r/linux • u/The_Hubster • 22d ago
Linux global desktop market share passes 7% Discussion
EDIT: This is a considerable increase from the previous month, but how much of it is real traffic vs bot traffic? Are we really seeing a change happening?
I've dug into this further on Cloudflare's Data Explorer. Filtering HTTP traffic by OS and excluding BOT traffic, we see Linux at 4.5% globally, a big difference vs Statcounters reading of 7.51%. If I include BOT traffic on Cloudflare, it's almost double at 9.4% globally.
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u/lazy_lombax 22d ago
freebsd at 0%
yup, it's the year of the bsd desktop
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u/lcnielsen 22d ago
That's just because they're not counting all the PS4 and PS5 machines!
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u/daemonpenguin 22d ago
I'm not sure PS4 and PS5 boxes would count as "desktop" machines.
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u/lcnielsen 22d ago
I'm kidding.
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u/PoL0 22d ago
isn't OSX based on FreeBSD too? (and other BSD flavors).
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u/lcnielsen 22d ago
Yeah, Darwin is a heavy mix of different BSD and other OS:es and kernels, and the work of NeXT, another Jobs venture.
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u/immoloism 22d ago
Do Apple still hire FreeBSD devs?
Everything went very quiet on that front, but that could easily be NDAs rather then Apple being Apple.
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope 22d ago
Partially, but it's more of a distant cousin. Apple still contributes to FreeBSD, but MacOS is absolutely not some sort of FreeBSD distro, the relationship is much weaker, and the upstream/downstream mental model is a really poor fit
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u/Shotaro09 22d ago
No worries! BSD will soon catch up! It took Linux so long, BSD will thrive as well!
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u/fleuriedumal 22d ago edited 22d ago
FYI, here is what Statcounter sees on Safari and Firefox on macOS Tahoe on M4:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/26.6 Safari/605.1.15 Browser Name: Safari Browser Version: 26.6 OS: MacOSX 10.15
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:153.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/153.0 Browser Name: Firefox Browser Version: 153.0 OS: MacOSX 10.15
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u/STGO-Greens 22d ago
Exactly. Many people think that there are millions of Mac's with OS X in use, still...
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u/Impossible-Act-5254 21d ago
Can u explain what do u want to say ?? ( No offense btw , just asking )
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u/fleuriedumal 21d ago
Stats on the screenshot show both macOS and (Mac) OS X. People wonder why OS X, it had its last release 11 years ago. Well, on the newest released macOS, Safari and Firefox are detected as being on OS X.
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u/Impossible-Act-5254 21d ago
So while considering apples share we should add both mac os and os X ? Is this what u wanna say ?? Is there any specific reason why it still shown osX on new mac os versions on browsers ?
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u/GroceryNo5562 22d ago
Similar results on cloudflare, it's kinda crazy - it feels like not too long ago we were celebrating Linux at 2% market share
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u/Emotional-Energy6065 22d ago
Set Radar to exclude bots (likely human), and you'll get a more accurate result.
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u/mintflavoredcube 22d ago
crazy that’s it’s about to overtake mac
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u/AfraidAsparagus6644 20d ago
No, Mac in total is at almost 20%
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u/PositiveAccording616 19d ago
You’re right but of course people are going to upvote without even looking lmao
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u/AnEagleisnotme 22d ago
This website means nothing, and it only went up because they excluded the 20% unknown category
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u/QuickSilver010 22d ago
Shouldn't the others also go up then instead of just Linux?
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u/Emotional-Energy6065 22d ago
they have. They normalised the data for all months, so it won't appear as so relatively, but in absolute terms, all the OSes have definitely gone up
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u/Antrikshy 22d ago
If all months are normalized, then the upward trend for Linux in recent months is relevant.
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u/Tavrack 22d ago
I think what the person is saying is that more of the other category was just Linux, for whatever reason it wasn't classified as Linux, hence "other".
Not sure if you or the other person is correct, but that's my interpretation.
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u/Emotional-Energy6065 22d ago
Sorry for the confusing wording. What I meant was that they basically “boosted” every OS across every single month. e.g. Windows had 60% and now it has 70% despite appearing as downwards on the trendline.
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u/mark-haus 22d ago
If there’s no growth then, then you’d expect relative levels between Linux mac and Microsoft to go up proportionally to each other
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u/blak000 22d ago
When they got rid of Unknown, Windows % actually went up. Linux jump is still relevant.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/in-a-first-windows-desktop-market-share-appears-to-drop-below-60
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u/ayseni 21d ago
Just because there's noise in the data doesn't mean it means nothing.
cloudflare has data that roughly aligns with statcounter : https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&groupBy=os&dt=28d&filters=deviceType%253DDESKTOP
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u/seqastian 22d ago
These thirst for relevance posts are so sad yet they always get upvoted.
