Linux back at 4.04% on the Desktop. Windows went below 73%
gs.statcounter.com
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.
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 📈📈📈
Microsoft set themselves up the bomb
Microsoft: As long as Adobe, Office, Autodesk are on my side, I have nothing to worry about.
All your corporate greed are belong to us
I use Linux for personal use, and Ive been using windows for work due to necessity.
There is one app I need that does not support Linux. I contacted their support asking about a Linux version and they suggested using waysroid to run the android version of the app.
So, when I have free time I’m working on switching things over.
My main motivation is Microsoft pushing ads everywhere and being aggressive about using online accounts and stuff that like.
Whats interesting is that both income , profits and the stock have been growing well for years, maybe they are just monetizing more aggressively because they can't compete on product quality (unlike other markets that are still evolving, AI and Cloud). not a ton of stuff to improve in operation systems it seems.
There are system dialogs that have unused space for ads, still plenty to improve!
In all seriousness, cloud (azure) and office subscriptions blew up and account for like 70% of MS profits. They know the Windows experience is lacking, but when they already capture so much of the market and it's such a small slice of revenue, they have no incentive to improve.
dont forget soystemd and wayland
i don't have a strong opinion on systemd, i just heard someone call it soystemd in some YouTube video once and it just stuck in my head for years
In all seriousness, I think government bodies switching to Linux (UK's, China's, some Indian states') attributes the most to this.
Even if that's the case, it's telling of Linux' maturity.
Oh absolutely!
No I think it's the Steam Deck. It's like half of all actively used Linux machines.
Half of the Linux machines on Steam, not the entirety of Linux.
Yes sorry you're right
A very important distinction
Source? Last I checked, the Steam Deck was very much in the minority even when narrowed down to just desktop Linux.
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
I believe the Steam Deck would be a significant portion of the Linux desktops, but Steam's survey might be a biased source, still
What does significant portion mean to you?
I can imagine it'd affect statistics enough to see a clear change
I confused it with Steam statistics sorry
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
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.
Steam deck has a full fat kde desktop on the stock os
I could install a full fat kde on the entertainment system of a car - still wouldn't call it a desktop PC.
You can plug in a keyboard, mouse, and monitor
We don't include Android here. What I meant is that the Steam Deck does count in that statistics.
Steam Deck is a desktop. It is exactly the same PC hardware and software you are using on your desktop PC. It runs the same games and is software compatible. Steam Deck is a desktop PC.
Android has a different hardware (not x86 compatible), is focused on phones, its eco system of software is not compatible with PC and in reverse does not run your PC software. Android based smartphones are not a PC.
But how many use it for browsing, which I imagine this data is from?
Valid point to be honest, but the answer is probably more than you think. I have a PC and still used the Steam Deck to browse the web too, not at least to install stuff. Also searching something while playing is useful too. Its made to be docked to bigger screen as well.
While you are probably right, my point was its still a PC, because he compared it to Android. And why this is hugely different. His point was to exclude Steam Deck, because it is not a PC, just like we would exclude Android. This data from the stats probably does not make a difference if its a Steam Deck or not (nor can it tell it? because browsing is the same as on PC, its an Archlinux and regular browser after all). On the other side it can definitely tell if its Android and exclude it.
So regardless if you think people browse the web with Steam Deck or not, this data should not be able to tell the difference between most distributions and Steam Deck, as its just a normal PC with Firefox (or other web browser) from the point of the stats. Just my assumption.
So your definition for "desktop" is if it's an x86 compatible architecture? Seems pretty random to me. Btw, there are x86 android device. IMO a desktop is something on the top of a desk to do typical "office work". PCs, Macs, Laptops, etc. but calling a SteamDeck game console "Desktop" is pretty dishonest I think.
PC in the first place means x86 architecture. Desktop is the operating system, here a Linux desktop or Windows OS. Nothing random here. Steam Deck is a Desktop PC with form factor of a handheld. Just like any other Laptop is a Desktop PC in a notebook form factor. It runs, plays and uses the exact same hard and software as a Desktop PC. Calling Steam Deck PC not to be a Desktop is pretty dishonest. Also saying desktop PC must be on a desk for typical office work is random too.
Also this is all about stats. Don't forget, this is not your opinion or my opinion. I am speaking from the stats perspective, as the Firefox browser (or any other browser) is just a Desktop PC from the perspective of the stats.
