8 ms·

Every month more and more people switch to Linux and I just love it. I'm tired of one company controlling the core operating system of 85% of desktop computers

Every month more and more people switch to Linux and I just love it. I'm tired of one company controlling the core operating system of 85% of desktop computers and users being at their whim. You want proprietary programs? Alright, fine, one can argue for that. But the central, core operating system of general purpose computers should be free and fully controllable by the users that own them!

petcat 8mo ago
> Every month more and more people switch to Linux We've been hearing this for decades and yet the home Linux userbase is microscopic and somehow even smaller than ever. Unless we're going to count Google's Android and Chrome OS. Those are the only Linux-based distributions that have ever gained market share over desktop Windows.
- dralley 8mo ago
  I mean, this is literally false? Desktop Linux userbase is growing, it's bigger than it has ever been even without including ChromeOS, and more OEMs are shipping devices with desktop linux than ever before (Valve's suite of devices, multiple laptop vendors including major ones like Lenovo, a few SteamDeck competitors)
- vikramkr 8mo ago
  I mean - steam deck was a pretty significant inflection point quite recently. Making gaming viable on linux via a popular consumer product is a huge deal and starts to kill one of desktop linux's single biggest barriers to adoption.
- bobsterlobster 8mo ago
  Calling 4-5% marketshare microscopic is not fair. I get it if it was still stuck at 1%, but it's growing, and the rate of growth has been increasing too.
  - rudhdb773b 8mo ago
    Is the desktop/laptop linux market share really over 4%? What is that based on?
    - jsheard 8mo ago
      The Steam survey has it at 3.6%, although that's obviously skewed towards gamers, and counts Steam Decks in addition to desktops.
      - lambdaone 8mo ago
        According to Statcounter, Linux's share is 3.86% and rising; but I'd imagine that quite a bit of the almost 16% 'unknown' is also Linux. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide Not insignificant at all.
        godelski 8mo ago
        Maybe more interesting is that if you switch to looking at just America Linux jumps to 5.25% (unknown 7.4%) (Similar numbers for all of NA), and for Europe it is 4.32% (9.75% unknown). Again, not huge numbers but also not insignificant. But they are quickly growing and taking share from Microsoft. If we look back at (Dec) 2021 the numbers are 1.8% and 2.2% respectively. Those gains are meaningful.
      - havblue 8mo ago
        You can see that while Windows 10 numbers are going down over the past few months, the Windows 11 numbers aren't making up for it. About 2/3 of that gap are going to Linux with the other third going to Mac. So Mac is getting more market at the expense of Windows as well. There are a significant number of disgruntled Windows users leaving over the past year.
    - GeneralMaximus 8mo ago
      At least according to Statcounter, Linux is currently at 3.86% worldwide: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide. It's slightly larger in the US at 5.28%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st... In India, where I live, it's surprisingly at 6.51%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india Take this with a grain of salt, because numbers from Statcounter are not fully accurate. However, none of those numbers are small. 3.86% of the entire PC market is not something to scoff at.
- fundatus 8mo ago
  Somehow I think the stars might be aligning this time though. People are genuinely fed up with Windows and governments around the world are loudly thinking about how to reduce dependence on US tech. And then there is Proton which makes it much easier for Gamers to jump ship. To me it feels like there is more momentum than ever for this. On the other hand I am also a realist and I don't think that Linux will take over the Desktop, but it will certainly have its biggest growth year ever in 2026.
  - nosianu 8mo ago
    > Somehow I think the stars might be aligning this time though > governments around the world are loudly thinking about how to reduce dependence on US tech I am definitely sympathetic, after all, I worked for a major Linux company for quite a few years, started using Linux RH) in 1994, and even wrote some network related kernel modules. However, this switch to Linux is not going to happen (apart from where it is already used heavily, from servers to many non-PC systems). I have been in projects for large companies but also government on and off. Now, I manage the IT of a small (<50 employees) non-IT business with people in several countries. People who actually comment in these discussions seem to be entirely focused on the OS itself. But that is what matters the least in business. Office is another, and even there most people who don't deal with it at scale are way too focused on some use case where individuals write documents and do some spreadsheeting. It's almost always about a very small setup, or even just a single PC. However, the Microsoft stack is sooooo much more. ID management. Device management. Uncountable number of little helpers in form of software and scripts that you cannot port to a Linux based stack without significant effort. Entire mail domains are managed by Office 265 - you own the domain and the DNS records, you get licenses for Office365 from MS, you point the DNS records to Microsoft, you are done. Sure, MS tools and the various admin websites are a mess, duplicating many things, making others hard to find. But nobody in the world would be able to provide soooo much stuff while doing a better job. The truth is, they keep continuously innovating and I can see it, little things just conveniently showing up, like that I now have a Teams button to create an AI script of my conversations, or that if more than one person opens an Office document that is stored in OneDrive we can see each other inside the document, cursor positions, and who has it open. Nobody in their right mind will switch their entir4e org to Linux unless they have some really good reasons, a lot of resources to spare, and a lot of experience. Most businesses, for whom IT is not the be-all-end-all but just a tool will not switch. But something can be done. The EU could, for example, start requiring other stacks for new special cases. They cannot tell the whole economy to switch, not even a