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Linux Marketshare is Above 2-Percent For Third Month in a Row (omgubuntu.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the marketshare dept.

For the third month in a row the share of worldwide desktop computer users running Linux has been above two percent -- up from one percent -- according to data from web analytics company Net Market Share. From a OMGUbuntu report: We reported back in July that Linux marketshare had passed two percent for the first time, and that figure remains the highest they've ever reported for Linux, at 2.33 percent. But the share for September 2016 was almost as good at 2.23 percent. It's the third consecutive month that Linux marketshare has been above 2 percent. Those of us who use Linux as our primary desktop computing platform can take a degree of pride in these figures. They do show a clear trend towards Linux, rather than away from it. But we should also remember that statistics, numbers and reporting methods vary between analytics companies and that all figures, however positive, remain open to interpretation and debate.

31 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. 2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by tnok85 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Or will it be 2017?

    1. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by tnok85 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I haven't been on Slashdot in a long time, but that used to be a joke around here whenever there was an optimistic news story about Linux on the desktop. I love (prefer) Linux on the desktop. Software requirements holding me back from fully embracing it.

    2. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by Shane_Optima · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I haven't been on Slashdot in a long time, but that used to be a joke around here whenever there was an optimistic news story about Linux on the desktop. I love (prefer) Linux on the desktop. Software requirements holding me back from fully embracing it.

      If the software in question isn't terribly performance intensive, that isn't a very compelling reason any more. You've plenty of virtualization options at your disposal, some ridiculously easy to set up (Virtualbox).

      If the cumbersome-ness of the UI or of moving data between VMs has been holding you back, I humbly suggest you consider Qubes OS, which has been promoted so heavily as a security-focused distro that many people have failed to emphasize that it's also one of the best hypervisors around from a usability standpoint. Templates (your choice of Fedora or Debian) greatly streamline the updating process and it's very easy to share the clipboard (securely) or send files to another VM on the fly, but most importantly there's one single desktop (XFCE or KDE) with one taskbar, and color-coded windows can be freely mixed from multiple Linux and Windows 7 VMs (Windows 10 compatibility in the works, but in the meantime it can still be run as an HVM.)

    3. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by rhodium_mir · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If the software in question isn't terribly performance intensive, that isn't a very compelling reason any more. You've plenty of virtualization options at your disposal, some ridiculously easy to set up (Virtualbox).

      Why would I want to run Linux if I'm just going to run a Windows VM on it?

      --
      You can't spell "oneiromancy" without "roman".
    4. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by Sperbels · · Score: 2

      I care. I would prefer not to have to use Windows 10 on my desktop.

    5. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by Shane_Optima · · Score: 5, Informative

      Because you don't have to run all of your applications in Windows? You can do the absolute minimum amount of work in Windows, only the stuff that you need Windows for, and then right-click to instantly send those files over to a Linux VM. The extra work involved is trivial. If you're apathetic about the differences between Windows and Linux desktops then that might not be much of a win[1] , but tnok85 (the person I was replying to) said that he preferred Linux desktops.

      Also, even if you only ran Windows 7 in Qubes (not using any Linux VMs other than the built in connectivity ones that are already configured for you), it's still actually a "Linux Desktop". You never have to look at the start button if you don't want to--all of your Windows 7 applications can appear seamlessly in KDE or XFCE.

      Also, Qubes' template system can be applied to Windows 7 in addition to Linux VMs. You can[2] very easily create multiple Windows VMs based on the same base image. There are a lot of ways you could use this functionality, but one possibility is one Windows VM could be strictly offline for security, one could be a regular online Win7 VM, and a third one could exclusively use a VPN or Tor ProxyVM for internet connectivity. And any application you install in the Win7 template would automatically propagate to all VMs based on that template (multiple templates are possible, either from-scratch or by cloning.)

      Almost all of this is doable using GUI tools (I think you might need a tiny amount of CLI usage for setting up a Win7 template but there are guides available.


