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GNU/Linux Now Exceeds 11% of Desktops/Laptops Market (Says ZDNet), Adoption Grows in Russia, and "the time to switch is now"
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ZDNet ☛ Why people keep flocking to Linux in 2025 (and it's not just to escape Windows)
By my count, Linux has over 11% of the desktop market. Here's how I got that number - and why people are making the leap.
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In addition, ChromeOS comes in at 3.67%, which strikes me as much too low. Leaving that aside, ChromeOS is a Linux variant. It just uses the Chrome web browser for its interface rather than KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or another Linux desktop environment. Put all these together, and you get a Linux desktop market share of 11.37%. Now we're talking.
If you want to look at the broader world of end-user operating systems, including phones and tablets, Linux comes out even better. In the US, where we love our Apple iPhones, Android -- yes, another Linux distro -- boasts 41.71% of the market share, according to StatCounter's latest numbers. Globally, however, Android rules with 72.55% of the market.
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VK messenger Max becomes available on Astra Linux
Russian internet company VK said that its messenger Max has become available for customers using devices powered by the Astra Linux OS. The Astra Group and VK have completed testing the compatibility of the messenger with the OS. According to experts from Strategy Partners, Astra Linux held 76 percent of the Russian OS market in 2024. The user base of the messenger Max exceeded the threshold of 55 million earlier this month.
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Medium ☛ Windows vs macOS vs Linux: the time to switch is now
People following developments in the personal computing market already know just how volatile it can be: it ebbs and flows depending on what’s affecting other parts of the economy or social life, be it e.g. a recession or a pandemic. Often, though, it’s just a plain old hardware upgrade cycle that greatly influences PC sales, like the one this market is entering as the second most popular PC operating system is now rendered obsolete.
See, Windows 10 reaching end-of-life recently means that hundreds of millions of non-upgradeable computers based on that operating system are no longer supported by Microsoft, so they will have to be replaced at some point — either very soon or in less than a year (if they partake in the Extended Security Updates program).
Fudzilla:
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What if we had a year of Linux on the desktop and no one realised?
For years, Linux fanboys have been insisting that this year will be the time of Linux on the desktop. Now, ZDnet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols thinks the take-up of Linux is much higher than numbers suggest.
"By my count, Linux has over 11 per cent of the desktop market," he claims. He reached that number by adding in the bits that StatCounter and the US Digital Analytics Program keep mislabelling as “unknown” or pretending are something other than Linux with a fancy coat of paint, and dividing by his shoe size.
What appears to have set him off was the numbers Zorin OS reported last week. For those who came in late, “Zorin OS 18 has amassed 1 million downloads in just over a month since its release.” The outfit said “78 per cent of these downloads came from Windows” users. That is a lot of Windows refugees downloading a 3.5-gigabyte ISO.