If you say I am pretty random and being dishonest, then first, you are discounting others opinions, secondly did not even understand the purpose of my reply. Maybe you should watch out your language next time before responding if you want further discussion. I hope my reply here made it crystal clear.
The names are pretty clear and are about form factor. Desktop is something on top of a desk. Laptop is something on top of your lap. Hand-held is something you hold in your hand.
The steam deck is a hand-held game console - doesn't matter what OS is it uses. It's true that most stat tracking sites count it as "desktop" but not because it's a desktop computer but because the user agent looks similar to desktop user agents.
If I install Android on a tower PC it doesn't randomly become a smartphone even though all browser trackers would register it as a smartphone.
And Valve using a "typical desktop OS" on their handheld console doesn't magically turn it into a desktop PC.
The example with Android makes no sense as a argument in our discussion.
Wrong. It does matter. Plus, it matters what software and what configuration it uses the moment it gets counted in the stats.
The discussion is not about what you try to tell. You can say what you want, it does not matter that the Steam Deck uses hardware that is PC and software that is a hybrid of Desktop and Gaming operating system. And when going to the web with a web browser, then the Steam Deck is in Desktop mode, and therefore seen as a Desktop PC. Not only act it like that, the functionality is a Desktop PC.
The Steam Deck has two modes if you forgot that, and we are talking about the Desktop PC mode. Which is what the stats are all about.
Desktop is a form factor not "software" and there are microwaves and refrigerators with "PC hardware" (in quotes, because it's actually a pretty ill-defined term), but they still are not "Desktops" even is you install Fedora on your fridge.
That's just a definition for you. For the stats it does not matter what form factor it has. For the software and operating system, the form factor has 0 meaning. We are talking about stats and I explained it multiple times why the Steam Deck is a desktop PC from the perspective of web browsing stats. But I will end the discussion here now, as we are running in circles. Have a good day.
Connect the Steam Deck to a compatible dock and you can quite easily use it as a desktop. At the end of the day, it's still an x64 based PC that's just handheld.
I'm not sure that's really a good argument. I can connect an android smartphone to a monitor, keyboard and mouse and call it Desktop. It's also just an arm64 or x64 based PC just handheld.
A Desktop PC IMHO is a device that is used for everyday "office" work and neither android smartphones nor steamdecks are that - but laptops for example are (IMHO)
It is. I use it as such regularly. Keyboard+mouse+screen = browsing firefox as usual. Works quite well. Libreoffice, okular, signal desktop... I've used worse computers in recent years, steamdeck desktop experience is better than many 4 to 5 year old cheap laptops with win10 or win11.
In Steam maybe. But this is StatCounter which is website visits. I doubt many Deck users are browsing the web.
For some reason I think a lot of them (probably even more than half) have tried browsing the web or at least using the desktop mode at least once.
Oh that is a good point, why didn't I think of that!
I'm fairly sure it's deficiencies in StatCounter's measurement that's accounting for it. Statistical noise, basically.
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.
It's hard to tell, as there are so many things that influence it. A huge factor is selection bias, as only a small number of website embed StatCounter, and that's very likely to not be a representative sample. I'd bet that the influence of that is magnitudes larger than of user agent spoofing.
And a portion of the "Windows" as well. Hiding in plain sight and all.
China is actually down. India is high but not increasing
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.
Mint is great and is absolutely enough for most people using computers, still as of now. It comes with its limitations though:
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
On your last point, there's also Flatpak which is available right from the baked in software center... That's not without its issues too, but they've been an overall smooth experience for me so far
Yes, Flatpak fixed a lot of the old shenanigans we used to have when everything was either native package, or a binary to hope for the best and install libraries manually, or source code to collect everything that’s needed for building and again, hope for the best. It is however designed to provide a way to install graphical apps, but can’t handle everything native package does (like out-of-tree kernel modules, CLI utils, system services)
I believe it can do CLI, but that's not always been the case and not a lot of CLI apps adopted it as a result
But for most of what the typical user, or even a lot of what a technical user, needs, it does a good job
Do you have an recommendation for a distro? I wanted to use mint, but i probably need wayland for a multiscreen setup with different scalings.
