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Programming Linux IT

Stack Overflow Survey Finds More Developers Now Use Linux Than MacOS (justingarrison.com) 195

Posted by EditorDavid from the year-of-Linux dept.
Justin Garrison works at Amazon Web Services on the Kubernetes team (and was senior systems engineer on several animated films).

This week he spotted a new milestone for Linux in the 2022 StackOverflow developer survey: [Among the developers surveyed] Linux as a primary operating system had been steadily climbing for the past 5 years. 2018 through 2021 saw steady growth with 23.2%, 25.6%, 26.6%, 25.3%, and finally in 2022 the usage was 40.23%. Linux usage was more than macOS in 2021, but only by a small margin. 2022 it is now 9% more than macOS.
Their final stats for "professional use" operating system:
  • Windows: 48.82%
  • Linux-based: 39.89%
  • MacOs: 32.97%

But Garrison's blog post notes that that doesn't include the million-plus people all the Linux-based cloud development environments (like GitHub Workspaces) — not to mention the 15% of WSL users on Windows and all the users of Docker (which uses a Linux VM).

"It's safe to say more people use Linux as part of their development workflow than any other operating system."


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Stack Overflow Survey Finds More Developers Now Use Linux Than MacOS More

Stack Overflow Survey Finds More Developers Now Use Linux Than MacOS

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  • Netcraft confirms it! (Score:3, Funny)

    by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Sunday December 25, 2022 @12:37PM (#63156766) Homepage
    2023: YoLD!

    Just in time before we all get made redundant by ChatGPT

    • 2023: YoLD!

      Yes, but in this case it's "Year of Linux Developer."

      [cue sad trombone]

      • Re:Netcraft confirms it! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Sunday December 25, 2022 @12:59PM (#63156804) Homepage

        While not scientific by any means, but I watch a lot of documentaries. Mostly nature and scientific, and one of the things that I've noticed is the number of Linux desktops I've seen in the background. It used to be that I would see Windows XP, CDE, and sometimes Mac's but not its almost always a Linux desktop of some kind.

        Granted, not scientific by any means but just something I noticed.

        • While not scientific by any means, but I watch a lot of documentaries . . sometimes Mac's but not its almost always a Linux desktop of some kind.

          I've noticed fewer bugs in the grills of cars in recent years. Not that it's scientific, but I think there's a correlation between more Linux and fewer bugs!

          • Re: Netcraft confirms it! (Score:4, Informative)

            by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Sunday December 25, 2022 @09:19PM (#63157534)
            The fewer bugs phenomenon is due to declining insect populations. Linux as a primary OS will never be a thing while Microsoft coerces laptop and desktop manufacturers to bundle Windows with every PC sale through anti-competitive discounts and lock ins. If the major manufacturers like HP, Dell, and Lenovo offered their entire lineup -$99 for a variant with Linux or no OS installed, that would be it. But, Microsoft ensures that unless you build your own PC, you basically own a Windows copy whether you want it or not, and the hardware therefore supports Windows primarily; and the developers develop there too as well. Apple has a great desktop platform, if you can afford it.
            • I agree it is the bizarre . . .

            • Linux is moving to be the primary OS since a long time.
              Basically everything in the world is running on Linux.

              And many companies developing software are moving to Linux PCs for development since decades.

              Windows is basically a teachers, home and office OS.

              The other developer OS is MacOS of course ... even "big iron" is often running Linux VMs instead of running business software on the native OS.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kmoser ( 1469707 )
            Well, that's because Linux has fewer bugs!

  • I'm not really convinced as large a proportion of MSWind and MacOS developers use StackOverflow as the proportion of Linux developers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lsllll ( 830002 )
      Why? Do you believe Linux developers need more help than Win/Mac developers? Or do Win/Mac developers have some other magic site that's tailored to them that they use?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Well, it's stale data, but back when I was developing for MSWind and MacOS systmes (now 2 decades ago) there were OS specific sites, so I assume there still are.

    • Re:I suspect the sample is biased (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Sunday December 25, 2022 @02:05PM (#63156900)

      Moreover, how do you go from 1-2% deltas YOY to a 15% delta YOY and not address the obvious elephant in the room? Barring an obvious reason why that shift would occur—which seems unlikely, given that Macs have been selling like hotcakes since the switch to the M-series—that should be an immediate red flag that there’s something wrong with this year’s sample data.

      Then again, the summary characterized a data series that ended with a decline as “steady growth”, so I suspect they may have an agenda in their reporting.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's because of Azure cloud. The most popular OS in Microsoft's cloud is Linux.

        Once you start using Linux in the cloud for all your apps and development, it becomes natural to switch to it on desktop. For modern developers there are fewer barriers too. They need a browser and Visual Studio Code. Everything else is a Docker container anyway.

        • It's because of Azure cloud. The most popular OS in Microsoft's cloud is Linux.

          Once you start using Linux in the cloud for all your apps and development, it becomes natural to switch to it on desktop.

