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Linux Grabs More Than 2% of Desktop Market Share (w3counter.com) 249

LichtSpektren writes: W3Counter's stats for June 2016 are in, and Linux desktop accounts for 2.48% of all web visits from tracked websites... (Android is counted separately from "Linux desktop.")
Meanwhile, NetMarketShare shows Linux with a 2.02% share of the desktop market. And StatCounter shows a more detailed breakdown of the top 7 operating systems, with Windows 7 at 42.02%, Windows 10 at 21.88%, OSX at 9.94%, Windows 8.1 at 8.66%, Windows XP at 6.5%, and another 4.06% for "Unknown" (which is roughly tied with "Other") -- beating Windows 8.0 at 3.52%. In May they also reported another thought-provoking statistic: that Firefox's browser usage had surpassed that of IE and Edge combined for the first time.
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Linux Grabs More Than 2% of Desktop Market Share

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  • Go Donald! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) on Saturday July 02, 2016 @03:36PM (#52435083) Homepage

    So now I'm all confused. Is this due to Trump's influence, Brexit or Global Warming?

  • Windows 10 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 02, 2016 @03:37PM (#52435093)

    Will make this the year of Linux on the Desktop.

    • It's likely there will sooner be more actual desktops running Linux than there are Linux desktops on computers, as per the IoT trends these days...

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by yithar7153 ( 4137793 ) on Saturday July 02, 2016 @03:39PM (#52435103)
    I would assume Linux has the largest group of users with adblockers, thus Linux would have the smallest desktop share.
    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Saturday July 02, 2016 @04:00PM (#52435237)
      These types of stats are gathered using the user agent string [wikipedia.org] in a http request, not from ads. StatCounter has an agreement with millions of websites to gather their site usages statistics (e.g. page hit counter) in this manner.

      Linux on mobile platforms (Android) was underrepresented because of this. A lot of Android users deliberately modified their user agent string to report a desktop browser, so they would get the desktop version of websites instead of crippled mobile versions.
      • Linux on mobile platforms (Android) was underrepresented because of this. A lot of Android users deliberately modified their user agent string to report a desktop browser, so they would get the desktop version of websites instead of crippled mobile versions.

        I doubt that Android users who actually did such would amount to any significant amount. Most users probably don't know such a thing is possible let alone be able to do something like that. Unless there's a browser that has a nice shiny button that does it for them, they wouldn't be doing that. There are a lot of tech savvy Android users, but Android is also the platform of the masses and they're generally tech illiterate to the point that if you asked them what mobile OS they were running they're just as l

        • Depends. Is there an app that does it for them?

          • most users would not even know if such an app exists, the only way for it to be true is if it was one of the hugely popular apps which just happened to automatically make this change for them in the background.
      • These types of stats are gathered using the user agent string [wikipedia.org] in a http request, not from ads.

        I spoof my User Agent string to make my machines look like Windows running Firefox, to get around those idiotic websites that insist on altering behavior according to your browser or OS, so I'm pretty sure that my machines were not correctly counted.

        • (On my desktop as well as mobile devices)

        • I spoof my User Agent string to make my machines look like Windows running Firefox,

          Thereby encouraging websites to continue to think that Linux doesn't matter.

          Have you tried not spoofing your user agent? I don't and I don't see any issues other than the need for plugins that are not available under Linux.

      • Linux on mobile platforms (Android) was underrepresented because of this. A lot of Android users deliberately modified their user agent string to report a desktop browser, so they would get the desktop version of websites instead of crippled mobile versions.

        By a Lot you mean a tiny percentage of technical users that care.

    • ...I would assume Linux has the largest group of users with adblockers...

      And I would figure you'd be wrong, as you provide no substantiation whatsoever.

  • I've been using Linux exclusively for closing in on 20 years now -- when I decided that DOS wasn't going to cut it in the brave new world of the Internet I tried Windows 98 for about two months. Decided that wasn't my thing and switched to Red Hat Linux and never left. (Though I use Centos rather than Red Hat's branded offering.)

    I see a plus and a minus here. The plus: Linux may become better supported, easier to find in stores like Staples, and so on.

    But it will also become a bigger target for the bad

    • Re:Yay Linux! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Wyzard ( 110714 ) on Saturday July 02, 2016 @03:52PM (#52435189) Homepage

      There's a certain amount of security to be had using a more obscure operating system.

      Linux is hardly "obscure". It's not widely used on desktops, but it's the dominant operating system for Internet servers. That makes it a plenty big target for attackers already.

      • While there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, you would expect those in charge of internet servers to be better aware of risks to avoid than the average home user.

      • by Nemyst ( 1383049 )
        Which doesn't imply that typical desktop vulnerabilities have been addressed at all. That web servers and databases are hardened won't change anything for your mom's facebook browsing. Browsers (and their plugins), office suites, email clients and so on are a whole new attack vector that's not had that much of a look at just yet on Linux.
  • Meanwhile... (Score:5, Informative)

    by wbr1 ( 2538558 ) on Saturday July 02, 2016 @04:06PM (#52435263)
    ...auto play video ads on /. cause it to fall below 2% readership in the tech news sector.

    . Come on whiplash, you can do better. I, and probably most others on here use ad blockers. I happen to be on mobile with no block, and I'm assaulted.

    . I admire some of the changes since dice, but this? I have been a member, under varying names since 96 or 97. It may be time to head to ars or soylent news.

    • by Teckla ( 630646 )

      ...auto play video ads on /. cause it to fall below 2% readership in the tech news sector.

      . Come on whiplash, you can do better. I, and probably most others on here use ad blockers. I happen to be on mobile with no block, and I'm assaulted.

      . I admire some of the changes since dice, but this? I have been a member, under varying names since 96 or 97. It may be time to head to ars or soylent news.

