There has been an upsurge in the desktop Linux market share which has seen a rise to 3.37% in the latest statistics on Net Market Share for operating systems. Linux market share has witnessed a steady increase, especially in the last two summer months.
The stats show May 2017 with 1.99%, June with 2.36%, July had 2.53% and August showed Linux market share increasing to 3.37%.
Net Market Share is an analytical company that “collects data from the browsers of site visitors to our exclusive on-demand network of HitsLink Analytics and SharePost clients”. Their network includes over 40,000 websites across the globe.
Quite clearly this is not the real statistics on how many Linux desktops are in use and perhaps that is even not possible. But this is as close as we can get in collecting data on Linux market share.
Chromebooks help Linux Market Share?
The stats seem to take count Chrome OS as Linux since it is built on top of Linux kernel. Chromebooks, devices pre-installed with Chrome OS, have grown popular lately especially among college going students.
Chromebooks are usually lower end devices that have low prices and are lightweight. They come handy in carrying around and taking notes and saving them to cloud.
This might be a factor as students preparing to go to college may have boosted Chromebook sales.
However, this is my speculation and it may happen that more people are actually using desktop Linux. It is worthy to note that Linux distros dominate the market in servers and embedded devices. Not to forget that Linux simply rules super-computers with almost all of the top 500 supercomputers running on Linux.
Leave your comments below on what you think might have caused the increase in Linux market share for operating systems.
While this is indeed an interesting topic, we Linux'ers have long since stopped looking for the YOTLD: "Y-ear O-f T-he L-inux D-esktop". This was a mythical year that was SUPPOSED to happen in the early 2000's....but never did...and EVERY year since then?...we're heard people speak on Linux "taking the desktop market". Well here's a novel idea.....what if the YOTLD already CAME and has BEEN here?....underground.....and in the remote parts of the world. Would it matter? No. Does it matter? Yes.
See.....while having Linux on every desktop in America, or the UK...or Spain...or Germany might be great, the simple fact of the matter is that if that statement were true?....we would have the bullseye on our machines and not on Windows and Mac...so most Linux users are perfectly content to NOT be the No.1 desktop in the world....most of them are quite happy being their nerdy, geeky, dorky selves in a cafe somewhere typing away happily and getting work done, or making their lives easier by performing some task that would be hard to do without a computer. Let Windows HAVE the desktop market.....Linux has already "Won".....by taking over the data center....the cloud...and any machine that can't just "run Windows".....(ATM's.....Gas Station Pumps.......Ordering kiosks at the WaWa/Turkey Hill / Scottie's etc.......Just about every home router.....the OS for most phones that aren't iPhones....and oh by the way?: The Large Hadron Collider.....just about every PC at NASA.......the US Defense Department.....the OS behind most "Smart TV's" and other devices....and a slew of other machines that are advanced and forward thinking. So yes....please "give" Windows the desktop market....as a consolation prize, because the REST of the computing industry?...belongs to LINUX! Hahahah! And before I forget to mention it....remember while the desktops in CORPORATIONS might have that horrible four colored "Windows" logo on most of their machines....the HOME USER Linux market is expanding exponentially DAILY!....as proven by the folks here who have testified that they've weaned themselves off of the "Windows Whiskey" that seems to plague so many others! So whether or not Linux has conquered the market regarding the desktop is not relevant anymore. What matters now is "us" getting the gospel of Linux out the door....down the block.....on the bus.....on the train.....at the grocery store......in the library...at church (well....maybe not AT church but AFTER church?...LoL! you can only spread one gospel at a time!...LoL!) and anywhere else that MS thinks they can "rule" with an iron IE!......LoL!
Year of Linux desktop will come.. some day...
*goes to corner and cries*
:P
I'm happy and proud to see Linux distros doing so well, but unfortunately, so are the crooks, virus makers and hackers.