      1. Except to the extent that using a hypervisor like Qubes is *great* for easy portability and security. System==>BackupVMs==>[just a few clicks later]==> done. Your entire environment is now be copied over and transferable to any other physical machine running Qubes. No CLI fiddling required (unless you want to), and you can even encrypt the backup without jumping through any extra hoops.

      2. Well, the precise legality of this is... a gray area, but certainly you could do this legally if you had the right license from MS, or multiple licenses.

    6. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by Yvan256 · · Score: 2

      It really doesn't matter, the desktop is dying.

    7. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by Shane_Optima · · Score: 2

      Who the hell modded this (and this) troll? I'm not annoyed so much as confused. A rabid pro-Windows user or something?

    8. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by Shane_Optima · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously, you people modding this down... post AC to explain why. You've got me curious now.

      Do you think I'm lying? The context of this conversation is someone who already says he PREFERS Linux desktops but is stuck with Windows due to some applications he needs. I'm explaining an elegant solution for his situation, not trying to convince anyone who is convinced that Linux desktops are far inferior to Windows' current desktop.

    9. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by antdude · · Score: 2

      What are the software requirements?

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    10. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by smallfries · · Score: 2

      Holy shit - user ids are over 4M now?!?

      I have no idea how long that implies your account has been here, but I'll reply as if you are fairly new so feel free to ignore this if it is obvious to you. The moderation system is not meant to be a robust measurement of the quality of a comment. It's meant to be a lightweight feedback that means we don't have to browse at +4 to avoid the GNAA trolls and other filth who lurk in the lower levels.

      There are two ways the moderation system is used:
      * drive-by moderation when people burn off their points quickly and express an opinion of your post. Hopefully this converges to reasonable average over time.
      * trolls with legions of sock-puppet accounts that attempt to harass particular users they've argued with.

      Beyond that, I wouldn't take it too seriously. Qubes sounds quite interesting, I'll take a look at it later so thanks for the pointer. My problem is somewhat different to the OP - I'm running an ubuntu desktop on a machine that I would prefer to be running debian. Sadly I can't make debian stable on the skylake it uses as the microcode update isn't working, hence the sledgehammer approach of sticking ubuntu on it.

      --
      Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
    11. Re:2016: Year of the Linux Desktop by Shane_Optima · · Score: 2

      I had two people different mod me troll in fairly quick succession long before anyone modded me up (plus another troll mod on another reply in this chain), so I felt the need to request a clarification. Obviously yes, it's the internet and people will do stupid shit but they didn't seem like posts that should have been particularly controversial.

      Qubes isn't 100% perfect; there are a couple usability points that Joanna has apparently sacrificed in the name of security, namely GPU passthrough for Windows (e.g. for 3d gaming) and automatic icon transfer to Dom0 (improving, but still far from perfect.) And there are a handful of relatively minor bugs I've seen, but overall the learning curve is remarkably shallow for what it's actually doing behind the scenes (and also the performance has been utterly astonishing, at least for someone like me who is coming over from Virtualbox.) Everything is very GUI-centric, and of the things that still require the CLI it's generally pretty straightforward (with well-written man pages) and Joanna has expressed the intention to eventually have it all doable via GUI.

      It is supposedly possible to build an Ubuntu template for Qubes but I've never tried. Qubes ships with Debian 8 but I think 7 and 9 are available as well, so if Debian unstable fixes the issue that might be the best way forward if you wanted to try Qubes.

      Of course, almost any distro is easily installable as an HVM (which is the label Qubes and Xen uses for a "second desktop" approach akin to Virtualbox or QEMU / KVM), but you won't have the window mixing, clipboard sharing, PV / PVH drivers (necessary for the near-native speeds Qubes' templates offer) or easy file sharing functional right out of the box.

  2. Not suprising by 110010001000 · · Score: 3, Funny

    This isn't suprising...I'm using Linux right now and it has been rock solid sta

  3. More user friendly by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Compared to a few years ago, Linux and the distros are more user friendly, more hardware support (less missing drivers), lots of free software, and many "main" applications have been improved a lot (think Gimp, Libre Office, wine...) . That gives a chance to users to try Linux and see for themselves that it's fast, reliable and has a lot of good open source software. Unfortunately for many demanding games, Windows is still the only alternative.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    1. Re:More user friendly by chipschap · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The idea that Linux doesn't have enough software to be usable keeps coming up, and I don't get it.

