Linux Reaches 5% On Desktop (ostechnix.com) 61
Longtime Slashdot reader bobdevine shares a report from OSTechNix: For the first time, Linux has officially broken the 5% desktop market share barrier in the United States of America! It's a huge milestone for open-source and our fantastic Linux community. While many might think of Linux as a niche choice, this new data shows a significant shift is happening.
According to the latest StatCounter Global Stats for June 2025, Linux now holds 5.03% of the desktop operating system market share in the United United States of America. This is fantastic news! [...] One truly satisfying detail for me? Linux has finally surpassed the "Unknown" category in the USA! It shows that our growth is clear and recognized. "It took eight years to go from 1% to 2% (by April 2021), then just 2.2 years to reach 3% (June 2023), and a mere 0.7 years to hit 4% (February 2024)," notes the report. "Now, here we are, at over 5% in the USA! This exponential growth suggests that we're on a promising upward trend."
According to the latest StatCounter Global Stats for June 2025, Linux now holds 5.03% of the desktop operating system market share in the United United States of America. This is fantastic news! [...] One truly satisfying detail for me? Linux has finally surpassed the "Unknown" category in the USA! It shows that our growth is clear and recognized. "It took eight years to go from 1% to 2% (by April 2021), then just 2.2 years to reach 3% (June 2023), and a mere 0.7 years to hit 4% (February 2024)," notes the report. "Now, here we are, at over 5% in the USA! This exponential growth suggests that we're on a promising upward trend."
Not exponential growth (Score:1)
It took eight years to go from 1% to 2% (by April 2021), then just 2.2 years to reach 3% (June 2023), and a mere 0.7 years to hit 4% (February 2024)," notes the report. "Now, here we are, at over 5% in the USA! This exponential growth suggests that we're on a promising upward trend."
That is not exponential growth.
It isn't even close.
Re: Not exponential growth (Score:5, Informative)
It's far faster than exponential (assuming that's 1% of a constant-size market, then 2% of the same market, etc.). The first doubling time was 8 years; an exponential growth process would keep the same doubling time, but it took another 2.9 years to double again.
So your "not even close" is correct, in that exponential growth is far slower than whatever this is.
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I suspect, much of this is driven by Microsoft, who are aggressively pushing features that absolutely nobody wants e.g. ads in the Start menu, Recall, and forced use of a MS-cloud account.
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The last straw for me was CoPilot in Notepad. What's next? CoPilot in Terminal, so you can "prompt engineer" your CLI commands?
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Re: Not exponential growth (Score:2)
I suspect itâ(TM)s more the collapse in sales of desktop pcâ(TM)s. The actual number of installs isnâ(TM)t much higher but there are far fewer windows boxes being sold etc.
Re: Not exponential growth (Score:2)
People can get everything done on their phones now. Why boot up a clunky old desktop all the time??
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and forced use of a MS-cloud account.
This is exactly why my nieces (ages 9 and 6) are currently linux users. My sister discovered the 9-year-old took a photo of the 6-year-old au naturel which was automatically uploaded to the cloud, and she bugged
I know that apple is sticking to their story that some 1337 haxOrs combed through millions and millions of accounts to find a couple hundred titty-pics of celebs (with many of the celebs swearing they deleted said pics), but no one is really buying it.
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That is not exponential growth.
Exponential growth can be very slow in the short term. Your savings account that pays 0.01% interest each year is growing exponentially, but you won't get rich off of it in a typical human lifetime.
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How much of that is SteamOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just curious how much SteamOS contributes to that total.
The Verge says 8 million (Score:2)
That doesn't really help desktop Linux adoption because not very many people use a steam deck as a desktop. I came across one YouTuber doing it because they killed their main desktop PC but beyond that most people are going to use it for gaming only. Maybe some movies and lite web browsing.
That means a lot of the software that locks pe
Re:The Verge says 8 million (Score:5, Insightful)
So I guess what I'm saying is the number of Linux users is likely to stay constant while the total number of other operating system users drops resulting in the percentage of Linux user is increasing.