          Perhaps, but nothing about that explains the sudden inflection point. I mean, Azure didn’t suddenly shift to Linux last year or gain tremendous market share, so there’s no explanation for a massive shift. On top of that, AWS remains more popular than Azure by a mile and is even more Linux-y than Azure, so Azure’s impact would be muted if there was one.

          And I’m not sold on your main point about the prevalence of Linux in the cloud driving a sudden demand for Linux on the desktop. The b

    • For over the last decade, 99.9% of my Linux use has been on either Windows or MacOS, not a standalone Linux box. Stick the linux in a VM or in WSL. So I think that could screw up the stats too, as I would have labeled myself as a Linux user without having a machine devoted to Linux.

      There's also the smaller systems, Raspberry Pi and other single board Linux systems.

  • Not surprising. Macs have gotten too expensive. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Sunday December 25, 2022 @12:44PM (#63156778)

    ARM ("Apple Silicon") MB Air starts at 1450 Euros, with a measily 8 GB of RAM. macOS is good and the FOSS support is excellent, just as is the hard- & software integration. But the hardware these days is just to damn expensive. I remember when the smallest Mac Mini came at approx. 350 Euros. Now the cheapest is almost 800 Euros. And that's more than a decade later. I like the apple stuff, but I'm too much of an expert not to notice the glaring gap between actual value and the price demanded by Apple. ... I'd rather mess around with a touchpad that breaks once a year because some Manjaro update disabled click and forced tap-click on me.
    I get a Tuxedo Laptop or a fanless premuim quality PC from Cirrus7 with 32+GB of RAM 2+TB M2 SDDs and 8+ cores for 2000 Euros, whilst an Apple equivalent costs at least twice as much and then still lacks in storage.

    Apples current pricing removes their value proposition for me and since I do cross-platform development most of the time anyway they've lost me as a customer in these times.

    • macOS is good and the FOSS support is excellent, just as is the hard- & software integration.

      It isn't, it isn't and it isn't.

      The MacOS UI is a matter of opinion, but there are plenty of tings not good with the OS itself. The performance isn't very good, for example, within a month and no support from Apple, Linux started outperforming OSX in things like storage benchmarks on the M1. And then there's stuff like the OS obnoxiously giving you the wrong keymap when you plug in a PC keyboard even though it'

      • .. homebrew is much flakier than Linux package managers ..

        Although Homebrew seems to get most of the attention, MacPorts [macports.org] has been around much longer and is based of the BSD ports system (which is appropriate since macOS is BSD-ish).

        • I used to use macports. It was a bit like real BSD ports except it would regularly shit itself and need a reinstall which was an overnighter at least.

          Reinstalling latex? Well going for a cup of coffee ain't gonna cut it this time.

          Oh a deadline (you know relying on your machine for actual work)? Oh boy is your life gonna suck.

          Oddly I never found open bsd ports did that. Or free bsd.

          • The only time I have to do a reinstall is after I do an OS upgrade. But even then I'm done in about half an hour. I guess YMMV.

      • I have had good luck with Homebrew, to the point where I have a script which can fetch it, then install all my apps (pretty much everything but stuff on the App Store) using it. This way, a restore from scratch is quite easy.

        For build quality, and this is IMHO, MacBooks are still top of the heap. However, I have been surprised of what a decent consumer grade Dell Inspiron can do and how well it can handle development work.. and Dell Latitudes and Precisions only go from there. Lenovos, HPs, and other bra

  • I wonder about the Windows users... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Sunday December 25, 2022 @12:55PM (#63156792)

    ... who use it only for the corporate requirement of Outlook or Teams but do all their "real" work in a virtual machine running Linux (via Virtualbox or the like). Let's see the percentages taking that into account. That was the case on my last project. The folks who spent the majority of their time in Windows were the rare exception (excepting the managers who lived in Windows all day).

    • Re:I wonder about the Windows users... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Sunday December 25, 2022 @01:40PM (#63156868) Homepage

      Many of us Windows developers actually prefer Windows. I've developed on Linux and on Windows, and I have no wish to spend time on the Linux side. The biggest difference is the level of polish. On Linux, you're constantly having to tweak config files after reading endless man pages, or work with components or software that "mostly" works. On Windows, particularly with .NET development, the tools and the platforms tend to be much more "finished." Options tend to be visible in actual UIs, installations don't fail because you forgot about one unanticipated, undocumented dependency, or because you installed a component in the wrong folder.

      • Re:I wonder about the Windows users... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Sunday December 25, 2022 @02:27PM (#63156952) Homepage
        The biggest difference is the level of polish.

