Mastodawn

jcrabapple Jul 17, 2025

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

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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.

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Felix 🐊

@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

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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.