Analytical company StatCounter claims that Linux’s share of the desktop operating system market has reached a historic high of 4.44%. This is a significant jump compared to July last year (3.12%) and July 2022 (2.76%). While this may seem like a small figure, it’s a huge leap in terms of real numbers, especially since most Linux distributions are essentially free and don’t have any marketing teams behind them.
Linux broke the 4% mark for the first time in February 2024, but fell back to 3.9% in April and May. In June, the OS recovered to 4.05%, and in July of this year, it reached a new record high of 4.44%. If the current trend continues, Linux could reach a 5% market share by February 2025.
Many consumers may not have seriously considered using Linux as their daily operating system. However, it is widely used in many corporate IT systems because of its flexibility, openness, and accessibility, as well as the wide range of general-purpose and specialized distributions available for free.
In addition, Microsoft makes it difficult to install Windows 11 due to a number of hardware limitations. As a result, many users are unable to upgrade from Windows 10 to Microsoft’s newer OS and may be looking for an alternative. As macOS is a rather expensive alternative to Windows, especially due to hardware limitations, many are discovering Linux.
The Steam initiative to introduce the Steam Deck portable computer is adding to the popularity of Linux. This contributes to the growth of this OS in the gaming space. In fact, the Steam Survey report for June 2024 showed that Linux has finally exceeded 2% of the market. This is important because the Steam Survey is likely to focus on consumer (gaming) PCs.
Source: tomshardware
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