ubuntu
Mint should have Waylant support if you don't use Cinnamon; I know Xfce has Wayland support (though I don't use it, they can pry X11 from my cold dead hands)
atm Mint only has experimental wayland support, i tried it an got instant graphical issues on the desktop. :(
Neither Cinnamon, XFCE or Mate have stable Wayland support. You need GNOME or Plasma for that if you want a desktop (or wait for the new Cosmic desktop and new PopOS)
Well, if your GPU is NVIDIA, you will also need a bleeding edge rolling release distro for now. Other than that, anything that ships recent version of KDE Plasma or GNOME (the first one handles Xwayland with DPI scaling a bit better imo and is generally more functional)
Garuda (Arch-based distro) is worth looking at, but has a ton of UI customization that I personally don’t like and, same as with Manjaro, I’d spend some time on cleaning it up to more vanilla state.
Endeavour is cool option as well, but other than GUI installer, it provides you with Arch base and is purely terminal-centric.
OpenSuse Tumbleweed - personally never liked RPM based distros, and Zypper (the package manager) is pretty slow, but the distro itself is beloved for being great balance between bleeding edge and stability and set of GUI tools for system management.
Fedora (defaults to GNOME but has decent KDE spin) is great option for a workstation, but it has couple of advanced configurations that not everyone needs (like SELinux getting in your way sometimes) and because it’s very concerned about licensing, you might need to manually add extra video encoding/decoding drivers and media codecs with royalties.
Nobara is modification of Fedora that comes pre-packed with gaming related stuff. It’s pretty cool, but in my experience it tends to ship experimental packages with regressions.
Last but not least, if you’re patient enough to read through some documentation and follow guides step by step, can invest some time and want to learn, go with Arch Linux. The ISO ships now with text-based
archinstallinstaller that guides you through basic install and brings fairly functional Linux system out-of-box EASY, but still pretty bare bones without any assumptions on what you’re going to use it for and how. Everything that you need (like gaming, bluetooth, printing, file sharing…) has its Wiki pages with thorough explanation in form of step-by-step guide. It’s all about installing packages and changing config files, it’s not doing anything automatically for you.I keep hearing people say this. But I've got an nvidia card, and I just went with the default Mint Cinnamon install and I've had no problems whatsoever. I guess maybe my card isn't new enough to run into whatever problems other people are talking about.
... Actually, there is one minor annoyance. I get lots of nvidia flatpak updates; and they are large downloads. I'd prefer not to be downloading gigabytes of graphics card updates every week. But other flatpaks demand that I have the latest nvidia stuff, so ... I guess that is an nvidia annoyance that I experience. I don't expect that to be fixed by a bleeding edge distro though!
Yeah, Flatpak installing user-space driver for itself is unfortunately not solvable until there’s open source driver that is part of the Mesa project. Every time you update the driver in your system, Flatpak must update its nvidia-utils too, because their versions must match exactly. For Mesa drivers, Flatpak also installs the drivers as Flatpak, but they’re compatible back and forth and it only updates when it ships new version.
The cleanup should be more automatic, but try
Because it always worked on X11 and Mint Cinnamon is just that. I used NVIDIA graphics on X11 in 2007 and, apart from the extra dkms driver that could break at times, it was fine, and much better anyway than ATI/AMD with proprietary fglrx driver. Rest in piss son of a bitch.
The question was what would I recommend for Wayland. Only the brand new 555 driver combined with most recent compositors (and other packages like mesa, xwayland,…) offers decent NVIDIA experience. It’s a matter of new distro releases around this fall.
Cinnamon can run Wayland in experimental mode. It's just an extra click during login. Mint also has direct support for flatpaks repositories, with flathub by default directly on the software center.
Any experience you can share on how complete and stable is that experimental session? I probably wouldn’t throw newbie on that
There's a bug where flatpaks seemingly disappear from the system the first time you run Wayland. But it resolves with a reboot. It happens too if you change back from Wayland to X11. Other than some minor glitches from very old software that hasn't seen an update in decades, it runs perfectly fine.
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!
I don't get them putting Mint down either, and I've built multiple Gentoo systems... I don't need an easy distro but still use Mint and like it for what it brings (basically, it's Green Ubuntu, what Ubuntu was supposed to be before they lost their way)
I assume the problem is hardware. Matt's hardware didn't work well with LM, therefore Matt thinks LM sucks.. I do wish there was better hardware support but it's the reason apple went with 1 product = 1 OS = 1 general set of hardware. Sure not every iPhone has the same hardware, but that's why they have the model numbers, and it's so much easier to test 200 model mixes than 2,000,000 (Android). Windows gets all the debug info sent directly to them like the others but they also have a huge stack of hardware they can use or they can buy it to test.
