Clickbaity title on the original article, but I think this is the most important point to consider from it:
After getting to 1% in approximately 2011, it took about a decade to double that to 2%. The jump from 2% to 3% took just over two years, and 3% to 4% took less than a year.
Get the picture? The Linux desktop is growing, and it’s growing fast.
As a daily Linux user, this makes me VERY VERY happy!!
About to be 6.0000001% when my Kubuntu download finishes. I’m finally taking the dive boys, linux on main here we go.
Cool, welcome! I assume you’re aware that it won’t be all sunshine and rainbows from day 1, but give it time and leverage the community to solve any issues you run into. Effective bug reports and knowledge sharing make the experience better for everyone.
To me it’s worth having control over my hardware, and an OS that’s designed to work for me and not some corpo against me.
FWIW, Fedora with KDE is fantastic - been using that as my distro of choice (for systems I want a UI on at least) for a few years now and I love it.
welcome!
i use ubuntu and its a good choice, but id recommend installing gnome-software and its flatpak plugin and using that instead of the slower snaps. its perfect otherwise, enjoy!
KDE has its own Discover thing for downloading Flatpaks FWIW.
You still need the underlying package manager installed (it’ll prompt you to do so), and on Plasma 5.0 you also need a special integration plugin for each package manager (merged into Discover since I think Plasma 6.0).
Discover is a joy to use.
Congratulations, and welcome to the Linux world. You won’t regret it. But also don’t get scared if something doesn’t work right away!
Congrats and welcome. You are a good man.
I think kubuntu was the very first distro I ever installed in a VM when trying out Linux 10 years ago. I’ve since moved on (an aging Arch install right now, which will eventually be replaced by a NixOS install whenever I get around to it), but just wanted to say that a whole new world lies at your footsteps, my friend. Enjoy it. It’s like discovering the wonder of computing for the first time.
Nice! That’s what I use. Don’t see alot of others talk about Kubuntu. I enjoy the heck out of it. It doesn’t play games all that well, but that could also be user error as well. Still, so far it’s my favorite distro. Good luck on your journey!
The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
Windows’ market share is being nibbled to death by cats.
Nah it’s just being replaced with phones.
Low tech users used to have cheap windows machines, now they have phones and tablets.
Zathras, holding up a thumb drive with a Windows Installer ISO:
“No, never use this.”
New distro: ZathrOS
Error message: This why ZathrOS not have nice things.
I should work on this at some stage
Damn Linux becoming mainstream. How will I feel like a superior tech elite now?
You could use Arch, btw
I assume you mean raw? Because I’m a noob and I installed Garuda, which is Arch, and it’s been dead easy.
Everyone could use Arch! Let’s all flex together!
Still rocking BeOS :)
One day Haiku will be ready
GNU HURD.
You can still use arch (btw) and be a superior tech elite to me, who just uses bazzite because i don’t want to tinker in my free time
Guess it’s time to move to Gentoo ~ or Nix
Only use TTY
Delete all browsers. Only access the web using curl.
Curl? You thunk I can’t craft my own web requests??
Piefed is actually weirdly usable in w3m.
Plan 9 it is !
Not even trying the Plan B?
If they’re typing I fear it may already be too late.
Switch to BSD
Is it any good
I only installed it once for fun in a VM but didn’t really use it. It’s different to Linux but you could get used to it. As far as I know however the hardware that it properly runs on is quite limited, mainly older stuff. So I wouldn’t recommend it as a daily driver but I would recommend to try it out.
I would definitely recommend OPNSense. The hardware support is quite good
Can you use OPNsense for general things or is it tailored to one specific usecase?
Pretty sure BSD is dying, Netcraft confirmed that like 30 years ago.
That’s why we need to switch to TempleOS
Plan9 all the way!
Maybe it’s dying, but it won’t die in our lifetimes, so it’s fine.
I am actually also thinking about creating customized version of OpenBSD as a side project.
After getting to 1% in approximately 2011, it took about a decade to double that to 2%. The jump from 2% to 3% took just over two years, and 3% to 4% took less than a year.
Could be exponential growth.
That’s what I was wondering too. Doubling time halved already.
Exponential doesn’t mean fast.
When it gets to 7%, is that when there is more malware designed for Linux desktop ?
There is already plenty of malware targeting devs on Linux where is it’s strongest userbase.
Yeah, unfortunate to rain in the parade but GNU/Linux definitely needs some attention sooner rather than later. Plenty of design benefits, but also plenty of pitfalls from an OS sec POV.
Average users aren’t installing SELinux or Qubes so I hope no-one was actually going to reply with what Linux can do as opposed to the everyday user experience.
A few years outdated, but relevant: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html
but also plenty of pitfalls from an OS sec POV.
Can’t possibly be more vulnerable than Windows, the system where you can elevate yourself to highest privileges by simply clicking “Yes” on a prompt without a password, and where most users are running outdated versions of their software because they never update anything, or have a thousand background “updater” applets that are scheduled to run periodically and have the ability to install arbitrary executables from their servers.
