Don't want to see articles from a certain category? When logged in, go to your User Settings and adjust your feed in the Content Preferences section where you can block tags!
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Another month down according to Statcounter at least, Linux on the desktop is doing better than ever. Take it with your usual little pinch of salt like any survey sampling though.

We've finally cracked 4%, which for Linux is a pretty big thing. How do they do it? They collect stats from over 1.5 million websites, so they have a pretty good sample size for it.

Here's how things have looked over the last year+

  • January 23 - 2.91%
  • February 23 - 2.94%
  • March 23 - 2.85%
  • April 23 - 2.83%
  • May 23 - 2.7%
  • June 23 - 3.07%
  • July 23 - 3.12%
  • August 23 - 3.18%
  • September 23 - 3.02%
  • October 23 - 2.92%
  • November 23 - 3.22%
  • December 23 - 3.82%
  • January 24 - 3.77%
  • February 24 - 4.03%

Here's a look at it since 2009:

See the worldwide desktop stats on Statcounter.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
37 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
See more from me
All posts need to follow our rules. For users logged in: please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Guest readers can email us for any issues.
35 comments
Page: «2/2
  Go to:

foobrew Mar 4
View PC info
  • Supporter
..does anyone have a good reason why a huge chunk moved from macosx to windows since end of last year?

That was right about when the Intel-based Mac supply dried up (they discontinued them earlier in the year). The new ARM chips are good but it's not x86 so there's still a ton of software which will need to be ported over to it to take full advantage of the architecture. In the meantime, there's emulation but that always comes at a performance cost which may be negligible or significant depending on the app.

That's just a guess but the timing does seem to coincide. I know it's been a challenge for my own company that we're still working through since none of us devs want to give up our MBP's for a Windows laptop.
sarmad Mar 4
Nice spike at the end.
sarmad Mar 4
So, does any country beat North Korea's 23.72% Linux market share?
Nice spike at the end.
It totally is. If we were to cherry-pick our data to just the last few points, we could project world domination in a few years!


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 March 2024 at 11:40 pm UTC
Last month, I likely contributed to the Linux, macOS, and Windows statistics.

I dual-booted Windows once and visited NVIDIA's site to download the new installer.

I used my iMac for After Effects, and probably visited a site or two in that time.

I used my three Linux machines quite regularly, and used the fourth Linux machine to browse the web once.
ToddL Mar 5
Hopefully 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.

This is the dream to have more people move over to Linux and one day, we'll see the Year of the Linux Desktop/Gaming finally become a reality like we're supposed to believe back in the early 2000s


Last edited by ToddL on 5 March 2024 at 5:42 am UTC
Sparhawk Mar 5
More and more people that I would not even expect to touch linux, already run linux.
It's getting more mainstream and windows does a great job of keeping to suck.
let Mar 5
I bet the actual marketshare is much bigger than that, because many linux users are more privacy-conscious, and use an adblocker which blocks statcounter's tracker and thus the requests not adding anything to the marketshare ratio.
Eike Mar 5
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
I 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 don't know how large this group is, but software development is moving towards Linux. I'm in a conservative company in a conservative corner, and even here we got people having got rid of Windows.
nenoro Mar 5
Soon Valve will migrate to gentoo and will dominate the market but then they will switch for FreeBSD.

And there are still people who keep mocking Ganoo/Linoox but cry when windows 11 is broken... windows has been broken after windows 3.1


Last edited by nenoro on 5 March 2024 at 5:35 pm UTC
Aron Mar 5
  • Supporter
Hopefully 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.
beko Mar 6
I'm not really into the loop but even I picked up on this: A shiton of YTberscontent creators… influencers, that never touched Linux before, started show-casing Linux. Think this starts to show.
I'm not really into the loop but even I picked up on this: A shiton of YTberscontent 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!
Suncatcher Mar 10
I 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.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register