Did Matt try putting the regular build on a newish machine? That's what I did with my current and was struggling until I put the latest kernel on it, should have gone with Edge, but had little trouble after)
This is an interesting post. I know the YouTuber you are talking about. I do not really like him but I would have considered him harmless. It is interesting to get your take.
Mint is great and quite popular. So, if you are going to make a YouTube video saying otherwise, I guess you have to go out of your way to come up with reasons why. I am sure that makes it sound worse than it is. Something to think about.
I have distro preferences too but most of the differences really only make a difference to those already using Linux. It is a bit like arguing about Ford vs Chevy in front of people that have never seen a car ( or truck ). In the grand scheme, they are both amazing and mostly the same thing. To listen to a fan though, one is God’s gift and the other is trash. Same with Linux distros.
I switched to librewolf so I will now show up as windows
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
What did it say? Why does it break?
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.
The problem is that websites sometimes change there behavior.
Do you have any examples of this?
Same, there must be a percent or so of Windows actually being Linux instead.
Yeah me too, safety in numbers. Maybe if Linux desktop gets bigger than Windows they'll swap it around 👨💻
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.
What's is the main topic of your blog?
Travel, nothing tech related
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.
I use ad blocker but do not spoof user agent. If uBlpck does not block statcounter, I should be counted.
I would wager thats your audiences bias showing up. If you did that measurement in lemmy users, you would get likely 90% Linux users.
lol no you wouldn’t. I’d be shocked if Lemmy users were greater than 20% Linux.
You can tell from the neofetch screenshots of their VMs showing weird configurations like 3 cores and 6 GB RAM with 15 minutes uptime.
Weird configs aren’t always a tell, my daily driver is a desktop with a tigerlake mobile engineering sample cpu
Are you implying that the host OS in those situations is not Linux?
Yes. Probably VirtualBox.
We should do a poll, who uses Linux?
Seems like you will get a biased sample here...
Why?
(Joking)
Can we commit to only posting about round number percent changes?
No, we will not stop
4.040000000000000000000001!
We could contact that person as a community
Based on a world population of 8 billion, that would be roughly 0.000000000000008% of a person. It's also not even representable as a 64 bit float so I had to do this math in my head (Calculator just says 0)
So you're saying that that number keeps going up as I get closer and closer to the actual weekend when I install it as my daily driver?
What's interesting is that multiple trackers are now saying it's above 4 percent. Last time something was posted, people questioned the data and where they got their data (which they should). Now there's multiple sites showing a real increase.
No, we have to post these when it's the year of the Linux desktop
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?
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.
Windows decline has nothing to do with any of the actual features.
It is declining because fewer people are buying PCs anymore. Every one is using a mobile device or tablet.
This is also the reason they are squeezing windows harder to make up for the down turn.
This is clearly a statistic about PCs, otherwise the share wouldnt be ~73% windows. So the decline of the desktop PC doesnt really matter here
The people who are more likely to retain a PC and not just use a phone, are more likely to be tech literate power users.
This selects against casual windows users, and selects for hardcore Linux users
But we're talking about proportions of Desktop operating systems. People using the desktop less might decrease (or slow the increase) of total desktop usage; but there would need to be more reason that just that for it to impact Windows disproportionately.
Fair enough, I am looking into buying PC only as a server, but as I am kind of migrant still trying to settle down it will be somewhere in 2025, if not 2026. And right now laptop + phone cover basically all my needs i.e. work, gaming, reading, surfing the web, interacting with the local government. Not to mention that it is much easier to get around with those compared to the headache that is moving PC :)
And from my experience most PC users now are either people who bought it 10+ years ago and they just still have it, or people really invested into AAA gaming. Everyone else has combination of smatphone and tablet/laptop.
My brother, who want nothing to do with computers if he can, asked me to install Linux on his domestic laptop. It's not an everyone is doing it yet, but there's definitely something.
Forcing everyone to stay connected will make pirating it harder, and that will drive many, many people away.
Next:
Must always be online
Cost is now $9.99 per month (free with commercial breaks. For now of course.)
