Linux back at 4.04% on the Desktop. Windows went below 73%

The combined forces of microsoft reaching new heights of greed and intrusion, plus the massive dev efforts for the best ever GNU Linux and Proton 📈📈📈

Microsoft set themselves up the bomb
- Microsoft: As long as Adobe, Office, Autodesk are on my side, I have nothing to worry about.
- All your corporate greed are belong to us
I use Linux for personal use, and Ive been using windows for work due to necessity.

There is one app I need that does not support Linux. I contacted their support asking about a Linux version and they suggested using waysroid to run the android version of the app.

So, when I have free time I’m working on switching things over.

My main motivation is Microsoft pushing ads everywhere and being aggressive about using online accounts and stuff that like.
Whats interesting is that both income , profits and the stock have been growing well for years, maybe they are just monetizing more aggressively because they can't compete on product quality (unlike other markets that are still evolving, AI and Cloud). not a ton of stuff to improve in operation systems it seems.
- There are system dialogs that have unused space for ads, still plenty to improve!
  
  In all seriousness, cloud (azure) and office subscriptions blew up and account for like 70% of MS profits. They know the Windows experience is lacking, but when they already capture so much of the market and it's such a small slice of revenue, they have no incentive to improve.
dont forget soystemd and wayland
- i don't have a strong opinion on systemd, i just heard someone call it soystemd in some YouTube video once and it just stuck in my head for years

In all seriousness, I think government bodies switching to Linux (UK's, China's, some Indian states') attributes the most to this.

Even if that's the case, it's telling of Linux' maturity.
- Oh absolutely!
No I think it's the Steam Deck. It's like half of all actively used Linux machines.
- Source? Last I checked, the Steam Deck was very much in the minority even when narrowed down to just desktop Linux.
- no, the statistics are based on browser agents, very few steam deck users browse the Internet on their devices. it's also only half the Linux devices on steam, not of all Linux desktops
- But that's not really a Desktop is it? If we'd count mobile device we'd also have to include Android and then the situation would look completely different.
- In Steam maybe. But this is StatCounter which is website visits. I doubt many Deck users are browsing the web.
- Oh that is a good point, why didn't I think of that!
I'm fairly sure it's deficiencies in StatCounter's measurement that's accounting for it. Statistical noise, basically.
- It's probably even higher than that. These stats are mostly based on website visits I believe. And many Linux users are also privacy-minded and might spoof their OS in the browser. I bet a large portion of the Unknown is actually Linux too.
China is actually down. India is high but not increasing

The youtuber matt from thelinuxcast sucks.

I am regular user, i don't code for living and my job is not tech related. I wanted to try linux and many of you guys supported and now I'm using Linux since 2 weeks its linux mint. That matt guy was so against linux mint that i thought it was shit too. But when i installed and started using it. It has been a smooth journey. Many people in linux community were helpful. But people like matt really make it for us regular guys scared to use linux. I really hope many good linux user help regular people switch to linux and increase this number.

Mint is great and is absolutely enough for most people using computers, still as of now. It comes with its limitations though:

By default it runs pretty old kernel. This is fine if your hardware is at least 3 years old. It allows to easily switch to newer kernel with just few clicks, but I expect newbies to not be aware of this at all. Oh, and I don’t know if it offers some custom kernels like tkg etc, which some might want to squeeze best gaming perf etc.

Cinnamon is still limited to X11. If you have multi-screen setup, VRR, mixed refresh, mixed DPI etc, it’s better to switch to Wayland. Plus, Xorg server gets less and less maintenance and development. All the innovation moved to Wayland, so the experience on X will remain pretty stale.

The Ubuntu base makes it so that for 3rd party software you either need deb packages or PPAs. Some will argue (me included) that it’s not the best solution

All of the above can easily be irrelevant to you and Mint is just perfect for what you need. It’s important to point out limitations of that choice, but crapping on it because you don’t like it is just pointless fuss
- On your last point, there's also Flatpak which is available right from the baked in software center... That's not without its issues too, but they've been an overall smooth experience for me so far
- Do you have an recommendation for a distro? I wanted to use mint, but i probably need wayland for a multiscreen setup with different scalings.
- Cinnamon can run Wayland in experimental mode. It's just an extra click during login. Mint also has direct support for flatpaks repositories, with flathub by default directly on the software center.
I get what you mean. I see a decent chunk of often more tech-proficient Linux users putting down Linux Mint, and it saddens me because even though I don't use Mint anymore, it was still the first distro I properly daily-drove and I still consider it an amazing system for people who are new to Linux.