fraction of it, but they could start with new government software. Maybe - depends on how it has to fit into the existing mostly Microsoft infrastructure. They could also require more apps to be web-only. I once wrote some code for some government agency to manage business registrations, and it was web software. The focus would have to be to start creating strong niches for local business to start making money using other stacks, and to take the long road, slowly replace US based stacks over the next two or three decades. At the same time, enact policies that let local business grow using alternative stacks, providing a safe cache-flow that does not have to compete with US based ones. The EU also needs some better scaling. The nice thing about the MS stack is that I can use it everywhere, in almost all countries. The alternative cannot be that a business would have to use a different local company in each country. I read a month ago that EU travel to the US is down - by only ~3%. Just like with any calls for boycott of this and that, the truth is that those commenting are a very tiny fraction. The vast majority of people and businesses are not commenting in these threads (or at all), and their focus is on their own business and domain problems first of all. Switching their IT stack will only done by force, if the US were to do something really drastic that crashes some targeted countries Microsoft- and Cloud-IT.
- deaux 8mo ago
  Go and download the archives of Reddit, there are plenty of torrents out there. Filter to a sub like r/gaming. Relative frequency graph of Linux mentions. You'll see a magnitude increase over the last 12 months compared to years before. It's real. Must admit, not sure if the data torrents are uptodate now that Reddit anti-scrapes so hard to raise their premium on the exclusive contract to the highest bidder, OpenAI.
- ManlyBread 8mo ago
  According to the Steam Hardware Survey (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...) only ~3.6% Steam users use Linux and these statistics include the Steam Deck users. SteamOS accounts for ~26% of Linux users, which in turn brings down the count to ~2.6%. For comparision, MacOS is ~2.1% of the market share at the moment. Wake me up when Linux gets to 10%.
- HendrikHensen 8mo ago
  More and more desktop apps are just becoming websites. More and more desktop apps are using Electron rather than some native app. Windows is slowly becoming a dumpster fire in terms of usability and issues. Most games these days Just Work on Linux without any tinkering. While I hardly think that this year will be "the year of the Linux desktop" or whatever, but if these trends keep going, I really foresee Linux market share growing, slowly, each year, until it's not so microscopic anymore.
- GoatInGrey 8mo ago
  As phones replace desktop computers for non-technical users, leaving a concentration of "skilled" users, my suspicion is that the pattern will resemble the quote "Slowly, then all at once."
- tempaccsoz5 8mo ago
  Have a look at the Steam Hardware [and software] Survey [0] results. Linux has been trending upwards whist Windows has been trending down for a wee while. And the population this looks at is primarily interested in gaming, which means that this is despite a compatibility layer being needed for a large amount of the software used. I imagine in other communities (software, old people) it's trending much faster. E.g. I recently installed Linux Mint for my grandma so she could use email and an up-to-date web browser on her old laptop that can't run (secure) Windows anymore. The UI differences are marginal for her, and she can do everything she needs to much better than she could before (which was not at all). [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
jillesvangurp 8mo ago
It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome for most people. They'll have some bit of software they imagine is irreplaceable because they have some special use case that means that they just have to tolerate the relentless abuse. Or some other excuse. Whatever. It all boils down to people being afraid of change. Most of that fear is not all that rational. It's not unlike kidnap victims falling in love with their captors. Your mind just tries to make the most of what fundamentally is a really messed up situation. You'll tell yourself it isn't that bad or that the next update will fix it or that you can get some magic software thingy that makes it go faster. Whatever. Once you realize you are being abused, you can make some choices and do something about it. Most tools can be replaced if you look around a bit and do a bit of research. And virtual machines on Linux can run Windows just fine if you have one or two things that just really need it (been there done that). There's also wine and proton which aren't half bad these days. And they work for lots of things other than games. You can dual boot. Etc. Try it and find out. The absolute worst case is that you have to go back to being a lame abuse victim here. You'll feel extra bad because now you know. The best case gets you out of that abusive relation ship for the rest of your life. Life is too short to get subjected to this kind of abuse.
- neogodless 8mo ago
  This might have some merit for some people. But the talk of abuse is also heavy-handed. I've spent months testing and trying out RAW photo editors, and months trying out Linux gaming. Linux is incredible, but my experience with Windows is still better. As many that still use it can attest, you can disable almost any annoyance. It's extremely stable. Things just work including brightness controls, fractional scaling, high refresh rates and high FPS gaming, and my favorite RAW photo editing. I could switch to a less enjoyable experience with Linux but I choose not to after extensive evaluation. I don't spend any money on Microsoft services, no Office or OneDrive subscription. But my decision isn't permanent. My hobbies, software use, gaming selection, etc. can change over time, and Linux is getting better while Windows is getting worse. If it's ever "abuse" and I can have a better experience with Linux, I won't hesitate to change. But it's also a lot of effort to try out alternatives, and dual booting is slow and annoying. Plus when I dual boot to Linux Mint the kernel fails to boot every other time and I have to select an older one, reboot, select a newer one, reboot. It's a huge waste of time. A bad experience and I have chosen to avoid it and try again in another year or two.