Everything is stored online (60GB free, $5.99/month to up it to 199GB, $49/m for 400GB).
The thing is that most Windows users don't care and will continue to use it. People like you and I know about the benefits of Linux, but sometimes we overestimate how much regular users care about the OS they're using.
If anything, they're moving in the opposite direction. Windows Server 2025 is going to support hotpatching, which means that system updates can be applied without needing to reboot. Not sure if the technology will come to consumer Windows though.
How long do you expect legacy hardware to be supported for?
I dunno, longer than 6 years, which is about how long it took for Skylake to go from brand new to not being supported by the new version of Windows?
And I honestly can't think of a time that's even happened before when you could get 10 running on 10+ year old processors as long as they were powerful enough. And the difference between a Core 2 Duo and a Skylake i7 is vastly more than between the Skylake i7 and the current generation.
The issue is not that the hardware stops getting support, either... It's that the hardware is expressly and needlessly being blocked long before it's no longer useful. My old Skylake is now 9 years old and more than capable of running as a moderate power machine on current workloads, other than being forcibly blocked to encourage me to put it in a landfill so I can continue the consumer march for more stuff to feed the corpos.
It's wasteful. And for the most part, all that's needed is for the old drivers to be allowed to function. And to make things like TPM 2 be optional, especially considering I don't think you're even required to actually use it for Windows 11, just have it.
Interesting... I didn't realise Skylake isn't supported. I agree with your comment. I thought people were talking about much older equipment.
TPM 2 has been around since 2015ish and I wouldn't be surprised if Windows starts relying on it more heavily. A lot of businesses have already required employees to use computers with TPM 2.0 for a long time, and enterprise use is a big focus for Microsoft.
I have some Sandy Bridge systems here running strong as Linux desktops for light work. You know, these 4-core 3,3GHz processors from - hmm - 2014?
I wonder what's on the 'unknown'
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.
Bare Metal, they are injecting Ethernet cable directly into their bloodstream.
In essence Netrunner then?
Case on his Ono-Sendai
That 6% attributed to "unknown" is the one true OS, the only one ordained by the Almighty... Temple OS!
True Temple OS has no networking
It does have networking if you truly believe!
Heretical, you will burn in hell
Based security approach
Amiga.
Netcat, mostly
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.
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.
No technical reason btw, just because "fuck you".
From a macro economic perspective, (and im not advocating for a conspiracy, just aggregate business interest) they're dropping energy usage so they can pay less on their electricity bills.
So actually a double fu. get less so they can pay less rent, to provide lesser service.
Because rent seeking is the only tech bubble left.
In theory I guess it provides better security in some ways, but certainly not all over giving you hardware and a VPN. So there's that. But yeah, it sucks.
I work in email Marketing and Outlook is the worst client, especially desktop. Everything I make has to have accommodations for this shitty inbox
And as a user do I hate it too. It is too many times while I edit an email and click delete that is deletes the email instead... It seems if I click a word and get the spell window does the focus always change to the list of emails.... And it also force a spell correction if I click space... I didn't pick one of the options I just want to edit the word myself!!! And if I scrolldown to remove some parts of the email thread or just want to copy a part won't it let me if I don't click twice.. and it jumps around...damn I hate it so much. Sorry that I replied to you with all these anger. But I really felt it when I saw yours and ops comment. I hope we one day will at least think it is an ok client to work with
All the different versions as well. Outlook web is decent, desktop is terrible. The Mac version seems to be closer to web, some problems I have are fine in one version of outlook and only appear in another. Why can't the app just be a container for the web version?
As a service outlook (microsoft mail) sucks, as a web service their page sucks andnisnpoorly laid out and optimised and the new desktop client is atrocious.
They made me change from hotmail outlook, created a hotmail folder for under the new outlook and now I dont get notification for that address on the outlook app. If something gets marked as spam that isnt, marking it not spam sends it to the outlook inbox regardless of intended destination. If I reply to a mail it prioritises outlook despite the mail being sent to hotmail. As a result I cant log into shared files that people gave access to one but not the other.
Man i hope linux becomes more popular
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.
And the valve steamdeck But some people install windows on it which defeats it's linux purpose
Nevertheless, Valve's work with proton has pretty much crushed the argument that Windows is needed for games. That use to be a major sticking point, preventing people from leaving Windows - but now not so much.
