Linux use overtakes macOS on the Stack Overflow Survey

As it's a developer site, I'm quite surprised this hasn't been the case years ago already. I'm at a big conservative company, and even we started to use Linux. (After 25 years of Linux usage at home and Windows usage at work, I finally get some bits of Linux at the company! )

As it's a developer site, I'm quite surprised this hasn't been the case years ago already. I'm at a big conservative company, and even we started to use Linux. (After 25 years of Linux usage at home and Windows usage at work, I finally get some bits of Linux at the company! )

So what you're saying is that it took you 25 years of nagging? :P


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 3 January 2023 at 1:24 pm UTC

This is very surprising to me, even though of course I personally really can't understand why anyone would choose mac over linux these days. It also seems pretty ridiculous that corporate IT departments which are probably constantly being asked not to waste money waste tons of money on macs which are both much more expensive and a lot harder to maintain (at least for the IT department itself, I'm sure apple makes all sorts of promises to counteract this).

Where I work I'm seemingly the only one who uses linux, and frankly if they told me I couldn't anymore I'd probably immediately quit. Life is too short to spend 8 hours a day dealing with apple's shit.

This is very surprising to me, even though of course I personally really can't understand why anyone would choose mac over linux these days. It also seems pretty ridiculous that corporate IT departments which are probably constantly being asked not to waste money waste tons of money on macs which are both much more expensive and a lot harder to maintain (at least for the IT department itself, I'm sure apple makes all sorts of promises to counteract this).

Where I work I'm seemingly the only one who uses linux, and frankly if they told me I couldn't anymore I'd probably immediately quit. Life is too short to spend 8 hours a day dealing with apple's shit.

If you need to develop and compile applications for iOS, you can only do it with Xcode which is Mac only, by doing this they force peoples to buy Mac :(

This is very surprising to me, even though of course I personally really can't understand why anyone would choose mac over linux these days. It also seems pretty ridiculous that corporate IT departments which are probably constantly being asked not to waste money waste tons of money on macs which are both much more expensive and a lot harder to maintain (at least for the IT department itself, I'm sure apple makes all sorts of promises to counteract this).

Where I work I'm seemingly the only one who uses linux, and frankly if they told me I couldn't anymore I'd probably immediately quit. Life is too short to spend 8 hours a day dealing with apple's shit.

Aside of what @serge has said, there are other things that are also important as to why choosing macOS over Linux. Integration with Microsoft 365 products, from Teams to Outlook, integration with company's directory, including the ability to wipe the device if lost/stolen, deployment of GPO's via Endpoint, integration of SSO... Granted, all this might be different if the company I'm at didn't use M365 or Azure AD.

However, not related to the above, for me there is also another point to not allow people to use Windows, mac AND Linux... and it's basically because IT would need to support them all. Reducing differences in hardware and software makes IT departments run smoother.

Where I work I'm seemingly the only one who uses linux, and frankly if they told me I couldn't anymore I'd probably immediately quit. Life is too short to spend 8 hours a day dealing with apple's shit.

I my corporation it is the same. A few of us used Linux for years, but were forced to use Windows since 2019 (at least we got VMs with Linux locally or on Citrix, otherwise I would have quit back then)
Now IT was forced to also support macOS (because the younglings seem to like that crap), and me and another colleague were to test, if macbooks could replace our Windows boxes with Linux VMs. I gave it a fair shot. I didn't know how good or bad it was, and I thought it couldn't be that bad. The hardware at least is fantastic (M1).
But boy was I surprised, when I got my finger on that machine. It drove me insane. The hardware support is abyssal (the macBook is the only machine, that wont work on my HP docking station at home). 2K monitors look like shit, because scaling does only work on 4K monitors. And lets not talk about macOS, its ridiculously bad, when you come from a KDE background
Now I am at the point to quit my job, because I have doubts, that policies will change any time soon. Luckily, there are plenty of companies out there, that are not so stupid.

But to counter your point: I'm actually surprised, that so many are using Linux professionally, considering, that most corporate IT departments are Microsoft sycophants

If you need to develop and compile applications for iOS, you can only do it with Xcode which is Mac only, by doing this they force peoples to buy Mac :(

That is true, but for the most part, you can develop on Linux and test on a mac sitting somewhere, connecting with some remote desktop. For mobile, I highly recommend Flutter ;-)
Then you only need a mac for iOS specific issues.


