If you include ChromeOS, the percentage rises to 6.34% while macOS records a decline. Linux reached a rate of 4.03% in February, according to data released by research firm Statcounter. Thus, Linux surpassed the 3% milestone it registered in June 2023. Although we are still quite far from the time when Linux could become dominant, it seems that lately there has been a remarkable increase in interest in this particular operating system. Statcounter says it derives data about the operating systems in use on computers by monitoring the code installed on more than 1.5 million websites worldwide, which collect 5 billion monthly page views.
The only adjustment that the company makes to this data has to do with the removal of bot activity and the inclusion of prerendering by Google Chrome. The computers counted by Statcounter also include the operating systems installed on laptops, with the company clarifying that it may revise the data within 45 days of its publication.
As Linuxiac first pointed out, Linux’s market share in February was higher than ever. If you include ChromeOS as a version of the Linux OS, then the market share increases to 6.34% for February. But if we focus solely on Linux’s percentages, we find that the market share of an operating system that measures 33 years of journey, has increased by 31.3% compared to June 2023. The increase since then has been generally gradual. Overall, there is a sharp increase in the number of users compared to the figures of five years ago.
As of February 2019, Linux was reportedly used on 1.58% of computers worldwide. Compared to last June, ChromeOS adoption is down somewhat, accounting for 2.27% of the global market last month. In October, Google’s Chromebook OS grabbed a market share of 4.01%, but overall it’s been in decline since then. Windows’ dominance, meanwhile, continued between June ’23 and February ’24, when Microsoft’s operating system was reportedly installed on 72.17% of PCs. Between June ’22 and June ’23 there was a significant drop (from 76.33% to 68.23%.
However, it now appears that Windows usage is back to early 2022 levels. macOS, in contrast, saw its shares shrink, from 21.32% last June to 15.42% in February. But Apple’s current operating share is similar to January 2023 (15.33%) and February 2023 (16.26%) levels. Statcounter’s data shows Apple’s operating system’s global market share plummeting between November and December 2023. It remains unclear what might have caused this development, and it’s possible there’s some margin for error here. After all, these are data from a single company. Another possibility is that the drop is linked to the increase recorded by the “Unknown” category over the same period. One guess is that this category could cover particularly new or old versions of operating systems.
Also noteworthy is the fact that Apple’s global PC market share rose from 8.6% in the second quarter of 2023 to 10.6% in the third quarter of the same year and then to 8.5% in the last quarter of 2023, according to IDC data. Between 2022 and 2023, Apple’s PC market share fell from 9.3% to 8.4%, according to the same company. New figures released by Statcounter show an increase in Linux usage in recent months. Ultimately, the big players at the operating system level remain, by far, Windows and macOS, which accounted for 87.59% in February. In the US in particular, Linux’s market share briefly fell short of the 4% mark, falling to 3.85% in February.
Even so, however, it was an improvement over June 2023, when the US market share reached 1.96%. Despite the improved rates, Linux remains a peripheral player in the market. The reasons are a matter of controversy. For example, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, has argued that the absence of a standard desktop that applies to all Linux distributions has been a barrier to wider adoption of the operating system. In any case, it is interesting to follow the development of an open source software, especially at a time when the shares of the powerful players in the market do not look unshakable. Linux’s march is slow and will probably never make it to the top of the hierarchy.
But the operating system’s strong gains, in India for example, where data shows it to be the second most popular desktop operating system, demonstrate the preference some techies show for Linux.
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