If you play games that requires anti cheat It's gonna be harder to switch
Almost all anti-cheats work on linux or offer linux integration or builds. It's the scummy unethical publishers who run the typical games that uses anti-cheat who refuse to pay engineers to make the minimum effort to support linux. Because it would undermine some of their bullshit claims used to manipulate their players. Fortunately for some people like myself, the typical game that requires anti-cheat is not a game they would want to play anyways.
Ohh okay I have never seen a anti cheat that supports linux
A lot of mods are also windows locked too.
Nexus mods is working on a Linux client which is really exciting! Also Steam Workshop works on Linux. This covers a ton of use cases.
Not saying everything is 100% perfection, but it's easier than ever to switch, and only getting easier.
I imagine "Windows locked mods" would probably also benefit from just disconnecting the internet and keeping it set up just the way one likes it, since MS is gonna drop Win10 soon.
That's the case with WMR VR headsets. Sadly don't see those getting cracked to work on Linux any time soon. :(
I just saw the news for Nexus mods like 20 minutes after I posted that. Hopefully it can be integrated well soon.
But yes, over time, things will continue to get better. Even Nvidia finally started working on open drivers for their GPUs.
Oh
Also vr support
Halflife alyx?
There's some other good ones too, but fair point
I just found out halflife alyx is windows only but maybe proton
VR as a whole is pretty borked on Linux so far.
oh okay
I feel like both "people who install windows on the steam deck" and "people asking for advice for migrating to linux on reddit" are just vocal minorities which you encounter on the internet but don't really influence the Statcounter's results in a meaningful way. Generally (from my view) it's the kids who got a steamdeck for xmass and the coders who use ubuntu for work influencing the numbers.
true and the kids want to play their favorite game but they cannot on steam deck or its hard
Sorry, I stopped playing factorio on my work Linux computer. I will play next month to get us back up.
Don't worry, I've been playing plenty of Linux factorio for the last few weeks to make up for it.
Thank you for your service
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.
Do we really want that?
We have it pretty good right now. I would actually say we're living in a golden age of desktop Linux: there's constant innovation, good support, you get to do pretty much everything you need, while flying under the radar.
Linux has won the majority of the industry (servers, mobile etc.) so it's not like it has anything left to prove.
If it starts getting noticeable on the desktop I fear we're just gonna get negative attention. Users who take and not contribute, because Windows had taught them to be entitled. Unwanted attention from Microsoft, who I bet are not going to be doing nice things once they start getting paranoid about it.
I really don't think that large companies like Adobe will care about Linux even at 10% and even if they did, they are a super toxic company nowadays, the least we get to interact with them the better.
There are many games & software with no Linux support, not to mention AC blocked games. Increased marketshare could change a thing or two, at least.
As long as competition and choice continues to be the mantra of the Linux desktop, then yes, I'd love to see more and more people using it.
Very true.
I mean, Ballmer called Linux a cancer pretty early on, so that ship sailed a long time ago.
Once they start losing large sums of money due to people switching and finding viable alternatives, they certainly will care. Right now Adobe has one main thing going for them -- apathy and muscle memory of the aging demographic of their users. That will eventually change.
Absolutely. I used to be an Adobe fan, back when Kevin Lynch was a part of it, and I was a Flex developer. Then Jobs wrote his thing about Flash, and a year later, not a month after Jobs's death, Adobe dumps Flex -- and literally overnight my position changed from Flex to HTML5 and Java.
Does that mean you don't count Alpine towards Linux market share? It mostly doesn't use any GNU stuff.
You can also compile the kernel with LLVM instead of gcc, use musl instead of glibc, and use BSD coreutils instead of GNU coreutils.
not OP, but my guess is that he was referring to android
Do they use the BSD userland instead? Interesting...
Perhaps the definition isn't good enough or accurate. What would you call a system that perhaps uses Darwin kernel or Hurd plus GNU user land, or any combo of.
I think Alpine uses Busybox, but it's feasible for a Linux distro to use BSD coreutils. Not sure if any do that, though.
I assume the proportions of people who spoof their OS is slanted towards Linux
THE YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
the year of the unknown desktop!
Now you jinxed it
People have jinxed it 20 years in a row
why do we negate chromeos we are 10% at least so there we really are
For starters doesn't it only run apps from the Google play store?
and what kernel would you say it and android runs? relevant?
