Linux holds more than 8% market share in India, and it's on the upward trend

yagav50850@sh.itjust.works to Linux@lemmy.ml – 800 points –
146

August 2022

Old data, man.

It's even better now.

Those wild spikes don't give me a lot of confidence in the data

That explains the popularity of "unknown OS" but not why it swings so wildly

Uhm what's re they using for this report... I would have assumed they would have gone with just taking the User Agent and similar which I guess that wouldn't matter on the modifications you say.

Yeah sure but you usually fake a real existing one so it would go into one of the categories not the Unknown.

This makes alot of sense I'll imagine the folk using Linux aren't using it out of choice but out of necessity due to linux being kinder to older hardware

The biggest spikes look like the correspond to new year. So my guess is that the spikes are vacations and show the difference between home PC and office PC usage.

You can see the same spikes on e.g. Googles IPv6 chart - when people are away from work IPv6 penetration goes up, when people are at work it goes down.

Damn, that's a lot, and within a year too!

Also, at least half of that 'unknown' is probably Linux too.

Why are so many people racist against indians? This thread is a good example.

I'm an instance admin and see heaps of the same stuff being posted. Pretty sure it's one lonely troll not lots of people. Even in this thread, it's all one user account not lots of different people, but we see the same stuff posted across lots of brand new accounts in a very similar way.

Well, up to 2 people now. But yeah, I get your point. Some people just suck

Makes sense. Even then a lot of the troll's comments are upvoted by a few people. There are definitely a few people here who share the troll's extreme opinions. Thanks for doing your part in removing all these bullshit. I wish lemmy had a way to block account creation by IP addresses. That might stop trolls from making dozens of alt accounts.

We very often see the same username created across many instances, it's very easy to do and Lemmy has no protections against it. Plus, there are no protections against creating multiple accounts to upvote your own posts (don't get any ideas 😆). IP blocks wouldn't work as instances are entirely independent, so there is no sharing of IP info across different instances.

Currently there is at least some level of coordination across instances, though, such as Lemmy.world's Defense HQ, where instance admins can share info about spammers/trolls so we don't have to wait for a report from one of our own users. There's also Fediseer, but this protects against spam instances not spam accounts on mainstream instances.

We very often see the same username created across many instances

Guilty as charged. I'll say though, there are several legitimate reasons why one might want to do this. I personally use it as a substitute for Reddit's multireddit feature, by grouping community subscriptions across different instances by theme. As long as users use the same username across instances I don't think this practice should be automatically regarded as an attempt to sockpuppet. It that was the goal, the accounts would definitely not be using the same username across all the instances.

Personally I have accounts on multiple instances because I wanted to make communities in different languages and some instances focus a lot more on one language than others and also because the SFW instances defederated the NSFW ones. I do not really interact with the same posts though.

That's what I used to love so much about reddit. NSFW and regular content on the same platform. No judgment.

Though the quality has really gone downhill since the people that really did it for exhibitionism reasons got overshadowed by the enormous wave of people trying to spam their onlyfans :(

Monetisation kills everything, not just on the platform side but also the content-generator side.

I didn't intend to imply that by using the same username across instances you were breaking some sort of rule. Different instances have different moderation policies, different federation policies, and different intents. Having multiple accounts in good faith should not be an issue and was not what I was trying to imply.

Rather, the intention was to show that we know bad actors do this with nefarious intent. Here's an example (they show zero comments as they have been banned with content removed - also I think these ones only had posts not comments anyway):

lemmy search showing many search results for the same name across many instances indicating escort services

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there are no protections against creating multiple accounts to upvote your own posts

They don't even have to be real accounts. Lemmy uses the ActivityPub protocol, and nothing's stopping someone from creating an ActivityPub server that federates with a Lemmy instance and spams upvotes from randomly-generated usernames. The server could just pretend that every username is a valid one.

Of course, I think something like that would be defederated pretty quickly.

Yes, there's fediseer that can help with that sort of thing. However, I think if it wasn't spam, it may not get noticed as quick as you'd think. Create a lemmy.world account, post a meme, and use your special server to throw 50 or 100 upvotes at it, and probably no one would realise.

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The problem is that would also ban anyone else who might be on the same IP. VPN, Tor exit node, public WiFi etc. Nothing beats a well staffed moderation team and other users willing to report abuse IMO.

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Indians are present in big numbers on reddit and other websites due to how populated India is, how english is popular there and that they aren't contained in national platforms like their chinese neighbors. It makes them noticeable for bigots to single them out and target. Just because they want someone to hate and laugh at to up their self-esteem.

riiiight it's not like they use their population to push lies, distort the truth and not push their extreme caste hatred elsewhere.

It makes them noticeable for bigots to single them out and target.

it's actually the opposite. one indian guy pushes a lie that puts india in a better light and almost every indian votes the post or comment to the top. anyone pointing out the truth is buried by the nationalistic brigade.

Racism is bad, using the ignorant populace to push lies is bad too.

Do you think the government itself is involved here, or is it just volunteers? Did it occur to fediverse? I think here you are talking about reddit, right?