petcat 8mo ago

> Every month more and more people switch to Linux We've been hearing this for decades and yet the home Linux userbase is microscopic and somehow even smaller than ever. Unless we're going to count Google's Android and Chrome OS. Those are the only Linux-based distributions that have ever gained market share over desktop Windows.

dralley 8mo ago
I mean, this is literally false? Desktop Linux userbase is growing, it's bigger than it has ever been even without including ChromeOS, and more OEMs are shipping devices with desktop linux than ever before (Valve's suite of devices, multiple laptop vendors including major ones like Lenovo, a few SteamDeck competitors)
vikramkr 8mo ago
I mean - steam deck was a pretty significant inflection point quite recently. Making gaming viable on linux via a popular consumer product is a huge deal and starts to kill one of desktop linux's single biggest barriers to adoption.
bobsterlobster 8mo ago
Calling 4-5% marketshare microscopic is not fair. I get it if it was still stuck at 1%, but it's growing, and the rate of growth has been increasing too.
- rudhdb773b 8mo ago
  Is the desktop/laptop linux market share really over 4%? What is that based on?
  - jsheard 8mo ago
    The Steam survey has it at 3.6%, although that's obviously skewed towards gamers, and counts Steam Decks in addition to desktops.
    - lambdaone 8mo ago
      According to Statcounter, Linux's share is 3.86% and rising; but I'd imagine that quite a bit of the almost 16% 'unknown' is also Linux. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide Not insignificant at all.
      - godelski 8mo ago
        Maybe more interesting is that if you switch to looking at just America Linux jumps to 5.25% (unknown 7.4%) (Similar numbers for all of NA), and for Europe it is 4.32% (9.75% unknown). Again, not huge numbers but also not insignificant. But they are quickly growing and taking share from Microsoft. If we look back at (Dec) 2021 the numbers are 1.8% and 2.2% respectively. Those gains are meaningful.
    - havblue 8mo ago
      You can see that while Windows 10 numbers are going down over the past few months, the Windows 11 numbers aren't making up for it. About 2/3 of that gap are going to Linux with the other third going to Mac. So Mac is getting more market at the expense of Windows as well. There are a significant number of disgruntled Windows users leaving over the past year.
  - GeneralMaximus 8mo ago
    At least according to Statcounter, Linux is currently at 3.86% worldwide: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide. It's slightly larger in the US at 5.28%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st... In India, where I live, it's surprisingly at 6.51%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india Take this with a grain of salt, because numbers from Statcounter are not fully accurate. However, none of those numbers are small. 3.86% of the entire PC market is not something to scoff at.
fundatus 8mo ago
Somehow I think the stars might be aligning this time though. People are genuinely fed up with Windows and governments around the world are loudly thinking about how to reduce dependence on US tech. And then there is Proton which makes it much easier for Gamers to jump ship. To me it feels like there is more momentum than ever for this. On the other hand I am also a realist and I don't think that Linux will take over the Desktop, but it will certainly have its biggest growth year ever in 2026.
- nosianu 8mo ago
  > Somehow I think the stars might be aligning this time though > governments around the world are loudly thinking about how to reduce dependence on US tech I am definitely sympathetic, after all, I worked for a major Linux company for quite a few years, started using Linux RH) in 1994, and even wrote some network related kernel modules. However, this switch to Linux is not going to happen (apart from where it is already used heavily, from servers to many non-PC systems). I have been in projects for large companies but also government on and off. Now, I manage the IT of a small (<50 employees) non-IT business with people in several countries. People who actually comment in these discussions seem to be entirely focused on the OS itself. But that is what matters the least in business. Office is another, and even there most people who don't deal with it at scale are way too focused on some use case where individuals write documents and do some spreadsheeting. It's almost always about a very small setup, or even just a single PC. However, the Microsoft stack is sooooo much more. ID management. Device management. Uncountable number of little helpers in form of software and scripts that you cannot port to a Linux based stack without significant effort. Entire mail domains are managed by Office 265 - you own the domain