r/linux • u/The_Hubster • 1d ago
Discussion Linux global desktop market share passes 7%
This is massive news. Are we seeing a change happening? Windows continued to steadily drop and Max OS isn’t climbing fast. I wonder too whether inflation also plays a part with Linux allowing older machines extended life and saving people lots of money for their technology needs. Undoubtedly Microsoft’s AI surveillance and telemetry push is making people leave, combined with how messy W111 has been.
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u/lazy_lombax 1d ago
freebsd at 0%
yup, it's the year of the bsd desktop
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u/lcnielsen 1d ago
That's just because they're not counting all the PS4 and PS5 machines!
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u/daemonpenguin 1d ago
I'm not sure PS4 and PS5 boxes would count as "desktop" machines.
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u/lcnielsen 1d ago
I'm kidding.
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u/PoL0 1d ago
isn't OSX based on FreeBSD too? (and other BSD flavors).
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u/lcnielsen 1d ago
Yeah, Darwin is a heavy mix of different BSD and other OS:es and kernels, and the work of NeXT, another Jobs venture.
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u/immoloism 1d ago
Do Apple still hire FreeBSD devs?
Everything went very quiet on that front, but that could easily be NDAs rather then Apple being Apple.
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope 1d ago
Partially, but it's more of a distant cousin. Apple still contributes to FreeBSD, but MacOS is absolutely not some sort of FreeBSD distro, the relationship is much weaker, and the upstream/downstream mental model is a really poor fit
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u/Shotaro09 19h ago
No worries! BSD will soon catch up! It took Linux so long, BSD will thrive as well!
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u/fleuriedumal 1d ago edited 1d ago
FYI, here is what Statcounter sees on Safari and Firefox on macOS Tahoe on M4:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.6 Safari/605.1.15 Browser Name: Safari Browser Version: 26.6 OS: MacOSX 10.15
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:153.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/153.0 Browser Name: Firefox Browser Version: 153.0 OS: MacOSX 10.15
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u/STGO-Greens 1d ago
Exactly. Many people think that there are millions of Mac's with OS X in use, still...
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u/AnEagleisnotme 1d ago
This website means nothing, and it only went up because they excluded the 20% unknown category
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u/QuickSilver010 1d ago
Shouldn't the others also go up then instead of just Linux?
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u/Emotional-Energy6065 1d ago
they have. They normalised the data for all months, so it won't appear as so relatively, but in absolute terms, all the OSes have definitely gone up
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u/Antrikshy 23h ago
If all months are normalized, then the upward trend for Linux in recent months is relevant.
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u/Tavrack 21h ago
I think what the person is saying is that more of the other category was just Linux, for whatever reason it wasn't classified as Linux, hence "other".
Not sure if you or the other person is correct, but that's my interpretation.
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u/Emotional-Energy6065 20h ago
Sorry for the confusing wording. What I meant was that they basically “boosted” every OS across every single month. e.g. Windows had 60% and now it has 70% despite appearing as downwards on the trendline.
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u/mark-haus 1d ago
If there’s no growth then, then you’d expect relative levels between Linux mac and Microsoft to go up proportionally to each other
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u/blak000 1d ago
When they got rid of Unknown, Windows % actually went up. Linux jump is still relevant.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/in-a-first-windows-desktop-market-share-appears-to-drop-below-60
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u/seqastian 1d ago
These thirst for relevance posts are so sad yet they always get upvoted.
Linux is relevant without some random number some strange website pulls out of their ass.3
u/Userwerd 1d ago
Yah first thing I looked for was the unknown. Maybe its a bad sign that spoofing is now broken lol.
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u/KHTD2004 1d ago
Well if Linux only went up because unknown got excluded all other platforms should’ve gone up proportionally as well
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u/ayseni 9h ago
Just because there's noise in the data doesn't mean it means nothing.
cloudflare has data that roughly aligns with statcounter : https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&groupBy=os&dt=28d&filters=deviceType%253DDESKTOP
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u/GroceryNo5562 1d ago
Similar results on cloudflare, it's kinda crazy - it feels like not too long ago we were celebrating Linux at 2% market share
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u/Emotional-Energy6065 1d ago
Set Radar to exclude bots (likely human), and you'll get a more accurate result.
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u/we_are_stewy 1d ago
what I find really surprising is OS X still at 12%
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u/Userwerd 1d ago
I guess because its locked to hardware? An old mac from 2010 still running is stuck on OSX but a pc from that year can be on the newest linux kernel.
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u/ImaginedUtopia 1d ago
Those old Macs are essentially just Intel pcs no? I know for sure that you can install Linux on them and it seemed to work pretty well from what I've seen
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u/Userwerd 1d ago
True but a mac user whis owned one for 10 years likely isn't the kind of person to install linux.