This is the format collision discussion that has no solution so far. A tablet that runs windows is counted as Windows. A laptop that runs android does not. Neither does an android cellphone. It all boils down to web browser user agent fuckery. This is why steam's numbers are more reliable than other sources, they're direct hardware surveys.
But the point is that a steam deck is not (but in a way it is basically just) a PC. There are tablets than run desktop interfaces and now there are laptops that can be used as tablet. Eventually the artificial mobile vs. PC/desktop/laptop schism will stop making sense.
true, but in this case you can look at the same graph that was linked and see another Linux distro clearly marked that they choose not to treat as one in their headline. seems a little silly to me
You can "sideload" apps outside the google store.
For example I've been using myinsta instead of IG. It was very easy to download and install.
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This is probably a good place to ask, but when ditching windows for Linux, what's a good distro to go with? Preferably one that has a good WINE interface.
I've seen a lot of people move to Mint or Pop_OS or Kubuntu. They're Debian based so updates are pretty stable.
I personally ended up with EndeavourOS using the KDE desktop environment. I have a steam deck, so this felt very similar to me. This is Arch based so sometimes updates break things, but I've had more success here.
Also remember that no distro is problem-free, but neither was Windows. The longer you commit, the easier it gets.
EDIT: If you're hesitant to fully commit at first, I also recommend dual booting with Windows. Over time you'll use it less and less until one day you feel like reclaiming the disk space.
I have a 10 year old laptop that I had to get rid of the hard drive for and am installing an nand drive and want to use to re-familiarize myself with Linux on it. Especially since my main desktops are too old to upgrade to Windows 11(not that I'd want to anyway) and I figure going Linux now will save me from scrambling when the pooch gets thoroughly screwed after Win 10 updates end.
I tried doing a dual boot to Mint awhile back, I did the mint backup at the start like it suggests, changed some things, broke it, restored from the backup thinking it was great id already made one, and broke the WHOLE pc.
I had to pull the battery on the BIOS to get it to go beyond a black screen when turning on.
It was terrible.
It seem to recall at the time recommendations about not doing dual boot, and if you wanted to dual boot, remove the main OS drive when you install Linux. Then put it back in.
I'd personally recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition. After distro hopping for a bit, it has personally been the best one for working right out of the box, both for my games and for my peripherals.
I like the UI, it's about at my tech level/needs. I have little to no complaints about it, which is as good as it gets.
This is one of many comments I've seen on several posts that have recommended Mint. I'm currently playing around with Ubuntu, just because it's the one I'm most familiar with from back in the day, but since the drive I'm using is temporary I might do a wipe and then load Mint and see how that operates.
In my experience, experience with one distro is experience with them all. 90% of what you are familiar with will be either similar or completely the same. So definitely give LMDE a shot.
IIRC, Zorin OS handles that the best. Furthermore, it's actually a distro that targets beginners (like e.g. Linux Mint does). So, overall, it's a great pick.
Of course, don't just expect that all your Windows software just works on Linux with WINE. Instead, search if they're somehow available on Linux and/or work through WINE. If that's not the case, then ensure that an alternative is available that you're willing to use instead.
Finally, ensure that the distro you choose, actually works great with your hardware.
Well this is the funny thing that has occurred in the last 24 hours. I have been playing about with basic Ubuntu and I installed Wine on it. But when I tried to come up with a Microsoft dependent application to test it out on I came to the realization that there are no applications that I use that are exclusive to Microsoft. Nearly everything I use is either web-based or has a Linux port.
Hell, even MS Office is web based nowadays. I think Windows truly has become obsolete, or at least out moded. That is for casual desktop users such as myself. There may be enterprise programs out there that still rely on Windows architecture.
Edit: P.S. the Ubuntu was really just a test for the machine I will be working with. I think I'm likely gonna stick Mint on it and give that a try after a new hard drive arrives for it later this week.
OK, who did you guys bully over basic tech support questions?
uMatrix prevents me from loading this statcounter website. :-( Can't lookup how they measure things. In the comments people assume the stats would be counted by just looking up the user agent, which is a naive approach. I don't think agencies dedicated to stats are doing it this simple. They have way more possibilities to track and to look what browser you are using. The stats are more accurate than you probably think. They do not need to know the exact version of browser you are using, just which type and maybe what operating system you are on.
If a script for Windows does not work on Linux and fails, then they know you are not on Windows in example.
