Linux reaches new high 3.82%

Okay, I guess I'll say it. Year of Linux Desktop!

This is very good. The higher those numbers go, the more pressure there will be for better official support for both HW and SW.

FOSS is fantastic. But lack of options (FOSS or paid) for a few of my use cases keeps me stapled to Windows and WSL. Unfortunately. I'm hoping the momentum shifts.

I mean, it's no secret that the SteamDeck is a huge reason why. Praise Gaben, may we game on every platform equally.

When I was part of the KDE marketing working group, we always talked about 5% being the magic number. If we hit that, then the avalanche of ported and supported third party software starts. It's a weird chicken and egg thing. Looks like we're close!

3.82% is actually pretty damn good. And if Windows 12 pushes us into a subscription model I can see that gap rising.

Also, if/when DirectX gets native Linux support, or DXVK/VKD3D matches the API in performance, that'll be it.

Personally I'm thanking Valve for this.

Wowzer, ok, that's seriously impressive though, like in 2022 I feel we were stuck at 2-2.5% and in 2023 we passed 3% for the first time and now we're at almost 4????? That's like DOUBLING the market share in a year

My journey to Linux pretty much started with the reddit thing. I moved to Lemmy and started slowly eliminating corporations out of my life.

2024 YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP

Meanwhile in India: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india (14.51%)

It was me checking out all the distros

Say the line, Bart!

I switched my gaming PC to Linux two months ago and I'm loving it. I've only had to boot my Windows drive twice.

I just installed Linux on a six-year-old budget laptop this morning. My first time using Linux. What was a uselessly slow machine is now just humming along.

I'm doing my part!

I am not saying “This is the Year of the Linux Desktop”. That said, things languished below 2% for decades and now it has doubled in just over a year. With the state of Linux Gaming, I could see that happening again.

Also, if ChromeOS continues to converge, you could consider it a Linux distro at some point and it also has about 4% share.

Linux could exceed 10% share this year and be a clear second after Windows.

That leaves me wondering, what percentage do we have to hit before it really is “The Year of the Linux Desktop”. I have never had to wonder that before ( I mean, it obviously was not 3% ). Having to ask is a milestone in itself.

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Steam Decks?

At least two dozens of us

For me the turning point was when a failed Windows forced upgrade ended up deleting me important files. I had backups, but I lost days of work because Microsoft felt so insecure in the face of piracy that they had to upgrade my computer despite me constantly telling them not to do so.

That was around 10 years ago. I went through various KDE distros; in the end I settled for Kubuntu.

The recent developments in KDE plasma are excellent. I haven't had to open a command prompt in years. I hadn't had a tech problem until this year when my tmp folder got full.

I use Linux (Arch actually) as my daily driver - I'm the MD of a small IT business in the UK. I have at least one employee who is asking me to create a Linux standard deployment to replace Windows because they don't like it anymore - W11 is quite divisive.

For a corp laptop/desktop you might need Exchange email - so that might be Evolution with EWS. You'll want "drive letters" - Samba, Winbind and perhaps autofs. You'll need an office suite - Libre Office works fine. There's this too: https://cid-doc.github.io/ for more MS integration - if that's your bag.

I often see people getting whizzed up about whether LO can compete with MSO. I wrote a finite (yes, finite) capacity scheduler for a factory in MS Excel, back in 1995/6 - it involved a lot of VBA and a mass of checksums etc. I used to teach word processing and DTP (Quark, Word, Ventura and others). LO cuts it. It gets on my nerves when I'm told that LO isn't capable by someone who is incapable of fixing a widow or orphan or for whom leading and kerning are incomprehensible.

I suspect that it's not Linux that is on the rise, but overall PC market that is shrinking. It's been a trend for quite a while for non-linux people to dump the PC entirely in favor of using just phone.

The desktop/mobile ratio chart aligns with this

https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet

On my laptop, I've switched to Linux since, despite being built in 2017, doesn't meet Win 11's min requirements. This is horseshit, I don't care how MS explains it or justifies it, there's nothing wrong with it. I'm sure during development, they realized a 20 year old computer could run Win 11 and decided to make up requirements to force people into buying new PCs.

Anyway, I'm using KDE Neon and I'm loving its ease of use and simplicity. I have barely needed to dive into the terminal to fix anything and KDE Plasma feels very polished and user friendly. To me, it feels like the new "normie-friendly" Linux. And without the horseshit telemetry and Microsoft spying, it's like a brand new PC.

Let’s go! It’s always great to see people wrestle control back from the corporations.

I wonder if that dip in Windows in April, going down to like 62%, and the correlated boost for "Uknown" operating systems to 13% might somehow simply be Windows not being recognized properly and categorized as unknown?

It seems a bit far-fetched to me that a bunch of Windows users would for 1 month suddenly all decide to use ReactOS, FreeDOS, BSD, Solaris, Illumos, Haiku, Redox, and Plan 9.

date '+%Y is the year of the Linux desktop'

I just ditched my old Windows 10 PC for a raspberry pi 5, and am running KDE Plasma.

It's refreshing to have an operating system that doesn't suggestive sell to me.

If adobe would be willing to port its creative suite to linux that number would increment faster

Very cool. I wonder how much the steam deck helped in this push

I'M DOING MY PART!

Garuda for gaming and Silverblue for work.

Nice, at this pace we'll reach 50% in less than 50 years!

https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology

Considering their methodology, I wonder how many of these are Steam Decks registering as "desktops" when they visit a website in the web broweser?

What a great news.

it would be very interesting also the kids had some aknowledge on school about linux, besides windows. Would be open mind to get new apprentices. Besides that, for the normal human being/worker, who only uses PC for internet and office, linux can be taken into account, since it is open source.

I know linux is harder to learn than windows for an average joe, but I guess teaching kids with two OS (windows and linux) give to them more capacity too choose and give them more software/hardware skills

(Im not using linux rn just because imo windows is more stable to edit videos, but in the future, is probably to return to the pinguin)

(Sry about my bad english)

if we add chromeOS to it which is also linux we have more than 5 percent. The future is ours.

I'm one of the converts. Didn't like Windows 11 at all, decided to try Ubuntu/Zorin before going back to 10 and ended up staying. I've tried various distros many times over the past ~15 years but it never felt "ready" to me until now.

Just made the switch at the end of December alongside making my new PC. Feels very refreshing to actually be in control of my own computer. I’ve barely run into any issues gaming either, which is a welcome surprise - Proton remains one of the best things Valve has ever done.

This is the year I'm porting my family to Linux. Starting this summer!

Windows 11 has irked me on my main laptop. I still use it due to various applications (not just games) that require Windows, but the slowness of the OS and the tracking drive me away from it. I installed Linux on another drive on the laptop.

Additionally, I purchased a desktop from my friend, and completely wiped Windows from it to install Linux (KDE Neon). I realized there is nothing that I'd want from that desktop, possibly aside from a couple of games my more powerful laptop can run, that Linux cannot run.

Nice, lets keep the moment going. Another great year for Linux and open source.

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Remember to include the android distro

I also noticed this and a bit surprised. Ah well, gotta see if it is a fluke though.

I'm really suspicious of those numbers, seeing the sudden drop in macOS and Chrome OS, but I'm hoping so much that those are accurate. Things are slowly but surely getting better.

What happened March-May?

Monthly jerkoff thread

I would switch in a heartbeat if MS office would be on Linux. I have tried all alternatives, including MS office online and I always encounter some kind of formatting fuck up. That's just not acceptable for my job.

MS knows this of course.

So some people switched to phone only after Windows 8 security stopped...

Jokes aside, it's cool to see it move up no matter how small the move is.