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https://www.w3counter.com/glob...
Chrome 62.5%
Safari 13.8%
IE+Edge 7.0%
Firefox 6.3%
Opera 3.0%

But if all IE/Edge users switched to this new "Microsoft Chrome" browser, the new stats would be:
Chrome 69.5%
Safari 13.8%
Firefox 6.3%
Opera 3.0%

And if you look at the monthly trends, Safari is just barely keeping its relative numbers while Chrome keeps going up, eating both Microsoft's and Mozilla's shares. But since Microsoft is basically becoming Chrome, the IE/Edge marketshare becomes irrelevant and simply pushes Chrome even higher.

I, for one, welcome our new Googlesoft overlords. ... sent from my Mac.

The statistics speak for themselves:

https://www.w3counter.com/glob...

In fact, to even make Edge look like it is even in the race, they combine Edge and IE 11 under the same statistic, but considering that IE11 is the third most used browser at a meager 3.49% based on browser/version, I'm guessing Edge is below Firefox in usage.

So you can call me a fanboy if you like, but the fact is that it's very clear very few people are using Edge at all, even with Microsoft's increasingly overt attempts to make switching default browsers difficult.

One Slashdot submission from July 2016 puts Linux's desktop market share at just over 2%.

Got to the same site now, it's 3.8%, catching up with MacOS and Windows 8. Not sure what's going on there, that's the fastest growth I've seen in a decade.

A similar submission from October 2016 puts it just over 2%, as well.

Why is Linux's share of the desktop market so abysmally low, even with several of the past releases of Windows (Vista, 8, and even 10) being widely disliked, and with Linux distributions typically being free, and after existing for over two decades now?

The one-word answer for that is: Gnome. It's just needlessly unfamiliar to Windows users, and face it, clumsy for everybody. Plus keeps changing for no apparent reason. Just one random item off the top of a large stack: after all these years, GTK file open dialog still sucks.

It's almost like Linux is most successful when the software that Red Hat is involved with is not used.

To be fair, Red Hat is heavily involved in kernel development, and as we all know, Linux Kernel is far and away the most successful OS in the known universe.

Given this lack of success, should the various desktop-oriented initiatives that Red Hat has started or worked on be considered failures?

X.org: definitely not a failure. Gnome: definitely a failure. Freedesktop.org: somewhere in between. It's a mixed bag.

If they aren't currently considered failures, at what point would they be considered failures? Would Red Hat's support for them be promptly terminated if they were deemed to be failures?

Interested in Jim's answer. Gnome, definitely a failure. Only Red Hat keeps beating that dead horse. The world's most popular Linux desktop is now Unity, based on QT. Just say no to GTK and C, the world has moved on. Red Hat has no significant desktop share, time to think about why.

Linux is rising (incredibly quickly at that) in a set of VERY SPECIFIC application domains.

So "all smart phones", "all internet servers" and "everything embedded" are "VERY SPECIFIC" application domains according to you? Good one, you're a real comedian.

There are some application domains (e.g. desktop operating systems) which are being handed to them on a silver fucking platter and it's still getting absolutely nowhere.

It's not a silver platter, it's a long uphill battle against Microsoft's illegal market control practices. And 40 to 80 million desktop users is not "nowhere". Linux is not yet dominant on the desktop as it is in almost all other computer application areas, but it is rising. Only a fool would deny it.

The latest browser usage stats show that Firefox has only about 7% of the market.

You mean some browser usage stats. Other usage stats show Firefox at 10% of the market, at 14.31%, and at 17.8%.

I thought those numbers were bizarre since I recalled that IE usage dropped had below 50% years ago. Now I see what the issue is. This survey is geared towards desktop usage only, and since the majority of desktops run Windows, and Windows comes with IE, it's no mystery that IE comes out on top. What is surprising is that looking at only desktop usage, IE is only barely a majority and not a slam dunk. That tells you how bad IE must be that people are actively switching away from IE. Hell, Microsoft itself is ditching IE for a new browser codenamed "Spartan" to get away from IE. What does that tell you?

