this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Usual question behind this kind of stats: what are the sources? I'm tired of having to believe stuff that appears on the net just by faith.
I think it's browser user agents.
Which have been wildly unuseful for over a decade
Not only that but looks to be via tracking code used on various sites. I suspect a larger percentage of Linux users will be using ad blockers that likely block that further reducing the numbers.
The stack overflow survey puts the various Linux distros at about 58.4%* with windows at 59.72% and MacOS at 32.57% for personal use. This both accounts for people using multiple OSs and gives a much more accurate number - at least among developers. Though I do suspect these numbers will be higher for developers than the general population but 3% to 58% is a huge discrepancy.
The steam hardware survey does put the number at 1.44%, though that is extremely biased towards windows for obvious reasons. And I don't know of any more accurate ways of counting then these two. But they only show two wieldy different domains.
* wonder why they broke that out to different distros this year pushing it down the list by splitting it up 🤔 why not also report on the different versions of windows? 😒