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.

I don't think they have produced enough Decks to change the statistics much. Deck is more of a prestige win: a major mainstream corp investing in Linux for consumers. Not to mention all work that Valve has put into dxvk and other libraries.

I think since the stats are based on web statistics, the steam deck probably won't be counted unless the user switches to desktop mode and browses the web.

Though it's possible the steam client accessing the steam store might count.

That's your mistake. I'm currently preparing a laptop with Linux for mine.

Why not?

Linux has already won the server and mobile. Desktop will follow.

Well looks like you outta do something bout that

If we keep saying it's the year of the Linux desktop, one day... It will be.

Does your grandmother use computers at all?

I wonder what is the most used distro for desktop users.

Most likely Ubuntu. We use Ubuntu at work because it's the most commonly supported Linux platform for many development tools

Here we go? https://lemmy.ml/post/11490248

To be fair my suspicious is steam deck users likely make up a larger chunk of recent desktop Linux growth and aren't (as) likely to go to typical linux spaces online. Though since this is based on browser data, I also wonder how many steam deck users are actually browsing the web on them, so perhaps that my be a bad assumption on my part

Increase is probably all Steam Deck

I installed Manjaro on my parents laptop. That probably helped :)

"why don't people switch to linux !?" People switch to linux "nah that's fake."

This new push might be from a new source of users that don't fit the pattern of the 3 percenters.

Too lazy to click, but it's probably browser data. By default pretty much all browsers report OS info while browsing.

The intent is to ensure compatibility with the sites, and it's also used to push relevant info to the front, e.g., going to the "download" page and having the first download link be a .deb instead of .exe.

It's unfortunately also used as part of the data collected for browser "fingerprinting" so it can be a touchy subject and may get spoofed by some users, leading to erroneous data, but in aggregate it can be used to give a general sense of OS and browser market share for studies like this.

They detect this from browsers, it's not really accurate. For example, if you're using LibreWolf, they'll detect you as Windows 10.

It's browser data, not telemetry.

Ubuntu does