I'm very glad you've been having a good experience with Mint!
- I don't get them putting Mint down either, and I've built multiple Gentoo systems... I don't need an easy distro but still use Mint and like it for what it brings (basically, it's Green Ubuntu, what Ubuntu was supposed to be before they lost their way)
I assume the problem is hardware. Matt's hardware didn't work well with LM, therefore Matt thinks LM sucks.. I do wish there was better hardware support but it's the reason apple went with 1 product = 1 OS = 1 general set of hardware. Sure not every iPhone has the same hardware, but that's why they have the model numbers, and it's so much easier to test 200 model mixes than 2,000,000 (Android). Windows gets all the debug info sent directly to them like the others but they also have a huge stack of hardware they can use or they can buy it to test.
- Did Matt try putting the regular build on a newish machine? That's what I did with my current and was struggling until I put the latest kernel on it, should have gone with Edge, but had little trouble after)
This is an interesting post. I know the YouTuber you are talking about. I do not really like him but I would have considered him harmless. It is interesting to get your take.

Mint is great and quite popular. So, if you are going to make a YouTube video saying otherwise, I guess you have to go out of your way to come up with reasons why. I am sure that makes it sound worse than it is. Something to think about.

I have distro preferences too but most of the differences really only make a difference to those already using Linux. It is a bit like arguing about Ford vs Chevy in front of people that have never seen a car ( or truck ). In the grand scheme, they are both amazing and mostly the same thing. To listen to a fan though, one is God’s gift and the other is trash. Same with Linux distros.

I switched to librewolf so I will now show up as windows

After seeing Garuda Linux set my user agent to Windows, I set my Windows install user agent to Linux.

Seeing Twitch.tv login break after changing my user agent was hilarious
- What did it say? Why does it break?
I unspoofed Librewolf back to Firefox + Linux. That way I'm not contributing to Chrome and Windows market share and perceived dominance. Plus the more people don't spoof, the less of a need there will be to actually spoof at all as the Linux market share increases.
- The problem is that websites sometimes change there behavior.
Same, there must be a percent or so of Windows actually being Linux instead.
Yeah me too, safety in numbers. Maybe if Linux desktop gets bigger than Windows they'll swap it around 👨‍💻

Fwiw, my blog's statistics say Linux is around 10% and I know a lot of browsers identify themselves as running on Windows when they're not, so I wonder how it's measured.

What's is the main topic of your blog?
- Travel, nothing tech related
I think the venn diagram overlap of linux users, and users of adblockers or noscript users that block such tracking is quite large. Must impact the statistic significantly.
- I use ad blocker but do not spoof user agent. If uBlpck does not block statcounter, I should be counted.
I would wager thats your audiences bias showing up. If you did that measurement in lemmy users, you would get likely 90% Linux users.
- lol no you wouldn’t. I’d be shocked if Lemmy users were greater than 20% Linux.
We should do a poll, who uses Linux?

Windows 11: Add advertisement to the start menu, add remote Artificial intelligence to your daily live. Require new CPUs and motherboards / hardware, ignoring the market for old computers.

What will they do next?

More advertisement.
More features that require an always on internet connection?
Forced restart for software updates

This is why I expect Linux share to slowly increase until the old computers die and you will not be allowed to choose to boot another operating system besides Windows on your Microsoft-Copilot+ PC that would be your only option.

Next:

Must always be online

Cost is now $9.99 per month (free with commercial breaks. For now of course.)

Everything is stored online (60GB free, $5.99/month to up it to 199GB, $49/m for 400GB).
Windows decline has nothing to do with any of the actual features.

It is declining because fewer people are buying PCs anymore. Every one is using a mobile device or tablet.

This is also the reason they are squeezing windows harder to make up for the down turn.
- This is clearly a statistic about PCs, otherwise the share wouldnt be ~73% windows. So the decline of the desktop PC doesnt really matter here
- But we're talking about proportions of Desktop operating systems. People using the desktop less might decrease (or slow the increase) of total desktop usage; but there would need to be more reason that just that for it to impact Windows disproportionately.
- My brother, who want nothing to do with computers if he can, asked me to install Linux on his domestic laptop. It's not an everyone is doing it yet, but there's definitely something.
  