and the DNS records, you get licenses for Office365 from MS, you point the DNS records to Microsoft, you are done. Sure, MS tools and the various admin websites are a mess, duplicating many things, making others hard to find. But nobody in the world would be able to provide soooo much stuff while doing a better job. The truth is, they keep continuously innovating and I can see it, little things just conveniently showing up, like that I now have a Teams button to create an AI script of my conversations, or that if more than one person opens an Office document that is stored in OneDrive we can see each other inside the document, cursor positions, and who has it open. Nobody in their right mind will switch their entir4e org to Linux unless they have some really good reasons, a lot of resources to spare, and a lot of experience. Most businesses, for whom IT is not the be-all-end-all but just a tool will not switch. But something can be done. The EU could, for example, start requiring other stacks for new special cases. They cannot tell the whole economy to switch, not even a fraction of it, but they could start with new government software. Maybe - depends on how it has to fit into the existing mostly Microsoft infrastructure. They could also require more apps to be web-only. I once wrote some code for some government agency to manage business registrations, and it was web software. The focus would have to be to start creating strong niches for local business to start making money using other stacks, and to take the long road, slowly replace US based stacks over the next two or three decades. At the same time, enact policies that let local business grow using alternative stacks, providing a safe cache-flow that does not have to compete with US based ones. The EU also needs some better scaling. The nice thing about the MS stack is that I can use it everywhere, in almost all countries. The alternative cannot be that a business would have to use a different local company in each country. I read a month ago that EU travel to the US is down - by only ~3%. Just like with any calls for boycott of this and that, the truth is that those commenting are a very tiny fraction. The vast majority of people and businesses are not commenting in these threads (or at all), and their focus is on their own business and domain problems first of all. Switching their IT stack will only done by force, if the US were to do something really drastic that crashes some targeted countries Microsoft- and Cloud-IT.
deaux 8mo ago
Go and download the archives of Reddit, there are plenty of torrents out there. Filter to a sub like r/gaming. Relative frequency graph of Linux mentions. You'll see a magnitude increase over the last 12 months compared to years before. It's real. Must admit, not sure if the data torrents are uptodate now that Reddit anti-scrapes so hard to raise their premium on the exclusive contract to the highest bidder, OpenAI.
ManlyBread 8mo ago
According to the Steam Hardware Survey (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...) only ~3.6% Steam users use Linux and these statistics include the Steam Deck users. SteamOS accounts for ~26% of Linux users, which in turn brings down the count to ~2.6%. For comparision, MacOS is ~2.1% of the market share at the moment. Wake me up when Linux gets to 10%.
HendrikHensen 8mo ago
More and more desktop apps are just becoming websites. More and more desktop apps are using Electron rather than some native app. Windows is slowly becoming a dumpster fire in terms of usability and issues. Most games these days Just Work on Linux without any tinkering. While I hardly think that this year will be "the year of the Linux desktop" or whatever, but if these trends keep going, I really foresee Linux market share growing, slowly, each year, until it's not so microscopic anymore.
GoatInGrey 8mo ago
As phones replace desktop computers for non-technical users, leaving a concentration of "skilled" users, my suspicion is that the pattern will resemble the quote "Slowly, then all at once."
tempaccsoz5 8mo ago
Have a look at the Steam Hardware [and software] Survey [0] results. Linux has been trending upwards whist Windows has been trending down for a wee while. And the population this looks at is primarily interested in gaming, which means that this is despite a compatibility layer being needed for a large amount of the software used. I imagine in other communities (software, old people) it's trending much faster. E.g. I recently installed Linux Mint for my grandma so she could use email and an up-to-date web browser on her old laptop that can't run (secure) Windows anymore. The UI differences are marginal for her, and she can do everything she needs to much better than she could before (which was not at all). [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

