How will you argue in opposition to these numbers?
twentieth Century Fox / Aurich Lawson
In accordance with one measurement by one agency, Linux reached 3.07 % market share of worldwide desktop working programs in June 2023. It is a notable first for the greater than 30-year-old working system, although different numbers in Statcounter’s chart open it as much as many extra interpretations. It is both the yr of the Linux desktop or a notable asterisk—your name.
As Statcounter explains, its numbers come from monitoring code put in on greater than 1.5 million web sites throughout the globe, capturing roughly 5 billion web page views per thirty days. Statcounter says it doesn’t collate, weigh, or in any other case alter its knowledge other than correcting for bots and Google Chrome’s prerendering. Laptops are included in “desktop” as a result of there isn’t any straightforward technique to separate them. They usually’re topic to revision for as much as 45 days after publication.
5 years in the past, Linux made up 1.69 % of Statcounter’s June numbers. Within the yr between June 2022 and 2023, Linux unsteadily crept up from 2.42 to three.07 %, leaping previous 3 % for the primary time between Might and June. When you regard Chrome OS as a Linux system, you can add that 4.13 % and get to 7.2 %.
Statcounter’s world desktop working system market share figures for June 2022 to June 2023.
StatcounterStatcounter’s US desktop working system market share figures for June 2022 to June 2023.
Statcounter
Wanting on the different numbers and places from the yr main as much as June 2023, nonetheless, and there is a lot happening. Home windows drops from 76.33 % to 68.23 % one yr later, recovering a bit from a heavy winter/spring droop that took it right down to 62.06 %. Is Microsoft’s suspension of gross sales in Russia, beginning March 2022, an element? What else would clarify a greater than 14 % drop in a single yr?
That one thing else could possibly be “Unknown,” which ramps up progressively, then jumps and stays at 13 %, simply as Home windows sees its droop. Tom’s {Hardware} suggests “Unknown” is probably going “very new or very previous variations of widespread OSes,” which tracks. Linux is not gaining on the identical form of quirky curve, however extra progressively.
Additionally rising progressively, however confidently, was MacOS, which Statcounter sees as rising from 14.64 % in June 2022 to 21.32 % a yr later. Home windows and Mac’s numbers in June 2022 account for 89.5 % of desktops, leaving the rest for Chrome, Linux, and the inconsistent “Unknown” to vie for a a lot decrease third-place podium spot.
When you swap to a US-only view, Linux didn’t hit 3 %, and actually, misplaced just a little share, from 2.14 % to 1.96 %. MacOS is gaining extra persistently right here, from 24 to 34 %, and Home windows dropped about the identical quantity, however from a decrease stage, to 55 %. “Unknown” had a much less wild trip in a US-only view however nonetheless fluttered upward within the spring, seemingly taking away from Microsoft and Linux.
As a result of we could not assist ourselves, we requested GPT-4 to graph out when, assuming an identical development sample from 1991 to 2023, Linux would attain 100% desktop market share. GPT-4 informed us that, assuming linear development, “which is a major simplification and unlikely correct for the actual world,” it may see the present 0.096 percent-per-year development price common reaching 100% within the yr 3033.
It is value noting that two different prompts resulted in solutions of “January 2121” and “2002.” The Yr of the Linux Desktop is prior to now; it is sooner or later; it is at 3% or 7.2% or neither; it is world or native; it is not possible and inevitable. It by no means stops being fascinating.