  Forcing everyone to stay connected will make pirating it harder, and that will drive many, many people away.
- Fair enough, I am looking into buying PC only as a server, but as I am kind of migrant still trying to settle down it will be somewhere in 2025, if not 2026. And right now laptop + phone cover basically all my needs i.e. work, gaming, reading, surfing the web, interacting with the local government. Not to mention that it is much easier to get around with those compared to the headache that is moving PC :)
  
  And from my experience most PC users now are either people who bought it 10+ years ago and they just still have it, or people really invested into AAA gaming. Everyone else has combination of smatphone and tablet/laptop.
The thing is that most Windows users don't care and will continue to use it. People like you and I know about the benefits of Linux, but sometimes we overestimate how much regular users care about the OS they're using.

Forced restart for software updates

If anything, they're moving in the opposite direction. Windows Server 2025 is going to support hotpatching, which means that system updates can be applied without needing to reboot. Not sure if the technology will come to consumer Windows though.

Require new CPUs and motherboards / hardware, ignoring the market for old computers.

How long do you expect legacy hardware to be supported for?
- I dunno, longer than 6 years, which is about how long it took for Skylake to go from brand new to not being supported by the new version of Windows?
  
  And I honestly can't think of a time that's even happened before when you could get 10 running on 10+ year old processors as long as they were powerful enough. And the difference between a Core 2 Duo and a Skylake i7 is vastly more than between the Skylake i7 and the current generation.
  
  The issue is not that the hardware stops getting support, either... It's that the hardware is expressly and needlessly being blocked long before it's no longer useful. My old Skylake is now 9 years old and more than capable of running as a moderate power machine on current workloads, other than being forcibly blocked to encourage me to put it in a landfill so I can continue the consumer march for more stuff to feed the corpos.
  
  It's wasteful. And for the most part, all that's needed is for the old drivers to be allowed to function. And to make things like TPM 2 be optional, especially considering I don't think you're even required to actually use it for Windows 11, just have it.
- I have some Sandy Bridge systems here running strong as Linux desktops for light work. You know, these 4-core 3,3GHz processors from - hmm - 2014?

Can we commit to only posting about round number percent changes?

No, we will not stop
- 4.040000000000000000000001!
What's interesting is that multiple trackers are now saying it's above 4 percent. Last time something was posted, people questioned the data and where they got their data (which they should). Now there's multiple sites showing a real increase.
No, we have to post these when it's the year of the Linux desktop

I wonder what's on the 'unknown'

likely content blockers preventing the trackers from working properly and invalid user agents. So i would expect about the same ratio of usage on there as well. Maybe very slightly more Linux since maybe the users are more likely to tinker with their browser configs and install content blockers, but even there Id say its an extremely slim minority of even linux users who do that

StatCounter also sometimes miscounts when new versions of windows or macos come out. At one point (I think at windows 11 release) there was a huge dip in windows 10 users and a huge gain in "unknown" and it was quickly fixed.
Bare Metal, they are injecting Ethernet cable directly into their bloodstream.
- In essence Netrunner then?
That 6% attributed to "unknown" is the one true OS, the only one ordained by the Almighty... Temple OS!
- True Temple OS has no networking
Amiga.
Netcat, mostly

I have had to do some work on my windows pc and I hate it. I have been away from desktop for a while now and changed to linux for personal one. At work it is all G suite, which does work to its credit, but the windows OS and microsoft cloud documents suck so much. The look and feel is clunky, so clunky. Constantly refreshing and just being shit.

Never forgive forcing outlook.

1980s: Hey guise, computers are now cheap and small enough that you can run an entire system and all your programs on your own machine at home instead of having to dial in to the mainframe!

2010s: No, we're putting it all back on the servers, you get a thin client.
- No technical reason btw, just because "fuck you".
I work in email Marketing and Outlook is the worst client, especially desktop. Everything I make has to have accommodations for this shitty inbox
- And as a user do I hate it too. It is too many times while I edit an email and click delete that is deletes the email instead... It seems if I click a word and get the spell window does the focus always change to the list of emails.... And it also force a spell correction if I click space... I didn't pick one of the options I just want to edit the word myself!!! And if I scrolldown to remove some parts of the email thread or just want to copy a part won't it let me if I don't click twice.. and it jumps around...damn I hate it so much. Sorry that I replied to you with all these anger. But I really felt it when I saw yours and ops comment. I hope we one day will at least think it is an ok client to work with
- As a service outlook (microsoft mail) sucks, as a web service their page sucks andnisnpoorly laid out and optimised and the new desktop client is atrocious.
  
