Apparently desktop Linux marketshare has finally hit that elusive 2% mark

View video on youtube.com

A milestone is a milestone. :D

(P.S. I chose this version of the Hallelujah Chorus because, like Linux, it arises from the people, transformative and miraculous.)


Last edited by Nanobang on 2 July 2016 at 3:00 pm UTC

I thought we'd be still closer to 1% than 2%. That's great news! Let's just grow exponentially from there? :D

These informal surveys are encouraging, but until we have a big commercial interest pushing Linux and ensuring it gets counted, we'll never have an accurate tally of Linux desktop usage. I have a feeling that it's a lot higher than many people suspect and certainly higher than Microsoft and Apple want to admit.


Last edited by Mountain Man on 3 July 2016 at 1:39 pm UTC

Quoting: dmantioneWow, I didn't expect that considering that we were well below 2% in the last months. But many people are considering to switch to Linux at the moment, now that Microsoft is increasing pressure with Windows 10 updates. Computer magazines also had specials about switching to Linux.

If this is responsible for the rise, it is likely that some of these people will reboot to Windows again. But some will stay on Linux, so it's good.

Also the W3Schools statistics pages show Linux at the highest share ever:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

Yep, there's a "general" computing mag in Australia, which is also the biggest one, which regularly runs Linux articles and ships with a Linux distro on the DVD (APC Mag).

W3Schools is a very specific site, mostly visited by developers. So its stats aren't really useful for any global estimations.

Well that is awesome news. I think we can partially thank Microsoft for that increase, because of all the Win10 naughtiness. Just converted my Mom, and I'm looking forward to convert more apprentices. ;)

so happly more AAA games will be coming out for linux. İ just wonder what happens if Rocket League get out for linux .

1. Hot damn. We finally broke the 2% barrier.

{the following are included because of talk elsewhere in the comments to this article}

2. Insisting on people using "Linux" just for the kernel and "GNU/Linux" for an OS built on the Linux kernel is at best disingenuous when we consider the fact that GNU is not the exclusive free toolchain to be had and there are non-mobile distros in the wild built without GNU which we should absolutely not call "GNU/Linux" but are indeed Linux based.

3. Stallman can... No I won't be rude here... I'll just say it this way, it is not freedom to let someone dictate to you what shape freedom takes. The FSF and R. Stallman have a long history of doing just this and are in some ways nearly as bad as Gates, Jobs and their respective companies.

4. Arguing about this kind of stuff is one of the significant things that drives otherwise interested people away from even trying the output of the FOSS community.

Quoting: vlademir12. Insisting on people using "Linux" just for the kernel and "GNU/Linux" for an OS built on the Linux kernel is at best disingenuous when we consider the fact that GNU is not the exclusive free toolchain to be had and there are non-mobile distros in the wild built without GNU which we should absolutely not call "GNU/Linux" but are indeed Linux based.

You think wireless access points and the like running busybox and uClibc (or other non-GNU user-space) combined with the Linux kernel are contributing to the 2% desktop usage figure? Really? We're not talking about those systems, and you can refer to them as embedded Linux systems (so the context "Linux" is being used in is still clear).

Quoting: vlademir13. Stallman can... No I won't be rude here... I'll just say it this way, it is not freedom to let someone dictate to you what shape freedom takes.

Richard Stallman created the term "free software". You can talk about other kinds of freedoms however you wish, but the term "free software" means exactly what he defined it to mean.

Quoting: vlademir1The FSF and R. Stallman have a long history of doing just this and are in some ways nearly as bad as Gates, Jobs and their respective companies.

Citation required (I guess you must use one of the BSDs then).

Quoting: vlademir14. Arguing about this kind of stuff is one of the significant things that drives otherwise interested people away from even trying the output of the FOSS community.

And yet, here you are. Why? Because like most political issues, it's important. Do you think political arguments keep people from voting?

Quoting: dmantione

Quoting: devland

QuoteThis does not include Android, even though it is Linux,

Android is not Linux. Linux programs don't work on Android and Android apps don't work on Linux.
Android uses a heavily modified version of the Linux kernel. That's it.

I don't agree, because you can easily install a Linux distribution in a chroot and it will run your usual Linux applications then.

Wait a minute now. We're talking about desktop Linux. Shouldn't this discussion be about ChromeOS rather than Android? And isn't ChromeOS a desktop Linux distribution? You can actually chroot a Linux distro very easily within it. Last I checked, Chromebook sales had even surpassed Mac laptops.

Isn't it kind of snooty for Linux users to only count a Linux victory if it's their standard of what they consider a "pure" Linux distribution? If you're not counting anything that runs the Linux kernel, then shouldn't you get all Stallman-like and call it GNU/Linux?