        How long has it been since you've used Linux, and when you did, what distro and DE (Desktop Environment) did you use? The days when you had to start out spending a day or more tweaking config files and restarting things to see how your changes worked are long gone. And there are enough DEs out there that if one doesn't work the way you want it to, there's always another one to try. As far as "mostly works," what kind of odd formatting styles do you need that LibraOffice can't do? And, if you don't like PageMaker or Adobe, Scribus [scribus.net] is both FOSS and available for Linux, Windows and Mac, as well as being a professional quality page layout program. If you don't want to start off by dual booting, burn yourself a LiveUSB, and try it before you "buy" it. You may well be favorably impressed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by leptons ( 891340 )
          I use Linux every day both in a server capacity, as well as desktop Linux, and I can still end up slogging through a lot of manual BS to get something running, as the previous commenter described. Once it's set up finally, it usually runs alright, but for my daily driver it's Windows. Windows does not get in my way at all, there's almost never any extra install just to get a program running, and no tweaking arcane config files that aren't well explained. And no, there's no blue screens, there's no crashing,

        • Your point about "trying a different distro" is making my point. You do indeed have to try different distros and different packages until you find one that actually works. I don't want to have to do the QC myself, of somebody else's half-finished code, the developer should have done that. I don't want to have to "try" a bunch of options. On Windows, if it's installed, I can be confident that it will work, unless there's some sort of hardware issue.

          As for LibreOffice, can you simultaneously open a document w

          • The reason that there are so many distros is that they're customized to fit different ideas of what your OS should do. Ubuntu is built to be easy for newcomers to use, Fedora is a rapidly changing test-bed for new things and Gentoo is for people who want to squeeze every last clock-tick out of their computer. The programs are the same, but the way they're packaged, and the emphasis on various control panels and so-on vary from one to another. Some people pick up on that quickly, some use Linux only at wo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Many of us Windows developers actually prefer Windows. I've developed on Linux and on Windows, and I have no wish to spend time on the Linux side. The biggest difference is the level of polish. On Linux, you're constantly having to tweak config files after reading endless man pages, or work with components or software that "mostly" works. On Windows, particularly with .NET development, the tools and the platforms tend to be much more "finished." Options tend to be visible in actual UIs, installations don't

      • Like what?

        So I've used a Linux desktop on and off for years, and there's this phenomenon that I think needs a name that I bet this guy is describing.

        Basically there's this curve with a lot of tech, when something makes the simple to moderate stuff easy, it makes the very hardest stuff hardest. (ie it is simpler to play games on Windows than Linux, but while compiling your own kernel may seem advanced on Linux, it is all but impossible on Windows.)

        What I see happen all the time goes like this:

        Week 1:

        So how's

      • constantly tweaking config files?

        What the fuck are you doing?

        And remind me how you authenticate a windows install without a Microsoft account again...

        I used windows for the first time in ages today. It's janky as fuck, frankly. I do like how is just bounced me back to the menu when I misread the Wi-Fi password with no indication why. That had me going for a bit.

        Also my god the amount of aggressive spamming and coercing for signing up for random Microsoft shit is insane.

    • All my work is done in WSL version 1 which allows WSL to reach corporate resources over the Windows VPN client. I take a WSL backups using the WSL tool inlcuded in windows which creates a tar ball of the WSL image with all tools scripts and whatever else. I can then share that WSL image with others who can then import it on their windows boxes via WSL restore. Quite handy.

    • Let's see the percentages taking that into account.

      Yep I'm sure it'll move the number up or down by 0.1%. The reality is there isn't some magic silent majority working that use case. Even in corporate environments people who are required to use other systems get other systems when requested because (and this shouldn't shock anyone here) support costs are overwhelmingly for software. The situations where using one host OS and a different VM offers benefits rather than hinderances are incredibly rare.

      • By the way have you noticed that percentages don't add up to 100%? Clearly developers who have both Window and Linux or some combination involving Mac are already being counted for each OS.

  • 39.89% out of a total 121.68% (Score:4, Funny)

    by scourfish ( 573542 ) <scourfish@@@yahoo...com> on Sunday December 25, 2022 @12:56PM (#63156798)
    Now that's what I call statistics!
    • In this black-and-white world, it's hard to imagine that some developers actually use multiple OSes to do their jobs.
      • I use windows and an iphone. How many people check/look up things on their phones? After all, if you're going to include github (which I will never use), you should also include phones.
      • Note:

        What is the primary operating system in which you work? [stackoverflow.co]

        In this world where language doesn't really mean anything any more, I suppose it's not hard to imagine that some developers, as well as some editors at StackOverflow, don't seem to understand how the words "the primary" modify the meaning of the words "operating system" in that question.

  • All three (Score:3)

    by slazzy ( 864185 ) on Sunday December 25, 2022 @02:07PM (#63156902) Homepage Journal
    Personally I'm on all three all the time. System76 laptop with POP!OS for most things, Mac for iOS development and windows for gaming. I also have VS code on all three so I really don't care what the OS is, I'm using the same IDE for development some terminal terminal, and a browser.

  • Free as in it costs no money (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Sunday December 25, 2022 @03:37PM (#63157052)
    This is understandable. Linux is the only OS I know I can use on any Intel based laptop and know I can use the latest version and will only be handicapped by the limits of the machine itself. I have 15 year old Thinkpads that function perfectly fine as test web servers and/or Android development; what else to put on them other than Linux? Apple is cutting me off from developing on my 6 year old Macbook. The only reason to continue using a mac for development is if you specifically want to develop for Apple devices and then you need to pay the tax, but this is probably a small percentage of developers. To develop for everything else is free with linux.

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