  They made me change from hotmail outlook, created a hotmail folder for under the new outlook and now I dont get notification for that address on the outlook app. If something gets marked as spam that isnt, marking it not spam sends it to the outlook inbox regardless of intended destination. If I reply to a mail it prioritises outlook despite the mail being sent to hotmail. As a result I cant log into shared files that people gave access to one but not the other.

Sorry, I stopped playing factorio on my work Linux computer. I will play next month to get us back up.

Don't worry, I've been playing plenty of Linux factorio for the last few weeks to make up for it.
- Thank you for your service

Man i hope linux becomes more popular

I see multiple posts on reddit everyday asking for advice for migrating to linux. I think linux userbase is increasing a lot since Window's questionable recall announcement.
- And the valve steamdeck But some people install windows on it which defeats it's linux purpose

I am still hoping it will hit 10% market share within my life time. I remember when it was predicted to hit that in 2010, obviously it didn't happen*. Of course for me personally, the year of the Linux Desktop was 2007 when I was finally able to use it as my main OS at home, I tried it before many times since 2003.

* not counting systems that use the Linux kernel but aren't considered a traditional GNU+Linux desktop.

not counting systems that use the Linux kernel but aren't considered a traditional GNU+Linux desktop.

Does that mean you don't count Alpine towards Linux market share? It mostly doesn't use any GNU stuff.

You can also compile the kernel with LLVM instead of gcc, use musl instead of glibc, and use BSD coreutils instead of GNU coreutils.
- Do they use the BSD userland instead? Interesting...
  
  Perhaps the definition isn't good enough or accurate. What would you call a system that perhaps uses Darwin kernel or Hurd plus GNU user land, or any combo of.
- not counting systems that use the Linux kernel but aren’t considered a traditional GNU+Linux desktop.
  
  Does that mean you don’t count Alpine towards Linux market share? It mostly doesn’t use any GNU stuff.
  
  not OP, but my guess is that he was referring to android
I am still hoping it will hit 10% market share within my life time.

Do we really want that?

We have it pretty good right now. I would actually say we're living in a golden age of desktop Linux: there's constant innovation, good support, you get to do pretty much everything you need, while flying under the radar.

Linux has won the majority of the industry (servers, mobile etc.) so it's not like it has anything left to prove.

If it starts getting noticeable on the desktop I fear we're just gonna get negative attention. Users who take and not contribute, because Windows had taught them to be entitled. Unwanted attention from Microsoft, who I bet are not going to be doing nice things once they start getting paranoid about it.

I really don't think that large companies like Adobe will care about Linux even at 10% and even if they did, they are a super toxic company nowadays, the least we get to interact with them the better.
- There are many games & software with no Linux support, not to mention AC blocked games. Increased marketshare could change a thing or two, at least.

I assume the proportions of people who spoof their OS is slanted towards Linux

THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP

the year of the unknown desktop!
Now you jinxed it
- People have jinxed it 20 years in a row

why do we negate chromeos we are 10% at least so there we really are

For starters doesn't it only run apps from the Google play store?
- and what kernel would you say it and android runs? relevant?
- You can "sideload" apps outside the google store.
  
  For example I've been using myinsta instead of IG. It was very easy to download and install.

404: Not found

This is probably a good place to ask, but when ditching windows for Linux, what's a good distro to go with? Preferably one that has a good WINE interface.

I've seen a lot of people move to Mint or Pop_OS or Kubuntu. They're Debian based so updates are pretty stable.

I personally ended up with EndeavourOS using the KDE desktop environment. I have a steam deck, so this felt very similar to me. This is Arch based so sometimes updates break things, but I've had more success here.

Also remember that no distro is problem-free, but neither was Windows. The longer you commit, the easier it gets.

EDIT: If you're hesitant to fully commit at first, I also recommend dual booting with Windows. Over time you'll use it less and less until one day you feel like reclaiming the disk space.
- If you're hesitant to fully commit at first, I also recommend dual booting with Windows. Over time you'll use it less and less until one day you feel like reclaiming the disk space.
  