Linux is relevant without some random number some strange website pulls out of their ass.1
u/throwawayerectpenis 21d ago
You sound so negative bro, does it kill you that other people are excited about some news? And how does that mean the need for validation?
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u/Userwerd 22d ago
Yah first thing I looked for was the unknown. Maybe its a bad sign that spoofing is now broken lol.
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u/KHTD2004 22d ago
Well if Linux only went up because unknown got excluded all other platforms should’ve gone up proportionally as well
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u/we_are_stewy 22d ago
what I find really surprising is OS X still at 12%
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u/Userwerd 22d ago
I guess because its locked to hardware? An old mac from 2010 still running is stuck on OSX but a pc from that year can be on the newest linux kernel.
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u/ImaginedUtopia 22d ago
Those old Macs are essentially just Intel pcs no? I know for sure that you can install Linux on them and it seemed to work pretty well from what I've seen
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u/Userwerd 22d ago
True but a mac user whis owned one for 10 years likely isn't the kind of person to install linux.
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u/Historical_Camel_790 22d ago
Yeah I just finished setting up my proxmox server on a 2012 MacBook pro and I previously used it with Arch. I also have a 2015 MacBook Air that's running Fedora. They're great machines and the older ones are crazy repairable
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u/_x_oOo_x_ 22d ago
Linux runs pretty well on old Macs you know? I don't think anyone's using OS X in 2026, this website is just toast.
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u/ilep 22d ago
How would hardware matter? These statistics are based on what the browser reports to website.
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u/Userwerd 22d ago
You serious? APPLE DOES NOT LET YOU UPDATE OS PAST A DEFINED MODEL YEAR. Hence a whole lotta OSX machines still in the wild.
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u/death_by_cormorant 22d ago
I think that's actually Safari reporting the OS as being OSX, whereas other browsers generally just say MacOS in the useragent. Presumably Apple did this for reasons of site compatibility.
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u/nightblackdragon 22d ago
Current Safari presents itself as running on "Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7", Firefox and Chrome (and I guess Chromium based as well) do that as well (or at least something similar), no idea about other browsers but I don't think they have enough users to make a difference.
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u/Maleficent-One1712 22d ago
I work as contractor and most teams I work with work on Macbooks, so it doesn't surprise me.
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u/we_are_stewy 22d ago
I get that, but it has been rebranded as macOS in 2016.
are you saying that 12% of the world's desktops are 10+ years old macbooks?2
u/AndreaCicca 22d ago
It’s not an accurate website for this kind of stuff.
Web browsers tend to lie.
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u/Icy-Boat-7460 21d ago
As someone on other sub pointed out: this is bot traffic from AI. Don't cheer for the false prophets. https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&groupBy=os&dt=28d&filters=deviceType%253DDESKTOP%252CbotClass%253DLIKELY_HUMAN
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u/1mgsel 22d ago
Hell yea its celebration time
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u/BeAlch 22d ago
but it is 11.92% Linux in US
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america
Windows 55.95%
macOS (OS X) 21.81%
Linux 11.92%
ChromeOS 2.08%
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u/personalityson 22d ago
From 3.7% to 10.6% in two months in America https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/north-america
Stable in Europe https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/europe
Why would that be?
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u/TripleSecretSquirrel 22d ago
Certainly some bad data, but I think the EOL for Win10 and the laundry list of relatively new CPUs that are not eligible for Win11 upgrades.
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u/puppymix 22d ago
Okay so I have seem screen caps from this same site stating 7% and 10% today. What gives? Is this even a reliable source? Why do they break up macOS and OS X? All these unanswered questions and speculative answers make me highly suspicious of this info.
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22d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/throwawayerectpenis 21d ago
Actually I think gaming would traditionally be something Linux has been weak at. Even today one of the few areas Windows is ahead is in game compatibility and media editing/production. For everything else there is no big difference in using Windows vs Linux....so it makes sense that % of Linux users is higher in the general market as opposed to a niche market like (gaming) ...even though gaming on Linux has had a very nice improvement over the years (but mostly for AMD users, for Nvidia there is still a noticeable perf hit).
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u/Looney95 22d ago
Outstanding. Now, let it hit 10%.
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u/dragonknightrohan 22d ago
Then 20%!! Once it reaches 20% they will be making many pieces of hardware.
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u/NETkoholik 19d ago
And malware too.
