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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

#101

Post by FirmwareBurner »

layer8 wrote: post #71
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?

It’s not burned into the BIOS, instead Microsoft maintains a database mapping licenses to hardware identifiers. But transferable licenses still exist, and enterprise volume licenses are yet a different beast, so it all depends on what Windows license the PC was originally sold with, if any.

>It’s not burned into the BIOS, instead Microsoft maintains a database mapping licenses to hardware identifiers.

Wrong. IT IS 100% stored in the UEFI firmware, specifically ACPI tables, MSDM field. Only if that exists, it is then verified on-line for activation to make sure the license is genuine and matches the device ID you're referring to for witch the license was sold(typically for OEM) or if it's portable.[1]

On linux you should be retrieve the license via something like:

  sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
OR

  sudo acpidump | grep MSDM
[1] https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-find-windows-10-oem-prod...

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#102

Post by latexr »

tomrod wrote: post #95
latexr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on your view of lightweight, but probably XFCE Ubuntu (Xubuntu) will serve you great. Full featured without a ton of bloat, historically.

> Depends on your view of lightweight

Basically, what I care is that as I’m running the game, the system is consuming as few resources as possible. It’s an outdated machine, so every bit matters.

> probably XFCE Ubuntu (Xubuntu)

Thank you. Will check it out.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#103

Post by atemerev »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #100

Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love Linux are the ones making Linux. You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal. No faster way to scare off users than give them a CLI heavy OS and have the trip over the very first copy+paste command they try to run (once they figure out the circa ~1982 cursor) I really cannot say enough about the total fumble of Linux distros in an age when people are more des…

Ctrl-C means something different in the terminal. Always has been. And if it doesn't make sense to use Ctrl-C, there is no sense in Ctrl-V either.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#104

Post by mr_toad »

jve wrote: post #58
ergsef wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked selling refurb computers and this wasn't the case from Windows 95 - XP. The rise of TPMs and EFI is after that time so it's possible some newer system provides a way of tying licenses to computers, but it's not BIOS.

Well, it's been 2 decades so things do have changed. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/activate-windows... https://superuser.com/questions/1575650/how-does-a-windows-d...

https://superuser.com/questions/1108151/windows-license-stor...

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#105

Post by nerdjon »

palata wrote: post #91
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…

I agree with your points, except this: > thanks to the Steam Deck [...] but I would be reluctant to call that Linux Desktop anymore than I would call Android an uptick for Linux. The Steam Deck very much runs Linux Desktop. Android runs the Linux kernel, but everything else is different. SteamOS is a Linux distribution based on Arch. If you run your Steam Deck in "desktop mode", it is very much a Linux Desktop (with…

Admittedly yeah SteamOS does walk that line, and I guess technically given that I think these numbers are based on browser data it would only be capturing the people that actually go into desktop mode (maybe?).

But, I think there is a conversation around this to ask how many of the people using a Steam Deck actually go into desktop mode or care that it is Linux (or even understand that it is Linux) vs would switch to a Windows version if it worked as well.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#106

Post by palata »

I think that there are multiple things at play:

1. The statistics only show Desktop usage relative to each other. But I could totally imagine that macOS "loses" users to iPadOS. Similarly, Windows could be losing users to smartphones in general (I see more and more people who don't actually have a personal computer anymore).

2. Valve (and others, surely) is doing an incredible job with video games on Linux. 20 years ago, I needed a dual boot just to play games. I dropped Windows when I stopped playing, and I started playing again thanks to the Steam Deck. I am convinced that many people today "need" an OS on which they can play video games, except that today they have a choice (thanks to Valve and others).

3. Privacy. I think it's becoming a lot more important outside the US (it's actually now a national security concern there), but I'm convinced that people are slowly learning about that. TooBigTech pushing to train their AIs with everything the users do surely has an impact on that.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#107

Post by supriyo-biswas »

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…

Additionally, with the number of people who use ad blockers on Linux and given that statcounter mostly uses 3rd party JS tags, I highly doubt these numbers are correct.

There's a discussion in a peer thread about how people never notice its Linux and keep using their refurbished machines as-is. This too, is surprising to me, as my own experience as well as the ones I've heard in person from IT folks and IT-related forums online, people immediately notice that the UI looks different and panic as to how to achieve their current tasks. I'm skeptical of that entire thread too.

In general, I just wonder how much of any popular forum is just people LARPing. I do wish that it didn't occur here, though it's undoubtedly difficult to moderate.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#108

Post by oefrha »

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…

Pretty sure OS X and macOS should be combined, not doing that feels like amateur hour, very puzzling. But even with that in mind, you see wild ups and downs as large as 3.5% a month from 10/24 to 11/24 to 12/24 to 01/25 and there’s no way in hell actual deployments are fluctuating like that. Error bars like that make a number of 5% pretty meaningless, however feel-good it is.

Also, for people unfamiliar with the Apple ecosystem: the OS X => macOS rebranding happened back in 2016, IIRC the Safari user agent never ever included macOS (Safari on M4 Macs running latest macOS 15.5 reports itself as “Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7” in its UA), so absolutely no idea where they’re getting this new “macOS” category. Maybe they publish technical details of their methodology somewhere? I can’t bother to check.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#109

Post by HKH2 »

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).

Gnome has sacrificed a lot of control.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#110

Post by input_sh »

triknomeister wrote: post #24
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).

Anything that's automated today is linux. So, I'll assume almost 99.99%, or may be BSD in some cases.

Any scraper out there that doesn't want to identify itself as such is very likely to spoof the most commonly used OS + browser combo (Chrome + Windows), regardless of what it's actually running on.
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