Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA

In Finland, Linux market share has jumped from 4% to 24% within the last 6 months.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/finland

That must be a mistake. Are there any Finish people on Lemmy? I'd like to know if they are observing this on the ground, because honestly, if every 4th person had Linux there it would be somewhat visible. Even non-techies in the family or friend circle would mention it or ask about switching to it, or there would be a popular store to buy stuff with linux pre-installed.
Anti Commercial-AI license
- I'm obviously limited to my own bubble, but my friends / aquintances consist mostly of "tech aware" people and they have been getting cozy with Fedora and Linux Mint due to the BuyFromEU/BuyFromEurope movement.
  I know from a few schools that they use ChromeBooks since corona pandemic (they were handing them to kids so everyone could equally attend remotely) and they just kept using them since they had them when they returned to classrooms. I don't know how widespread this is and don't know if chromebooks count towards linux desktop stats?
- Another finn chiming in, linux user for about 1.5 years. Another friend of mine started dual booting recently. Wouldn't say it's common to use Linux at all.
- Sopuli.xyz is run from Finland, so probably yes.
- Yeah that stat is almost certainly a measurement artifact - these browser-based surveys only track user-agent strings which can be spoofed, and some Finnish university or government network probably changed their default config or started running a massive scraper project lol.
That seems highly unlikely to me. Could a reason be website scrapers for AI using different user agents to prevent being blocked? The recent reports of different projects plagued by scrapers fit the timeline
- If you read the FAQ, Statcounter detects and removes bot data.
Wow! What caused that? Orange man?
- I have no idea, but it does match the Orange timeline.
- yes. disassociating tech stacks from fascists enablers like FB/google/M$.
- If you look back in 2022, you see the same ramp up. I expect ramp down soon.
Wow, that’s crazy. Any particular reason for that?
- Love for penguins

Linux has finally surpassed the "Unknown" category in the USA!

Got a chuckle out of me! Excellent work.

One in every 20 computers. Not too shabby.

Look at the computer to your left. Now look at the computer to your right. Now look at the computers in 18 other directions. ONE OF THOSE COMPUTERS IS A LINUX.
- Looooooonix
No, Statcounter measures usage; not machines.
- So the headline is a lie and it's not 5% of market share?
Yes the important server computer is Linux, and the others are something else.

Tux having fingers kinda creeps me out.

Fuck, is this AI again?
- This is what slop looks like, yes.

It's probably all the AI web crawlers that have Linux userstringe

It tracks along the lines of all the other linux usage stats. The actual % is a bit different by the trends all show growth. PH released 5% linux usage on the desktop. US Gov released 5% linux usage on desktop. If it included web crawlers and AI scrapers the % would be like 80% since thats the majority of internet traffic.
I've seen a lot of machines running Linux in the last year or two

merican gif

What's going on there? MacOS and OSX are counted separately.

Anti Commercial-AI license

You are delusional if you genuinely believe that link is stopping any AI scraper.
- AI scrapers do see them though. Gpt 4-o mini:
  Here are some examples of forum comments that might be found with an anti-AI license attached:
  Creative Writing:
  "I just finished writing a short story about a time traveler. Please do not use this story for AI training or any commercial purposes."
  Personal Opinion:
  "I believe that community gardens can significantly improve urban life. This comment reflects my personal views and should not be used by AI systems."
  Artistic Feedback:
  "I love the colors in this painting! This feedback is my original thought and should not be utilized by AI for analysis or training."
  Technical Advice:
  "For anyone struggling with coding, I suggest breaking down the problem into smaller parts. This advice is my own and should not be used by AI tools."
  Product Review:
  "I recently tried this new gadget, and it exceeded my expectations! This review is my personal experience and should not be processed by AI."
  Travel Experience:
  "I had an amazing time visiting the national park last summer. This comment is based on my personal experience and should not be used for AI training."
  Health Tips:
  "I found that drinking more water has really improved my energy levels. This tip is my personal insight and should not be utilized by AI."
  These comments illustrate how users might express their thoughts or experiences while explicitly stating that they do not want their content to be used by AI systems.
So are android and Linux.
It's just how the site does things.
- Is android considered a desktop OS? See my other reply to your parent comment.
- Android isn't GNU/Linux
OS X: Holds 16.57%.
macOS: Accounts for 7.72%. (It's worth noting that some data reporting issues mean OS X and macOS are sometimes split, even though macOS is the newer branding for OS X. When combined, Apple's desktop presence is around 24%).
So not to be confused with iOS. Which if this is just counting desktops, then that shouldn’t apply.
- crazy to me that apple OS is such a small percentage relative to Windows. Most people i know use Macbooks.
  its crazy how many general devices in the country are running windows

Installing stuff needs to not be a hostile moonscape of cobbled instructions and deciphering terminal matrix-speak.

