https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/north-america/#monthly-200901-202607
Cloudflare stats also seem to support peaks of 15% usage but around 9-10% on average. In the United States alone, the market share for Linux is nearly 12% now for the whole month and Cloudflare stats suggest peaks of up to 25% (!) Linux desktop usage on certain days and times.
The trendline suggests this is just the start. When will companies realize they cannot ignore Linux anymore?
Maybe some AI crawlers started to honestly report Linux instead of Windows as they possibly did before? Otherwise such a quick spike is hard to explain (unbelievable). Or did I miss any big news lately?
//I’m on Linux in the last 15 years and I don’t even care that much about what unrelated to me people use, although I always do help fellow Linux-ers when I encounter them in the wild.
Most of my friends have either switched to linux or have said they will have to in the future
Its impressive how good microsoft is at getting people not want to use their os
ive noticed lots of videos on youtube of people switching to linux.
honestly, i think the Linus Tech Tips linux challenge videos gave many people confidence to take the leap, along with people’s general distain for win11, and probably also the work Valve’s been doing on proton and the “release” of the steam machine is driving all this.
it really feels like adoption has spiked.
The recent Hardware Haven video I think was better that the LTT videos. That dude does a great job presenting some pros and cons and is much more level headed in his approach.
But I agree that the big names in YT is doing a good thing showing people it’s not too hard to switch, Especially if you have a spare SSD so you can keep your Windows install just in case.
I feel like I heard of more people switching after the Steam Deck, and then more after the forced expansion of copilot in Windows.
I haven’t heard much of ltt other than him trying Linux and not liking it. Kind of been more on the negative side until the Steam Machine. His attempts just seemed to end in disasters.
If youtubers are pointed to I think pewdiepie is the one with way more Linux influence given his bigger reach and going all in on it a long time ago as opposed to a recent stint of saying something good about it in passing due to the steam machine.
LTT did another Linux challenge recently, and this time their verdict was that they‘d all be staying on Linux for their personal PCs (with FakeLinus dual booting Windows, because he needs software there for his job). They did also say that most of their videos will still show Windows, as that is still the primary target of the manufacturers that send them the press kits.
thats totally fair. im just noting what ive seen. feels like we’re hitting a tipping point tho. i dont expect a majority any time soon, but i think we could be pushing 20/30℅ before too long
ive been using linux since the 90s, and its finally at the point where the only thing holding it back is specific proprietary software that people think they need, or maybe properly need. i struggled like hell trying to run software i needed in college around 2007 for my math classes.
if we get enough of a market share, there will be more motivation to port to linux. not that that means itll happen
I think people making I can make a better steam machine content might have also helped too.
Microsoft helped the most though with Windows 11 forcing tpm requirements, disliked UI changes, copilot, and increasing hardware costs.
Among non gamers I think the buy non US alternatives helped get those that would normally not give more niche tech stuff a try to also join in. Such as guides people would share with alternatives to emails, software, phones, messengers, and OS.
Many different motivating factors now from boycotts, global relations, affordability, and increased accessibility of Linux than in the past pushing some people that wouldn’t have changed if life were not as eventful as it has been the last couple of years.
I’ve noticed some pretty big spikes in download stats for certain distros like CachyOS and Bazzite, too. I’ve seen a lot of stories of people churning through Linux in the past and recently coming back to it because the software has matured so much and Windows and OSX are enshittifying.
I think datacenter use may be part of it- usage peaks at the middle of the working day and the highest peaks are on Monday. Its also possible a lot of companies related to AI swapped to Linux distros on workforce computers to reduce headaches in managing AI workloads. There is something that happened July 1st-6th that caused the trendline to accelerate, maybe Kimi K3 news and market shocks? But it should be noted Bazzite and CachyOS use peaked around this time as well.
Honestly, this is the reason I like Linux so much better.
Corpo OSes tend to get worse with every update. But Linux gets better with every update.
Apparently Windows 11 sent out an EOL notice for October 2026 recently too. https://www.tech2geek.net/windows-11-24h2-support-ends-on-october-13-2026-heres-how-to-stay-protected/
Steam Machine also came out and sold around 20k machines in the USA. I also wouldn’t discount how good LLMs are at guiding people through “complicated” things like swapping to Linux. GPT for example suggests moving to Linux on first prompt after asking how to fix the windows 11 eol message. Seems like a perfect storm that led to a ton of people swapping to Linux for a wide variety of reasons.
What? How can Windows 11 already be EOL? And just in a few months!?
Is there just not going to be any Windows anymore? Or are they planning a surprise release of Windows 12 (AI prompt only edition) within the next month or two?
It’s not, the article is about update 24H2 of Windows 11. If you install updates you already have a newer version installed.
I don’t think Ai companies / crawlers are honest, so I would rule that out. And its not like a single big event happened over time, but many and people slowly catching up now. In example the big PewDiePie video is just 1 year old, lot of other “smaller” channels like Linus Tech Tips and many other even smaller channels talk about their experience switching to Linux, how to switch, what it offers and why Windows sucks. Valve with their ongoing support and development of Steam operating system and hardware sending shockwaves of news throughout the entire industry. Then there are governments and companies in the world who suddenly switch lot of machines at the same time.
There is so much going on in small steps, then together it makes a single huge step. Or there is just an error in the graph and I made myself a monkey with this speech. Both possible realities are fun.
yea a lot of them do report linux, if they report an os at all. however, in a survey of “desktop” visitors, one would expect visits determined to not be ‘interactively human’ to be omitted entirely from the counts.
This was my thought. How much of this is lightweight crawlers to support AI. Nothing good ever happens for good reasons
Fingers crossed for a Century of M$ Humiliation