of that. Browser and OS aren’t the same thing. Weird.
I had to check if I was alone on this…I wasn’t. First hit on a quick Google:
So yeah, not alone… this is the hill I’m dying on😁
I’ve been daily driving Linux for over 3 years and don’t remember ever seeing it. And as a web developer I know the only way that would happen is if a shitty business decision mandated it.
I’ve been daily driving Linux for over 3 years and don’t remember ever seeing it.
So you are calling everyone out on this because you started using Linux too recently to witness it, therefore it didn’t happen.
Gonna second you in this one. My Manjaro box is what I run to as a gold standard if one of my families windows machines using Chrome fails to load something. It’s consistent, reliable and fast. What I think is missing from this conversation is: wired or wifi. One of the reasons the Linux machine is the yardstick is that it’s not using wifi; never had a first page load fail.
Slack on Linux however… Eesh. Never had an app so reluctant to launch.
Are you also a relatively new Linux user as the guy you are agreeing with has said he is? Because this absolutely happened and was a continuous annoyance in the 2000s.
Never heard of this and highly doubt it
A quick google search will probably turn up lots of discussion forum results where Linux users were talking about the best way to change their user agent and complaining about sites that forced them to during ~ late 90s -> 2015 (give or take - prob was pretty rare by then).
In most cases it wasn’t anti-linux, it was the site being programmed to go “the user agent has to match these things or tell the user it’s not compatible with their browser” - but in MANY cases if Windows (or presumably MacOS) wasn’t one of the matched things, you received that message. Off the top of my head I specifically remember having to change it to pay my cable bill and get to my bank website.
There were also some more subtle cases where the site would load but some shit would not work (most famously the web interface for Office365 when it was newish).
So you can doubt, but this is what it was like to run Linux in the 2000s.
More recently (for sure post 2016) I recall having to change it to get the Netflix website to let me play content or fix some other bit of functionality on their site. As of today I haven’t run netflix in a browser window in years, but I assume that’s been resolved by now.
It is really nice to see an alternative to US corporate tech making inroads. But to get the numbers even higher the US needs to ban the Chinese and Russians from using Windows and I hope they do.
But to get the numbers even higher the US needs to ban the Chinese and Russians from using Windows and I hope they do.
It’s been not that long since most of Windows installations in Russia were pirated ones, with MS updates turned off (in case they try something).
There’s a popular opinion that MS liked it this way - they get just as huge a userbase as everywhere else, and they don’t have to change pricing policy to make it affordable in ex-USSR.
I’m not sure if there’s point to talking seriously about Western software licensing in China.
My point is that numbers won’t get higher for such reasons.
