For the first time ever, Linux has clawed its way past the five per cent desktop market share barrier in the United States so maybe 2025 is finally the much predicted year of Linux on the desktop.
StatCounter’s latest figures for June 2025 show Linux holding 5.03 per cent of the US desktop market. That might sound modest, but it is a massive milestone for the open-source faithful who have been banging on for decades that Linux would one day break through. Even more satisfying, Linux has now overtaken the “Unknown” category in the stats, a small but symbolic victory that shows the growth is no longer being ignored or misattributed.
It took a grinding eight years for Linux to crawl from one to two per cent by April 2021. Another 2.2 years were needed to hit three per cent in June 2023. From there it snowballed, taking only 0.7 years to cross four per cent in February 2024 and just four months later Linux is through five per cent.
Analysts say AI workloads, the backlash against surveillance-heavy proprietary platforms, and the never-ending trainwrecks of Apple have made Linux a more attractive option for ordinary users. Microsoft’s increasingly locked-down Windows 11, with its forced online accounts and hardware restrictions, has not helped either.
I guess Apple and MS are finally finding out.
Agreed, also wonder how many people it proves that Linux is now perfectly valid for a gaming pc
Yup, there’s enough games supported that one could completely ignore windows.
And all it took was a corporation throwing millions of dollars and thousands of developer hours at it.
And one dude that really wanted to play Nier Automata on Linux.
Well, on top of the tens of thousands of volunteer developer hours put in to stuff like wine that they built upon.
You make it seem like Microsoft didn’t do everything they could to kill Linux and Mac.
Like literally investing in $150 million in Apple in 1997 and porting Office to MacOS to get in front of a possible antitrust trial ahead of Jobs’ return?
I’m not an MS fanboi, but at least get your facts right if you’re going to make such a claim.
Okay look at the history. Look at the Macworld introduction to Microsoft Office. The Apple community wasn’t happy about it. Microsoft made a lot of money and kept themselves from being a monopoly. You think they did that out of the kindness of their hearts?
I bet if we talk about Linux, you’re going to bring up that Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation and completely ignoring their anti competitive practices before that.
I’m merely pointing out that your thesis – “You make it seem like Microsoft didn’t do everything they could to kill Linux and Mac.” – is categorically false. Of course no sane business decision in the current economic climate is altruistic, but this is scarcely news.
The word “could” can refer to anytime in history.
Just because someone tried to murder someone and did everything they could do to make the murder happen, doesn’t mean they didn’t just because they got caught trying to do so, changed their mind so they wouldn’t get caught, and gave the person, that they tried to murder, money.
Just because Microsoft did everything they could to kill Linux and Mac, doesn’t mean they didn’t just because an antitrust case was building up, changed their business practices, and invested money in Apple.
Also it’s no thesis. In 2001, Microsoft settled with the DOJ and changed their business practices.
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