Linux market share passes 4% for first time; macOS dominance declines \ stacker news ~Linux

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Linux market share passes 4% for first time; macOS dominance declines arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/linux-continues-growing-market-share-reaches-4-of-desktops/

291 sats \ 19 comments \ @0xbitcoiner 6 Mar Linux

Report: Linux was on 6.34 percent of computers last month if you count ChromeOS.

Linux reached 4.03 percent of global market share in February, according to data from research firm Statcounter. That takes Linux past the 3 percent milestone it reached in June 2023. While we’re still far from the Year of the Linux Desktop, interest in Linux has somewhat grown lately.

Statcounter says it gets its desktop operating system (OS) usage stats from tracking code installed on over 1.5 million global websites generating over 5 billion monthly page views. The only adjustments the firm says it makes to this data are around removing bot activity and adjusting for Google Chrome prerendering. Note that when Statcounter analyzes desktop OSes, it also includes laptop computers, and Statcounter says it may revise its data within 45 days of publication.

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16 sats \ 2 replies \ @dgy 6 Mar

I wonder what the market share of Linux among bitcoiner is. I guess it is higher than 4%?

3 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner OP 6 Mar

It depends on what you consider a bitcoiner 😂

32 sats \ 0 replies \ @dgy 6 Mar

For instance the guys hanging around here on stacker.news, but certainly the hodlers that do self-custody.

I think the measurement is difficult anyway because if you add some privacy to the mix then users of the Tor browser etc. on Linux are hiding as Windows user in the big mass...

16 sats \ 3 replies \ @chaoticalHeavy 6 Mar

This doesn't consider Linux's share of the server market (or Android).

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner OP 6 Mar

I'm curious to see some data on the Linux server market. Do you have any or know where I can find some?

16 sats \ 0 replies \ @chaoticalHeavy 6 Mar

There's a wiki entry.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @wopwopwopwop 6 Mar freebie

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16 sats \ 2 replies \ @nullcount 6 Mar

Probably just more bots scraping webpages on linux VMs

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner OP 6 Mar

Do you really believe that or are you just kidding? Is there any way to verify this information?

16 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullcount 6 Mar

More demand than ever to scrape web data for AI training. Access to data increasingly restricted at the API level. So the next best way to scrape is to emulate a user and puppet a headless browser and parse the HTML

Apple is still making record sales. This seems a more likely explanation for the increase of linux usage than "mac users are switching to FOSS".

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @037447d9ca 6 Mar

how do they measure it? linux users are more privacy conscious and their browsers' user-agent might report a different OS. just like firefox users are often misreported as using chrome

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 6 Mar

That's a fair point. The methodology is definitely covered in the article.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @021da48107 6 Mar

I have no data on it but I assume the growth of the Linux "desktop" market the last few years is because of the SteamDeck.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 6 Mar

Does the use of the Steam Deck factor into the methodology used for this study?

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @021da48107 6 Mar

Looks like the source of the data uses the browser user agent: https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#desktop-laptop

Steam would show up as linux in the browser user agent by default.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 6 Mar

If that's the case, then this will inflate the data. Is it possible to know by how much?

16 sats \ 1 reply \ @021da48107 8 Mar

I'm sure there is but the SteamDeck is Linux so I'm not sure it's inflating it, or just accurately reporting it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner OP 10 Mar

Good point! It's still Linux at the end of the day.

26 sats \ 0 replies \ @wopwopwopwop 6 Mar

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