Linux on the desktop breaks 4% for the first time on Statcounter

Quoting: LibreTEKHopefully people begin making the switch due to Microsoft's gamble on forcing an AI "copilot" into their desktop OS. Not that I'm against AI but my goodness, that's gonna (as I said before, hopefully make users jump ship.

But all in all, exciting news! Been using Linux for over 10 years now and never thought it'd get to where it's at today.

Yes. AI is all about getting training data. Because of this, Microsoft tries to use his market position to get all the data from their clients.

I'm not really into the loop but even I picked up on this: A shiton of YTbers… content creators… influencers, that never touched Linux before, started show-casing Linux. Think this starts to show.

Quoting: bekoI'm not really into the loop but even I picked up on this: A shiton of YTbers… content creators… influencers, that never touched Linux before, started show-casing Linux. Think this starts to show.

Interesting. I had no idea.

Looks like exponential growth to me!

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI really wonder what's going on. As far as I know there hasn't been some major manufacturer suddenly marketing a big line of Linux computers, or anything. And as Tuxee said, I don't think it's the Steam Deck because I doubt most people browse the web with their deck.

I see three big factors that are probably contributing here.

First up, the steam deck isn't going to be directly accounting for most of those users, but the fact that it exists means that Valve has put a lot of money into compatibility tools, and a lot of major game developers are actually considering linux to be a significant fraction of their customer base. So the barriers to gaming are getting broken down from both directions, meaning it's a lot less work for a new user to figure out, which means that people who like the concept of switching to linux but don't want to give up the benefits of windows have a lot less reason to delay switching.

Second, Microsoft is getting more irritating every year. The bloatware problem in windows is so bad that if you're the kind of sucker who buys a laptop with less than 16GB of ram, you probably can't even get it to do anything anymore, and that's before you get into the automatic unavoidable updates (that have about a 10% chance of breaking your PC), the relentless advertising, and the AI nonsense they're trying to push. The pressure to move away from Windows is growing fast, at the same time the disadvantages are fading.

Third? I've met a lot of young people who seem to think that even owning a PC is too much trouble these days. They don't need to do much that android doesn't, and even a laptop seems big and clunky to kids who grew up on smartphones unless they're doing a lot of writing, PC gaming, or actually learning to code. In past years, there were a lot of people who ended up on Windows just because they didn't have any real idea of how a computer works and don't have any interest in learning, so they liked to get whatever was most user friendly and then leave it on the default settings forever. Now a small but significant and growing fraction of those low-effort users are just never bothering to get a PC at all, which leaves a larger fraction of the total PC market being the people willing to put in the effort to figure out command lines.