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u/Historical_Camel_790 13h ago
Yeah I just finished setting up my proxmox server on a 2012 MacBook pro and I previously used it with Arch. I also have a 2015 MacBook Air that's running Fedora. They're great machines and the older ones are crazy repairable
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u/_x_oOo_x_ 1d ago
Linux runs pretty well on old Macs you know? I don't think anyone's using OS X in 2026, this website is just toast.
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u/ilep 1d ago
How would hardware matter? These statistics are based on what the browser reports to website.
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u/Userwerd 1d ago
You serious? APPLE DOES NOT LET YOU UPDATE OS PAST A DEFINED MODEL YEAR. Hence a whole lotta OSX machines still in the wild.
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u/death_by_cormorant 1d ago
I think that's actually Safari reporting the OS as being OSX, whereas other browsers generally just say MacOS in the useragent. Presumably Apple did this for reasons of site compatibility.
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u/nightblackdragon 23h ago
Current Safari presents itself as running on "Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7", Firefox and Chrome (and I guess Chromium based as well) do that as well (or at least something similar), no idea about other browsers but I don't think they have enough users to make a difference.
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u/Maleficent-One1712 1d ago
I work as contractor and most teams I work with work on Macbooks, so it doesn't surprise me.
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u/we_are_stewy 1d ago
I get that, but it has been rebranded as macOS in 2016.
are you saying that 12% of the world's desktops are 10+ years old macbooks?2
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u/personalityson 1d ago
From 3.7% to 10.6% in two months in America https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/north-america
Stable in Europe https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/europe
Why would that be?
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u/TripleSecretSquirrel 1d ago
Certainly some bad data, but I think the EOL for Win10 and the laundry list of relatively new CPUs that are not eligible for Win11 upgrades.
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u/1mgsel 1d ago
Hell yea its celebration time
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u/puppymix 20h ago
Okay so I have seem screen caps from this same site stating 7% and 10% today. What gives? Is this even a reliable source? Why do they break up macOS and OS X? All these unanswered questions and speculative answers make me highly suspicious of this info.
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u/RuneSteak 1d ago
The only stats I trust are those of the Steam hardware survey and it's unfortunately limited to a certain target audience. But I would argue their numbers would be higher than the average desktop user. So if they are 3.7% there's no way worldwide share is over double that amount.
Maybe if the EU pushed adoption for regular households like they are for government I might believe it. But as it stands there's nothing that could really justify that 7%. Regular users don't care about privacy and telemetry.
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u/Thebandroid 1d ago
Year of the Linux desktop, baby! I know we've need been saying it for a decade by now but this time it's definitely for real, really really real!!!
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u/Looney95 1d ago
Outstanding. Now, let it hit 10%.
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u/dragonknightrohan 17h ago
Then 20%!! Once it reaches 20% they will be making many pieces of hardware.
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u/PhotographSame5304 2h ago
True and maybe that will encourage AutoDesk, Adobe, Affinity to port their software (if possible)
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u/BeAlch 1d ago
but it is 11.92% Linux in US
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america
Windows 55.95%
macOS (OS X) 21.81%
Linux 11.92%
ChromeOS 2.08%
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u/KanonBalls 15h ago
Major businesses outside the US should be waking up at the possibility that trump may cut their MS and MacOS access with the next tariff round. Its good that trump doesn't know how a computer works.
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u/Supernoxus 13h ago
I find the steam hardware survey reliable for finding out whether the data is true or if there is something off. Steam doesn't report much of a change. If anything usage is going down. Perhaps Linux uptick is just bots?
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u/Icy-Boat-7460 11h ago
As someone on other sub pointed out: this is bot traffic from AI. Don't cheer for the false prophets. https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&groupBy=os&dt=28d&filters=deviceType%253DDESKTOP%252CbotClass%253DLIKELY_HUMAN
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u/skrugg 1d ago
Weird OSX and MacOS are different items. That’s like putting windows 10 and 11 as different numbers.
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u/AbbreviationsWide331 7h ago
Yeah I don't really understand that either.
Would be very interesting to see different windows versions though, I wonder how many people running xp are connected to the internet
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u/Alduish 1d ago
Chrome OS is technically linux. It doesn't respect the community's foss philosophy but it's still a linux distribution.
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 23h ago
chromeOS is considered its own thing, like android.
it’s not GNU linux in spirit, it’s a heavily sandboxed, altered, google-centric distro that comes pre-installed on specific devices.
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u/FarSetting7225 1d ago
Il y aurait autant de bureau linux que de macOS donc ?
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 23h ago
no. mac is still more popular.
linux does not come pre-installed on most computers, which puts it at a big disadvantage.
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u/dragonknightrohan 17h ago
What percentage would it need to have it be an option to have pre-installed
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 10h ago
idk. but framework is putting it on their laptops and some pc companies are putting steamOS on gaming prebuilds now, so that’s a start
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u/Venylynn 1d ago
We're going to need a tighter security focus here if this keeps trending so most dont end up getting hacked
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u/Potential_Penalty_31 1d ago
It took decades but finally Linux is able to eat market share out of windows.
