Ako podporovateľa slobodnej kultúry ma obzvlášť zaujíma síce pomaly ale dlhodobý rady Linuxu na bežných počítačoch. "Rok desktopového Linuxu" je však zatiaľ v nedohľadne. S nevôľou k Windowsu 11 však očakávam ďalší rast Linuxu.
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Hmm... What's eating Windows' lunch? Oh "Unknown" and "Other". Cool.
The Year of the Unknown Desktop
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where...
You get the idea
What do we know about
The unknown knowns
The things we don't know we know?
Technically Cisco devices use "IOS" but i doubt that's whats shown here.
I'd count laptops along with desktops. There's no meaningful difference for most folks. The desktop is dying hard and fast, has been for a decade.
Everything going down or steady except "Unknown"
I don't care who wins, I care that Windows loses
What the hell happened in Jan 2023
That’s what I want to know too! Did Windows blip out of existence in the UK for a month or something?
the shape of the gap is almost the same as the peak in "other". So that peak is probably "windows but we messed up with data collection" or "some browser in windows changed its user agent".
Unknown could be AI scrapers
Even if they sell like hot cakes relative to their intended audience of Steam users, it will not make much of a difference in overall market share. Steam might be relatively big with PC gamers, but overall they are rather tiny.
Tiny yes, but IMO getting the attention of computer gamers needs to be the next step if a Linux flavor is going to become a household name.
Even if it's "SteamOS" that becomes the household name instead of "Linux" that's still good overall. Maybe it'll turn into how people used to say they had "Droid" smartphones, not Android.
I mean, if a single distro is what we're after, isn't there already ChromeOS?
ChromeOS is pretty far from normal Linux. It's closer to something like Android. Uses the Linux kernel, but doesn't bring the freedom, flexibility, or even GUI tool that come with a Linux desktop. SteamOS does come with all of those.
And, importantly, improvements and software for SteamOS is, generally, improvements and software for most Linux distros.
Between that and windows 11 forcing people to choose between buying new hardware (at currently inflated RAM prices) , remain on win10 without updates oo switching to a different OS, it really could mean the fabled "year of the Linux desktop" has finally arrived.
I'm colour blind so there's basically only three colours on this graph but what I'm assuming is showing is that windows is decreasing in popularity and apparently so is OS X. I'm assuming the other colour is Linux or Chrome but no idea which is which.
For future reference, when making graphs make them in black and white first and if they are visually distinct then you can add whatever colours you want.
Unknown is kind of a lot here
BeOS is making a serious comeback

They're in order in this highlighted column:
- Windows (at the top)
- OSX
- Unknown
- Linux
- Chrome
- IOS
- Other (dotted)
if you click in the source in der desc of the post, you can hover over the lines. thre it says which line referes to what
The order in which the operating systems are named in the bottom is their order on the complete right side of the graph. Most left (windows) is the top on the line graph. The next one OS X is the second from the top in the line graph, etc.
Unknown could be anything. It could even be windows!
A couple of peaks of unknown seem to match very nicely with the windows graph, if you invert it. I think the two big windows crashes we see are measuring differences or re-categorization effects. ... or how about brand new or discontinued versions of windows, that were not counted as windows yet?
The unknown is actually a niche OS they put on all the smart dildo and sex toys they make now. True story. ✌️
Interesting. But since when is iOS a desktop operating system?
Other is really taking off in 2025. Should we invest in other?
OS X
I don't use Apple devices and didn't realize that they didn't all use the same operating system (OS X vs IOS). Shame on me, I guess.
It's not even called OS X anymore, now it's called macOS.
iOS is actually based on macOS, although it's slimmed down a lot. iOS has been further split into iOS and iPadOS, although they're pretty much the same thing. It's just a marketing move.
So unknown can we count as Linux+ BSD?
the graph says desktop operating systems so maybe it is a Linux. no idea why iOS appears in it.
actually it's probably just some uncategorised version of windows, looking at the matches in dips of windows
Well iOS only shows up on the graph right at the end, in 2025. You'll note that it correlates perfectly with a large drop in MacOS. This must be people using an iOS browser on their Mac, this is possible if you're mac has Apple silicon. I don't know why people would do that, but that's what it looks like.
Why would it in desktop segment
TIL there's a new operating system that came out less than a year ago but already captured 5% of the market, passing ChromeOS and Linux
This stat is rubbish because they're basing it on web views, and the millions of ai scraping bots are influencing it
So I assume this is some kind of web traffic graph?
There's desktop iOS?
iPad + Magic Keyboard. It’s my primary device. Pretty easy when you interact with virtually everything in a browser. Plus it gets ridiculous battery life and mine has cellular connectivity.
I do still have a Windows box for gaming, but I don’t browse the web with it; it just boots into Steam Big Picture mode.
Trash graph showing Win at nearly 100%
Fuck right the fuck off lol
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