10mo ago

Linux for desktop market share surpasses 4% for the first time, says Statcounter

www.neowin.net Linux for desktop market share surpasses 4% for the first time, says Statcounter

Statcounter is reporting that Linux on the desktop has surpassed 4% of market share compared to just 1.53% in October 2020. The reasons for the increase aren't known but we speculate about the cause.

Statcounter, a website that tracks the market share of web browsers, operating systems, and search engines, is reporting that Linux on the desktop has over 4% market share for the very first time (Statcounter records ChromeOS as a separate operating system despite being based on Linux). Statcounter doesn’t provide any explanation about why the market share has increased but we can speculate what’s going on.
Linux’s march to its 4.03% market share has been a steady process ever since the final months of 2020 when Linux held just 1.53% of desktop market share. One of the biggest contributors to the growth of Linux is likely the stringent hardware requirements of Windows 11.

70 comments

I'd of thought steam and proton would of been a large contributing factor
- I think the spotlight on KDE from Steam Deck definitely helps. It's polished as shit, and it acts like Windows by default, and that is a good thing.
  
  And the most of distros defaults to shitty gnome, slowing down Linux adoption. Steam finally showed that anybody can use Linux, with proper WM.
- It was for me at least, only moved to Linux after spending a long time with the steam deck
  
  think youd of eventually used linux without the intervention of the steam deck?
- I'd of thought
  would of been
  Interesting grammar.
  Where are you from?
  
  Interesting good or interesting bad? I'm from UK Devon
- gaming was THE missing piece for me since i first tried desktop linux long ago. and it has improved massively in many other ways since then.
  i suspect many other people think alike me too.
  
  Definitely this is huge. Proton and the respective Wine advancements are exactly what needed to happen. And the headlines about some games running better on Linux really gives it a good look.
- Im building up to switch over thanks to proton. I will still have to dual boot for edgecase games though.

The insane requirements of Win11 (and the added Ai features) are definitely factors for me to switch to Linux
- How was your experience? What information did you miss, to make this a smooth transition?
  
  Right so I haven't switched just yet, I'm waiting on Win10 EOL because there is still stuff I use that is windows only (Adobe suite [ I fucking hate gimp ] and some games)
  However, I did look into distro stability, and what apps are avalabile. Everything else I use IS either Linux native or runs great on Linux.
  Inevitably, when I switch, I will miss Photoshop and not having to tinker with making games work
  
  I just switched from 10 myself.
  I started on NixOS for some reason… that was a pain in the ass. Every time the machine locked for inactivity it killed my session and I had to relaunch all my apps.
  I now have ZorrinOS installed and I’m much more at home on a Ubuntu/Debian base. I’m not seeing the same session issue anymore - it resumes as you would expect.
  The install for Zorrin has an “install with Nvidia drivers” option (others may too - idk) which made it easy.
  I haven’t had to use it yet but I guess wine is there if I have a Windows only app I have to run.
  
  I would install Manjaro. It runs KDE, which is super familiar, and maybe more polished than Windows. And it is Arch-based, which means you have access to AUR apps, which makes finding programs super easy. It's like if the MS app store actually had every program on it.
  Keeping the explanations simple.
  Don't start with Ubuntu/Gnome. The desktop is way too weird, and app repository is limited.
  Don't start with Mint or Cinnamon or LxDE. Linux nerds will recommend these, but they feel "old" and are not really lighter on resources than KDE.
  Highly recommend Arch-based distros. AUR feels like a miracle coming from the Windows paradigm of tracking down installer EXEs and MSIs.
- What requirements do they have? I remember requiring a TPM module which was quite absurd.
  
  Yeah TMP, my CPU doesn't have it, and I'm not going to get a new motherboard and CPU just for a shittier Windows experience.
  
  What does TPM even do that it is needed over UEFI secure boot? Validate individual hardware components?
- I had been on Linux since 2016 when I finally installed Windows 11 on my newer shitty laptop which had a bug that was apparently unresolved no matter what distro or config I tried. But Windows' issues like it's famous update times, the modern distasteful UI(in my opinion) and inclusion of more and more features that the user didn't ask for send me back to Linux. And with Copilot being forced on users, I don't think Microsoft is respecting their customers choices.
  
  You are now the product. Please do not resist.
  microsoft, probably

I'm doing my part!
Proton is what allowed me to make the switch. I do dual boot but almost never use my windows partition.

The Linux ecosystem has matured to the point where it can work well for the majority of people. Even the worst of Linux like Nvidia is still usable.
- If you don't play games Wayland, if you do play games xorg. I haven't tested gnome but kde has a screen tearing bug for games on a gsync monitor. I don't like dealing with gnome when I have 20 windows open, sucks overusing the mouse.
  Hyperland has been amazing for games since the Nvidia 550 update but there is still minor stutter in some games like gta 5.
  