      Yes, there are things that just won't run on Linux, and in some cases there are no alternatives (particularly the case with verticals like, I don't know, dental records software or running a television studio, and certainly many games). But if you look at a mainstream user, who does web, email, maybe touches up some photos, writes some letters, does some spreadsheets, scans some documents, plays some music, watches some videos --- you get the picture --- everything is there and then some.

      Hardware support out of the box beats Windows as far as I can see. I plug new stuff into Linux and it works. Windows, I've got to install a driver. Yes, there are a few items that won't work with Linux, or require additional software (as is the case with Windows) but they are becoming rarer, and often can be avoided.

      I won't get into "the year of Linux on the desktop" --- that's likely never, given the entrenchment of Windows --- but unusable due to lack of software? That's a generalization that's false a lot more often than true.

    2. Re:More user friendly by green1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If by "a few years ago" you mean 2 decades, maybe. But really Linux has been more user friendly than Windows for a very long time, with more support for hardware than Windows, and many great applications.

      I stopped using Windows at home in 2000 and haven't looked back, any time I am forced to use it (eg. at work or at a friend's place) I cringe at how much harder it is to do anything on Windows than on Linux.

    3. Re:More user friendly by Shane_Optima · · Score: 2, Informative

      Diversity also greatly helped Linux. You have to be very, very careful with the "diversity is bad--we must reduce choices so people aren't overwhelmed!" argument... that's what got us GNOME 3.

      (And I personally believe that GNOME 3 and Unity, which would've never come about if not for GNOME 3, together constitute the worst thing that's ever happened to the desktop Linux ecosystem.)

    4. Re:More user friendly by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      The people who only do web, e-mail, etc... many are ditching PCs altogether and using their smartphones or tablets. That's why desktop PCs are a declining market (although that's very different from 'dying', which escapes many pundits). Essentially, a significant percentage of number of people don't actually *need* a fully powered computers unless:

      a) They require specialty software. A lot of line of business / internal software runs on Windows stacks, and it makes sense for people to have compatible systems at home. Or maybe you have a digital audio workstation with Cakewalk Sonar installed. Linux isn't an option for specialized software like that where you can't afford compatibility glitches.

      b) They want a high-end gaming machine, in which case Windows is still king. Yes, Linux is making strides, but it's still nowhere close to Windows. Even Mac seems to have a better selection of games, as far as I can tell.

      I attribute Windows success these days due to simple inertia more than anything, as well as being well-entrenched in business and enterprise. It's extremely difficult and costly to make a wholesale switch to a new OS on a mass scale, with completely new infrastructure, software, and support.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  4. Re:What is the driving forces? by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Some of it is cost. Windows + Office is EXPENSIVE. Since digital computers aren't increasing in power much, and won't ever be now that Moores Law is dead, now is the time for Linux to "catch up".

  5. Re:What is the driving forces? by DeBaas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    , and no real UI improvements or new features.

    Which is exactly the point. Those 'improvements' are to many just an unnecessary complication. The UI of W2K was fine, WinXp could be set to look like it it.

    I've put some family members on Ubuntu Mate. They love, they just use the computer for internet. The UI is more familiar than Windows 10, it doesn't get slower over time and there is a lot less worry for them for malware.

    --
    ---
  6. Re:What is the driving forces? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Chromebooks?

    Ever single child in my daughter's school was assigned one at the beginning of the year. And we're a public school in the boonies of Pennsylvania, not some preppy private school

  7. Re:What is the driving forces? by arth1 · · Score: 2

    I am trying to figure out what the driving forces are.

    Gnome 2 has finally become stable, in the Mate incarnation.
    More likely, Steam and similar have modified the market somewhat, combined with Windows 10 being such a fustercluck that people look elsewhere.

    Anyhow, the title is misleading as it doesn't qualify it to desktops. Linux marketshare for servers and Linux marketshare for mobile devices are certainly much higher than that.

