 Over the last few years I've said that I really believe that Linux desktop market share is exploding in popularity because I see it. I see more people online talking about Linux. I see more YouTube channels talking about Linux. I see the channels that are talking about Linux on YouTube getting a lot of views, a lot of subscribers. More people are interested in desktop Linux and I've seen that but we didn't have real world data to back this up. I can't really just say Linux is becoming very popular just because of a feeling, right? We need actual data. Well, we have some good news here from StetCounter because recently they released this month's operating system market share and specifically we're talking about desktop operating systems. So not servers where obviously Linux would dominate. This is desktop operating systems only and Windows comes in at a rather low 68%. I was really shocked by that and OS 10, so the Mac OS, right, 21.38%. That is extremely high. I can't believe that Mac OS has that big of a market share on the desktop right now. So Mac OS is actually gaining a lot of users. Chrome OS is at 4%, unknown is at 3% and look at Linux, 3.08%. What makes this really great news is this is the first time Linux has ever come in at 3% in the statistics forever. Linux was always hovering around 2%. I remember a few years ago we were 1%, 1.5% here in the last couple of years we've always been above 2% but we never really could get above about 2.5%, 2.7% and this month we come in at 3.08%. Of course this month's market share, if you go back about four years ago, five years ago when I started my YouTube channel, Linux market share typically was around 1.5%, 1.6% in these same stat counter statistics monthly reports that they would do. Which means in the last four or five years Linux has essentially doubled as far as desktop market share, right? We have twice as many people using Linux as a desktop operating system today than we did just a few years ago. So I know a lot of people are going to look at this 3.08% number and say well that's still a really low percentage of the desktop market share but when you consider that we just doubled the number of our users here in the last few years, this is an extremely good sign and the fact that Windows usage is obviously declining. Which means pretty much everything else is gaining all of these Windows refugees. I think that's why OS X is exploding in popularity all of a sudden as well as Linux as well as Chrome OS unknown, this unknown category, this is probably going to be really old installations of these other operating systems but for whatever reason they can't register what these people are running. So it's probably really old versions of Windows probably is what these people are running in the unknown category. Obviously the rise in popularity of the Steam Deck is really pushing Linux adoption. As far as this graph here, this graph is kind of unreadable because you still have Windows that started here at around 78% and now it's around 68% over the last year and you can see that Mac OS has slowly risen but it's really hard to read anything else on the chart. You really can't view Linux because the line really doesn't move. I mean the move from 2.4% to 3% is such a slight move that the graph is hard to read so I actually downloaded that data as a CSV file and if we go back over the last year you can see a year ago last June where we're at 2.42% and we've slowly increased of course it fluctuates a little bit and these numbers do vary but you can see that there is a slow gradual drift up for pretty much all the operating systems at set Windows which of course is on a slow decline down. Now the April and May statistics of 2023 are a little weird because for whatever reason Windows only reported 62% market share was extremely low much lower than 68% for this past month but I think that was due to some unusually large readings in the unknown categories. The unknown was 13% and again those are probably mostly really old versions of Windows that for whatever reason don't register as a Windows machine so you know stat counter just put something in an unknown category but probably most of those are actually Windows installations. Some of them are probably really old Mac OS 10 installations as well which was a little low for those months as well but you can see OS 10 went from 14.64% in the last year to 21.32% you can see it was a pretty steady increase you know a couple of jogs down but for the most part it has been a steady rise and much like Linux has doubled its market share in the last four or five years if I went back to like 2018 2017 when I first started my YouTube channel and I was checking these statistics Mac OS 10 then was only registering around 12% 13% so it's gone from like 12 or 13% to 21.32% in the last four or five years so it hasn't quite doubled its market share but that's probably a 70 or 80% increase in market share which is an extreme increase which is probably one of the reasons that Apple now is a three trillion dollar company as far as their market cap but Microsoft is also a trillion dollar company they haven't hit the three trillion dollar mark but they're doing fine with Windows and then all their cloud stuff and everything and of course Google the maker of Chrome OS is also a trillion dollar company not to mention that Google makes a ton of money on mobile operating systems which we're not talking about today now one interesting thing is there is another monthly report that comes out from the guys over at Steam and this report is not as good because Steam obviously is surveying Steam users so gamers and pretty much if you're a avid gamer you're going to use Microsoft Windows right so you're going to see a huge percentage of Steam users using Windows you can see 96.77% that is insane right and then OS 10 1.79% and Linux 1.44% which is crazy that Linux has 1.44% compared to OS 10 1.79% so there's many pretty much as many people gaming on Linux as there are on Mac OS but again this is kind of a niche kind of survey because it is only targeted at avid gamers and specifically those that use Steam so the stat counter desktop market share percentages are a much better representation of what's going on so what should we make of this survey what should we make of this number well there's a few things we could make of this number for one thing if this number is real then this means that Linux has never been as popular on the desktop as it is right now and if these monthly statistics if the trend is real then Linux has exploded in popularity here in recent months especially so I think that's a good thing we're clearly growing right we're clearly growing faster probably than any other operating system on the desktop right now and when you couple that with the fact that Linux dominates server market share right now pretty much in the server world it's all Linux all the time and then in the mobile world the biggest mobile operating system obviously is Android which is built off a Linux kernel at least you know Linux is very healthy as far as the just general computer space now where do we go from here I think with the rise of the steam deck I think this percentage is going to continue to see a gradual increase I don't know if it's ever going to get to the point where we have a mac os 10 kind of percentage like a 20% market share I think that is kind of crazy to predict that could we have a 10% market share I think that's probably crazy too but it wouldn't shock me in five years you know another five years from now if I'm still doing this Linux YouTube channel if this number isn't say five percent six percent like we double again here in the next five years I could I could totally see that happening in fact I think that's destined to happen I think we're probably going to see another doubling in our desktop market share as long as our desktop Linux distributions don't drop the ball as long as something like the big desktop environments like GNOME and KDE plasma as long as they don't drop the ball if we start releasing some really buggy alpha quality garbage out there for people to use I think that would hurt us one of the things with free and open source software is sometimes we will push out releases of stuff experimental releases because that's the way we roll with free software right well we often break things and change things and I think we have to be careful about that now especially as we're gaining this popularity we don't want to give any of this back now before I go I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of this episode I need to thank Gabe James Matt Paul Royal we as armor dragon commander angry george lee meadows nader yon paul peace archon vador realities for less red prophet rolling tools devler war gen two and a boon to willy these guys they're my highest tiered patrons over on patreon without these guys this little look at the stat counter survey it wouldn't have been possible the show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen all these names you're seeing on the screen right now these are all my supporters over on patreon I don't have any corporate sponsors I'm sponsored by you guys the community if you like my work and want to see more videos about free and open source software subscribe to distro tube over on patreon peace one in five desktop computers is a mech that hurts my heart