jcrabappleJul 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.

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Show threadFabian【ファビアン】🏳️‍🌈Jul 17, 2025

@jcrabapple

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
Show threadFals Fiction 💜🏳️‍🌈Jul 17, 2025
@fabiscafe @jcrabapple what is OS X?
Show threadFabian【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
Show threadalex.tmJul 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?
Show threadFabian【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.
Show threadalex.tm
@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.
Jul 20, 2025 at 1:51pmWeb
Show threadFabian【ファビアン】🏳️‍🌈Jul 20, 2025
@alextm
Thats a good question.
@shadowfals @jcrabapple
Show threadalex.tmJul 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.