Last edited by Vardamir on 3 January 2023 at 3:38 pm UTC

Mac OS still gets more native ports for games. I'll take more native games over winning a survey on a site I don't even frequent.

Mac OS still gets more native ports for games. I'll take more native games over winning a survey on a site I don't even frequent.

Mm. Native, sure. But does Proton work on Mac OS?

Mac OS still gets more native ports for games. I'll take more native games over winning a survey on a site I don't even frequent.

Not by much. In 2022 there were 1,791 native Mac games released on Steam compared to 1,411 native Linux (and 12,706 native Windows).


Last edited by CatKiller on 3 January 2023 at 6:26 pm UTC

This is very surprising to me, even though of course I personally really can't understand why anyone would choose mac over linux these days. It also seems pretty ridiculous that corporate IT departments which are probably constantly being asked not to waste money waste tons of money on macs which are both much more expensive and a lot harder to maintain (at least for the IT department itself, I'm sure apple makes all sorts of promises to counteract this).

Where I work I'm seemingly the only one who uses linux, and frankly if they told me I couldn't anymore I'd probably immediately quit. Life is too short to spend 8 hours a day dealing with apple's shit.

If you need to develop and compile applications for iOS, you can only do it with Xcode which is Mac only, by doing this they force peoples to buy Mac :(

Or you have those people set up a mac vm or you can have the company use something like... flutter I think it is, that compiles for android and iOS, not sure through what means though.

This is good 👍️

!link

Mm. Native, sure. But does Proton work on Mac OS?

I'd trade Proton for more native games.

Not by much. In 2022 there were 1,791 native Mac games released on Steam compared to 1,411 native Linux (and 12,706 native Windows).

Assuming your math is correct you would trade 380 native games for winning some dumb survey ? Is this really where the Linux gaming community is these days ?

I'd trade Proton for more native games.

Are you unwell?

With Proton, I can play every game (well, almost). At almost identical performance (benchmarks showing a 3-10% loss compared to native Windows).
With a few more native games, I still couldn't play the majority of games I'd like to play.
And the native ones have no guarantee whatsoever to actually have good performance (sometimes, the ports are just straight worse than the Proton version).

A game having a native Linux version is a nice bonus at this point. But no longer a necessity, and that's quite amazing.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 4 January 2023 at 1:38 pm UTC

Mm. Native, sure. But does Proton work on Mac OS?

I'd trade Proton for more native games.

Not by much. In 2022 there were 1,791 native Mac games released on Steam compared to 1,411 native Linux (and 12,706 native Windows).

Assuming your math is correct you would trade 380 native games for winning some dumb survey ? Is this really where the Linux gaming community is these days ?

So you'd trade 380 native games for around 10,000 Proton games? I get preferring native but that's ridiculous.

Or you have those people set up a mac vm or you can have the company use something like... flutter I think it is, that compiles for android and iOS, not sure through what means though.

I tried a Mac vm once, but usb wasn't working (don't know if it is still the case now) so you can't test your app on a real device, and you are left with emulation and a significant loss of performance from the vm.

You can also rent a Mac in the cloud, but it is the same you can't test your app on a real device.

Flutter, Ionic, and Quasar require both Xcode to compile on iOS, you can develop and test for Android on any platform, but you will have to do some specific code for iOS (don't really know for Flutter, i don't use it, but it is probably the same as with Ionic and Quasar) and you will only learn about it once you test on the device.

In the end if you want to develop efficiently for iOS you have to use their material.

Integration with Microsoft 365 products, from Teams to Outlook

Yes, I know from experience that corporate IT departments care a lot about this and that their attitude is that this somehow necessitates either mac or windows, but it's yet another really stupid consideration on their part. For one, you can use MS office on the browser these days, which is more than sufficient for email (this is how I access my work email). Same goes for teams, which I believe has a native linux version anyway.

Beyond that, I'll resist going on a rant about how ridiculous MS office is and the violence I'd like to perpetrate on anyone who tries to give me an excel spreadsheet, but suffice it to say, if you absolutely *MUST* use MS office crap, you're probably going to have a hard time convincing me why libreoffice is not adequate for that task. Indeed, whenever I do have the misfortune of being forced to look at an excel spreadsheet, I just use libreoffice, in which the first thing I do is export it to a non-ridiculous format. Furthermore, just about every programming language these days has some package for reading excel files into some dataframe format... and if the amount of effort collectively represented by those packages doesn't give some indication of the amount of human suffering caused by excel, I don't know what does.

