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Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

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Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#61

Post by pessimizer »

vlovich123 wrote: post #21

Desktop and laptop sales have been declining worldwide for years and while laptops have dipped up in 2023 desktops continued their downward trend. My hunch it’s less that people have suddenly discovered Linux and more that desktop sales have been slipping for a long long time so either it’s shifted to Apple or people stick with just phones and tablets. Thus it’s not necessarily that Linux market share has increased b…

Desktop and laptop sales are declining, but that's probably because they're all fast enough now and there's no reason to replace them unless they break. That's actually more room for Linux, because the big two OSes are gradually going to leave those people behind. Most people are going to have fairly new phones in their pockets and super-old laptops at home.

Anecdotally I've been getting a lot of calls from normies afraid of surveillance and now AI in the OS (both Mac and Windows), asking how to switch to Linux. The ones on Windows also very much hate Windows.

I have a feeling that Microsoft and Apple will not mind this, Linux desktop share getting that high is in fact a comforting, Firefox-sized claim that consumers have other, freer, functional options. It also allows their most disgruntled users to leave rather than become obsessively angry with an OS they've been trapped with.

Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#62

Post by 7e »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #43

Statcounter's data is based off hits to a certain websites. Not unique hits but hits. It's really hard to see their data as worthwhile from my perspective. This is already desktop stats, a market that isn't really growing. Then figure they're unlikely to be partnered with anyone like Facebook, Tiktok, or Discord, the sites that 90% of users spend most of their time on. Think of the remaining internet they might have…

Yes, their data is garbage. macOS losing 20% share in one month. ChromeOS losing 50% in one month. A huge "unknown" share. Lots of volatility. This is just the Linux faithful seeing what they want to see.

Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#63

Post by littlestymaar »

pjmlp wrote: post #59
littlestymaar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like the upward trend shows that it is not in fact “game over”. Steam making sure than the vast majority of games run fine on Linux at the first try is much more impactful than WSL in the grand scheme of things.

[flagged]

> As long as it keeps translating Windows,

For people to be able to play games on your platform, there must be games running on it, and the reality is that people won't bother developing commercial games targeting explicitly Linux, at least not if Linux is at 2% market share. Being able to run the games which already exist is a massive adoption boost.

> and doesn't lose to the handhelds running Windows proper.

It's not just about handhelds, I don't have a Steam Deck yet I can use pretty much all games I want on my Linux Desktop thanks to Valve's work.

> Lost opportunity to actually make Linux gaming take off.

No, unless you restrict “Linux gaming” to games that are natively developed for Linux, which is pretty much arbitrary.

Should Linux reach double digit market share, then maybe it will become commercially viable to do so, but the reality is that before Valve did their magic, playing on Linux was hit or miss and every gamer around me had a Windows dual boot. It's not the case anymore, and that's really weird to see it as a “lost opportunity” (but I know some people really love to be contrarians on HN).

Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#64

Post by mixmastamyk »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #16

I truly believe that once Linux solves its app packaging problem it could go mainstream for casual use on home laptops. (Office machines obviously are a different beast, needing Microsoft Office\365 support, etc). We're 99% of the way to being able to hand an everyday person a laptop with Linux on it and have them have a decent experience - but they need to be able to go to a website and download a program without sc…

App stores already solved this for regular folks.

Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#65

Post by hansvm »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #16

I truly believe that once Linux solves its app packaging problem it could go mainstream for casual use on home laptops. (Office machines obviously are a different beast, needing Microsoft Office\365 support, etc). We're 99% of the way to being able to hand an everyday person a laptop with Linux on it and have them have a decent experience - but they need to be able to go to a website and download a program without sc…

Suppose websites don't change. What should Linux do about:

1. Packages only offering building from source for the Linux crowd.

2. Packages with soft DRM, offering Windows builds easily and Linux builds referencing the forums.

3. Packages with hard DRM, actively rejecting attempts to run on Linux.

4. "Downloads" built for YUM or APT or whatever.