Double click to install for everything, good (as opposed to existent) GUIs for everything, one-click updates all in one place. Leave the obscure terminal stuff in forever, so the big dick terminal folk can clack away and do everything they want that way. No reason to remove any of it; it's an awesome option to have.

It's too difficult to recommend wholeheartedly on its own merits because of random 10,000% drops in usability. It's not super far from living up to its ideals more fully, though. Well...it feels that way to me, but maybe those problems don't make the amount of work to fix them obvious.

I'll never leave it because it's clearly the way to go, but with a little attitude solving, Linux could be the god damn best on every front, as opposed to "best overall mostly because the others are spying shitty money addicts trying to ruin your computer on purpose".

I understand that's how things are, but man, what a sorry state of affairs. CLIs used to be the ONLY way to use computers, and common people wrote programs all the time! It was part of normal school curriculum for fucks sake. My mom was required to learn BASIC in high school. Nothing even close to that now. Schools MAYBE have some intro programming elective, if they're lucky.
We've managed to deskill multiple generations of computer users, and it gets worse every single year. More and more people only understand to scroll and press big buttons, with cognition of any sort being completely absent. Just monkeys in a cage created by corporations. It's heartbreaking, really.
- I bet that when CLIs were the only way to use computers, the majority of people probably didn’t use a computer at all.
Yeah I recently installed Signal on my kubuntu machine and the Signal website only showed how to install it via CLI no mentioning of the Discover or Snap store. My parents, who only started using the computer for the first time after their 60’s, are definitely not able to install it if they forget that the stores exist and a website tells them to use the CLI as the only option.
Like the front ends exist application makers just need to point people to it if they want Linux adoption to improve.
What don't you like about GUI package manager frontends? The Pop!_OS spin of GNOME software worked pretty good for me and so does the cosmic-epoch store they're working on. (Plus they both look good) Even downloading random .deb from the internet is only a double click away from being installed with Popsicle. Can't comment on non Debian based ones though
The best part of Linux is that it comes from servers/embedded
You don't need any specific software or GUI. It is modular and performant.
, but with a little attitude solving
pot name kettle.
When was the last time you used a Linux distro? 2005? Some desktops have had one-click updates since about that year, there are pretty good GUIs (that you don't like them because they are in a terminal is a terminalWindowsism) and the "terminal matrix speak" is just knowing what you are talking about. You do know at least something about the parts of the car you drive, do you not?
The one big thing I grant is the double-click idioms, because at least in my experience it's where lots of systems tend to clash against each other. A given app registers double click actions for certain files, then the browser does the same for those files, then Wine / Flatpak steals that association too... in the end you almost never know who is going to open your files in modern Linux unless you context-click specifically. It's the one aspect on the list I'd say Linux has regressed since 2015.
I don't know man... Once you get used to firing up a terminal and typing "flatpak install whatever" and it just installing in a few seconds, it's hard to go back.

My sympathies go out to anybody forced to use a Linux desktop environment.

My condolences to anyone who thinks windows is more usable / suited better to their use case in any way.
I don't know, I enjoy using gnome much more that the steaming pile of shit that is windows 11
sorry but if you can't navigate around something as simple as KDE Plasma that idiocy is on you my friend because you must be bottom of the barrel dumb to not be able to figure that out.
My sympathies go out to anyone who doesn't get paid when they have to waste time touching Windows.
As a life-long Windows user, Linux Mint's Cinnamon UI feels very at-home. Hell, it feels more at-home than Win 11's UI, since Win 11's UI has so many weird choices and unnecessary changes from prior OSes.
- Windows 11 is fine for me honestly
  I don't find it worse than Windows 10
When was he last time you tried?
You don't know enough about Linux to defend this argument.
Just put a relatively tech unaware friend on mint. They're doing very well so far!
Which one specifically?
While there are certainly Linux desktops I prefer more and those I prefer less, as someone who is forced to use Windows 11 at work I'd gladly take any Linux desktop environment over that mess.
Based shit stirrer.
Hi