Can’t possibly be more vulnerable than Windows
The linked article provides many examples where security techniques lag far behind Windows. Vulnerability isn’t as simple as being ‘more vulnerable’ or ‘less vulnerable’, it’s a complex concept, and both GNU/Linux and Windows have design decisions which make each better than the other in various ways. We need to understand security in a more nuanced way than “x is better than y” if we actually want to protect ourselves from threats.
A Linux installation can be set to run root with no password or prompt. A Linux user can choose to never update their software - one could argue that Windows forced OS updates are an improvement here. The argument that the typical user has more technical understanding is a weak defense (as in, we really really really should not rely on that) and also irrelevant when we’re talking about Linux gaining a wider audience.
If you run a repo-only system, where everything you install comes from the first-party distro repo, you’ll likely be fine. Just as you are on Windows or Android if you only download apps from the first-party store.
But like on Windows and Android, you’ll quickly reach the limit of what you can do with first-party store only.
Especially stuff like gaming requires non-repo/non-store stuff pretty quickly, and then you are on exactly the same turf as on Windows.
There’s no world where Windows users only use the official store. In fact, that’s why every “S” version of Windows always failed.
where everything you install comes from the first-party distro repo, you’ll likely be fine.
Canonical’s Snapcraft has a bad reputation for a reason. Many reasons. But compromised apps is a major one.
A long time ago when Linux was around 2-3% someone said that macOS adoption by software companies happened when it got to 5% of the marketshare.
If Linux continues down the path, we might see real support from some of the holdouts.
Before anyone says to use an alternative, sometimes there are not workable alternatives.
Linux has a problem with distribution of binaries, and companies for profit doesn’t want to share source … and packages with only binaries have some dependencies problem… although Flatpak and Snap improved this A LOT…. But then would have GLPv3 in many dependencies and you cannot ship it with a “for profit” product.
This is the biggest hurdle for Linux “for profit” market for better apps. Also many Linux users are against the paid model, preferring open source. There is a cultural limitation to break the bubble
I think SteamOS is helping a lot to break this … but still Linux desktop need to have a cultural change specially on license model or binary stability to be able to have a better app availability
This has been a big problem historically. Agreed.
But you cite the solution yourself. Flatpak is all you need for effective distribution of commercial apps. GPL has nothing to do with it. There are already commercial apps in FlatHub.
What is missing is “paid” commercial apps. We have no “take my money” App Store in Linux. I think FlatHub is working on it. Honestly, I am surprised a commercial company has not launched one yet. Well, other than Steam of course.
I’m not sure about the legal intricacies of it, but there is commercial software being distributed through flatpak on Flathub for a while now. The first example that comes to mind is Bitwig, a well-known, paid, commercial Digital Audio Workstation: https://flathub.org/apps/com.bitwig.BitwigStudio
Also, Flathub is working on offering paid apps: https://news.itsfoss.com/flathub-paid-apps/
I went to CachyOS on my desktop full time this year. Already had Bazzite on a laptop.
There’s been a few hiccups here and there, but nothing insurmountable with a little patience and practice and reading.
And best part, those skills translate to most linux distros!
Hang on though, if it’s web stats, how many of those impressions are ai bots scraping training data claiming to be Firefox users?
Don’t those likely read as Linux from how they fingerprint on TCP connections?
The last thing a scraper wants is to stand out. Most scrapers out there masquerade as Windows+Chrome on PC. It’s not hard to spoof a user agent and any scrapers that identify uniquely get blocked real fast.
Fuck man I saw a post in the past week that it was 5%. At this rate we’ll be leaving M$ in the du$t.
The 5% story was published yesterday. This new article from today says that they trust the government site figures more than StatCounter which was cited on yesterday’s story.
I thought the 5% story was for USA users
I’m not sure about the 5% story, but this 6% one is specifically about US government sites. Sorry I didn’t mention that in the post.
Hahaha so many articles on different percentages
I know! This article kind of addresses that with this line: “although we can’t be certain of the exact numbers, Linux is clearly growing”.
Interestingly enough, reading through again, the 6% figure is from US government sites, but the growth numbers in the line I quoted in the post is actually global. Here’s the graph they’re referring to:
I hadn’t noticed that dip in 2025 until I looked at this graph more closely!
Unfortunately the media failed to load
You mean the attachment in my comment above? It’s a webp file copied from the article, the table of year-by-year Linux desktop market share (global).
Curious about how popular enterprise/backend is.
Servers are like 90% Linux.
Linux is so much more stable than windows and its free+open source so everyone uses Linux on servers.
If you’re using the web, you’re being served by Linux. If you’re using a supercomputer, it’s running Linux. Etc, etc
Even when I’m ordering a pizza??
Yes ma’am/sir/pronoun of choice
I go by slice/pie. Thank for being polite.
Things will really take-off if Linux hits 10%.
Actually, if it hits 10%, I think it could go all the way.
OK, so now it’s important to create collegial democratic project government for Linux, and freeze Linus in carbonite as a memorial. Before Linux has become too important, and before Linus lost his marbles to become a geriatric dictator.
Actually in the age of Android I think it’s already too late, but this should be done regardless.
