Dear Reader,

Several years ago, the Linux crowd was spending a lot of time waiting for Linux to arrive and explode onto the general PC consumer market. Every year was supposed to be "the year of the Linux desktop." Ubuntu, in particular, had grand ambitions to be the operating system of the future and cultivated a flashy in-crowd image much like Apple did.

But this ascendancy never really worked out like we thought (or hoped) it would. One reason was that, despite the settlement of the Microsoft antitrust case, Microsoft and Apple still had their own sneaky little ways of staying in control. Another reason was that, admittedly, Linux's persistent aversion to standardization made it difficult for the public to understand and for the industry to deal with.

Eventually everyone just kind of quit talking about it. Smartphones and tablets became the hot new thing. Ubuntu stopped courting end users and focused on the same big corporate contracts that Red Hat and SUSE were chasing. Linux captured a huge share of the server market, but the desktop market wasn't so much on anyone's mind.

Fast forward to just this month, and the StatCounter website reported that Linux desktop usage is up to 5% in the USA [1]. Usage was still under 2% as recently as 2020, and since then it has risen dramatically, reaching 3% in 2023 and 4% in February 2024. (I would have guessed that Linux usage was higher in Europe, but according to StatCounter, European usage is actually a bit under the current 5% US rate.) This 5% doesn't even count Chrome OS, which is actually a Linux-based system. Chrome OS use adds another 2.69% to the US total.

7.69% of the desktop systems means that 1 in 13 desktop computers in the US is running Linux – a remarkable number. It is fair to ask, of course, what is StatCounter, and how do they count desktop computer users? StatCounter is a web analytics platform, and its counters are embedded in websites around the world, so this number is based on the sample of operating systems that have interacted with StatCounter's counters. The accuracy of this sampling method depends on the distribution of websites that retain StatCounter services. If, for instance, geekier websites are more likely to use StatCounter, the numbers will show a disproportionate number of geeky systems.

I don't know the details of the StatCounter client map. However, the always savvy and insightful Steven Vaughan-Nichols offers another data point that appears to validate the StatCounter analysis. Steven points out that the US Federal Government Website and App Analytics site, which counts visitors to US government sites) actually shows Linux usage at 6%, or 6.8% with Chrome OS [2]. The government counters also track the Linux-based Android at 16.2%. So if you throw in Android, the total usage is more like 23%.

Linux usage appears to be one of those pots that doesn't boil when people are watching it. When we all had our fingers crossed, not much changed, but when we drifted off to think about other things, the bubbles started rising. Many factors could explain why the recent improvement in usage is happening. Certainly, Linux is less intimidating than it was 20 years ago (although maybe not so much different from how it was 5 years ago). More to the point, though, Linux isn't the only community that quit watching. Microsoft and Apple used to invest so much money and energy into hyping their desktop operating systems, but now they don't seem to bother quite so much. The desktop operating system is not as much of a shiny thing as it used to be – it is more like a pencil or screwdriver than it is like a sleek new car. In the absence of the hype and advertising dollars, the systems are closer to competing on quality terms, and that's all good for Linux.

Joe Casad, Editor in Chief