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Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

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Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#81

Post by latexr »

WJW wrote: post #28
whizzter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that receive these machines? A new machine for an enterprise or gamer will probably retain windows because it's needed but people not using their computers for more than surfing will be happy enough. On that side-note I would also not be surprised if people are leaving "computers" altogether in favor of phones, it's a capable enough computer today for most la…

Anecdotal evidence, but Steams' Proton compatibility layer that lets you run Windows-only games on Linux works really really well. I haven't had to log into years and years by now.

I’ve been wanting to do this for years on an old (and severely underpowered) MacBook Pro which I use with Windows exclusively for Games.

Do you have any recommendation for an extremely lightweight Linus distro which installs and runs Steam fine? It would be used exclusively for that, so it shouldn’t run a ton of background stuff.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#82

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

sylware wrote: post #2

I still wonder how they can know that reliably. elf/linux distros are hardly pre-installed on PCs and forced upon users.

> I still wonder how they can know that reliably.

I think the general conclusion is that they don't know it reliably; notice the other comments in this thread pointing out that the numbers jump up and down more or less every time they're measured.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#84

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

theanonymousone wrote: post #15

I can't think of any logical reason to exclude ChromeOS and count it separately,and a good portion of the "Unknown" category may as well be Linux. The "real" number shouldn't be far from 10%, if not already exceeding it.

> I can't think of any logical reason to exclude ChromeOS and count it separately

Because virtually nobody who says "desktop Linux" means ChromeOS.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#86

Post by IshKebab »

elsjaako wrote: post #30
jsnell wrote: post #18

The statscounter data is not reliable, and it is just embarrassing how often these posts make it to the HN frontpage. You even have a demonstration in this very article, with the surge of classic Mac OS to 7% for several months . The data is obviously nonsense, and when it has errors nobody at the company cares about them. But when they have persistent "data reporting issues", why are we supposed to believe any of th…

Note that OS X goes down for the same period. I believe Apple is calling it MacOS now. So that looks like it might be some change in how Apple computers are reporting their OS.

I don't understand why Statcounter reports them separately though. They're just two different versions of the same OS, and those are grouped for other OSes in this chart. Makes no sense.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#87

Post by lvass »

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…

How exactly is Linux becoming popular going to make my EXWM setup suck? To be fair, if it does get a large market share, some company is probably going to take MS's role and make a distro that sucks but many people use. But that shouldn't be an issue to existing users unless they take over something like a major DE and you insist on using that for some reason. For IT people, having the possibility of running a decent shell and sshd in most desktops would be terrific.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#88

Post by Zambyte »

palata wrote: post #73
tiborsaas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think it's more "they will give less control in order to please the peasants, and as a result I will lose control". And I agree with that concern, though my hope is that we can make it easier for the peasants without sacrificing control for the nerds (trying to find a word that would work with "peasant" in this context :D).

I disagree with the concern, because obviously making Free Software easier for non-technically inclined people to use does not make the software harder for technically inclined people to use. This is strictly an issue for proprietary software.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#90

Post by positron26 »

nerdjon wrote: post #53

I have to wonder how much of this is people switching to Linux vs the larger trend of people not having traditional computers to begin with. Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. So is a solid chunk of this the p…

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