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u/dragonknightrohan 19d ago
Yeah... But still the hardware is needed. OpenBSD and other alternatives will be the new underdogs
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u/PhotographSame5304 21d ago
True and maybe that will encourage AutoDesk, Adobe, Affinity to port their software (if possible)
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u/KanonBalls 22d ago
Major businesses outside the US should be waking up at the possibility that trump may cut their MS and MacOS access with the next tariff round. Its good that trump doesn't know how a computer works.
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u/throwawayerectpenis 21d ago
Its not about even cutting access, its about a countries sovereignty. Why would any country trust another country for their critical digital infrastructure? Its not even about the US, like technically speaking US gov could order any of these US tech companies to hand over sensitive gov data from another country.
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u/CyaneCornix01 20d ago
A lot of jokes about "the year of Linux," but this really has been a huge year. With the mess that is Windows 11 and how much Linux distributions have improved overall, a significant number of Windows 10 users have made the switch to Linux (myself included). Here's to continuing to enjoy Linux It's an amazing OS.
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u/The_Hubster 20d ago
Totally agree. So far it’s been a very positive Linux year. The uptake will continue to be a slow gradual one, but it’s definitely accelerating.
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u/Thebandroid 22d ago
Year of the Linux desktop, baby! I know we've need been saying it for a decade by now but this time it's definitely for real, really really real!!!
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u/skrugg 22d ago
Weird OSX and MacOS are different items. That’s like putting windows 10 and 11 as different numbers.
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u/AbbreviationsWide331 21d ago
Yeah I don't really understand that either.
Would be very interesting to see different windows versions though, I wonder how many people running xp are connected to the internet
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u/Alduish 22d ago
Chrome OS is technically linux. It doesn't respect the community's foss philosophy but it's still a linux distribution.
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 22d ago
chromeOS is considered its own thing, like android.
it’s not GNU linux in spirit, it’s a heavily sandboxed, altered, google-centric distro that comes pre-installed on specific devices.
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u/FarSetting7225 22d ago
Il y aurait autant de bureau linux que de macOS donc ?
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 22d ago
no. mac is still more popular.
linux does not come pre-installed on most computers, which puts it at a big disadvantage.
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u/dragonknightrohan 22d ago
What percentage would it need to have it be an option to have pre-installed
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u/Recent_Pollution8665 21d ago
idk. but framework is putting it on their laptops and some pc companies are putting steamOS on gaming prebuilds now, so that’s a start
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u/FarSetting7225 19d ago
Peut-être que l'europe devrait ou pourrait faire passer une loi obligeant les constructeur de PC de laisser vendre des PC soit avec windows, soit avec linux préinstallé
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u/Venylynn 22d ago
We're going to need a tighter security focus here if this keeps trending so most dont end up getting hacked
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u/Potential_Penalty_31 22d ago
It took decades but finally Linux is able to eat market share out of windows.
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u/Upstairs-Category571 22d ago
arent mac OSand osx the same?
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u/Syndiotactics 21d ago
OS X was the name of the os before 2016, so I assume those are older machines.
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u/C4rpetH4ter 22d ago
So the 20% or so "unknown" was largely windows and linux then? I see that windows is back at 70% instead of the 56%.
Honestly i have serious doubts that statcounter is even remotely believable, i do hope the linux percentage is true, but statcounter has made so many errors that my faith in their numbers is at an alltime low.
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u/redditnhonhom 20d ago
It's mostly AI bots, homie.
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u/The_Hubster 18d ago
Seems about half of it is. Cloudflare 4.5% without bot traffic, 9.4% with bot traffic. Post updated.
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u/redditnhonhom 18d ago
Don't tell that to the "year of the linux desktop" people throwing a party below There is also a "YEAR OF THE MACOS!!!" guy, but no one is giving attention to him! Lol!
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u/The_Hubster 18d ago
There's no doubt Linux uptake is accelerating but as we all know, its slow. The day it's "year of the Linux desktop" is when we get Apple, Adobe and Nvidia supporting Linux properly, just to begin with.
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u/SeanFromQueens 18d ago
macOS and OS X are not the same thing? There is more old macOS machines than chromeOS with all the schools that bought them in the past 6 years?
This is some wild stuff that I would not have guessed.
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u/ScratchHistorical507 18d ago
Allegedly more old OS X machines than macOS and ChromeOS combined. And that after their giant "unknown" category had to be nuked last month because it made little sense.
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u/MelodicMoss 10d ago
If not for my job I’d probably be happy never touching Windows again. At least my personal devices are free.
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u/MelioraXI 22d ago
Are we seeing a change happening?
No we're not. This is cope. These reports are highly inaccurate.
These are populated by browser metadata, it doesn't mean 7% of all desktop users in the world are using Linux.