Why are you still using uMatrix in 2024? Wasn't it discontinued 3 years ago or smth?
It's still useful with all its functionality. Even if it does not get updates, it still blocks most stuff and I can enable or block stuff too. Plus the blocklists it uses are still updated, as they act independently from the main addon. There is no better alternative in my opinion. I use uMatrix + uBlock Origin.
Where do they get data from?
They get the data from user-agent strings, so it may not be 100% accurate
User agent strings are frozen these days, at least in Chrome. They still have the browser major version and OS name at least, but Windows will always report Windows 10, Android will always report Android 10, MacOS will always report 10.15.7, and Linux is just "Linux x86_64": https://www.chromium.org/updates/ua-reduction/
User agent strings are essentially deprecated and nobody should be using them any more. They've been replaced by User-Agent Client Hints, where the site can request the data it needs, and some high-entropy things (ie fields that vary a lot between users) can prompt the user for permission to share them first.
Oh nice. Googie once again deciding for the entire Internet what it should be using and forcing it down everyone's throats.
User agents were commonly used for the wrong reasons - fingerprinting, sites that block particular browsers rather than using proper feature detection, etc. so I'm glad to see them slowly going away.
Shit started hitting the fan when everyone started faking Netscape's "Mozilla" user agent. Then "KHTML, like Gecko" and after that every fork kept the originating name in the string and extended it.
There's a good explanation about that here: https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/
The issue is that a lot of sites used the user-agent to determine if the browser supported particular features (e.g. show a fancy version of a site if the user is using Netscape, otherwise show a basic version for Mosaic, lynx, etc). New browsers had to pretend to be the old good browsers to get the good versions of sites
This is why getting rid of the user agent is a good thing. Sniffing the UA is a mess.
@Tixanou @Madiator2011 Plus they are basing themselves off of a sample of websites, so it's like polls it's made to be representative but cannot be 100 % accurate
From cookies.
What kind? Personally I wouldn't trust any kind with raisin.
From analytic cookies.
What about peanut butter? Or are you more of a salted chocolate kind of person?
Both are very trustworthy.
Statcounter numbers are to be taker with boulders of salt. you can look at many metrics and especially when you filter by country. you will see a lot of erratic unexplained changes. jumping down and then a few months lather up by sometimes up to double digits.
Question: Why is BSD so low? (And why/what is unknown?)
The BSDs got screwed over by a lawsuit in the 90s that made a lot of people hesitant to use them (coincidentally leading to the creation of the Linux kernel). Inertia carried it from there and Linux ended up getting more hardware and software support, which is the primary reason that people pick Linux over the BSDs now.
Because it’s not overly popular as a desktop os, you are far more likely to see it in certain appliances and server applications etc, none of which will show up in a pagevisits based statistic.
Less hardware support than Linux without enough substantially better about it to make it anyone's clear preference. Which isn't to say it doesn't have advantages over Linux. Just that the average BSD user is going to be able to easily swallow their pride and run Linux if things went wrong with a BSD install (trust me, I've literally done this, these people do exist)
There really isn't a compelling argument for BSD other than interest and hobby. It doesn't have the industrial use case Linux has.
If only linux gaming and thermal became more and more robust, in few year I will switch too with pleasure. Adobe suite can still be a problem but not for me anymore at least.
Playing on Linux for a year now. I wouldn't say it was flawless, but a lot has to do with me learning how to do it correctly. Like using steam and heroic game launcher, trying a different version of Proton or wine, and it's beginning to be very easy now that I have the right recipe so to say.
Good to know, the main problem is that a good % of gamer doesn't have time to a tryhard with different version of things, drivers... I have skill to setup a linux gaming machine but I don't have time to do this. If Linux gaming becoming more and more straightforward (not as windows but similar, starting from gpu driver), more and more ppl could ditch at least windows second partition.
I must be clear that the problem is not that it rakes time to do the things if you have the right recipe to do them. It takes time to find it when you make a mistake.
The good way is simple: you need a system that's well updated, so debian stable is not ideal and that was my first mistake. You need to use Proton on steam, or heroic game launcher for gog. And that's it.
The setup for these things is straightforward, simply follow a guide for your OS.
Things got better and better in the last 2 years, and they're still improving. I would argue that today Windows is not better. People learned how to install graphic drivers on windows, and any setup on Linux now is not harder than that.