  8. Lotus 1-2-3 by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maybe they will release an update of Lotus 1-2-3 for Linux!

  9. It's the Windows 10 bump by cfalcon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While Windows 10 has been pushed into many computers accidentally on purpose, to many of us, Windows 10 was the final straw for our personal machines. While the awful privacy invasions and security issues of the new OS aren't anywhere close enough to force all, most, or frankly even many users to flee, plenty of Windows users are looking for an out- and those that have use cases that are compatible with Linux have moved (and in smaller numbers are still moving) for that reason.

    So I think we are seeing a Windows 10 bump. Certainly Linux desktop is vastly superior to where it was a few years ago, but that's not normally the sort of thing that pushes for a change. We'll probably see it again in a couple years when Microsoft tightens its coils some more- hopefully the desktop Linux experience will be even better then!

    1. Re:It's the Windows 10 bump by cb88 · · Score: 2

      The Linux desktop has declined in quality, and usability... while the range of Linux drivers available has went up. There just isn't even any justification for the sheer bloat present in the current GUI toolkits and libraries.

      Evidence of the decline in usability is the sheer excitement that KDE1 was met with upon it's recent rerelease... sure nearly any Linux desktop properly configured is better than windows 10's interface. But that still doesn't make the modern desktop environments good.

      KDE1 + antialiased and hinted fonts would genuinely be good. Personally, for awhile I used e16 as a desktop it mostly was quite nice, lightweight on resources (several megabytes of ram and negligible CPU) and *unintrusive*. I don't think the same can be said for any modern desktop at all.

  10. Re:What is the driving forces? by Mitreya · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Those 'improvements' are to many just an unnecessary complication. The UI of W2K was fine

    Actually, these improvements are not so much complications as they are an act of war against users. Every time I accidentally open the (a-parrot-exploded theme) Paint on Windows 8 I spend half a minute trying to close it.
    I miss W2K...

  11. Re:OSX by thegarbz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    as Microsoft doesn't care as much about Windows anymore

    Microsoft cares a lot about windows. What they don't care about is what end users think about it.

  12. Governments may be responsible by matbury · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Governments are by far the biggest procurers of operating systems. There's an EU draft directive that says that member states must favour free and open source IT solutions. So far, the various flavours of Ubuntu have been the favoured option. My bet is that EU governments switching to Ubuntu is mostly responsible for pushing the usage stats up recently.

  13. Linux 85% of new sales, desktop moved to lap, pock by raymorris · · Score: 3, Informative

    85% of devices sold last year ran Linux. The desktop is now in your lap and in your pocket, running Linux. Windows is more popular on systems with IDE drives, PalmOS is most popular on Treo systems, Linux is most popular on supercomputers, Windows is most popular on systems that weigh between 8 and 20 pounds. Linux is most popular.

    Next story / complaint: Linux isn't popular on systems installed by major corporations headquartered in Redmond. Um, okay, but anyway 85% of all new devices run Linux, period.

  14. Re:Android is nothing like a desktop linux by nofx911 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Linux is the peasant behind the scene on everything, including "Desktop Linux"!

    Linux has always been a basic OS. While bootable without any additional applications or libraries it is not very functional. At the very least you will add a libc implementation and from there many other libraries, applications and possibly window managers to have a usable user interface. I agree that Android is not GNU/Linux (probably the most common form of CLI/GUI "Desktop Linux"), but in GNU/Linux, Linux is still the peasant behind the scene.

    Linux is not *BSD/Windows/etc where the development team creates a whole package from the kernel up to the user interface, it is just the core, the "peasant" doing the hard work of managing system memory, networking and disc io, etc. Unless you are doing system development, or very low level application development, as a programmer you probably would almost never interact directly with Linux.

    Yes, the media has turned Linux into a complete OS, but that has nothing to do with the actual Linux software and what it does. The media just did not like saying GNU/Linux which is generally what they were referring with when they would say Linux...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  15. Re:What is the driving forces? by vandamme · · Score: 2

    Windows is only cheap if your time is worth nothing!