I’ve just read an item from my ZDNet Tech Today newsletter named Desktop Linux just cracked 10% market share - and Windows 11 is mostly to blame! I’ve known how good GNU/Linux is, and now it’s beginning to appear that the general public is catching on. Read the item for yourself if you’re interested.
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I am probably not typical. I am much happier about the Linux share being higher than the Mac share than whatever the Windows share is.
That comes from decades of working on and support Windows systems and catching a ton of flack about how “evil” something that Microsoft is doing is while letting Apple have free reign with a super walled garden. The users always rubbed me the wrong way too. Old bias dies hard.
But good to see Linux gaining some ground. I think much of it is from Steam Machines and the like rather than end users deciding they now like Ubuntu or Fedora or fill-in-distro-here.
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According to the article, that 10% is in North America (Canada, Mexico, USA). Don’t skip that vital detail.
Still, 10% is a lot. This will probably make more companies interested in producing software and hardware for Linux.
This is a good thing anyway.
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I’m unable to argue that point, but anything that gets users to use any GNU/Linux distribution, even for gaming still gets them exposed to the OS. If you ask me, that’s what matters most, even if many return to Windows. At least they’re making an informed decision.
I posted this item because it indicates that adoption is still on the rise!
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For me, what’s important is that adoption remains on the rise. And I agree that rising adoption should induce more vendors develop for GNU/Linux, or at least allow open source developers to have access to their APIs for the purpose of creating drivers for their hardware. Additionally, how cool would it be for cross-platform development to become the default, industry wide. And how ironic would it be if Microsoft began to develop their software for GNU/Linux as well as Windows! 
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I would not want Microsoft built cross platform software . Developers coming from a Windows background tend to write aweful Linux software… for example Oracle.
A bigger victory would be Apple cross platform software.
More than that. Games users tend to be more computer literate than other users.
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They’ve had SQL Server for Linux for years now. I heard it was very popular. In fact, they sold more Linux than Windows versions. At least one of my podcasts claimed that some years ago.
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Surely there are lots of good linux SQL servers … Postgress comes to mind.
I bet the Microsoft product is riddled with non-sql features that make it addictive and locked in.
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Me neither! But the thought crossed my mind and the irony made me smile. I just hoped that the irony of the idea might give others a smile too.
Perhaps, but the point of the observation in the linked item for me is that as more people give any GNU/Linux distribution a try, they’ll share their experience, and perhaps induce others to follow suit. That’s a factor in how open source communities grow, so this item gives me hope that our overall desktop Linux community will continue to grow as well.
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Interesting, but I’ve always been of the impression that SQL’s a database standard, so I never realized that Microsoft developed a version for GNU/Linux. If I needed to set up an SQL server, I probably wouldn’t choose the Microsoft version for the same reasons that I don’t choose Edge as my go-to web browser on either Garuda Linux or Windows 11 25H2.
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They do already - have been for years now… The stopped the Teams for Linux Preview though… But you can install Edge on Debian/Ubuntu and/or Fedora/RHEL… And Teams works perfectly well in Microsoft Edge on Linux…
And Microsoft SQL Server has been available on Linux for years now…
What would be REALLY nice, is an Active Directory server for Linux… But I’m guessing that would eat into Windows server licensing…
There are some things Microsoft do better than others - e.g. Active Directory is VASTLY easier to manage than LDAP or OpenLDAP - and Windows DNS craps all over hideous convoluted bind database files…
What’s really missing is actual Microsoft Office and apps from Adobe…
Me? I don’t really care if Linux keeps its current market share… Makes us less of a target for malicious actors, viruses and trojans…
What? Oracle were developing their RDBMS for Unix for YEARS before they ported it to Windows - and even today - Oracle on Windows isn’t anywhere near as ubiquitous as Oracle DB on UNIX - i.e. Linux. Oracle also make Oracle RDBMS “Hardware” - there’s two lines of products, Oracle Exadata, and Oracle Database Appliance or “ODA” - both run Oracle Linux (which is a fork of Red Hat).
I haven’t had a customer for years running Oracle RDBMS on Windows… All my customers run Oracle DB on Linux (Oracle Linux) or Exadata or ODA…
Oracle ARE a Linux vendor, and they own Solaris UNIX… e.g. if you buy Oracle x86_64 server hardware - you can get support from them for Oracle Linux with your hardware support…
I’m not sticking up for Oracle - they’re a horrible company, and I dislike their CEO / founder Larry Ellison - but they’re way more Linux / UNIX than Windows… Larry Ellison actually hates Microsoft and has tried to kill them, fight them, in the past…
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Well they behave like a microsoft developer and their software , eg Vbox, works like a Win app.
My guess is they are trying to popularize linux by emulating Win
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Vbox is a tiny bit of their product range and perhaps the least important…
Oracle got VirtualBox with the purchase of Sun Microsystems around 2009… Originally by a German company called Innotek - Sun acquired them a year or two before the Oracle buyout…
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Take note: these figures—especially the US data—are very likely the result of massive AI-generated traffic.
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You are saying that linux users generate more website accesses because linux users use more AI queries?
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If Linux gets too big of a share, someone like the government or big tech will seek to wreck it. They can’t be having to many computers where they aren’t able to constantly spy on the user and capture data to sell.
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I very much doubt the government will be interested in manipulating the market. Also, the genie is out of the bottle now, good luck in getting him back into it; over here (in the EU) various governments are transitioning away from Windows for their desktops and servers.
EDIT: There’s also parties selling computers with Linux pre-installed on desktop computers, such as System76 and Tuxedo Computers. I own such a device, works quite nicely.
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Linux is the preferred choice for powering servers, automated scripts, and botnets. A sudden surge in automated activity recorded as browsing by open source systems would well explain such a dramatic increase.
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