Yeah.. the side effects of popularity :D
I picked up a new computer for my wife yesterday, just a little Lenovo Ideapad 110S at a discounted price with WIndows 8 on it. The salesman wanted my phone number (he was then going to ask for my name and address; I've been through the routine before). Ostensibly this was for "warranty purposes". The only purpose was in fact to resell my details and purchase information to data miners for better advert targeting. Legally all I need is a receipt and I prefer not to have my privacy monetised. As usual, the manager's permission had to be obtained. Imagine, you cannot buy something without this malarkey. He duly obtained it. Next: would I like to purchase some insurance to extend the warranty? No thanks. Would I like to buy some anti-virus software? I laughed and shook my head. He seemed puzzled. No?? I'll be wiping it I told him, and putting Linux on it. Cue: a small ahah. He'd heard this before. That was interesting. At a guess, he'd heard it more often than people declining to provide their personal details.
I use several OSes on my computers: Raspbian, Linux Mint, FreeBSD (FreeNAS), ChromeOS (on an old Samsung C303), and still have a Windows 7 laptop that I keep for a few things, and my wife is still using Windows 7. We are absolutely not, ever, moving to Windows 10 (our kids use OSX and iOS). I hadn't spent any time with Windows 8 until yesterday; I'd only seen it on display. Sure, I had read that it bombed but I hadn't had personal experience of the skin-crawling revulsion. How could they have shipped such a dog which couldn't fail to annoy? Really the mind boggles. And then to have followed it up with the scummy attempted coercion to "upgrade" to WIndows 10 which required active efforts to defeat. Windows 10 was free because it was in Microsoft's long term interest to get the consumer to use it, not the consumer's. (I do not know of a single person who had a trouble free "upgrade" and I know of many who needed professional help to fix their computers afterwards).
Microsoft has persuaded me that my information doesn't belong in its infrastructure and that it can't be trusted. It seems to me to fit Matt Taibbi's description of Goldman Sachs quite well ("a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money").
Nevetheless, Microsoft is going the way of the internal combustion engine. It will never hold the same sway again. It's had a good run. I have no plans to subscribe to any completely proprietary platform. The existence and growing popularity of alternatives is hardly a surprise given the declining cost of hardware and the need to shift to a service and subscription based business model (the ideapad cost less than I once paid for MS Office!), but what remains surprising is how ACTIVELY Microsoft has alienated customers. I think Linux's share will pick up some more when many Windows 7 machines reach the end of their life. (Dual booting is for new computers and not something most consumers want to do).
Those email address, phone number, additional warranty stuff is more of a store's policy. They want to sell you more products so they will try to extract more info from you. Generic practice worldwide these days.
One factor may be that Windows 10 with all those destructive updates is becoming more trouble than it's worth. Each update bings its toll of peripherals (specially printers) that disappear or no longer work properly, and of software that's deleted without warning or notification.
Unfortunately, Windows is being mantained in existence to a large extent by companies like Adobe, whose products are not always easy to replace in practice. There are thousands of smaller applications that run only under Windows; I happen to use ToWeb for some websites that would have to be rebuilt.
Windows 10 is the final straw. Microsoft is catching up to Apple and Google with a vengeance and have done so with a complete abandonment of concerns for the end user: us. Linux is freedom from all of them.
My personal experience is that Chromebooks can be spotted every so often in the wild, while I have to see a Linux desktop that is not mine, or one of my coworkers' who, like me, have been using Linux in the desktop for years. Quite frankly, the best that Linux in the desktop can hope for is to stay where it is, with Chromebooks (running ChromeOS) steadily climbing over the next few years. With the KDE, Gnome and (now extinct) Unity monstrosities, Linux is alienating traditional users, without getting much traction with new ones.
One should be extremely careful of accepting data such as this as true. Concerning measurement of anything, statistics which have been showing slow, steady growth, and an ABSOLUTE small value do NOT JUMP like this.
I am a Linux user and fan, and nothing would make me happier than for Linux to "...win on the desk-top."
This ain't it.
I am not a computer pro but I have been using Linux as my desktop for years. Many of my relatives have converted too. I think the number is much higher than 3 or 4% because we use adblockers, script blockers, spoof referers, and other things just to get some web sites to load properly.
Even those who use Linux occasionally to fix Windows machines are getting more comfortable and will be switching as MS licensing and privacy invasions get more intrusive.
I am new linux user and really if most of linux was depending on terminal i would have turned back to MS windows
But luckily there is lot of GUI work done recently
And i feel more safe on linux
Windows is a mess when it comes to viruses and security
Linux GUI is better than any OS, Linux has diversified GUI, Like Plasma Desktop, unity, cinnamon .....