I'm not Indian and all I've seen lately are news about how bad their ecological and ethnic situations under Modi are. I've heard of something named like r/chodi, but mostly from drama write-ups. What's the scale of brigading we are talking about?

I think it's due to the stereotypes and the bad experiences, I've had pretty bad experiences with indians in gaming (racist, annoying, begging) and work (incompetent, corrupt, etc), but I've also seen that from other people with different backgrounds, more importantly though is that I've also seen some amazing tutorials in YouTube from Indian peeps and I've also found some great repos from Indian devs as well.

Probably trolls looking for attention and engagement. But not being aware that their comments does hurt someone.

4chan trolls who didn't grow up when everyone else did.

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Glad that there are govt. level systems who make use of Linux (mostly ubuntu ) systems here. For eg. , in kerala, all govt schools and colleges use linux for computer labs and academic activities, i guess the local body administration too use ubuntu.

Only wish we could convince those private sector schools of the money they'll save converting those slow windows systems to linux.

Problem with private schools is most likely the training investment required. They can't as easily replace IT team and/or CS teachers with those who can handle Linux

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Somehow things seem similar (perhaps better) in Greece:

12% in Norway! At least last I checked when this same stat was posted.

How much in Linuxland?

Edit: 3.52% in Finland.

Czech Republic is at 2.53%

This is the birthplace of Red Hat Linux for god's sake

Greenland is at 12,51% idk why but it is so I guess

Statcounter reports 99% of Penguinland(Antarctica) uses OS X, which is obvious bullshit

Rechecked this now, and it's at about 5% now. The statistics seem a bit weird to me, unless there are some big seasonal changes. Your 12% was recorded in June and July. Maybe with less business activity during these months, the Windows share plummets in favor of home users who are more prone to use Linux.

To be fair here, Greece has much less population than India 🙂

Oh my bad, I misunderstood the concept of percentage.

To put it in right context (relying on Wiki data for year 2021):

Current population of Greece: 10,482,487 (~10.5 Million)

Current population of India: 1,210,854,977 (~1.2 Billion)

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UnkownOS is a great privacy operating system. If users dont know what they are doing, then how can the government?

Also consider the number of people in India. There is a massive Linux user base there.

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Here's what it looks like in Morocco:

Somehow we prefer using the Apple more than the Penguin.

Why is Chrome OS separate?

It doesn't really feel like Linux if you ask me. It's not even open source, since Google controls everything. You could run Linux apps on it with a special mode I guess, but what bugs me is that they call Linux a "feature" when it's absolutely not that at all.

But really, not a single soul in Morocco has even heard of Chrome OS. And even then, they're gonna hate it.

In Canada, Apple is taking most of the increase, I wish Linux was more prevalent but I'm happy to see the downward slope for Windows:

I just hope asahi Linux takes of because the M3 looks sick but I'll be fucked if I get sucked into the apple ecosystem. I'd rather be forced to use Windows on arm.

I wonder how many of them are using Kali Linux

That is impressive since the world share for Linux is something below 4%. So the uptake is over double of that of the rest of the world.

Makes sense, when I check new distro/apps videos on YT, something like 70% of them are made by Indian people.

And from 2026 thanks to Microsoft it will raise more as I can’t possibly imagine everyone buying new computers just for windows 11

Me neither, but what I can imagine is people running an unsupported OS forever, like they did with XP and probably 7

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netbsd is just chilling somewhere in the corner, left to rot alone :(

NetBSD's license helps it get adoption, but much fewer public forks/natural contributors, so it's gonna be pretty much impossible for it to catch up

I think it actually hurts adoption as is allows companies to steal code

It is hard to say Linux holds market share because Linux is not a bitch to be sold, but it's not hard to guess why people prefer it.

Ofc, you would not want your own computer to have a virus, would you?

Joke, I'm jealous of you and your Government. Germany is doing something, but not nearly enough to push Linux.

We need more Linux marketing and more Linux hardware shops like Tuxedo Computers, SlimbookES, Purism, etc.

Hopefully the Steam Deck is contributing here too.

Why is linux so popular in India?

Probably because Microsoft made newer versions to of Windows unusable on the cheap, older machines that are common there

Because it's free. That's the beauty of FOSS software. But only is it user freedom respecting but also often free of charge.

In third world countries like India where only a small percentage can afford a Windows licence, Linux can thrive. And once people see it can do anything that Windows can, and far better with no security concerns, plus they can modify and build upon Linux, they tend to adopt it with passion.

If you're starting a business in India and have little money but need an OS to run your business, Linux can do that for you for free.

Government departments are slowly ditching windows because everything they need to do can be done on Linux without malware attacks and every application screaming "buy me!" every time you open it.

Also educational institutions (at least in my State) do give basic Ubuntu training. I learned Gimp ,Inkscape and Libre office as part of my curriculum.

And we love free stuff.

There is also the reduction of dependencies on non-democratic institutions for the government to function! The America first policy held by the US for a few years triggered a lot of planning from governments to increase their ability to sovereign from the states.

I suspect it is a combination of its being free, working well on older hardware, and the tech literacy in India.