  I have a 10 year old laptop that I had to get rid of the hard drive for and am installing an nand drive and want to use to re-familiarize myself with Linux on it. Especially since my main desktops are too old to upgrade to Windows 11(not that I'd want to anyway) and I figure going Linux now will save me from scrambling when the pooch gets thoroughly screwed after Win 10 updates end.
- I tried doing a dual boot to Mint awhile back, I did the mint backup at the start like it suggests, changed some things, broke it, restored from the backup thinking it was great id already made one, and broke the WHOLE pc.
  
  I had to pull the battery on the BIOS to get it to go beyond a black screen when turning on.
  
  It was terrible.
  
  It seem to recall at the time recommendations about not doing dual boot, and if you wanted to dual boot, remove the main OS drive when you install Linux. Then put it back in.
I'd personally recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition. After distro hopping for a bit, it has personally been the best one for working right out of the box, both for my games and for my peripherals.

I like the UI, it's about at my tech level/needs. I have little to no complaints about it, which is as good as it gets.
- This is one of many comments I've seen on several posts that have recommended Mint. I'm currently playing around with Ubuntu, just because it's the one I'm most familiar with from back in the day, but since the drive I'm using is temporary I might do a wipe and then load Mint and see how that operates.
Preferably one that has a good WINE interface.

IIRC, Zorin OS handles that the best. Furthermore, it's actually a distro that targets beginners (like e.g. Linux Mint does). So, overall, it's a great pick.

Of course, don't just expect that all your Windows software just works on Linux with WINE. Instead, search if they're somehow available on Linux and/or work through WINE. If that's not the case, then ensure that an alternative is available that you're willing to use instead.

Finally, ensure that the distro you choose, actually works great with your hardware.
- Well this is the funny thing that has occurred in the last 24 hours. I have been playing about with basic Ubuntu and I installed Wine on it. But when I tried to come up with a Microsoft dependent application to test it out on I came to the realization that there are no applications that I use that are exclusive to Microsoft. Nearly everything I use is either web-based or has a Linux port.
  
  Hell, even MS Office is web based nowadays. I think Windows truly has become obsolete, or at least out moded. That is for casual desktop users such as myself. There may be enterprise programs out there that still rely on Windows architecture.
  
  Edit: P.S. the Ubuntu was really just a test for the machine I will be working with. I think I'm likely gonna stick Mint on it and give that a try after a new hard drive arrives for it later this week.

OK, who did you guys bully over basic tech support questions?

Where do they get data from?

From cookies.
- What kind? Personally I wouldn't trust any kind with raisin.
Permanently Deleted
- User agent strings are frozen these days, at least in Chrome. They still have the browser major version and OS name at least, but Windows will always report Windows 10, Android will always report Android 10, MacOS will always report 10.15.7, and Linux is just "Linux x86_64": https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/
  
  User agent strings are essentially deprecated and nobody should be using them any more. They've been replaced by User-Agent Client Hints, where the site can request the data it needs, and some high-entropy things (ie fields that vary a lot between users) can prompt the user for permission to share them first.
- @Tixanou @Madiator2011 Plus they are basing themselves off of a sample of websites, so it's like polls it's made to be representative but cannot be 100 % accurate

Statcounter numbers are to be taker with boulders of salt. you can look at many metrics and especially when you filter by country. you will see a lot of erratic unexplained changes. jumping down and then a few months lather up by sometimes up to double digits.

Question: Why is BSD so low? (And why/what is unknown?)

Because it’s not overly popular as a desktop os, you are far more likely to see it in certain appliances and server applications etc, none of which will show up in a pagevisits based statistic.
There really isn't a compelling argument for BSD other than interest and hobby. It doesn't have the industrial use case Linux has.

If only linux gaming and thermal became more and more robust, in few year I will switch too with pleasure. Adobe suite can still be a problem but not for me anymore at least.

Playing on Linux for a year now. I wouldn't say it was flawless, but a lot has to do with me learning how to do it correctly. Like using steam and heroic game launcher, trying a different version of Proton or wine, and it's beginning to be very easy now that I have the right recipe so to say.
- Good to know, the main problem is that a good % of gamer doesn't have time to a tryhard with different version of things, drivers... I have skill to setup a linux gaming machine but I don't have time to do this. If Linux gaming becoming more and more straightforward (not as windows but similar, starting from gpu driver), more and more ppl could ditch at least windows second partition.