      To add to this... They didn't really remove auto-refresh, and going to the next page of stories on Mobile Safari, for some bizarre reason, leaves you at the bottom of the new page, rather than the top.

      Starting to think all the sweet talk from whiplash was just pillow talk. Sigh.

  • Could the new 'prominence' of Linux be because normal people don't use desktop computers any more? Only senior citizens still using their grandson's hand-me-up, some hard core gamers and Linux geeks still use them. And confess- how many of you are still using a green screen CRT monitor?

    • Yeah, because I'm totally going to trade out my triple monitor setup at work so I can write documents, track emails, design network diagrams, parse logs, run multiple virtual machines, and do Webex sessions with enterprise customers on a F***ing 10 inch iPad. Are you touched in the head?
    • by armanox ( 826486 )

      Odd, because I support hundreds of users (all under the age of 60, with the exception of some of the C-levels) who use desktops every day. For that matter, we are moving people back to desktops over laptops.

  • While I congratulate Linux and its 'army', it will not be useful for me unless it gets a credible MS Office contender. I mean, this potential replacement should have good documentation and a [native] programmable language. Think VBA for Office apps.

    • MSoffice 2007 runs in WINE just fine.

      No part of the EULA insists it be installed on a windows machine.

      Office is not denied to you on Linux.

      • Does it run in Ubuntu 12.04's Wine?

        That's the main, or only objection I have. I suppose most people have the "apt-get install" version of Wine and not quite the freshest and latest, thus one may read reports of "Game X works perfectly" and not witness the same result.

        • by tepples ( 727027 )

          Does it run in Ubuntu 12.04's Wine?

          I use Wine in Xubuntu 14.04, and it runs most of what I've thrown at it. What's blocking the LTS to LTS dist-upgrade for you?

          • There's also the winePPA you can enable in Ubuntu. That gives you bleeding edge WINE builds, with all manner of fancy new features. Even if he insists on using ubuntu 12.04, adding the PPA will give him "very very recent" Wine.

            The thing to be aware of-- you WILL need to run WineTricks and install the MSCore Fonts package. Office does not compromise on that. It DEMANDS real Tahoma, and real Arial.

    • by armanox ( 826486 )

      As a serious question, what's wrong with the existing options? What can you do in Office that I cannot do in Open Office, KOffice (or whatever they're calling that group now), Office365 (webapp), WordPerfect, or even Pages on OS X? I ask because I don't know of anything - every thing I need to do works just fine no matter where I do it (Okay, WP and Office have some compatibility issues, but even then I only send people PDFs).

    • Think VBA for Office apps.

      No thanks, I just ate. Use a CMS to build apps, don't use an office suite. Posterity will thank you.

    • I think people should drop office already, both libre and ms variants, more particularly writer/word. Most of time of using it is devoted to dicking around with fonts and text layout, something that should be done automatically by a typesetting system. It's really unfair that professionals get to use real typesetting systems while rank and file amateurs are stuck setting up all this manually. Amateur nature of this software and lack of proper standardization leads to formatting breakages when moving between
  • I bought if off ebay last year, when my Windows XP laptop failed. Windows 8.0 with no shell modifications.

    I have fun showing people how horrible the interface is.

    I'm going to upgrade the hard drive to a solid state drive soon, and then upgrade the OS to 8.1. This will be after Microsoft stops tying to hijack it to Windows10 - Spyware Edition.

    • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      I was just about to ask why people were still on 8.0. It's unsupported now and pretty buggy.
      Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell and you have as close to current Windows as you can get w/o the spyware.

      • I completely agree. I just need to have the extra cash to get the SSD first. I want to keep the current hard drive as a backup to original state if need be. I don't know if upgrading to 8.1 will mess up that plan.

        Plus, right now I still get to show people why version 8.0 was so despised. Most never saw it because they didn't buy a new computer when it was standard.

  • I mean seriously... M$ is doing a great job on that... check here:
    http://www.hanselman.com/blog/... [hanselman.com]

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday July 02, 2016 @04:39PM (#52435455)

    On my (unfortunately quite neglected) gardening website, for 2016 I see:

    Windows 40.55%
    iOS 26.24%
    Android 17.12%
    Mac 12.40%
    Linux 1.52%

    Chrome 38.31%
    Safari 30.31%
    Firefox 12.60%
    IE 10.30%
    Edge 3.62%

    I found it rather funny that I got four hits from a Nintendo Wii.

    • On my (unfortunately quite neglected) gardening website, for 2016 I see:

      Windows 40.55% iOS 26.24% Android 17.12% Mac 12.40% Linux 1.52%

      Chrome 38.31% Safari 30.31% Firefox 12.60% IE 10.30% Edge 3.62%

      I found it rather funny that I got four hits from a Nintendo Wii.

      I've gotten hits from wacky devices too, such as a PS3, a PSP, some Windows 95 IE user, and what I believe was a Blackberry of some sort. It's really neat to see what people still browse with! Though I don't think my website would even display correctly in a version of IE that runs on Windows 95...

    • by bazorg ( 911295 )

      Thanks for these stats. Considering how widespread neglected gardening is, these figures are probably a meaningful sample.

  • back when it was MacOS hovering around 2% market share.

  • by aspx ( 808539 ) on Saturday July 02, 2016 @05:49PM (#52435775)

    So basically, Mac users can make fun of us now? How humiliating.

    • by Lisias ( 447563 )

      So basically, Mac users can make fun of us now? How humiliating.

      Surprised? Lot of us jumped ship from Linux at the Gnome Desktop 3 fiasco. =/

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Does Chrome OS count as Linux?
  • Who remembers that big push related to Linux .... back in 1995 !?

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