jillesvangurp 8mo ago

It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome for most people. They'll have some bit of software they imagine is irreplaceable because they have some special use case that means that they just have to tolerate the relentless abuse. Or some other excuse. Whatever. It all boils down to people being afraid of change. Most of that fear is not all that rational. It's not unlike kidnap victims falling in love with their captors. Your mind just tries to make the most of what fundamentally is a really messed up situation. You'll tell yourself it isn't that bad or that the next update will fix it or that you can get some magic software thingy that makes it go faster. Whatever. Once you realize you are being abused, you can make some choices and do something about it. Most tools can be replaced if you look around a bit and do a bit of research. And virtual machines on Linux can run Windows just fine if you have one or two things that just really need it (been there done that). There's also wine and proton which aren't half bad these days. And they work for lots of things other than games. You can dual boot. Etc. Try it and find out. The absolute worst case is that you have to go back to being a lame abuse victim here. You'll feel extra bad because now you know. The best case gets you out of that abusive relation ship for the rest of your life. Life is too short to get subjected to this kind of abuse.

neogodless 8mo ago
This might have some merit for some people. But the talk of abuse is also heavy-handed. I've spent months testing and trying out RAW photo editors, and months trying out Linux gaming. Linux is incredible, but my experience with Windows is still better. As many that still use it can attest, you can disable almost any annoyance. It's extremely stable. Things just work including brightness controls, fractional scaling, high refresh rates and high FPS gaming, and my favorite RAW photo editing. I could switch to a less enjoyable experience with Linux but I choose not to after extensive evaluation. I don't spend any money on Microsoft services, no Office or OneDrive subscription. But my decision isn't permanent. My hobbies, software use, gaming selection, etc. can change over time, and Linux is getting better while Windows is getting worse. If it's ever "abuse" and I can have a better experience with Linux, I won't hesitate to change. But it's also a lot of effort to try out alternatives, and dual booting is slow and annoying. Plus when I dual boot to Linux Mint the kernel fails to boot every other time and I have to select an older one, reboot, select a newer one, reboot. It's a huge waste of time. A bad experience and I have chosen to avoid it and try again in another year or two.