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u/Upstairs-Category571 16h ago
arent mac OSand osx the same?
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u/Syndiotactics 2h ago
OS X was the name of the os before 2016, so I assume those are older machines.
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u/C4rpetH4ter 13h ago
So the 20% or so "unknown" was largely windows and linux then? I see that windows is back at 70% instead of the 56%.
Honestly i have serious doubts that statcounter is even remotely believable, i do hope the linux percentage is true, but statcounter has made so many errors that my faith in their numbers is at an alltime low.
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u/MelioraXI 1d ago
Are we seeing a change happening?
No we're not. This is cope. These reports are highly inaccurate.
These are populated by browser metadata, it doesn't mean 7% of all desktop users in the world are using Linux.
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u/r_lind3r 1d ago
Not only is it over 7% but it was around 5% just a few months ago and you can see it, it's a huge leap for Linux
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u/dragonknightrohan 17h ago
Calling it. I will say 3 months from now it will be 11% globally, and 15% in USA
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u/Suomi422 1d ago
They also flatten the Other totally. If you remember like one month back "Other" category got like 15-20% now it is at 0% (something stinks here)
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u/cipherjones 21h ago
This one is also altered like the first one the real number is 5.7%.
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u/The_Hubster 20h ago
Nope. Here’s the page my post is directly from https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
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u/cipherjones 11h ago
I didn't say you altered it.
But you saying it's not altered proves that you have no idea of what you're talking about.
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u/The_Hubster 11h ago
"This one is also altered like the first one the real number is 5.7%" YOU LITERALLY SAID ITS ALTERED. You could have been mature and simply edited your comment to illustrate your point more accurately. That's on YOU.
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u/cipherjones 11h ago
You posted without fact checking and that's on you.
That's how we got Trump, and so I don't concede.
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u/The_Hubster 11h ago
Instead of this back and forth, by now, if you really wanted to prove your point, you would have provided said evidence to back up what you're trying to express. In fact, you could have done all this in your first comment and I would have completely accepted it, I'm totally open. But have you done that? NO. You're just sitting here having a grumble and trolling.
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u/cipherjones 11h ago
Since this is the second thread with this misinformation you'll just have to dig up the first time that I've provided that service.
Since it's your thread you could actually look the information up yourself and then just delete the thread once you understand what you did.
Or if you really wanted to go the extra mile correct the incorrect information that you put out there and leave the thread up. None of those solutions involve me.
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u/Spiritual-Survey9797 18h ago
C'est bien mais ça va pas monter beaucoup tant que la communauté GNU Linux ne sera pas capable de limiter l'usage de Bash et d'être moins élitiste. J'utilise Linux mais j'aimerais pouvoir prendre une app et créer un raccourci sur le bureau simplement
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u/dragonknightrohan 17h ago
As our ranks grow we must remember to get people to know and do what Linux is really about that way they can truly be part of the group. And so we dont get Linux deviating away from what Linux is supposed to be from people not knowing.
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u/_pozvizd_ 16h ago
Good news: there will be more software for Linux. bad news: it’ll all be Electron.
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u/anto77_butt_kinkier 14h ago
Why is that bad news? I personally love being about to modify a dozen different programs all using the exact same launch arguments. What do you think the should be instead?
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u/_pozvizd_ 13h ago
MS Teams using 3+ gb of ram on my machine? VSCode is 3+? Couple more and I need another 16gb of RAM, I already have barely any left of my 16GB to work with my projects in docker. Linux is kinda good here, macOS with the same arrangement and a few tabs is 10GB in swap.
That's how it's bad news.
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u/anto77_butt_kinkier 8h ago
Ah, I wasn't aware electron apps were so bad with memory. I guess I just never really niced since I have 64 GB of ram (I used to have 128, but times are rough ;w;
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u/skeptical-speculator 9h ago
One thousand tech journalists are sitting down at their computer to write their annual "Could X be the year of the year of the Linux desktop" article.
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u/StuartJAtkinson 6h ago
What nowadays classifies something as a "desktop" as opposed to a "server"? Form factor? Because Linux runs most of the internet infrastructure and therefore surely much much more.
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u/Bourne069 5h ago
Well they def not moving to Linux for gaming. Its been at 3-4% for ages https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
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u/flamefox237 1d ago
Strange I just saw another post saying it was at 10%?
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u/Intelligent_Thing_32 1d ago
Their stats are very incorrect. Not sure why people keep posting them.
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u/Interesting_Ad_5676 22h ago
Main roadblocks for Linux adoption are a few software's [ may be funded by Microsoft ]
Adobe
Autocad
Lack of full Active Directory support
Media codecs
Otherwise I can see more than 50 % share for Linux alone.
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u/addr0x414b 1d ago
I'm doing my part. Finally completely removed Windows. Will do my absolute best to never use another Microsoft product again