Surely it does
Actually i love linux desktop environments especially mate
Excuse me i didn't say it right
But i meant i am not used to terminal so programs in linux are depending more and more on gui than terminal
And that is keeping linux easier to me and to lots of people
I believe we will see Microsoft declare bankruptcy in the near future. They lost the server market to Linux. Over 90% of the world's Internet servers run Linux. They lost the educational market to Chromebooks. They lost the Office Suite market to LibreOffice. All the have left is the Windows Desktop, and for the past 5 consecutive updates, they have broken Windows for thousands of users. Micro$oft is literally pushing users away from it's last stronghold! They're trying so hard to lock users into their ecosystem, and then push them away. Linux beats Microsoft in every way, speed, security, ease of use, configurability... I'm an MCSE. Microsoft is my bread and butter, but I switched to Linux.
(I'll copy-paste what I said in another website...)
Here's my theory of the huge increase in just 1-2 months...
I think it's a little bit of several factors, all playing in favor of Linux.
First of all, I'm not so convinced that the increase is due to an increase in ChromeOS. Two different statistics sites that separate Linux and ChromeOS actually register a decrease in ChromeOS marketshare over the last 1-2 months while registering an increase in Linux's marketshare.
http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
So, honestly, I think Linux is really growing... The reason in my opinion:
The recent events over the past few months: the WannaCry and Petya debacles were huge in the news and a significant number of people and businesses were affected, making them consider (and apparently take action) on switching to Linux. In the past (5-10 years ago), events like these might have turned people to Linux, but Linux 5-10 years ago was still to "hostile" for the average user (hello, wireless connections) and they just went back to Windows (that was my case)... Today? Things have improved A LOT. Hardware now works out of the box, driver performance and features are everyday closer to Windows levels, GUIs for programs are replacing the daunting CLI stuff... Things are getting much more "average user friendly".
So, I really think people are slowly turning their heads over to Linux... This rate of adoption will slow down a lot over the next weeks while the ransomware fears dissipate, but I still think we will stay over 3% and maybe reach 4% by the beginning of 2018.
"ChromeOS actually register a decrease in ChromeOS marketshare over the last 1-2 months while registering an increase in Linux's marketshare"
I don't dispute that traditional Linux is growing on its own, independently of Chrome OS. But with regard to the decrease in Chrome OS usage seen over the last 1-2 months, Chrome OS usage consistently dips each summer, probably due to less academic use over the summer break. (See my previous comment for a citation/link.)
How much Chrome OS accounts for the growth of Linux outside the U.S., I don't know. But within the U.S. (where Chromebooks are being marketed), Chrome OS is growing at a blistering pace. (Again, see my previous comment for a citations/links.) So it’s hard for me to imagine how growth of Chrome OS doesn’t account for at least a substantial part of the growth in Linux that is being reported by sites (such as NetMarketShare) that don’t separately report the usage data for Chrome OS and traditional desktop Linux.
Regarding Chrome OS, StatCounter reports a 0.56% desktop usage share for Chrome OS worldwide [1], with measurable dips each summer [2], probably due to less academic use over summer break.
And StatCounter currently reports a 2.12% desktop usage share for Chrome OS in the United States (where Chromebooks are being marketed), which currently exceeds the 1.79% desktop usage share that StatCounter currently reports for traditional Linux in the United States [3]
Also, according to the NY Times, "of the 12.6 million mobile devices shipped to primary and secondary schools in the United States in 2016, Chromebooks accounted for 58 percent of the market, up from 50 percent in 2015." [4]
[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
[2] http://imgur.com/rIKMe2e
[3] http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/technology/apple-products-schools-education.html
Linux = android = quality, freedom, safety. Its marketshare can only increase.
And now, do the same thing for Android. Since Android is based on Linux, Linux has a great marketshare there too. I think the desktop is to become the only marketshare where Windows will keep its advance. More and more servers are becoming Liunx-based. And there, it depends on whether you consider the based OS under VM software such as VMware, or the individual server software used on top of it.
how can 'netmarketshare' be so sure that no one fake numbers?
There is no way to really know that. And second thing, why would anyone fake stats in such a large number? :)
They can't.