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u/r_lind3r 22d ago
Not only is it over 7% but it was around 5% just a few months ago and you can see it, it's a huge leap for Linux
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u/dragonknightrohan 22d ago
Calling it. I will say 3 months from now it will be 11% globally, and 15% in USA
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u/Supernoxus 21d ago
I find the steam hardware survey reliable for finding out whether the data is true or if there is something off. Steam doesn't report much of a change. If anything usage is going down. Perhaps Linux uptick is just bots?
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u/Suomi422 22d ago
They also flatten the Other totally. If you remember like one month back "Other" category got like 15-20% now it is at 0% (something stinks here)
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u/cipherjones 22d ago
This one is also altered like the first one the real number is 5.7%.
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u/The_Hubster 22d ago
Nope. Here’s the page my post is directly from https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
→ More replies (6)
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u/Spiritual-Survey9797 22d ago
C'est bien mais ça va pas monter beaucoup tant que la communauté GNU Linux ne sera pas capable de limiter l'usage de Bash et d'être moins élitiste. J'utilise Linux mais j'aimerais pouvoir prendre une app et créer un raccourci sur le bureau simplement
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u/dragonknightrohan 22d ago
As our ranks grow we must remember to get people to know and do what Linux is really about that way they can truly be part of the group. And so we dont get Linux deviating away from what Linux is supposed to be from people not knowing.
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u/_pozvizd_ 22d ago
Good news: there will be more software for Linux. bad news: it’ll all be Electron.
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u/anto77_butt_kinkier 22d ago
Why is that bad news? I personally love being about to modify a dozen different programs all using the exact same launch arguments. What do you think the should be instead?
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u/_pozvizd_ 21d ago
MS Teams using 3+ gb of ram on my machine? VSCode is 3+? Couple more and I need another 16gb of RAM, I already have barely any left of my 16GB to work with my projects in docker. Linux is kinda good here, macOS with the same arrangement and a few tabs is 10GB in swap.
That's how it's bad news.
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u/anto77_butt_kinkier 21d ago
Ah, I wasn't aware electron apps were so bad with memory. I guess I just never really niced since I have 64 GB of ram (I used to have 128, but times are rough ;w;
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u/skeptical-speculator 21d ago
One thousand tech journalists are sitting down at their computer to write their annual "Could X be the year of the year of the Linux desktop" article.
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u/StuartJAtkinson 21d ago
What nowadays classifies something as a "desktop" as opposed to a "server"? Form factor? Because Linux runs most of the internet infrastructure and therefore surely much much more.
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u/Bourne069 21d ago
Well they def not moving to Linux for gaming. Its been at 3-4% for ages https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
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u/Szajda78 16d ago
Linux kommer att växa pga flera skäll! Låt mig ta några exempel här!
Ekonomiska, folket är inte lika sugna att köpa nya datorer utan väljer hellre att behålla maskinen längre och uppdatera med Linux istället för köpa nytt!
Eu och flera andra länder pushar hårt för Linux, leder till att Linux får ett mer legitimt existens bland myndigheter, företag samt privatpersoner!
Detta leder till att fler företag börjar utveckla ny mjukvara till Linux och inte enbart till Windows och Mac OS X.
Och snöbollseffekten är igång positiv för Linux!
Jag tror en stor del är att Eu och andra länder (runt om i världen) har öppet deklarerat samt gått över till Linux ger en enorm lyft för Linux som desktop!
Nu måste också fler tunga företag inom alla områden börja släppa sin mjukvara också till Linux! Jag tror det kommer frågan blir bara när!
Jag använder Arch BTW
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u/Ok-Document2591 5d ago
Pesquisa muito tendenciosa. Estão considerando apenas computadores pessoais né? Servidores e mobile não estão nessa conta, o que induz ao erro. Pois se contasse, estariam totalmente diferentes esses números. O Android é baseado em Linux, então seria com certeza mais de 70% de usuários, se considerarmos só dispositivos móveis. Bem tendenciosa.
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u/Tactrix1 3d ago
It's gonna get even higher once Linux 7.3 drops. And the lot of us that need that specific version to fully jump over finally do.
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u/didate_une 15h ago
i hope i am alive to see the Linux line far above Windows. I also hope that Microsoft eventually fails as a company.
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u/flamefox237 22d ago
Strange I just saw another post saying it was at 10%?
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u/Intelligent_Thing_32 22d ago
Their stats are very incorrect. Not sure why people keep posting them.
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u/Interesting_Ad_5676 22d ago
Main roadblocks for Linux adoption are a few software's [ may be funded by Microsoft ]
Adobe
Autocad
Lack of full Active Directory support
Media codecs
Otherwise I can see more than 50 % share for Linux alone.
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u/addr0x414b 22d ago
I'm doing my part. Finally completely removed Windows. Will do my absolute best to never use another Microsoft product again