Meanwhile, here are some links to actual web traffic usage patterns seen on the internet here and here. They tell a different story.

http://gs.statcounter.com/

http://www.w3counter.com/globa...

Firefox has been well over 20% for years.

IE dropped below 20 percent two years ago.

Of course, you can pick different stats to prove pretty much anything when it comes to the web.

Using W3 counter it could be IE, it could be Safari, it could be Firefox.

But recently both Google and Apple have thrown down the gauntlet with respect to requests by the DoJ. Microsoft could very well be taking a different tack; having your browsing routed through TOR makes it harder to know the contents - until you upload it to "the Cloud" and it sits on the servers unencrypted.

Unleash the "Microsoft is in bed with the NSA" hounds.

Yeah, "Safari" and "Opera" are such more functional names for a Web browser than "Konqueror".

They aren't better names

If you seriously think I was suggesting that they were better names, you really need to go get your sarcasm detector re-calibrated.

and that is reflected in the fact that nobody uses them.

Presumably by "nobody uses them" you mean "nobody uses those browsers", and by "nobody uses" you mean "most people don't use".

However, you have not demonstrated that there is any connection between the lower market share for those browsers and their choice of name.

Much of Safari's lower market share may be due to its low market share on Windows, an OS to which it was a latecomer and may never have had a chance to be a contender.

You've just weakened your own argument with that statement.

You've just demonstrated that you don't even understand the argument by everything you've said here.

The number one web browser is still Internet Explorer.

According to NetMarketShare, but not according to StatCounter or W3Counter.

(And the statistics for mobile browsers are a bit different.)

Newsflash: IE still has >50% market share.

Um, no. Depending on what site you're looking at it might go up or down, but nobody is ranking IE at over 50% anymore. W3 is actually reporting IE at around 20% these days:

http://www.w3counter.com/globa...

IE, as of about version 9, is on par with other major browsers in terms of security. It only gets more publicity because, let's face it, it's IE, and still the most widely used browser.

It depends on who you ask.

http://gs.statcounter.com/ shows Chrome clearly in the lead.
http://www.w3counter.com/globa... also shows chrome leading.
Wikimedia says Chrome leads http://stats.wikimedia.org/wik...

Just because its common doesn't mean its used. And you don't see these stories about Firefox or Chrome, at least not many. And given the market share that Chrome enjoys you would expect to see many more stories.

You've fallen for the old Microsoft lie:
They insist We are attacked because we are popular.
The real story is they are attacked because they are easy targets.

The statistics are "collected from W3Schools' log-files..." So an English-language site for people interested in web development is now considered an accurate proxy for browser usage? I think not. Predictably, the results are way out of line with, well, pretty much everyone:

http://www.netmarketshare.com/...
http://gs.statcounter.com/
http://www.w3counter.com/globa...
http://browsermarketshare.com/
http://clicky.com/marketshare/...

http://www.w3counter.com/trends
http://gs.statcounter.com/
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1&qpcustomb=0

There is an unexplained trend upwards in Internet Explorer

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?year=2013&month=07

2.27% share of linux-users. I would say this has a accuracy of +/-1%.

I know supporting XP is against two (different?)major strategies; Selling people on Microsoft's stupid everything is a tablet so we are winning(the new strategy of copying Apple), and the old we are Monopoly, buy a new version by crippling(discontinue) the old version so we can can roll around in cash(The old strategy when they were called Micro$oft).

Ignoring problems from fragmentation, and support...and it holding back the web for many years, or how Microsoft basically won against the United States by building IE into the OS (a partially successful strategy for them). Google has started separating its first party Applications from the underlying OS(in Android) by giving its users a great internet experience.

