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Comment by bobsterlobster | Hacker News Reader

Calling 4-5% marketshare microscopic is not fair. I get it if it was still stuck at 1%, but it's growing, and the rate of growth has been increasing too.

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Is the desktop/laptop linux market share really over 4%? What is that based on?

The Steam survey has it at 3.6%, although that's obviously skewed towards gamers, and counts Steam Decks in addition to desktops.

According to Statcounter, Linux's share is 3.86% and rising; but I'd imagine that quite a bit of the almost 16% 'unknown' is also Linux.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Not insignificant at all.

Maybe more interesting is that if you switch to looking at just America Linux jumps to 5.25% (unknown 7.4%) (Similar numbers for all of NA), and for Europe it is 4.32% (9.75% unknown).

Again, not huge numbers but also not insignificant. But they are quickly growing and taking share from Microsoft. If we look back at (Dec) 2021 the numbers are 1.8% and 2.2% respectively. Those gains are meaningful.

You can see that while Windows 10 numbers are going down over the past few months, the Windows 11 numbers aren't making up for it. About 2/3 of that gap are going to Linux with the other third going to Mac. So Mac is getting more market at the expense of Windows as well. There are a significant number of disgruntled Windows users leaving over the past year.

At least according to Statcounter, Linux is currently at 3.86% worldwide: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide.

It's slightly larger in the US at 5.28%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...

In India, where I live, it's surprisingly at 6.51%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india

Take this with a grain of salt, because numbers from Statcounter are not fully accurate. However, none of those numbers are small. 3.86% of the entire PC market is not something to scoff at.

The high amount of "Unknown" is interesting. Especially as it doubled in the last 6-8 months.

"Unknown" is always mostly some version of Windows that they couldn't classify for one reason or another.

Probably. But part of it might also be something else entirely. I'm not saying it is, but how's anybody to tell? Statcounter is just not a good way to research Linux market share. Unfortunately, what they lack in statistics, they seem to make up for in SEO... everybody's landing there.

There's also the people like me that couldn't historically run certain games well directly on Linux, so we have Windows virtual machines with GPU passthrough. Which would read as me being a Windows user in the Steam stats, but a Linux user in other stats.

The state of gaming has improved drastically since I started doing it that way, though, and I'm considering ditching the VM entirely. Multiplayer games seem to be getting the hint about anticheat exclusion on Linux. ARC Raiders, for example, is a competitive game and runs flawlessly directly on Linux.

Last time I looked on stat counter it showed 4 and something percent. That's where I pulled the number from. But it seems they updated it to 3.86 now. It's so over for the Linux community.

Statcounter isn't just "not fully accurate", it's a hot dump of analytics garbage, at least for this purpose. Take your time to reflect on these diagrams - what's happening there? What's the 55% "unknown", and what does that tell you about the quality of those stats? (I've commented on this problem before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472324 )

I suggest referring to Cloudflare instead: https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&loc=&dt=5...

They're actually even putting Linux on 5.1% for desktops as of now - strangely, down from 6.5% in June last year.

also, I would bet Linux desktop users are more likely to use an Adblocker or Brave browser, which actually block statcounter! Probably not enough to bump numbers significantly, but maybe 1-2% additional.

Its not ... The problem is that people do not realize that devices like Steam Deck are also considered Linux desktop devices in those numbers. Chrome tends to also inflate those numbers. Yes, they are Linux desktops but not in the way people are comparing Windows to Linux.

The real number is closer to 2.5% somewhere. What is still growth but nowhere the "year of the Linux desktop".

You tend to see a rather vocal minority that makes you feel like there is some major switch but looking here in the comments, people that switched 8 years, 12 year, 20 years ago are people that are part of the old statistics. There are some new converts but not what you expect to see despite Linux now also being more gaming compatible.

It still has minor issues (beyond anti-cheat), that involve people fixing things, less then the past. But its still not the often click and play, works under every resolution, has no graphic issue etc etc. That is the part people often do not tell you, because a lot of people are more thinkers, so a issue pops up, they fix it and forget about it.

Ironically, MacOS just dominates as the real alternative to Windows in so many aspects. If Apple actually got their act together about gaming, it can trigger a actual strong contender to Windows.

Steam Deck is a Linux desktop device. It is literally a thin laptop with a build-in screen and joystick running linux. Does my linux system stop being that when I turn on big picture mode in steam? You can run the steam deck as your daily driver hooked up to a keyboard and a monitor.

The Steam Deck is not a Desktop ... That is like saying that every Android smartphone is a desktop. Sure, you can use it as a desktop but 99.99% of the people are using it as a handheld console.

And nice downvotes... Typical in Linux Desktop topics.

I didn't downvote, but it might have to do with the fact that you appear to be just inventing numbers like 2.5%. If Steam Decks are only used for gaming, why would they make up for 1.38% of the Statcounter numbers?

>The problem is that people do not realize that devices like Steam Deck are also considered Linux desktop devices in those numbers.

Are people even browsing on Steam Decks? Because everybody in this thread seems to be referring to stats published by a rather obscure web tracking solutions company. "High-traffic sites using Statcounter include khabarban.com, codelist.cc, and download.it"

A growth of 4% over 20 years is not an increasing rate. And yes, 4% marketshare is microscopic. macOS has a bigger share but you wouldn't say macOS is massive. Posts like this are cheerleading OS's because everything needs to be a zero sum competition.

But it's also not not an increasing rate, there's not enough information to know if the rate is increasing or not.

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