It does help that basic hardware is extremely standardized so you can just install Linux just about anything nowadays.
And there's a lot of gaming you could do under Linux because of valve. Although the big multiplayer games are still locked away on Windows because of the anti-cheat software with the exception of marvel which remarkably runs very well and is fully supported under proton.
I know some musicians though that are completely stuck on Windows because the software for running they are interfaces just does not work in Linux. And there's lots of people stuck with Adobe software or something like it or who need Microsoft Office. Although I'm not sure how well the web-based version of office runs under Linux it runs pretty crappy under windows.
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That doesn't really help desktop Linux adoption because not very many people use a steam deck as a desktop.
We count gaming PCs but most gamers don't really use their PCs as a desktop beyond "some movies [porn] and lite web browsing."
In all seriousness, though, I think it does help Linux desktop adoption because it normalizes Linux for these users. It's very common on ./ to see posts where people say, "I only use Windows for games." Gamers tend to build their own PCs (or buy weird custom rigs), so unlike most computer users the OS isn't just baked into the cost. Also, judging by their hardware, ricing Linux shoul
The new rack-mount deskheld. (Score:2)
But that's probably worldwide. There's an estimated 60 million desktops in America though. So I think it's safe to say that a lot of if not most of that is steam decks.
* looks over at the rather obvious handheld form-factor that is Steam Deck *
If that is now considered a “desktop”, then I’m guessing my full-sized tower chassis is now classified as either an MMA weight training aide or a medieval torture device, depending on local gun laws.
Perhaps I should stop complaining before someone doubles down and re-defines what a “desk” isn’t anymore.
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No lets forget them since Android are identified as a separate OS category and not considered a desktop OS. SteamOS actually is a desktop OS - it just runs an app over the top by default. A quick push of a button drops you to the KDE environment.
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Just curious how much Windows 11 contributes to that total.
FTFY.
Even the Microsoft fans who love to hate those who hate Windows, would agree at this point.
Twinkie with one candle. (Score:1)
Microgratulations! This is the Year of 1/20th of Desktops for Linux! In the year 2525 we'll finally own the desktop! The robots will be so jealous of humans while they are converting us into biofuel.
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The linux powered terminators that will take over the world will still use windows in their desktops mostly.
Yes, this is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
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What always kept Linux from gaining mainstream adoption is that many features were just intended to stoke egos. Post-Ubuntu/Mint, things have changed for the better. I think programmers fantasized about everyone thinking they're-super smart with their text command interfaces. Thus, instead of providing a simple text-editor, the user was required to engage in a lengthy ritual to get anything working. Not because it was needed, but because it made the users feel super 1337. The following is a fairly accurate
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I think programmers fantasized about everyone thinking they're-super smart with their text command interfaces. Thus, instead of providing a simple text-editor, the user was required to engage in a lengthy ritual to get anything working. Not because it was needed, but because it made the users feel super 1337. The following is a fairly accurate set of commands required to create a simple text document in an older Linux system
I'm pretty sure programmers fantasize about other things, I use CLIs a lot and they never feature in any of my fantasies.
As for creating a simple test document "vi document.txt" has been in pretty much every Linux system for decades. If like me you don't like vi then "sudo apt install joe" so you can use "joe document.txt" is hardly a "a lengthy ritual".
Re:Yes, this is good news. (Score:4, Informative)
> The following is a fairly accurate set of commands required to create a simple text document in an older Linux system, which may or may not have been written by AI
Not only was it written by AI, it's obviously also a hallucination. Why the F would you run a text editor as a SystemD (also a very recent addition to Linux, btw.) service? A simple terminal text editor (e.g. nano going back to Debian Potato, and ed and vi or variants thereof before it) has been included with mainstream distributions such as Debian for a VERY long time.
The syntax is also prettty simple, e.g.: nano textFileName.txt
Your entire post is complete bull.
