Thanks, Steam Deck.
Most OS statistics come from web usage which is probably pretty minimal for Steam Decks.
It's not so much about browsing on steam decks. It's about the technical improvements Valve has brought to Linux gaming compatibility that has now made full Linux conversion without a Windows dual-boot for gaming (and many other Windows programs) a true reality. Once people don't have to reboot every time they want to start a game they'll stay in Linux full time.
Very true, more of a Thanks Valve :)
Just an FYI that at this rate it's only going to take another 115 years before Linux has 100% market share.
2138 is the year of the Linux desktop!
What if S-curve instead of linear rate?
You mean Linux isn't going to have 200% market share one day? Shit, I'm starting to think my calculations may have not been totally serious.
Market share is usually a curve.
This is the same logic that a right wing ex-president of my country used to criticize the current leftist president while talking about the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
The critical mass needed to tip the scales is not high. Once Linux has enough market share to matter as a customer base, game studios will switch to developing as cross-platform for it by default, so that they don't lose launch sales. Once this happens, a lot of people won't have any reason to stay on windows anymore as gaming was the only thing holding them back. This will then create a virtuous cycle of users migrating and games (and then apps) switching to it. Along then come hardware vendor supporty and then pre-built PCs and laptops. If the tipping point is reach, the rate of market share gain will be exponential.
The same thing happened with Internet Explorer 6
The only thing that can stop this is outside pressure from software giants like Microsoft through lobbying the Governments, buying out game studios or buying exclusivity, or strong-arming hardware vendors.
steam deck is helping a lot on that front.
MacOS holds a nearly 30% market share and few game developers give a shit about publishing their games on Mac. Why would Linux be any different?
Apple is notorios about being anti-gaming, yet many games support it while not supporting linux. Don't know the actual stats though.
Because linux doesn't have deprecated opengl, doesn't run their own proprietary api for gpu instead of implementing vulkan and last but not least because linux does still have support for 32bit application.
Are you including iPhones in this market share?
Other than gamers, there's a huge share of enterprise Windows users. And they're not likely to shift OS, because of IT admin issues. Others in this thread have commented on how Apple is struggling to get devs to build native games compared to Windows.
Sure the number of home PC users might decline, one can always hope.
Oh yeah
This is the year
People are really late to the party but better late then never....
Linux is awesome.
Is it actually truly the year of the Linux desktop?
Linux desktop has basically become the Be-so-good they-can't-ignore-you man
It helps that Microsoft has been alienating their customers and set high bars for OS upgrades.
This is definitely a major reason. Windows 11 forces TPM 2, random hardware requirements that make no sense, and is objectively a downgrade from windows 10 (like every other windows version always is). Since Windows 10 is two years out from EoL and all major Linux distros have gotten so much better... might as well upgrade while you can still go back to 10 should you need to, before you have to be on Linux or throw out a bunch of otherwise fine computers.
Partly my fault - I have that page set to auto open on my browser every week
Wow, if it keeps going at this rate, it'll be the year of Linux on the desktop (50% share) in 2079.
Proud to be one of them. I tried to disable the job that runs windows update, they said I don't have permission, so I switched to Ubuntu on every single computer except the one that runs VR games.
As a bonus, as an enthusiast for artificial intelligence stuff, more programs run on Linux than they do on Windows
Seriously considering swapping over to my Linux partition as main and virtualizing the Windows side this weekend. Still need the Windows because well, I make Windows software.
Glad to be part of the trend. Literally just yesterday, I got rid of Windows and installed Pop OS instead.
I helped! I installed Linux Mint on 2 of my friends aging laptops.
Is Linux actually growing, or are other users simply buying fewer computers because their phones have reduced the need for personal computers?
I didn't crunch the numbers, but as far as I see, most of the linux growth comes from the Steam deck, which runs a Linux OS.
This could also be the reason for the decrease of OSX, because more other, non classical computer, devices are included, which automatically reduces the share of Laptop and PC devices.
I wish librewolf had a toggle for its user agent. The default user agent is windows and you can't change it without extensions
There are no longer just 5 of us! There are now 6 of us, YES!
After many years of thinking about it i finally gave Linux a try on my main PC and was met with the unfortunate realization that HDR support was non existent for NVIDIA cards and had to switch back to Windows.
HDR will probably be supported in a year or two, so you might want to give it a try again at some point. There's ongoing work to enable HDR.
Glad to be part of the trend! Recently converted my 12 year old MacBook Pro to Fedora and it's running incredibly well. Have used command line Linux for work for years, but have really been enjoying it with a GUI in a desktop setting.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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