Statcounter, a website that tracks the market share of web browsers, operating systems, and search engines, is reporting that Linux on the desktop has over 4% market share for the very first time (Statcounter records ChromeOS as a separate operating system despite being based on Linux). Statcounter doesn’t provide any explanation about why the market share has increased but we can speculate what’s going on.
Linux’s march to its 4.03% market share has been a steady process ever since the final months of 2020 when Linux held just 1.53% of desktop market share. One of the biggest contributors to the growth of Linux is likely the stringent hardware requirements of Windows 11.
I had been on Linux since 2016 when I finally installed Windows 11 on my newer shitty laptop which had a bug that was apparently unresolved no matter what distro or config I tried. But Windows’ issues like it’s famous update times, the modern distasteful UI(in my opinion) and inclusion of more and more features that the user didn’t ask for send me back to Linux. And with Copilot being forced on users, I don’t think Microsoft is respecting their customers choices.