I notice that chrome continues to rise in usage as Internet Explorer continues to Dive(Firefox too, but for different reasons)

These graphs say it all http://www.w3counter.com/trends.

Is difficult to measure users when you are usually measuring sales, not people actually using it. Indirect hints (like i.e. Steam or browsers stats) still have to play with the amount of people that follow one trend in one platform vs the amount on another platform (do linux users visit the same sites of the being measured ones? are more or less likely to use steam?), but if we focus in one trend (i.e. in w3counter stats, to have enough historical data) has increased usage over the last years, so, not just absolute numbers has increased, percents too. But yes, numbers are still too low if your intended target is desktop domination.

When I search for "browser usage" Chrome typically lists #1: http://gs.statcounter.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers http://www.sitepoint.com/browser-trends-january-2013/ http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

While it may have had good sales during the Christmas shopping season, I'd like to know the return rate after people found out it was not a $150 laptop but a internet dependent device. I know people that returned Kindle Fire units when they found it was more of a sales portal for Amazon than an actual tablet. I know people that bought e-book readers when they did not even have WiFi in the home... Damn... I need to meet smarter people... But my point is most of the sales are made to people that don't actually understand what they bought. While Chrome the browser is doing great, ChromeOS has not even warranted a label in the stats tables I'm seeing.
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

People are going to use Windows 8?

Yes they will.

I am an anti-Microsoft person. People will use Windows 8, I guarantee it.

Vista was a flop. Many people and corporations avoided it like the plague. It has already been replaced by Windows 7. All microsoft fanbois have already dropped Vista for 7, and all new computers come with 7 installed, not Vista. Yet to this day Vista is used by almost as many people that use Macs, and more than triple the people that use Linux. (according to this site: http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php , YMMV based on your favorite stat site.) While the stats can be second guessed, the fact is that this hated OS is still in use by a significant number of people. This proves that there are a lot of people that either like vista, don't care about their options, or are not even aware that options to change even exist.

There will be people who will refuse to upgrade. There will be people who will install a different OS whether that is Linux or an older version of Windows (with the assumption it is possible.) There will be people that switch to Macs. However, most consumers will not have any clue and buy Windows 8 because they are clueless in regards to the options and they will buy whatever the salesrep is selling, and eventually they will be selling Windows 8. This alone will sell Windows 8.

Many people, especially those prone to the manipulates of sales and market, will simply get Windows 8, and even ask for it, for no reason other than, "Well its the latest, and that must mean the greatest, so why would I ever want something else."

And of course, some people will truly like it and want it...

So yes, People will use Windows 8. Guaranteed.

Proof? Exactly. It's closer to 2.6% according to http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php So is under 3% your target audience? I didn't think so.

I'd have to disagree. Firefox has reached a level of penetration beyond it being used by power users and their friends and family. It has a momentum of it's own. The figures for Firefox usage alone tell you that.

Really? The figures for Firefox show a nearly flat, but downward trend. The numbers for chrome show a significant upward trend.

Don't like w3schools? Let's try another site. Oh, look, that one shows the same downward trend for Firefox, too.

And a third site (warning: flash required) shows the same thing, too: Firefox has a downward trend.

I like Firefox, too, but the devs actions seem to be driving users away. I'm only using FF because of the addons (but I'm getting really tired of some breaking every month or two).

I have loads of friends who use Firefox on recommendation from a friend who wasn't a power user..

My friends and co-workers are slowly moving away from Firefox to chrome. While personal anecdotes may be fun, they're not all that useful.

"...(Firefox) is used by a minority of users."
26.7% versus 35.4 for IE is a minority, true, it has 9% less than IE.
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

"OpenOffice is only used by "normal" people to the very small extent it is because it's free."
I use it because it doesn't have a fucking ribbon, I wouldn't use MS office if it gave money on top.

