The attrition is slow, but every user lost to Linux is likely lost forever. After a year or so of totally free software, who is going to build a new windows compatible PC, buy a Windows 11 license, and pay for subscription service just to do word processing, or play a few incompatible games?

Windows completely overestimates people's willingness to throw out their laptop or PC just to get a new OS paintjob. For every person who does it, another one will leave their ecosystem forever.

i honestly just wanna express my gratitude to all the people who made linux what it is today over the last decades, the experience is incomparable to the one i had when first installing debian in 2007. i wish i were more skilled in order to meaningfully give back to this community.

and to all the newbies: thanks for joining our ranks! please dont be scared by the rather elitist attitude that some users display. we secretly all love you!

The games I play work just fine under Linux. I'm EXTREMELY thankful for every single person that has contributed to Linux or the apps they can use.

If I wasn't such a monkey I'd help any way I could.

Spez started it all for me.

At this point I use Linux for everything except my music production hobby (Mac for that) and even then I use Renoise and BitWig on Linux. I've been on Linux since 1996 but I haven't been 100% Linux until the past two years.

I hope to see it reach 10% within my lifetime

At this rate we might just see the Year of the Linux Desktop^TM^ on our deathbeds!

What’s odd to me is the cultural zeitgeist has moved to folks being aware that Microsoft (& Google & Apple) is collecting data on them to being the butt of jokes, yet those folks aren’t adopting an alternatives. With over a decade on Linux I’m now pretty out of touch with the opposite feeling. I guess the closest analog I have is not being able to realistically leave Android behind, but that is more hardware than software (banking app already don’t let you root or otherwise flash your device so I have given up hope in trying with them).

Made the switch this year, I'm not going back.

I bought Windows 11 early on so I'm still using it to justify the purchase on my desktop, but I moved my OEM licensed laptop over to Debian a few months ago.

Can confirm that as soon as Windows 11 is no longer supported or it gets slightly more ass, I'll be moving my desktop over to Debian or Arch or something as well.

With the advent of gaming becoming so much more accessible on linux either through native support or through something like proton, I am very hard pressed to find any reason to stay.

Honestly with this rate we may even reach 5% on end of this year or maybe even earlier Proton FTW

Now that gaming is effectively a solved problem thanks to Proton, Adobe Lightroom is just about the only thing keeping my desktop PC on Windows. My laptop is already running Linux. I’ve tried the FOSS alternatives but none of them fits my workflow like Lightroom. This is a me problem more so than a problem with any of these pieces of software.

There is the theory, that to convince everyone of something, you have to invest very hard work to convince 4% of the populace of what you are doing is right. After that, the rest will learn to know of this by themselves.

Hopefully this is similar

Oh god, it's happening. Everybody stay calm

what happened in 2021 that started this trend?

I just got a steam deck and I'm surprised how well it runs games. It's not quite as refined as a switch but it can run games were designed to run windowed in Windows with a mouse and keyboard. It can translate the game to run on Linux, the inputs to a gamepad and convert the game from being windowed to fullscreen. It's impressive and if the games were actually designed for the deck I feel like it could feel as seemless as the switch.

It is really making me consider Linux for my desktop once Windows 10 reaches EoL. The only game I've found that doesn't work is Destiny 2. Even the desktop mode on the deck is surprisingly nice

Let's stop pretending that Linux has a small market share. It is flipping 4%

I tried to give Windows 11 another go recently just to see how it is, I pulled all my files over including my gog games files which had wineprefixes in the folders, with /appdata folders for each prefix.

Windows decided "you know what, screw c:\users\appdata, lets use the appdata folder in this random gamefolder on a different drive instead" and proceeded to cannibalize itself just breaking the majority of apps. No idea how it can't recognize that the random wine "windows" files that aren't in the correct locations aren't the actual location for them. Couldn't fix it because it thought the "c:" folder in the wine directory was my actual c: drive and refused to delete it

Sure it was an extremely niche issue a Windows user would never realistically run into, but it reminded me just how fragile it is for uncommon usecases

I have been slowly switching to Linux for the last year. I have 2 Lenovo ThinkPad's and an HP EliteDesk running Ubuntu. I have my gaming PC dual booted but, for the moment, mainly using Linux Mint.

It has been an easy transition and I am not some Linux whiz.

Just wait for Windows 10's service life to run out. That's when I'm switching full time

This is the best summary I could come up with:

First hitting over 4% in February, their March data is now in showing not just staying above 4% but rising a little once again showing the trend is clear that Linux use is rising.

A number that is getting steadily harder for developers of all kinds to ignore.

It terms of overall percentage, it's still relatively small but when you think about how many people that actually is, it's a lot.

For those thinking it may be due to Steam Deck with SteamOS, it's unlikely, at least not directly.

StatCounter gather their info from web traffic across over 1.5 million sites globally.

There's going to be various other bigger factors at play here though, like Linux nowadays actually being properly good on the desktop.

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