Software development and engineering are important aspects of the Indian economy. Linux is arguably the best platform for that kind of work, especially in the cloud. Tech support of those kinds of systems require the same skills.

Given how well Linux runs on older machines, I consider low Linux penetration a hallmark of rich countries.

In my own household, Linux goes on all the older hardware ( including Macs ). That has really extended the length of time before hardware needs to be replaced. It also means that, over time, the percentage of active equipment using Linux has increased.

I can speculate:

  1. Engineering is very popular in India and computer programming is one of the courses that is common to all disciplines. Our professors recommended installing Linux.

  2. A few years back, Dell would sell budget laptops with Ubuntu preloaded instead of Windows. Although I can't find any right now.

  3. Back around 2010s, in my state edu. board, we were taught about Ubuntu in high school and had Linux Mint installed in our school computers. Although the material was very shallow and designed short-shortsightedly, it helped introduce Linux and FOSS to lots of us.

India is a country with a huge population India is also a third world country where people. 1 computer is probably an years wages for most Indians. And alot of linux distros run well on older hardware same goes for eastern europe and africa or so I hear plus engineering is very popular over there as embed put it himself

Because they are smarter than the West and less likely to use the biggest "scam" called Windows. Linux is also suitable for less modern computers and useful with excellent FOSS software.

I wish they would include mobile in these stats, it would better show consumer operating systems and the Android bump would let people know Linux isn’t as niche as they thought

Edit: Apparently they have this but they don’t label it as Linux

but Android doesn't feel like linux does it ? its on very old kernel , its restricted relatively locked down

Because it's not the same thing. That's not what they mean with Linux.

We really need more marketing of Linux itself. I run ubuntu and run Cyberpunk 2077 natively, with a wireless gamepad.. It's all out of the box, I don't know why people are afraid of it?

Edit: It does take about 30 seconds to load things into VRAM, but still worth all of it.

Think of the opportunity Linux creates in a place like India. If you have some smarts and a good work ethic, Linux and a machine from 2010 allows you to run the very latest software used by tech giants all over the world.

You can self-teach a huge number of skills on Linux and become deeply familiar with the REAL software that professionals are using—even in the West. One you know your stuff, you can leverage that into a job that pays fantastic money by local standards.

If you want to be a developer, you can build a GitHub portfolio or participate in Open Source projects.

If you are more entrepreneurial, you can post videos showing others how to use the skills you have acquired. These not only make a fantastic resume but they can generate advertising income. What may seem like a poor return on time in richer countries can provide important income in poorer ones.

If you have not tried it, you may be amazed that you can run up-to-the minute current versions of Docker, Kubernetes, databases, dev in any language ( even .NET ), and almost any other in-demand technology on really old Linux hardware.

Beyond hard technology skills, a Linux computer is just a fabulous productivity tool. You can get hardware and software to help manage your business that you perhaps could never afford otherwise. If you are a creative professional, you have access to amazing tools. If you are a photographer, you have pro level tools. If you are an architect or engineer, same thing. Again, we can say that some of these are not “professional” but I bet they do the job in markets where few can afford expensive software.

About the only things that push the hardware envelope these days are video editing, AI, and gaming. Even these work better than you may think though. It will take you longer but you can do pretty good video editing on 2010 HW for example.

But how do we profit off of this ???

edit: lol sad you all cannot tell this was a joke -_-

First, you set up a company, doesn't matter the name. Hire the bare minimum number of employees maybe one to handle accounting, and one sales person to start. Make sure you pay them either minimum wage or slightly under, with a false promise of introducing a profit sharing mechanism soon to keep them motivated. Then, the magic starts. You handle key clients yourself and make your sales target various demographies - sell this graphic for 1 bison dollar per jpeg. The trick is to sell the first million within 3 months. Show these sales to banks or investors and ask them for a further 500 million to expand and scale up your sales. Then, you vanish to an unknown island in the Pacific. Easy money.

Sure, as our European businesses - under management of big IT groups - are using indian's sweatshop - that we have to train moreover!!! - for implementation and operational projects. I don't say there's not skilled indian, of course not, but they got a "shortcut".

West is full of cowards and traitors .

1000018735 Indians

Hahaha they did a racism so funni

Fuck off streetshitter

It must be hard to make your way through the world with a shatteringly low IQ. Unfortunately for you, one does not have to be Indian to object to racism... so we can confirm that your cognition is at rock bottom.

I guess that would explain why you act like such a bottom-feeder, spewing so much garbage because that's all you like to eat.

This was fun to type, thanks for the opportunity! Go fuck a cactus :D

People will seriously believe anything just to feel superior. No wonder most people spewing bullshit like this are losers in dire need of feeling like they're worth something.

Looks good, distro forums will be the new XDA.

"sAr, when linux karnal 6.9 OC boLTE?"

"I installed all DEs and on my computar now not boot"

"When debian update sar?"

As an Indian, I never ask someone to help me set up my Linux, understand its usage, or troubleshoot any issues. Instead, I read the entire wiki or search the web to find a solution on my own. If I still can't find any help, I move on and forget about that.

And if you do ask someone, your grammar is on point.

Splendid, keep it up!

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