Integration with Microsoft 365 products, from Teams to Outlook

Yes, I know from experience that corporate IT departments care a lot about this and that their attitude is that this somehow necessitates either mac or windows, but it's yet another really stupid consideration on their part. For one, you can use MS office on the browser these days, which is more than sufficient for email (this is how I access my work email). Same goes for teams, which I believe has a native linux version anyway.

Beyond that, I'll resist going on a rant about how ridiculous MS office is and the violence I'd like to perpetrate on anyone who tries to give me an excel spreadsheet, but suffice it to say, if you absolutely *MUST* use MS office crap, you're probably going to have a hard time convincing me why libreoffice is not adequate for that task. Indeed, whenever I do have the misfortune of being forced to look at an excel spreadsheet, I just use libreoffice, in which the first thing I do is export it to a non-ridiculous format. Furthermore, just about every programming language these days has some package for reading excel files into some dataframe format... and if the amount of effort collectively represented by those packages doesn't give some indication of the amount of human suffering caused by excel, I don't know what does.

It is not the IT departments the ones that decide on using MS365, but it's up to IT departments to support certain tools and applications, along with configuration and deployment, of said tools.

One can use many things in the browser, but that doesn't mean it works in the same way that the native clients. By the way, Teams for Linux lacks MANY functionalities and is buggy as hell. Similarly with OneDrive, you'd need a 3rd party app to integrate seamlessly with Linux, and you'd need to write an Ansible playbook to have all deployed to a new device, but that would not work until the user has logged in, or unless you impersonate the user when setting it up and then changing the password again, to run the playbook... And like this, a ton of other things.

However, with macOS/Windows, they get the device, log in, MFA prompts to be set up, all the policies and configurations download and by the time the user start using the laptop all software and security policies are there. As much as I hate macOS/Windows, to me, at work, that is priceless.

Now, regarding the libreoffice comparison. Most finance departments use Excel because it is what they're used to. In some cases they'll have bespoke connectors that don't exist in libreoffice. Others will use some proprietary settings in Microsoft, or simply don't know/want to switch, because, let's face it, people are scared of changes when things "work" and because MS uses a big marketing campaign, or fear of open source... Of course, I'd prefer if they did use libreoffice, but I cannot force people to change how they work. Companies would lose millions on re-educating their staff.

As for email, let's face it, the functionalities and UX that Outlook offers, thanks to Exchange, not for me but for most executives, are also superior to what the competition does. Not even AWS with their mail service get near enough to Exchange. Yes, everything Exchange does can be done with a mix of other tools and providers, but then again, you'd need someone to know about it, someone to install, configure, maintain and support. There's a reason why people like turnkey solutions (usually money and simplicity)

Just for the record: I was the only one using a Linux distro at work until recently in my company, and I hate spreadsheets. Whether Calc or Excel ;)

Every programming language can read spreadsheets... but not everyone that deals with spreadsheets knows a programming language. We, as in most tech people, fail to understand and see, in most cases, a couple of things:

1. Most people, in 2023, struggle to do anything on a computer that is not opening a browser and check the internet.
2. Even if they're more tech-savvy, for them a computer, or software, is just a tool to do their work, and don't care the loops you need to go through to make it work, or the sweat it was to set it up in time record for a new starter, or your political views on why open source is better... They just want to come in at 9, leave at 17, and forget about it.


Last edited by Arehandoro on 5 January 2023 at 12:36 am UTC

I'd trade Proton for more native games.

Too bad. You don't get that option. You get decreasing numbers of native games and no Proton, or you get decreasing numbers of native games with Proton (with the potential that more games means more market share which means more games - which does tentatively appear to be happening post-Deck according to the statistics). This isn't a secret.

Assuming your math is correct

Feel free to check them yourself; they're from SteamDB.

you would trade 380 native games for winning some dumb survey ? Is this really where the Linux gaming community is these days ?

You appear to be under the impression that the user base of generic developers (not even game developers) hanging out on Stack Overflow is somehow directly tied to the number of native Linux games that get released. For what reason you would think that, I can't possibly fathom. Indirectly, of course, more developers using Linux means more developers improving tooling, getting experience, and wanting to game on Linux, although you probably think that's dumb. However, if you want to moan about "some dumb survey" that is related to the number of native games we get, you should be looking at this one, where Linux has lost to Mac every month for the past ten years.


Last edited by CatKiller on 5 January 2023 at 4:28 am UTC