Linux may very well be 3% of worldwide desktops. What occurred to Home windows?

Based on one measurement by one agency, Linux reached 3.07 p.c market share of worldwide desktop working techniques in June 2023. It is a notable first for the greater than 30-year-old working system, although different numbers in Statcounter’s chart open it as much as many extra interpretations. It is both the yr of the Linux desktop or a notable asterisk—your name.

As Statcounter explains, its numbers come from monitoring code put in on greater than 1.5 million web sites throughout the globe, capturing roughly 5 billion web page views per 30 days. Statcounter says it doesn’t collate, weigh, or in any other case regulate its information apart from correcting for bots and Google Chrome’s prerendering. Laptops are included in “desktop” as a result of there isn’t a simple technique to separate them. And so they’re topic to revision for as much as 45 days after publication.

5 years in the past, Linux made up 1.69 p.c of Statcounter’s June numbers. Within the yr between June 2022 and 2023, Linux unsteadily crept up from 2.42 to three.07 p.c, leaping previous 3 p.c for the primary time between Might and June. In the event you regard Chrome OS as a Linux system, you can add that 4.13 p.c and get to 7.2 p.c.

Trying on the different numbers and places from the yr main as much as June 2023, nonetheless, and there is a lot occurring. Home windows drops from 76.33 p.c to 68.23 p.c one yr later, recovering a bit from a heavy winter/spring hunch that took it right down to 62.06 p.c. Is Microsoft’s suspension of gross sales in Russia, beginning March 2022, an element? What else would clarify a greater than 14 p.c drop in a single yr?

That one thing else may very well be “Unknown,” which ramps up step by step, then jumps and stays at 13 p.c, simply as Home windows sees its hunch. Tom’s {Hardware} suggests “Unknown” is probably going “very new or very outdated variations of widespread OSes,” which tracks. Linux is not gaining on the identical form of quirky curve, however extra step by step.

Additionally rising step by step, however confidently, was MacOS, which Statcounter sees as rising from 14.64 p.c in June 2022 to 21.32 p.c a yr later. Home windows and Mac’s numbers in June 2022 account for 89.5 p.c of desktops, leaving the rest for Chrome, Linux, and the inconsistent “Unknown” to vie for a a lot decrease third-place podium spot.

In the event you change to a US-only view, Linux didn’t hit 3 p.c, and in reality, misplaced somewhat share, from 2.14 p.c to 1.96 p.c. MacOS is gaining extra persistently right here, from 24 to 34 p.c, and Home windows dropped about the identical quantity, however from a decrease stage, to 55 p.c. “Unknown” had a much less wild trip in a US-only view however nonetheless fluttered upward within the spring, seemingly taking away from Microsoft and Linux.

As a result of we could not assist ourselves, we requested GPT-4 to graph out when, assuming the same development sample from 1991 to 2023, Linux would attain 100% desktop market share. GPT-4 advised us that, assuming linear development, “which is a major simplification and not going correct for the actual world,” it might see the present 0.096 percent-per-year development charge common reaching 100% within the yr 3033.

It is price noting that two different prompts resulted in solutions of “January 2121” and “2002.” The 12 months of the Linux Desktop is up to now; it is sooner or later; it is at 3% or 7.2% or neither; it is international or native; it is not possible and inevitable. It by no means stops being fascinating.