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I've been using Linux since Red Hat in the late 1990's and have never had to go through the steps you just listed, why the difference, was I smarter?
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As the desktop percentage of Linux increases, the incentives for manufacturers to take Linux on the desktop seriously as customers increases.
Suddenly all those Come to the Dark Side OS jokes get confusing. Who’s the Dark Side again? Are we the Good Guys now? I mean hell, we gotta be looking at all the shit Windows is pulling..
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Are we the Good Guys now?
We are always the good guys.
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Yes and no, at present the drive is still special purpose devices and not something that manufacturers would target to general public. The issue here is manufacturers know the numbers. Other than HP all other majors provide Linux options across some of their products and they can see how consumers choose.
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It's not just "Linux" that they need to support though, it's a dozen different distros all with a slice of that 5%. Linus Torvalds commented on it a few years ago. To support them all, with different desktops, different window managers, different software management systems, is a lot of work. Not only for companies who want to make Linux software, but for the volunteer package managers.
If you look at commercial software that does support Linux, it tends to only support one or two distros, and even then not
Windows 11 really is that bad. (Score:3)
It's causing linux on the desktop to become a thing.
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No, that's bad. (Score:2)
Microsoft wants perfectly functional hardware to become e-waste. Windows 11 makes the world a worse place in service of corporate profits.
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It's causing linux on the desktop to become a thing.
I'm old enough to remember when MacOS had only 5% market share, or even less.
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Yeah, well Linux was even worse, lol. It did take a huge chunk of the *nix market at one point, though. I'm actually doing work on Linux servers and did support on mac OS X servers, no bias, I'd prefer *nix/Linux for servers.
How much can we trust statcounter's methodology? (Score:2)
These stats from statcounter are based on analysis of hits to the set of websites that they have instrumented. Their FAQ mentions that they have instrumented 1.5 million websites. The estimate of global websites is over 1 billion, with somewhere around 200 million active websites. So, it's clear that statcounter's instrumentation is a sampling of the total websites.
However, the more important question is how representative that sampling is. We get a hint from the distribution of website hit across count
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Its got 3 of the 4th largest european countries. Russia isn't on that top 10, probably for similar reasons that china seems lowish. But excluding russia, Turkey, UK and Germany are the three largest countries (Turkey, Germany, UK in that order of size.) So yes, the smaller ones arent on the top 10, but thats probably beause they just dont have enough people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Looks like critical mass to me. (Score:1)
The things holding back Linux for the unwashed masses have diminished to minor annoyances in the last 15 years, especially when compared to the nonsense wintel still puts its users through. It finally has gotten through to ords that there are solid reasons why experts don't even consider Windows as an option when doing mission critical stuff these days. ChromeOS and Android are signs of the things to come and Windows isn't even on the radar with those usage patterns.
Looks like linux has finally gotten criti
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Personally I fundamentally do not get why M$ even has a business case with their system.
Their business case is to use their Windows monopoly to force users into using their browser, default every software to save into their cloud space and stronghand them users to subscribe more, extract personal data from anything on their clouds and show ads, exploit any useful media on their cloud for AI training, promote subscriptions for their office software, and bundle together software that people used to subscribe separately so to suppress competition.
1 in 20 eh (Score:1)
hmm lemme think... a real os with actual people really caring about it, or your infinitely enshittifying personal pile of ad-infested idiocy?
yeah i think i'll take the real os thanks, losers
Congrats to Linux Devs and Distros! (Score:3)
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And usability... does a M$ Word document open and work 100% in OpenOffice? Does a Windows game run 100% in WINE? How much still has to be done through Bash or some terminal in order to make something else work? Will it work with some random box of parts?
The reason it's never taken off is that every single person's computer is different (mine: 24-core 3.8GHz Threadripper, 128GB RAM, Titan X GPU)... people don't want to have to fight crap just to get video working at a decent resolution... one distribution
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Does a Windows game run 100% in WINE?
