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Another month, another record. Linux market share has now hit 3.37% according to the netmarketshare website.

Funny, I said last time "we may hit ~3% (and hopefully stay above it) by the end of 2018.", I guess I was wrong there then?

It's worth noting that all ways of tracking it come with their own flaws. Nothing is perfect. To be honest, I don't put a massive amount of faith in them myself.

Year of the netmarketshare Linux desktop!

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Tags: Misc
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gnanini Sep 1, 2017
On the last survey, it only appeared when I was on steam by wine, on Linux it never asked me to complete the survey!
Kuduzkehpan Sep 1, 2017
I got my second survey in linux steam. Also i had got 3rd time on windows in a 5 month. My account is 5 years older.
Maybe we should send an e-mail to valve.

Also im happy to see linux usage rising.
ElectricPrism Sep 1, 2017
The important thing to take away from this is that a major statistic site is giving added weight to our significance. No sense in nit-picking the technological mechanisms and merits of their authenticity as if we were all scientists and engineers.

An official source is saying that Windows and Mac are having a user decline. My opinion is that they are doing things unpopular enough to cause a user-decline which will lead to more (1) Linux Users (2) Linux Developers and (3) Better Software Improvements (4) Larger Market Cash Pool to Buy Things, etc...

This is how a snowball starts. ( The snowball technically started when Ballmer created Windows 8 and stopped respecting their users and then was denounced by Unreal Developers and Gabe Newell )

The snowball is rolled up 3,500 games and tons of software patches and fixes and upgrades across Linux. I suspect the snowball will continue to gain momentum and we'll see a healthy increase in these areas.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 1 September 2017 at 6:10 pm UTC
Pecisk Sep 1, 2017
Quoting: Leopard
QuoteIt's worth noting that all ways of tracking it come with their own flaws.

Flaw in here is , Chromebook's counts as Linux.

How that is a flaw? Last time I checked they have been very capable machines running huge list of indie games without any fuss.

They aren't super gaming machines - but neither is majority of Windows machines.
wvstolzing Sep 1, 2017
Linux becoming more mainstream ... time to migrate my a$s to openindiana 'Hipster Distribution'. (Seriously, though, they have ZFS.)
Shmerl Sep 1, 2017
Quoting: wvstolzingLinux becoming more mainstream ... time to migrate my a$s to openindiana 'Hipster Distribution'. (Seriously, though, they have ZFS.)

I still have an old UltraSPARC IIIi Sun Blade 1500 desktop with OpenSolaris. Looks like Oracle is going to kill Solaris off anyway, so it's good that illumos is still alive.


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 September 2017 at 7:06 pm UTC
wvstolzing Sep 1, 2017
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: wvstolzingLinux becoming more mainstream ... time to migrate my a$s to openindiana 'Hipster Distribution'. (Seriously, though, they have ZFS.)

I still have an old SPARC desktop with OpenSolaris. Looks like Oracle is going to kill Solaris off anyway, so it's good that illumos is still alive.

It's also good to see that there seems to be an increase of activity lately; last time I downloaded an iso to play around with*, the project seemed moribund.

(* It's pretty fun & informative to set up a bunch of different *nix VMs, and compare the various tools and documentation on each. Or at least that's what I tell myself while I'm procrastinating my real work.)

(** slightly more on topic -- I think it's pretty amusing that just as there are people who'd like to leave windows, but cannot because of games, there are people who'd be happy to switch from Linux to a BSD, but they cannot, because of, well, games.)
Shmerl Sep 1, 2017
Quoting: wvstolzing(** slightly more on topic -- I think it's pretty amusing that just as there are people who'd like to leave windows, but cannot because of games, there are people who'd be happy to switch from Linux to a BSD, but they cannot, because of, well, games.)

Resources behind Linux are way larger, and in stuff like graphics stack Linux is clearly leading. That's why FreeBSD are basically copying DRM/KMS over from Linux.

Rather than classic ones though, I'm personally more interested in some FOSS operating systems emerging, that use modern approaches to kernel design. Redox looks quite interesting (it's using Rust rather than C for its core components).


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 September 2017 at 7:33 pm UTC
slaapliedje Sep 1, 2017
Yeah, Linux has gone too mainstream, time to go back to my Atari Falcon!

So I wonder with the netmarketshare if we would do nice log into all of the servers we maintain and did a curl command to request whatever page they gather stats off of what it would look like...


Last edited by slaapliedje on 1 September 2017 at 7:35 pm UTC
wvstolzing Sep 1, 2017
Quoting: slaapliedjeYeah, Linux has gone too mainstream, time to go back to my Atari Falcon!

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