Wikipedia doesn't have June numbers yet. W3C has seen it rise from 16.8% to 18.7% in the last month. That's a 1.9% increase, statcounter has 1.29%, hitslink only 0.59% and Wikimedia still isn't ready yet, but it's likely the WP average will go up from 16.2% to 17.3-17.4% for June. Either way there's no denying Chrome is climbing fast.

Wikipedia doesn't have June numbers yet. W3C has seen it rise from 16.8% to 18.7% in the last month. That's a 1.9% increase, statcounter has 1.29%, hitslink only 0.59% and Wikimedia still isn't ready yet, but it's likely the WP average will go up from 16.2% to 17.3-17.4% for June. Either way there's no denying Chrome is climbing fast.

I totally disagree with all the anti-Bill Gates rants here.

Let me see where MS was when Gates left? Oh yeah ...

1. IE owned 90% of the browser market
2. SQL Server was rapidly gaining marketshare over Oracle and DB2
3. WindowsCE aka Windows Mobile owned 90% of the smart phone market
4. Windows owned 95% of the desktop operating system market
5. Customers upgrading Windows/Office every 2-3 years during life cycling desktops.
6. MS was first with the MS tablet

Cons
1. XBOX lost 1 billion a quarter. Thats the only negative cost center under his leadership
Things were very good under Bill Gates

Today under Balmer
1. IE owns less than 50% of the browser market in North America
2. SQL Server is rapidly being replaced by MySQL for many internet/intranet sites
3. Windows Mobile owns only 6% of the market
4. Windows only owns 85% of the US market thanks to Apple. 10 years ago they had something like 3% market share rather than the 12 - 15%!
5. Customers are keeping and still buying WindowsXP and Office 2003 and refusing to upgrade if they life cycle to new desktops or not.
6. Ipads and now Andriod tablets are eating XP tablets for breakfast and took over the whole market
Pro
1.I think XBOX is now breaking even

So, in other words Microsoft is losing their existing monopoly slowly and every new market they are trying to get into is just a money losing division. Notice I did not even mention Linux up there. Apple and google, combined with MS incompentence for their existing monopolies are doing the work for us. The fact is MS already won the war over Apple and the Palm Pilot in the mobile wars. Now they are losing BAD and this is inexcusable if I were a shareholder. You can hate Bill Gates all you want for his business tactics, hence I chose his name back in 1999 as he was perceived as unstoppable then. Something needs to change

Web Stats Nov 2010 - Operating Systems

1 45.98% Windows XP
2 24.12% Windows 7
3 15.59% Windows Vista
4 9.13% Mac OS X
5 1.66% iPhone OSX
6 1.52% Linux
7 1.06% Windows 2003
8 0.43% Android
9 0.24% Windows 2000
10 0.11% WAP

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

Hitslink numbers for Linux are suspiciously low.
Wikimedia: 1.8%
W3Counter: 2.78%
W3Schools: 4.5%

Firefox is available on many, many more platforms than Flash

If you're a content creator (e.g. you're making a web site), it doesn't really matter which platforms Firefox is theoretically available on... it's the marketshare that matters. Firefox is on less than 1/3 of computers, whereas Flash is available on 99% of them.

Because OSX is an entire operating system used by 7.95% of users, while Linux is used by only 2.34% of users. Opera is just a web browser used by only 1.42% of users.

For those 1.42% using Opera, it's rather easy to upgrade to a new version. As already stated there are versions available that fix the problem, and only requires a simple application install. Even if Opera never released a patched version, moving to Safari/Firefox/Chrome/(gasp!)IE isn't too hard, at least when compared to moving to a new OS.

Updating an OS is more of a chore, especially in a large company with many computers. There is no update yet for OSX which addresses the issue, and even when it comes out there's no guarantee it will work with anything besides 10.6. Users of 10.5 may be, and users of 10.4 will almost certainly be, stuck no matter what web browser they choose. They would be forced to upgrade to 10.6; for users with older hardware, that might require them to buy new systems just to keep internet access. That's why the issue is bigger for OSX users than Opera users.