  I know you're talking about Nvidia specifically, but I find it kinda funny how people say that regarding X11 and Wayland even for AMD and Intel, because for me the experience is literally the opposite -- when I try playing games on Xorg, they always stutter and freeze really badly to near-unplayable extents even when FPS counters report they're running at 60 FPS (or if I set them to the lowest possible graphics), but ever since I switched to Wayland, the issue was just gone and games run flawlessly now. And note that I'm using Plasma, the one people often said had a worse Wayland session than Gnome and Wayland-based WMs.
  I don't know why this is the case for me specifically when it seems like literally everyone else reports the opposite happening to them (and afaik Wine and most Linux games still run in XWayland). Does Xorg just hate me in particular?
  
  kde has a screen tearing bug for games on a gsync monitor
  You mean on Wayland? I play a lot of games, so I haven't dared try it

I'd guess every day someone gets fed up with some MS bullshit and goes looking for something else, for me it was the forced updates/restart and the following waiting to finish updates then 100% disk usage for a few minutes, then removing whatever bullshit that got reinstalled.
- For me the infuriating things about Windows are the slowness of everything, the tendency of so many applications to turn white and "not responding" all the time, the coercive setup questions on installation and at random times after installation, the forced Microsoft account and tracking, and the fact that after 29 years the Start menu still doesn't work about 50% of the time but comes up empty or not at all. Everything is fast and solid under Linux.
- I haven't used Windows in years, hearing the forced updates stories always confirms that's the right choice.

I added 2 to that count this week!
I resurrected my Asus T100TA tablet/laptop that got killed by Windows10 and installed Linux Mint. I can now stream the seas in the comfort of my TV.
Then updated my Lenovo Flex from Win11 to Kubuntu. I used to play Android games via LD Player and it was so slow in Win11. But with Kubuntu+Waydroid, I was able to play my mmorpg game at the highest setting without lag!
- I added Debian to my mom's new laptop. I cannot rely on windows having a stable desktop environment and interface anymore which is crucial for my mom to be able to use it.
  
  That's a great option for her. Should Windows push a crappy update, she'll still be able to use her computer.
  My Lenovo Flex was okay at Win10. But I made the mistake of updating it to Win11 and it became a potato. I like my taskbar to never combine and at the right side of the screen so I could see all my open windows. Win11 killed that and I'm too much of a dinosaur to adjust to the "dock" taskbar type.

One of the biggest contributors to the growth of Linux is likely the stringent hardware requirements of Windows 11.
Keep it up, Microsoft! You'll make life better for us all yet. Windows 12 should be only for the elite few.

The huge push from communities to get back to normal communication and marginalising toxicity is something that doesn't get often mentioned, but the culture has definitely improved over the years to where the usual "elitist gatekeeper" accusation from other OS's bad actors falls flat and more people are not put off before even downloading an iso.

I used windows all my life up until May 2023 when I decided to try Debian and then never went back. Now that Debian 12 is easy to install I hope more people will join.

Last year's December marked my one-year birthday of daily-driving Linux as my primary OS consecutively, while this January marked one year of me using a single distro reliably without running into weird issues that'd lead me into a distrohopping frenzy. I am still proud that I managed to pull this off! I guess third time really is the charm.
I had previously tried using Linux two other times before - the first time was around March 2021 when I had to finally upgrade my computer and switch out of Windows 7, and since I didn't like Win10, I wanted to try out Linux. Sadly, I didn't know much about it at the time and made a bad first-distro choice in Manjaro, whose installer broke so horribly that it somehow nuked my entire SSD. Lesson learned: Don't use Manjaro.
Second time was in November (also in 2021), where I mustered the courage to try again after many frustrations with Windows 10, but with a different distro (initially Pop!_OS, but I had a terrible experience with its community and switched to Linux Mint the next day). My days on Mint were pretty great and I still remember them fondly, but there were many things that I needed but couldn't use as Mint's repositories were ancient and lacked them (and I didn't know about Flatpak at the time), so I tried switching to other distros with newer repositories... and kept running into all sort of bizarre, nonsensical issues nobody else had (such as atrocious gaming performance, archives not working, and other things I don't remember), and my requests for help were often either ignored or responded harshly, so I ended up giving up and returning to Windows...
...Uh, that didn't last more than 6 months because for some reason Windows 10 hates me and started giving me even worse issues. I managed to find a nicer and more forgiving community of Linux users who could help, so I mustered the courage to try again. And thankfully, with my prior experience, I managed to make it stick this time by finally resolving some of the bizarre issues I had - it got to the point that I sometimes forget I'm using Linux, lol. I'm very glad I could contribute to the 4%.

As always, such statistics should be treated with caution.
What methodology is used to calculate Statcounter Global Stats?
Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 1.5 million sites globally.
Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology
It is assumed that there are more than one billion websites worldwide. It is therefore not exactly unlikely that a Linux user will not access any of these 1.5 million websites.
Furthermore, it is quite common for Linux users to use tools such as Pi-Hole that simply block such statistics scripts. This means that these users would not be counted even if they accessed one of these 1.5 million websites. For my part, I also use computers with Linux that I don't use to access websites. Some of these computers don't even have access to the Internet. They are therefore not counted either.
Finally, let's come to the most important point. Percentage values say not much if you don't know the actual number of users behind them. Let's assume, for example, that 3.5 per cent Linux users were detected in December and only 3 per cent in January. However, if the total number of users was higher in January, it is therefore possible that more users were detected in January.
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