Linux Grabs More Than 2% of Desktop Market Share (w3counter.com)

LichtSpektren writes: W3Counter's stats for June 2016 are in, and Linux desktop accounts for 2.48% of all web visits from tracked websites... (Android is counted separately from "Linux desktop.")
Meanwhile, NetMarketShare shows Linux with a 2.02% share of the desktop market. And StatCounter shows a more detailed breakdown of the top 7 operating systems, with Windows 7 at 42.02%, Windows 10 at 21.88%, OSX at 9.94%, Windows 8.1 at 8.66%, Windows XP at 6.5%, and another 4.06% for "Unknown" (which is roughly tied with "Other") -- beating Windows 8.0 at 3.52%. In May they also reported another thought-provoking statistic: that Firefox's browser usage had surpassed that of IE and Edge combined for the first time.

Comments

Linux Users use Adblockers

[yithar7153]

I would assume Linux has the largest group of users with adblockers, thus Linux would have the smallest desktop share.

Re:Yay Linux!

[Wyzard]

There's a certain amount of security to be had using a more obscure operating system.

Linux is hardly "obscure". It's not widely used on desktops, but it's the dominant operating system for Internet servers. That makes it a plenty big target for attackers already.

Re: Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the MS Shill is back.

What a fucking tard.

Re: Windows 10

[mark-t]

You may be trolling, but I'd like to answer a few of these:

1) I have to call bullshit on this. While some distros do indeed push systemd on you, that is a distribution-specific issue, and not a Linux one. There are at least two very mainstream systemd-free distributions of Linux. and both will remain so for the far forseeable future.

4) No argument about compatibility, my wife has griped about the same thing, but one could just as easily argue that the windows versions are inferior because they aren't compatible with open source alternatives. The notion of which is actually better depends on what a person happens to personally prefer, and is not based on objective and universal truth. Simply being adopted by fewer people does not make inferior by the same reasoning that suggesting the earth was not the center of the universe is not flawed either.

9) Three words: 'fsck -a /dev/sda1'. Some distros even come with an option at boot time to launch a recovery shell, but in a pinch you can always just boot from a usb recovery image or dvd. In my experience, recovery time on Linux in the event of a catastrophic failure is much faster (not to mention much less frequently needed in the first place) than it is on Windows.

And finally:

11) You are quite mistaken. First of all, not even all distributions require you to use X, let alone gnome, of which Bug Buddy is just a part. Secondly, only a very small amount of technical skill is required to block it.

The chief reason why Linux will probably not succeed on the desktop has nothing to do with any technical characteristics, merits, or lack thereof of the OS itself, but rather on the typical technical aptitude of computer users. Linux doesn't hold your hand the way that some other OS's might, and this can be intimidating for some people, but with the freedom that Linux gives to its users comes a great ability to control and customize your computer to behave exactly the way that you want.... in ways that Windows users probably cannot even imagine.

I preferred counter culture

[aspx]

So basically, Mac users can make fun of us now? How humiliating.

Re: Windows 10

[TommyNelson]

The chief reason why Linux will probably not succeed on the desktop has nothing to do with any technical characteristics, merits, or lack thereof of the OS itself, but rather on the typical technical aptitude of computer users. Linux doesn't hold your hand the way that some other OS's might, and this can be intimidating for some people, but with the freedom that Linux gives to its users comes a great ability to control and customize your computer to behave exactly the way that you want.... in ways that Windows users probably cannot even imagine.

Not so much to do with hand-holding than with marketing budgets and vendor binding. Installing and running Windows might be simpler than Linux, but not that much. Many distros have come a long way. The problem Linux faces is all the preinstalled machines. Buy an off-the-shelf desktop or laptop PC and it'll close to 100% likely be preinstalled with Windows.

Re:Windows 10

[Bert64]

The reason people say "open up bash and type" is because a textual interface is easier to explain vocally or in a textual medium like a website. Text is far more clear, you read out the instructions and they read back the output, they don't need to understand the output or interpret it, just read it. Compare that to a gui where you have to explain and describe and rely on both sides of the conversation understanding the way things have been described.

You could usually achieve the same result through a gui, only doing so would take twice as long to explain.

I've also seen many many cases of windows problems where "just open regedit and..." or something similar was the proposed solution, even very recently people have been proposing such hacks as the way to get rid of the windows 10 nagware - how is this better than the idea of opening a bash shell?

While i agree that linux in its current form is unsuitable for the average user, windows is even less suitable. Both systems can be limped along by users who have no idea what they're doing, but both are dangerous and can easily be broken by such users. General purpose computers are specialist tools designed by geeks for geeks, putting such systems in the hands of users who don't understand how to use them properly results in an epidemic of malware, fraud and other crime.

Users are better off with games consoles, chromebooks and ipads etc.