YES! Many happy users of Proton on Steam Deck will answer in the affirmative for many games. This is what Valve's 30 percent cut of Steam sales pays for.
If *Nix was just a simple drop-in replacement without all the config issues that require an hour of reading to fix
As if Windows 11 doesn't have its own host of "config issues that require an hour of reading to fix."
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"does a M$ Word document open and work 100% in OpenOffice"
Yes. The only thing that I ever had trouble with in Open Office was Excel graphs.
Most people are not running the sort of state of art monster gamer rig you use. For Joe Computer Linux works fine for Joe Computer defined as than Core 2 Duo or newer.
Now sitting up file sharing of the Samba is a pain and requires a couple hours of study as opposed to three or four clicks on a Mac. Most people don't do that either, but it is a valid complaint.
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>"And usability... does a M$ Word document open and work 100% in OpenOffice?"
An MS-Word document doesn't open and work 100% between MS-Windows versions and MS-Word versions. Seriously. And who uses OpenOffice anymore? (It is LibreOffice for what, 95% of Linux users for many years now).
>"Does a Windows game run 100% in WINE?"
Install Valve and the answer is approaching "yes". And how many desktop users need/want top-notch gaming? 50%? 20%? Really, I don't know. I don't need/want it. Most of the
Most people just use web browsers. (Score:2)
Re: Most people just use web browsers. (Score:1)
Most people have a whole brain, that is, two halves. So they switch with one half, then the other, and end up back where they started.
So you either create a whole 'nother open source OS and ecosystem so that after two switches roughly half end up on Linux.
Or you lobotomize everyone.
Thanks! (Score:2)
Give thanks to the mighty Windows 11. The best thing to ever happen to Linux. An honorable mention needs to go to the nutter Satya for making it all possible.
Meh? (Score:2)
Is it really that hard to garner just the smallest of market share when you have 1900 different products that classify as "linux"? The metrics count even a single day of use before that user distro hops to yet another choice - so one user can count as 50 or 100? Only the linux cultists will take this 5% as something wow-able, to the rest of the computer biz, it's only slightly better then the rounding error it's always been. What's more impressive is with a product that's GIVEN AWAY FREE, they can only g
Uh (Score:2)
Stop leaving your android phones on the desk while using your Windows or Mac.
Why did they skip the time span for the last %? (Score:2)
It took eight years to go from 1% to 2% (by April 2021), then just 2.2 years to reach 3% (June 2023), and a mere 0.7 years to hit 4% (February 2024)," notes the report. "Now, here we are, at over 5% in the USA!
So, from 3% to 4% took 0.7 years.
Oops, from 4% to 5% took 1.4 years. That didn't quite make the "exponential" curve look so pretty. But hey, 5%, time to pop some corks!
Could this be? (Score:2)
Could this be the herald of the year of Linux on the desktop?
10% by 2031 (1.14x annually) (Score:1)
Desktop Linux had roughly 0.62% share of the Desktop in 2009, 0.7% in 2010, 1.0% by 2013. 2% in 2018. 3% in 2021. 4% 2023-2024, 5% 2025...
That's a 1.14 multiplier annually.
If it continues then 10% Desktop share in 2031 (90% Skynet), 15% by 2034, 20% in 2036, 30% by 2039, and 50% by 2043, and 100% by 2048.
Are these really desktops or Steam Decks? (Score:2)
How much of these "desktops" are actually SteamDecks?
My own experience (Score:1)
I had some laptops from my current employer that were being thrown out.
2x of these had windows on them and I gave these to two families in need.
One mornig my wife contacted me as a colleague was very upset as her laptop broke and she was very poor.
I did a linux install via USB, super easy, installed libre office and chromium etc.
Her colleague got the laptop, she was extremely grateful, so much so that she bought me a gift.
She is still super happy and says there is no difference for her between a windows lap
Congrats and still don't know anyone using it.... (Score:2)
It's likely higher (Score:2)