Desktop Linux
I’ve been using desktop Linux in some form or another for a long time. I first got into it in the 90s with, if I remember correctly, Red Hat Linux 5.1. That’s not Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora or Cent or any of the other flavors that have spawned from Red Hat over the years. That’s just normal Red Hat. Most of the time when people heard I used Linux on my desktop computer, I’d get strange looks and people would inevitably say at some point or another, “No one uses that stuff!” Lately, that’s been changing.
Ten years ago, according to statcounter, Linux had a desktop market share of 1.38%. macOS had 8.65%. Pretty much everything else was Windows. In 2018, things hadn’t changed much with Linux commanding 1.69% to macOS’s 12.65%. macOS had made some progress, but Linux had barely moved. macOS’s increased market share had taken a bite out of Windows, but it still held on to 82.51% of the market. Based on the data presented to us by statcounter,things started to change for Linux for the better in the spring of 2021. Linux on the desktop first passed the 2% market share in April of that year. It’s been climbing ever since.
It’s worth noting that Linux’s market share only crossed the 1% threshold in 2013. It was initially released in 1991. For those of you who are bad at math, that’s 22 years to get 1% of the desktop market. It got to 2% in 2021, which was only 8 years later. Linux crossed the 3% mark in 2023, 2 years after getting to 2%, and first got to 4% in February of this year, less than a year later.
Things haven’t been as rosy for other desktop operating systems. Windows has been on a steady decline since 2009 (that’s when the data starts in my chart, so I’m only going back that far). In January of 2009, Windows was clocking in at 95.42% of the desktop. In August of 2024 (that’s now for people not paying attention), Windows only claimed 70.67%. Granted, that’s still a commanding lead and it’s actually been going up since last year. This is mostly at the expense of macOS, which topped out in the +20% range last year and has since fallen almost 5%.
So, what does this all mean in the long run? I have no idea. I love seeing Linux’s market share growing and I’ve love to see it rivaling Windows in the near future. That’s not impossible. As I said before, I’ve been using Linux a long time. When I first started using it, desktop Linux was hard. Today, desktop Linux is no more difficult than Windows or macOS, and it’s got a lot less advertising and spyware than at least one of those guys. Steam, and the Steam Deck specifically, have pushed the boundaries of what has been possible in Linux gaming. Cloud based applications like Office 365 have removed necessary applications off the desktop and into the cloud, reducing their dependance on particular operating systems and instead putting the spotlight on the browser. There’s a whole series of blog posts about what’s going on with web browsers right now, but for the purpose of this post Linux is doing just as well when it comes to browsers as Windows or macOS.
Am I going to claim 2025 is going to be the year of Desktop Linux? I think we’ve all heard that tale enough times to not make that leap. Still, I like the direction things are going, and fingers crossed it continues moving in the same direction.
Day 6 of the #100DaysToOffload Series.
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