It seems to have plateaued and increasing more slowly. Combining data from Steam and Statcounter reveals this:
The year of the Linux desktop: any year now for the past 10 years.
I’m waiting for the day someone who isn’t a nerd and regularly uses Linux.
Possibly controversial point, but I don’t want Linux to go mainstream.
I like that there are very few viruses developed for Linux. I like that most countries don’t regulate Linux in the way that MacOS or Windows are regulated (I live in the EU, so I know a thing or two about regulations). This could potentially make some linux distros unsupported in some regions due to being none-compliant.
And most of all, I like that Linux apps are mostly Free as in free beer, and a labour of love for all involved.
All these things would go away if linux were to reach 10-15%+ market share. Is it really worth it to invite all this scrutiny for a chance of having hardware companies make hardware run better on linux?
How do you see Linux being regulated if it grows? I imagine that Windows and MacOS are regulated because they’re for profits that e.g. harvest our data, create proprietary limitations on apps, and so on. Genuinely curious how regulating Linux would look similar - or how it might differ.
Decade of Linux desktop.
We’re getting up there.
It honestly doesn’t take much more for the snowball effect to take hold.
Could be interesting to see how proprietary platforms respond to increased adoption. Maybe they’ll start removing their ads and surveillance, or even giving their operating systems away altogether (minus the source code, of course.)
May be similar to the 3d software world where autodesk created a monopoly and could charge around 5k USD for something like Maya, and then go the adobe route and only rent once innovation dies off. Only when Blender started getting more hype and attention did autodesk start offering cheaper indie versions and licenses.
Windows is already basically free using the user as a product
And yet they still charge people for it.
They charge only those who are not technically literate enough to transfer to Linux. Cracking Windows is a piece of cake but if someone can’t do that they probably will not switch.
plateaued since when? if you look at the second half of the graph, 2022 forward, it looks more steep to me.
I take it ‘geometric mean’ is the geometric mean of ‘statcounter’ and ‘steam’? What’s the specific source of those latter two measures? For instance, when I look at linux usage on the statcounter website I get more like 1.5%, not 4%.
It seems to have plateaued and increasing more slowly.
Look like 1 year “growth then plateau”, like 2021-01 to 2022-01. But 2022-05 to 2024-09 linear growth again. Analysis/forecast of human behaviour not easy.
Also combine data of different source not easy, please handle with care.
Good point, thanks. The way I modeled the adjustment was by assuming that most usage is captured by Statcounter but there’s movement back and forth to a reservoir that flies under its radar, in bursts, with zero net movement in the long run. So I used a geometric mean of the source data scaled by the square root of their averaged ratio.
