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Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

ostechnix.com

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Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#41

Post by megous »

ryandv wrote: post #22

Based on the history of the tech industry, Linux adoption should be kept at this level and advanced no further. This is already the sweet spot for the "year of the Linux desktop," which should be celebrated by experts, technical users, and the sufficiently motivated. Once the unwashed masses start coming in, the software and its interaction patterns pander to the lowest common denominator and the quality of the mediu…

Linux based distributions solve this by not being a monoculture, no?

Pandering to the masses would be in the form of specific desktop environment, and maybe specific distribution integrating it well with all kinds of desktop software.

Nothing would change for the existing users of obscure software, hackishly stitched together.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#42

Post by CalRobert »

Fade_Dance wrote: post #16
iLoveOncall wrote: post #9

I don't believe this number for even a second.

I have literally never seen a Linux desktop in the wild. Speaking as a "normal" person who occasionally builds PCs for friends, fixes family computers, etc. I have an old ThinkPad with Linux, but agreed, no way this can be true.

My wife works at a Dutch company where they all run Ubuntu (mostly because they’re frugal)

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#43

Post by tiborsaas »

ryandv wrote: post #22

Based on the history of the tech industry, Linux adoption should be kept at this level and advanced no further. This is already the sweet spot for the "year of the Linux desktop," which should be celebrated by experts, technical users, and the sufficiently motivated. Once the unwashed masses start coming in, the software and its interaction patterns pander to the lowest common denominator and the quality of the mediu…

"oh no, the peasants are using MY operating system, this can't be good"

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#44

Post by bitmasher9 »

ryandv wrote: post #22

Based on the history of the tech industry, Linux adoption should be kept at this level and advanced no further. This is already the sweet spot for the "year of the Linux desktop," which should be celebrated by experts, technical users, and the sufficiently motivated. Once the unwashed masses start coming in, the software and its interaction patterns pander to the lowest common denominator and the quality of the mediu…

In some ways we are already seeing this. Have you ever opened a GitHub repository and the only installation/build instructions are for the AUR. I seem to run into this pretty frequently while looking at small projects.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#45

Post by art0rz »

aquova wrote: post #32
shaunpud wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the Windows license was burned into the BIOS, so a reinstall would pick it up automatically?

That might be even worse then, you'd be reselling a machine which was licensed under the previous owner's Windows key

How is that worse when the key is bound to the hardware and non-transferable anyway?

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#47

Post by goku12 »

pessimizer wrote: post #12

Linux now has a bigger desktop marketshare than firefox. I never would have imagined history would turn out like this. Firefox had the easy job and desktop Linux had the hard one. This will lead to a virtuous circle for Linux unless someone does something; privacy issues are leading people to the OSes where you get to freely choose your level of privacy. Anybody have any more weird old unix patents to throw at them a…

I came to say this as well. The market share of Linux in the US is 5.03%, while the same for Firefox is 4.23%! [1]

It's not an apples to apples comparison. But the userbase is largely the same, and it's easier to switch a browser than it's to switch an OS. So it does have a significance.

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/united-s...

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#48

Post by DaSHacka »

bboygravity wrote: post #34
ryandv wrote: post #22

Based on the history of the tech industry, Linux adoption should be kept at this level and advanced no further. This is already the sweet spot for the "year of the Linux desktop," which should be celebrated by experts, technical users, and the sufficiently motivated. Once the unwashed masses start coming in, the software and its interaction patterns pander to the lowest common denominator and the quality of the mediu…

So is this the reasoning to keep Linux as hard to use as possible? * just open the terminal and type this magic spell to make x work *

I'd imagine they would say: "if you find that difficult, then yes"

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#49

Post by ahartmetz »

Fade_Dance wrote: post #16
iLoveOncall wrote: post #9

I don't believe this number for even a second.

I have literally never seen a Linux desktop in the wild. Speaking as a "normal" person who occasionally builds PCs for friends, fixes family computers, etc. I have an old ThinkPad with Linux, but agreed, no way this can be true.

I'm not particularly surprised anymore to see Linux on people's laptops in public, usually while travelling (you don't usually see people using laptops in public much otherwise). That is mostly in Germany where I live. Linux is, of course, also very common in universities.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#50

Post by hollerith »

andyferris wrote: post #10

I have to ask - what OS do AI-training web scrapers tend to report? (A mixture? One with > 5% linux market share? Sorry, being a sceptic, otherwise I think this is fantastic news if accurately measured).

Good question. Most of these headlines about Linux market share ("mind share"?) are completely uninformative about how widespread the use of Linux is in reality.

12 years ago or so, a similar headline appeared, then someone explained that the Chinese government had recently cracked down on Windows pirating (to appease the Americans) with the result that some PC vendors had stopped including (pirated copies of) Windows with the computers they sell (shipping some Linux distro instead of course) but since pirated Windows install media was still widely available, there quickly grew a cultural practice in which the consumer installs Windows (or gets his more technically-inclined cousin to do it for him) as soon as he gets his new PC home. But the headline reported on a statistic that did not catch this cultural practice because it counted only the OSes on computers when they were sold (i.e., "OS shipments").

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