this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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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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As always, such statistics should be treated with caution.
It is assumed that there are more than one billion websites worldwide. It is therefore not exactly unlikely that a Linux user will not access any of these 1.5 million websites.
Furthermore, it is quite common for Linux users to use tools such as Pi-Hole that simply block such statistics scripts. This means that these users would not be counted even if they accessed one of these 1.5 million websites. For my part, I also use computers with Linux that I don't use to access websites. Some of these computers don't even have access to the Internet. They are therefore not counted either.
Finally, let's come to the most important point. Percentage values say not much if you don't know the actual number of users behind them. Let's assume, for example, that 3.5 per cent Linux users were detected in December and only 3 per cent in January. However, if the total number of users was higher in January, it is therefore possible that more users were detected in January.
I think someone had estimated recently that Linux has about 50 mil desktop users. I think that sounds like a lot... I'd personally put that number to about 10 mil tops. I think the higher number we're seeing these days is related to Steam OS.
50M desktop users does not sound so high tbh
It sounds like a lot of users
It does not sound like a large percentage of users
Yeah, people are bad with big numbers. 50M sounds huge to us, but there's 8.1B people in the world right now. 50M is a blip in comparison to that.