(disclaimer: I am a happy user of OS X 10.6 on my iMac and MBP)

While I am wary of Chrome, there's a very simple reason this warning is coming from Microsoft.

This post brought to you by Captain Obvious

I didn't say it has over 100% of marketshare

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

FF has 32% share, IE has 48% share

32.1 * 1.62 = 52.002, which is pretty close to the 48% marketshare that IE has - certainly within the error margins that you could expect if you took your browser census data from several websites, so it might not just be a number that someone pulled out of their ass.

{snip}it'll take more than this to chip away from IE's 62 percent lead in the browser war,{/snip}

Before we work on getting rid of the whole OS (good idea BTW ;) ), we should start by getting the effin' journalists to check their numbers and do some decent reporting - IE isn't even at 62%, much less @ a 62% lead over *any* other browser... The *only* thing IE leads in is, as you have pointed out, default installs.

Sorry, I haven't noticed.

Please elucidate. Please give me a list of the top three Linux devices and their sales volumes compared to, say, symbian, rim and iPhone.

Or perhaps you can explain some of these http://w3counter.com/globalstats.php stats and how Linux, Android and WAP come in at less than 2% with regard to your "irrelevant" statement.

Dammit, you're trolling, aren't you? Well... Fool me once, strike one, fool me twice, strike, uh three.

Haha, you sound like that figure is fixed and not going down. How about this one: 55.66% or this one: 50.3%
There, and I didn't even have to go to the w3schools site like so many people mistakenly do.

Saying that Firefox beat IE6 is like bragging Mac OS X surpassed Windows 98 in usage share. oooh.

October, 2009

3 Mac OS X 7.38%

9 Windows 98 0.10%

Thanks for being part of the problem. Linux users won't buy games, so games developers won't develop for Linux, so Linux users won't buy games, so games developers won't develop for Linux...

I buy more games than I honestly have time to play. All for them with native linux support.

Maybe when Linux (all distros) has more desktop market share than a Microsoft OS which isn't even released yet they'll begin to care. Until then, please feel free to manually edit your .conf files, fiddle with wireless device "firmware" stripped out of Windows drivers, and live safe in the knowledge that you're intellectually elite compared to the rest of the Wintards (like myself) who are playing the games you can only whinge about.

I haven't edited any .conf files for my system, nor have I fiddled with wireless devices. I havn't even installed 3rdparty drivers. I am aware there is some firmware thing going on somewhere below (as I presume there are on windows), but that is handled somewhere beneath the hood. You do come across as someone with an inferiority complex.

Horses for courses. Get Windows or a console for gaming. Until there is a unified architecture for 3D rendering on Linux (like DirectX on Windows) you're living in a dream world.

It's there, it's older than DirectX, and it's called OpenGL. And anyway, I already play games on linux, so the technical side is obviously not a problem. It is merely a matter of whether this game's maker want to exploit the linux niche or not. If they don't, fine, I'll take my money elsewhere. Capitalism at work, no?

Thanks for being part of the problem. Linux users won't buy games, so games developers won't develop for Linux, so Linux users won't buy games, so games developers won't develop for Linux...

Maybe when Linux (all distros) has more desktop market share than a Microsoft OS which isn't even released yet they'll begin to care. Until then, please feel free to manually edit your .conf files, fiddle with wireless device "firmware" stripped out of Windows drivers, and live safe in the knowledge that you're intellectually elite compared to the rest of the Wintards (like myself) who are playing the games you can only whinge about.

Horses for courses. Get Windows or a console for gaming. Until there is a unified architecture for 3D rendering on Linux (like DirectX on Windows) you're living in a dream world.

If you took reports from major websites (Google, ESPN, Yahoo, MSN, etc, etc), I think that would be the best metric for filling in any gaps. That would give you a percentage of an OS actually used.

