Mastodawn

Linux Breaks 5% Desktop Share in U.S., Signaling Open-Source Surge Against Windows and macOS

https://www.webpronews.com/linux-breaks-5-desktop-share-in-u-s-signaling-open-source-surge-against-windows-and-macos/

Linux Breaks 5% Desktop Share in U.S., Signaling Open-Source Surge Against Windows and macOS

Linux has surpassed 5% desktop market share in the US (5.03% in June 2025), per StatCounter, driven by privacy concerns, rising costs of Windows/macOS, and user-friendly distros like Ubuntu. Community celebrates amid gaming and enterprise boosts, though challenges like software gaps persist; analysts eye 7% by 2027.

WebProNews

Tired Morlock 🚀🌖Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple I read that as “Linux breaks 5% of Desktops” and was like, that tracks. 😹

Phil Betts Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple ooft, nearly twice as popular as Firefox. 😬

@jcrabapple That's easy for me to believe because the backlash against #Apple and #Microsoft is getting real now.

Crystal 💾💽📼🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple maybe not the best reference as it's an AI written article with no links to sources.

Kevin Russell Jul 17, 2025

@crystal717 @jcrabapple

This what's known as sour grapes, the report 5% linux

How many do you need?
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2851606/linux-market-share-just-crossed-5-percent-hitting-a-new-milestone.html

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/25/07/16/2048246/linux-reaches-5-on-desktop

Linux market share just crossed 5%, hitting a new milestone

This could mark the beginning of a new era for Linux-based platforms.

PCWorld

Troed Sångberg Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple tbh this might be the funniest analyst opinion ever though:

"analysts predict Linux could hit 7% by 2027 if trends continue, driven by AI integrations in distributions like those from Canonical"

Bandersnatch Jul 17, 2025

I switched last May & love it.

DJ Sexy Fresh Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple I use Kubuntu as my daily driver because Windows 11 crashes every hour or two.

Thibaultmol 🌈Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple DID SOMEONE SAY YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP?!?!?!

Chris. R. 🎧🎼☕🍍Jul 17, 2025

@thibaultmol @jcrabapple
Every year!

Kevin Russell Jul 17, 2025

The growth of Linux per year is increasing.

Slashdot is a website of nerds, coders, designers, techs in a dozen industries, long time among the most visited sites, it polled its users, a regular feature.

For coding designing engineering computer users.

https://m.slashdot.org/poll/3259/results

#linux #slashdot #poll

Fabian【ファビアン】🏳️‍🌈Jul 17, 2025

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america/#monthly-202406-202506

Desktop Operating System Market Share United States Of America | Statcounter Global Stats

This graph shows the market share of desktop operating systems in United States Of America based on over 5 billion monthly page views.

StatCounter Global Stats

Fals Fiction 💜🏳️‍🌈Jul 17, 2025

@fabiscafe @jcrabapple what is OS X?

Fabian【ファビアン】🏳️‍🌈Jul 17, 2025

@shadowfals @jcrabapple a strange phase where mac OS X lost the mac part with 10.8, mountain lion, until it was renamed to just macOS with 10.12, Sierra

alex.tm Jul 20, 2025

@fabiscafe @shadowfals @jcrabapple Any idea what is the logic behind combining all Linux distros (with a variety of capabilities/features from many different companies) into a single number, but keeping MacOS and OSX separate even though they’re just slightly different versions of the same OS?

Fabian【ファビアン】🏳️‍🌈Jul 20, 2025

@alextm @shadowfals @jcrabapple technical limitations. It's not easy, nor worth it to try separating Linux distro based on browser identifiers, like the user agent.

alex.tm Jul 20, 2025

@fabiscafe @shadowfals @jcrabapple Yeah, that makes sense, but I’m more wondering why they don’t just combine MacOS and OSX into one number. The name change was mostly marketing, not some major change in the OS itself.

Fabian【ファビアン】🏳️‍🌈Jul 20, 2025

@alextm
Thats a good question.
@shadowfals @jcrabapple

alex.tm Jul 20, 2025

@fabiscafe @shadowfals @jcrabapple It gets stranger. I’m digging around their site trying to find an explanation. If you look at OS version market share, they have a report for MacOS but not OSX. Within the MacOS report, there is one version of “OSX” shown (El Capitan from 2015), but it has essentially zero use. Any other versions of “OSX” are older and presumably even less used. Everything else is listed as “MacOS”.

But the main desktop OS report shows OSX having over double the market share of MacOS. Very confusing.

Miyu 🇪🇺Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple StatCounter isn't the best measurement of operating system market share, actual number can be lower due to many factors such as Windows users using only mainstream websites that do not report to StatCounter, but the trend is clearly visible and hoping for the best. Release of Windows 11 and end of life of Windows 10 was Microsoft's suicide

penguin42 Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple oh, so *this* is the year of the Linux Desktop?

Internet Rando Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple somebody noticed SteamDecks. lol

@mousey Steam Decks have not sold volume to this scale. I would believe Raspberry Pis though

Internet Rando Jul 17, 2025

@phurd whynotboth.gif?

Also, anecdotally, I've seen a lot of gamers shifting away from Win* on their machines of late, many coming into our gaming org(s), like "hi we're new to linux". So maybe Steamdeck isn't *the* driver, but a lot of people in my orbits seem to be shifting. It's interesting to watch.

quixote Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple Interesting. The last time this happened, when Microsoft owned pretty much everything like Apple does now, Microsoft jumped right in and squelched as much as it could. (Times were primitive then. They just lowered the price on Windows to $3, which kept enough people chained to MSFT.)

It'll be interesting to see what shenanigans the broligarchy tries to pull now.

Felix 🐊Jul 17, 2025

@quixote @jcrabapple
tbf, windows is free, de facto, considering Microsoft owns github, which hosts this popular repo:

https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

Not to mention, windows is perfectly usable without even activating it, it just has limited features.

I can't imagine they make money off of OS sales much, anymore (but I'm not a microsoft employee, so really I don't know anything about how the company works). However, it's no mystery that corporate-developed OS's have been inserting ads into their UI, and advertisements make more money the more people get exposed to them... It may no longer matter if windows is paid software to microsoft, because everyone running Windows 11 is being advertized to and likely having all their data scraped by OneDrive and Recall.

So yeah, my impression is windows is free if you don't value your privacy or personal information at all.

GitHub - massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts: Open-source Windows and Office activator featuring HWID, Ohook, TSforge, and Online KMS activation methods, along with advanced troubleshooting.

Open-source Windows and Office activator featuring HWID, Ohook, TSforge, and Online KMS activation methods, along with advanced troubleshooting. - massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

GitHub

quixote Jul 17, 2025

@crocodisle @jcrabapple Nowadays, yeah, you pay in crapware but otherwise it's the OEM who pays actual money, so it's less noticeable.

In Olden Times, MSFT made great galloping gobs of money off OSes.

Polly Kraisus Jul 18, 2025

@jcrabapple wondering how much of it is Linux scrapers disguised as desktop to feed the AI bubble. I haven't looked at the methodology, might be covered?
(Also, side note but how annoying are news websites citing a source but not even linking to it... ugh!)