5. "Downloads" which are basically just scripts designed to shit all over your directory structure and do the real installation later.

6. Downloads only available for a particular distro, and only then by trusting a third-party repo and otherwise doing key-based shenanigans.

...

I bet you could get a decent chunk of the way there with a script turning the "normal" install procedure from that above garbage into a nice desktop icon and an easily deletable binary (with an associated uninstallation script), but people package software differently for Linux than they do for other OS's, and unless you change that part of the culture or manually package a lot more things I don't think you'll solve that particular problem.

Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#66

Post by pjmlp »

littlestymaar wrote: post #63
pjmlp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> As long as it keeps translating Windows, For people to be able to play games on your platform, there must be games running on it, and the reality is that people won't bother developing commercial games targeting explicitly Linux, at least not if Linux is at 2% market share. Being able to run the games which already exist is a massive adoption boost. > and doesn't lose to the handhelds running Windows proper. It's n…

Of course I am restricting it to native Linux games, the others are Windows games, developed and sold for Windows customers, that happen to be running on Linux thanks to Proton.

One could be running a VM of some sort for exactly the same purpose.

To the point that studios with Android NDK versions don't even bother to have them on GNU/Linux.

Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#67

Post by moondev »

bydo wrote: post #54
sergiotapia wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. I've been working with a VMWare Linux Mint machine for two years, and very recently installed Windows 11, and decided to try WSL2. It's seamless, and literally Linux. I installed asdf and all the stuff I would normally do with zero headaches. No more vms for me.

WSL2 is literally a VM.

And WSL1?

Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#68

Post by wmf »

BikeShuester wrote: post #14

Linux distros should collaborate on a unified feedback initiative to boost adoption. The major distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc.) could create a joint survey site targeting Windows users who have tried Linux but reverted back. This would provide invaluable data on pain points preventing wider Linux adoption.Questions like: What Windows-specific software or functionality did you miss most on Linux? If you…

They know what the problems are. They don't have the manpower to develop more than a fraction of what users want.

Re: Linux market share approaching 4.5% for first time, could hit 5% by 1Q25

#70

Post by littlestymaar »

pjmlp wrote: post #66
littlestymaar wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as it keeps translating Windows, For people to be able to play games on your platform, there must be games running on it, and the reality is that people won't bother developing commercial games targeting explicitly Linux, at least not if Linux is at 2% market share. Being able to run the games which already exist is a massive adoption boost. > and doesn't lose to the handhelds running Windows proper. It's n…

Of course I am restricting it to native Linux games, the others are Windows games, developed and sold for Windows customers, that happen to be running on Linux thanks to Proton. One could be running a VM of some sort for exactly the same purpose. To the point that studios with Android NDK versions don't even bother to have them on GNU/Linux.

> Of course I am restricting it to native Linux games,

And of course that's completely arbitrary.

> the others are Windows games, developed and sold for Windows customers, that happen to be running on Linux thanks to Proton.

And so what?

> One could be running a VM of some sort for exactly the same purpose.

Except it keeps you monitored by Microsoft abusive telemetry, need much more RAM than what you'd normally need, and requires a Windows license. Dual-booting was the convenient way of doing this before proton came out, not VM. And proton made dual boot obsolete, which is a very good deal given that Microsoft regularly messes with it…

> To the point that studios with Android NDK versions don't even bother to have them on GNU/Linux.

Games developed for Android are made for touchscreens, so it's not like porting is easy.

And again, nobody is ever going to develop games for a platform that barely even exists as a gaming platform. Valve makes the platform exists at all, which is a big deal. But until market share hasn't reached something like 20% at least, nobody will bother developing games for it.

MacOS still isn't a serious gaming platform despite its huge market share compared to Linux, it's ridiculous to expect Linux to ever become one with native Linux games.

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