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Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

linuxiac.com

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Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#11

Post by blitzar »

echoangle wrote: post #9
blitzar wrote: post #3

The cope in this article is strong ... the year of desktop linux indeed. > Of course, StatCounter’s numbers should be read for what they are: web usage statistics, not a direct count of installed operating systems. I am unclear how one writes that paragraph after saying the numbers are "global desktop OS usage" over and over again. Not to mention the android share of web usage is 0%.

How many desktop Android users are there?

My mistake I misread the "OS X at 11.89% and macOS at 4.48%" and thought one was iOS rather than 2 versions of the desktop os, and we were lumping in all the web users not just desktop.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#12

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

echoangle wrote: post #9
blitzar wrote: post #3

The cope in this article is strong ... the year of desktop linux indeed. > Of course, StatCounter’s numbers should be read for what they are: web usage statistics, not a direct count of installed operating systems. I am unclear how one writes that paragraph after saying the numbers are "global desktop OS usage" over and over again. Not to mention the android share of web usage is 0%.

How many desktop Android users are there?

I would be willing to count those Android HTPC devices you plug into a TV. Those come with a web browser, so it would be greater than zero.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#13

Post by modriano »

CodesInChaos wrote: post #4

I wonder what the "unknown" 25% are.

Looking at the FAQ for the data source [0], specifically this part

> What methodology is used to calculate Statcounter Global Stats? > Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 1 million sites globally. These sites cover various activities and geographic locations. Every month, we record billions of page views to these sites. For each page view, we analyse the browser/operating system/screen resolution used and we establish if the page view is from a mobile device.

I assume they infer the OS and stuff from the User Agent and other stuff in the headers of requests. And I assume scrapers collecting data for AI systems don't include the standard User Agent stuff Statcounter classified when they made their data collection tooling. So my guess would be non-browser-automation style scrapers that are getting around defenses and have header data Statcounter doesn't know how to classify to an OS.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#14

Post by jcsager »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #10
blitzar wrote: post #3

The cope in this article is strong ... the year of desktop linux indeed. > Of course, StatCounter’s numbers should be read for what they are: web usage statistics, not a direct count of installed operating systems. I am unclear how one writes that paragraph after saying the numbers are "global desktop OS usage" over and over again. Not to mention the android share of web usage is 0%.

I was a daily windows user for ~20+ years and haven't turned on my windows 10 desktop in months because the only thing I have it for now is anti-cheat games that are too time consuming to play... Anecdotal for sure, but microsoft's blunders and erosion of trust are starting to hurt it.

My last desktop before Linux was SunOs4 on a Sun Pizza box. Before that I used Macs. I had to use Win3.1 as road warrior kit until I got a laptop that would run Linux. So I've been using a Linux desktop for at least 30 years both at work & at home. I still use Windows (not 11!) sometimes where I can't avoid it but that's in a VM under Linux.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#15

Post by echoangle »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #12
echoangle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many desktop Android users are there?

I would be willing to count those Android HTPC devices you plug into a TV. Those come with a web browser, so it would be greater than zero.

I don’t think they should count as desktop.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#16

Post by sandreas »

I think the events line up...

Windows 11 removing support for older hardware, skyrocketing prices for new Hardware along with bad decisions to make even more money and Apple making ahead of its time tech now forces more and more users to give Linux a try or just buy a Mac. Linux gaming is also nice. Often a pad or phone is enough, I know many non-tech people not owning a single PC any more.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#17

Post by OhSoHumble »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #10
blitzar wrote: post #3

The cope in this article is strong ... the year of desktop linux indeed. > Of course, StatCounter’s numbers should be read for what they are: web usage statistics, not a direct count of installed operating systems. I am unclear how one writes that paragraph after saying the numbers are "global desktop OS usage" over and over again. Not to mention the android share of web usage is 0%.

I was a daily windows user for ~20+ years and haven't turned on my windows 10 desktop in months because the only thing I have it for now is anti-cheat games that are too time consuming to play... Anecdotal for sure, but microsoft's blunders and erosion of trust are starting to hurt it.

Yeah, but you're also on Hacker News. You are an outlier. I recently wiped Windows off of my gaming PC and installed CachyOS and, honestly, Linux just isn't ready yet. I'm also an outlier because I'm an SRE whose first distro was Slackware and I'm returning to the fold because Linux gaming has gotten much, much better... but it is still pretty inferior to playing games on Windows.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#18

Post by ykl »

Why are macOS and OS X listed separately? Is it to delineate pre-2016 Macs from post-2016 Macs, when the rename to macOS happened? But in that case, I have a hard time believing that there are way more pre-2016 Macs floating around out there than post-2016 ones, as the chart shows. I have a hard time believing that anyone is running pre-2016 OS X versions at all, outside of a very small group of hobbyists; I thought Apple’s data showed that generally Mac users were pretty aggressive about being on relatively current macOS versions.

Also why separate out OS X and macOS at all when it appears that all Windows versions are lumped together and all Linux versions and distros are lumped together?

All of this seems very suspect.

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#19

Post by hmstx »

ykl wrote: post #18

Why are macOS and OS X listed separately? Is it to delineate pre-2016 Macs from post-2016 Macs, when the rename to macOS happened? But in that case, I have a hard time believing that there are way more pre-2016 Macs floating around out there than post-2016 ones, as the chart shows. I have a hard time believing that anyone is running pre-2016 OS X versions at all, outside of a very small group of hobbyists; I thought…

Anecdata: Every time over the years that my parents (now in their 70s) have purchased a new mac, software updates only ever happen if I run them. I don't visit all the time. They run outdated versions of everything until I hear "we need to buy a new mac because we can't use this website for some administrative thing", which is caused by not updating the os and the browser becoming unsupported over time.

Also account for i.e musicians (I hear there's a few of them in Apple-land) who seem to keep getting bitten by Apple somehow breaking compatibility with a bunch of audio software/equipment even with developer release, time and time again.

Multiply by real world amounts of people.

Would be a good explanation...

Re: Windows Drops Under 60% in Global Desktop OS Share for the First Time in Years

#20

Post by giancarlostoro »

Would love to see this decrease compared to mobile rates, before and after the decrease. People are using phones and tables like computers, more and more. Take a game like Habbo Hotel, it was originally browser based, had no mobile presence forever. Now most people playing it are on their phone. I wouldn't be surprised if RuneScape has similar numbers. Roblox definitely might, I've seen kids out in public, playing Roblox, off a phone.
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