this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Linux

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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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It peaked at 4.05% in March. The last 2 months it went just below 4% as the Unknown category increased. For June the reverse happened, so 4.04% seems to be the real current share of Linux on Desktop as desktop clients were read properly/werent spoofed.

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 4 months ago (6 children)

The combined forces of microsoft reaching new heights of greed and intrusion, plus the massive dev efforts for the best ever GNU Linux and Proton 📈📈📈

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Microsoft set themselves up the bomb

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 4 months ago (4 children)

In all seriousness, I think government bodies switching to Linux (UK's, China's, some Indian states') attributes the most to this.

[–] [email protected] 88 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Even if that's the case, it's telling of Linux' maturity.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

Oh absolutely!

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 months ago (7 children)

No I think it's the Steam Deck. It's like half of all actively used Linux machines.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Half of the Linux machines on Steam, not the entirety of Linux.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Source? Last I checked, the Steam Deck was very much in the minority even when narrowed down to just desktop Linux.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Source is the Steam hardware survey set to show Linux data only. He forgot to mention the statement is only true for Steam Gamers, not for all of Linux desktops outside of Steam.

~ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=linux

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

I confused it with Steam statistics sorry

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

no, the statistics are based on browser agents, very few steam deck users browse the Internet on their devices. it's also only half the Linux devices on steam, not of all Linux desktops

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (16 children)

But that's not really a Desktop is it? If we'd count mobile device we'd also have to include Android and then the situation would look completely different.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Steam deck has a full fat kde desktop on the stock os

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm fairly sure it's deficiencies in StatCounter's measurement that's accounting for it. Statistical noise, basically.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It's probably even higher than that. These stats are mostly based on website visits I believe. And many Linux users are also privacy-minded and might spoof their OS in the browser. I bet a large portion of the Unknown is actually Linux too.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

China is actually down. India is high but not increasing

[–] [email protected] 75 points 4 months ago (5 children)

The youtuber matt from thelinuxcast sucks.

I am regular user, i don't code for living and my job is not tech related. I wanted to try linux and many of you guys supported and now I'm using Linux since 2 weeks its linux mint. That matt guy was so against linux mint that i thought it was shit too. But when i installed and started using it. It has been a smooth journey. Many people in linux community were helpful. But people like matt really make it for us regular guys scared to use linux. I really hope many good linux user help regular people switch to linux and increase this number.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (15 children)

Mint is great and is absolutely enough for most people using computers, still as of now. It comes with its limitations though:

  • By default it runs pretty old kernel. This is fine if your hardware is at least 3 years old. It allows to easily switch to newer kernel with just few clicks, but I expect newbies to not be aware of this at all. Oh, and I don’t know if it offers some custom kernels like tkg etc, which some might want to squeeze best gaming perf etc.
  • Cinnamon is still limited to X11. If you have multi-screen setup, VRR, mixed refresh, mixed DPI etc, it’s better to switch to Wayland. Plus, Xorg server gets less and less maintenance and development. All the innovation moved to Wayland, so the experience on X will remain pretty stale.
  • The Ubuntu base makes it so that for 3rd party software you either need deb packages or PPAs. Some will argue (me included) that it’s not the best solution

All of the above can easily be irrelevant to you and Mint is just perfect for what you need. It’s important to point out limitations of that choice, but crapping on it because you don’t like it is just pointless fuss

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I get what you mean. I see a decent chunk of often more tech-proficient Linux users putting down Linux Mint, and it saddens me because even though I don't use Mint anymore, it was still the first distro I properly daily-drove and I still consider it an amazing system for people who are new to Linux.

I'm very glad you've been having a good experience with Mint!

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I switched to librewolf so I will now show up as windows

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

After seeing Garuda Linux set my user agent to Windows, I set my Windows install user agent to Linux.

Seeing Twitch.tv login break after changing my user agent was hilarious

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I unspoofed Librewolf back to Firefox + Linux. That way I'm not contributing to Chrome and Windows market share and perceived dominance. Plus the more people don't spoof, the less of a need there will be to actually spoof at all as the Linux market share increases.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

Same, there must be a percent or so of Windows actually being Linux instead.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Fwiw, my blog's statistics say Linux is around 10% and I know a lot of browsers identify themselves as running on Windows when they're not, so I wonder how it's measured.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What's is the main topic of your blog?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago

Travel, nothing tech related

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think the venn diagram overlap of linux users, and users of adblockers or noscript users that block such tracking is quite large. Must impact the statistic significantly.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I would wager thats your audiences bias showing up. If you did that measurement in lemmy users, you would get likely 90% Linux users.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago (4 children)

lol no you wouldn’t. I’d be shocked if Lemmy users were greater than 20% Linux.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (11 children)

Windows 11: Add advertisement to the start menu, add remote Artificial intelligence to your daily live. Require new CPUs and motherboards / hardware, ignoring the market for old computers.

What will they do next?

  • More advertisement.
  • More features that require an always on internet connection?
  • Forced restart for software updates

This is why I expect Linux share to slowly increase until the old computers die and you will not be allowed to choose to boot another operating system besides Windows on your Microsoft-Copilot+ PC that would be your only option.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Can we commit to only posting about round number percent changes?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (3 children)

4.040000000000000000000001!

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (5 children)

I wonder what's on the 'unknown'

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

likely content blockers preventing the trackers from working properly and invalid user agents. So i would expect about the same ratio of usage on there as well. Maybe very slightly more Linux since maybe the users are more likely to tinker with their browser configs and install content blockers, but even there Id say its an extremely slim minority of even linux users who do that

StatCounter also sometimes miscounts when new versions of windows or macos come out. At one point (I think at windows 11 release) there was a huge dip in windows 10 users and a huge gain in "unknown" and it was quickly fixed.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Bare Metal, they are injecting Ethernet cable directly into their bloodstream.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That 6% attributed to "unknown" is the one true OS, the only one ordained by the Almighty... Temple OS!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago (3 children)

True Temple OS has no networking

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 months ago (5 children)

I have had to do some work on my windows pc and I hate it. I have been away from desktop for a while now and changed to linux for personal one. At work it is all G suite, which does work to its credit, but the windows OS and microsoft cloud documents suck so much. The look and feel is clunky, so clunky. Constantly refreshing and just being shit.

Never forgive forcing outlook.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

1980s: Hey guise, computers are now cheap and small enough that you can run an entire system and all your programs on your own machine at home instead of having to dial in to the mainframe!

2010s: No, we're putting it all back on the servers, you get a thin client.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

No technical reason btw, just because "fuck you".

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Sorry, I stopped playing factorio on my work Linux computer. I will play next month to get us back up.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Man i hope linux becomes more popular

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I see multiple posts on reddit everyday asking for advice for migrating to linux. I think linux userbase is increasing a lot since Window's questionable recall announcement.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (16 children)

And the valve steamdeck But some people install windows on it which defeats it's linux purpose

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (7 children)

I am still hoping it will hit 10% market share within my life time. I remember when it was predicted to hit that in 2010, obviously it didn't happen*. Of course for me personally, the year of the Linux Desktop was 2007 when I was finally able to use it as my main OS at home, I tried it before many times since 2003.

* not counting systems that use the Linux kernel but aren't considered a traditional GNU+Linux desktop.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago

I assume the proportions of people who spoof their OS is slanted towards Linux

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (5 children)

why do we negate chromeos we are 10% at least so there we really are

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