Counting web hits is a very common technique. Here is a recent survey showing 2% market share for Linux, and here is one showing 1%. That shows that the technique is very crude -- uncertain by at least a factor of two. There are all kinds of reasons for that uncertainty. Many user agent strings are bogus, often because someone is trying to work around servers that lock you out unless you have a certain string. Every web site is going to have its own demographic. Unique users are notoriously hard to identify in server logs.

I'm hoping that general Linux adoption will snowball. It seems likely: growth tends to be exponential and Linux market share (according to W3C) is at 2.13%, as apposed to 2.06% last month... If we maintained that growth, we'd be at 26.4285% in 12 months (2.13*2.13/2.06*12)... Just a thought.

Oops. My bad. I checked my math: it's actually (2.13/2.06)^12*2.03 = 3.03139. Still, thats pretty good.

That was very embarrassing.

CAPTACHA: Monthly...

I'm hoping that general Linux adoption will snowball. It seems likely: growth tends to be exponential and Linux market share (according to W3C) is at 2.13%, as apposed to 2.06% last month... If we maintained that growth, we'd be at 26.4285% in 12 months (2.13*2.13/2.06*12)... Just a thought.

According to Wikipedia and W3Counter, IE7 has been ahead of IE6 since 2007.

... not that I think this is at all the reason people don't update.
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

Windows 98 is listed as less than 1%.
And I'm pretty sure FF3 still works on Windows 2000 which just barely beats out Linux in popularity.

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
Don't forget w3counter.
27.46%

w3schools of course is totally off, but w3counter on the other hand...

It seems to me, that microsoft can press everything into the market.

Where are the 100 million vista-users? Do they only buy it, or do they install it on their computers, also? They seem not to use the internet, because the statistic says, that Windows XP is still with 80 percent the market leader.

http://www.w3counter.com/

If you are using vista and you are not satisfied, then it may be best for you to switch to a Macintosh. Please, if you are not in the least technically skilled, don't try Linux. You can't sue someone, if you screw up the installation and lose all your data.

It is no good idea, to switch from Windows to Linux, only because you are temporally not satisfied with the products from microsoft. We linux-users have chosen it, because it gives us the freedom to do with our hardware what we want to do with it, not what a single company what's us to make us do with it (for a limited time until the next update has to be sold). It is a different world. You have been warned!

Vista is only in use by about 6 percent of the internet surfers.
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

Maybe the users of vista don't like to surf the net?

The referenced stats for this article lack two key items: an "other" classification, and and explanation of how OS is being identified. A definition of the sample would also be useful, as browser/platform distribution can vary quite strongly across websites.

A competing set of web client statistics shows Linux at 1.77% of all clients, and (if you do the math) 2.16% "other" or unclassified clients. Missing, if you've any experience running yoru own website, are the various crawler and spider types which can account for a significant volume of traffic.

Regardless, it would appear that actual Linux web client share is somewhere in the 1% - 4% range. Given 1.26 billion people on the Internet, I'd estimate 12.6 - 50.4 million Linux users. More or less (or most or cat or dog....).

Karsten M. Self

Well, my goal with that post was to inform, not to debate. If you're intent on "proving" Linux is dying, or Mac is dying, or BSD is dying, I'm sure you'll find a way to do so, and I'm not interested in arguing. I'm sorry if my post came across as abrasive or dismissive; it wasn't intended that way. It's just that I've looked through too many sites with OS percentage statistics to be able to remember all of the URLs, so I can't really give you a full list. Since you asked, I dug up a couple more references, though:

http://www.radok.com/internet-statistics.html
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php.

If you'd like to look for more, I find that Googling for things like

"operating system" desktop market share
OS market share

etc., usually yield better results than things like

Linux market share
mac Linux market share
mac market share

for finding websites with web browser/OS hit statistics.

Most that work with browser issues on a daily basis considered IE6 dead and IE7 a spasm.

Meanwhile, http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php is reporting:

as of 1 October, 2007.