I want SteamOS to turn into a general purpose OS so I can shitcan Windows for good!
Name me a feature SteamOS has that Bazzite doesn’t.
It’s got a reckognizable name and first party support from an actual company.
Linux usafe has surely grown, but I think a laege percentage of that are AI crawlers and shit like that.
Would love to see what kind of porn Linux users watch compared to others.
“Femboy” or furry, obviously.
I use Arch btw.
Polyamorous in public. It’s open and anyone can contribute.
Brilliant
Anime? Manga? Tentacle?
Whatever type it’s probably esoteric and somehow involves the command line.
Whatever kink, but with consent not sudo.
sudo is asking for permission. It’s su that is straight up pillaging.
what else is there ? porn with a GUI ??
People who use Linux probably just have less sex and watch porn instead ;)
I thought our primary way of producing new Linux users was sexual reproduction and then indoctrination from birth…
Wrong. If that were true, it wouldn’t have suddenly gone up 22% this past year.
…I wonder, did something happen recently that might have led to an influx of incels/cucks/betas into the chad Linux community?
Could this just be AI scrapers running Linux?
I’m more willing to bet this is VPN servers running linux
That’s not how browsing over a VPN works. Your user-agent is still the one of your browser on your computer.
VPN services probably run on Linux
This would have zero effect on these metrics. A VPN only routes your connection through a server, which device identification is not affected by.
Vpn services doesn’t change your user agent typically
I think this is YoY PP growth as a percentage, which might be unintentionally confusing.
There’s an old thing “the thing that won the Video Format Wars was porn”, because in the 80s, mail order and rental porn was very popular, and the easiest format (VHS) to buy and record onto won largely because of that.
Makes me wonder if we’ll see the same for Operating Systems?
It was probably sports that made VHS the winner. Porn was on both technologies (and available at local video rental places in Australia at least).
VHS could handle a full gridiron game (but not a cricket match) but Betamax couldn’t.
unfortunately this is mostly an instance of https://xkcd.com/1102/
It’s probably SteamDecks alone.
While that is a good point (and an xkcd I didn’t know), the stats say Linux also had the largest absolute growth, so it’s not quite as misleading as you make it out to be
I’m as happy about this news as the next tech enthusiast, but bluntly, it’s not a big shift. Going from … What? 5% to 6%? That’s great and all but it’s hardly moving the needle.
If we want a significant shift we need OEMs selling prebuilt PCs with some flavor of Linux pre-installed, that’s as easy to use as the competition (Windows/mac) with compatibility that’s both good enough and transparent enough that people don’t need to think about it much.
Before we get Linux OEM PCs on store shelves, we need to figure out that last bit first.
That still hasn’t happened yet. We can’t even agree what window manager should be used, nevermind any of the dozen or so other critical services on the system…
The thing that makes Linux great is that anyone and everyone can, and does, make stuff for it. That’s also the thing that’s going to hold it back from being put on store shelves pre installed on prebuilt PCs.
What? 5% to 6%? That’s great and all but it’s hardly moving the needle.
It’s huge because the people who do the tech support in the families are moving.
That’s an important step, for sure, but that’s not going to push the majority.
I’m that guy for plenty of people and the number of times a conversation starts with “so I bought…” is crazy. It’s basically the first thing anyone says to me when they need help.
I don’t know if you already use Linux or not, but if you do you have a valid excuse for why you can’t help them with their impulse buy from HP. So if they want your help, they can take your suggestions for where to get a Linux computer, such as System76, Framework, and I think even some Dell models come with it preinstalled. There’s probably some I forgot, but the point is, those selling Linux machines are in a growth market that only seems to be accelerating. It should be only a matter of time before more players want a piece of that.
This.
The one step that would really push a lot would be if you can go to your local electronics store and buy a PC there with Linux preinstalled and completely setup, just like you can with Windows, Mac and ChromeOS.
That’s why the Steam Deck actually pushed the Linux market share quite a bit.
I mean, there is a thing like that and it’s called Chromebooks, but we, the tech people, deemed ChromeOS not Linux enough and told everyone not to buy chromebooks.
But still ChromeOS is by far the most popular Linux distro with about 5x the market share of the next most popular Linux distro (which is Arch, thanks to the Steam Deck).
My elderly, former programmer father is one. Too bad it took him 30 years after first trying but he is up and running now for about three months 😁️ Now to get him off the Apple phone and into an alt android OS…
Now to get him off the Apple phone and into an alt android OS…
But, why? I can understand for you and I, but does a 50-60yo, need to shift from a platform they’re comfortable with and can afford, just because their nerdy kid doesn’t find it cool?
So honest question, what is everyone’s hopes with the increase in Linux desktop use?
Like when I think about it the only thing I really care about is that I have decent hardware/driver support and holdouts for anti-cheat give up on requiring other operating systems (mostly so that my wife and eldest child stop complaining that I can’t play Fortnite with them) as well as other random stuff that flat-out blocks use with Linux and requires either extra configuration or to keep a spare computer around with Windows.
Basically I hope that Linux can be where MacOS was about a decade ago, a second platform that vendors are aware of and will put in some amount of effort in to support (and will be clear about limitations/lack of support otherwise) and it won’t be as weird to employers or schools if you have a preference for the platform
If you look at the commercially successful variants of Linux (ChromeOS and Android), you’ll see that taking away freedom/choice was the first thing they did.
And ultimately, if you are targeting the mass market, that’s almost required.
ChromeOS isn’t successful.
Successful compared to what? I don’t have data, but I’d venture to say that it’s the most popular desktop Linux distro.
It’s a bit past its peak, but in 2023 it had 7% market share in the quite lucrative North American market. That’s not nothing. In North America, all other Linux distros combined just overtook ChromeOS this year. World-wide it was last year.
There’s also no other Linux distro that comes pre-installed on devices from different manufacturers (at least none that I know of).
Yes. By the porn stats, Linux already crushes ChromeOs. Let’s not take any advice from it.
Well, all Linux distros combined are more than ChromeOS. If you split up by distro, ChromeOS is still the top Linux distro by far.
Interesting. I would have guessed that Mint gave ChromeOS a run for it’s money, by now.
Really difficult to actually get good numbers here since there’s a ton of sampling bias and user agent strings (which are used for most of these market share detectors) don’t capture Linux distros apart from ChromeOS.
But we can combine sources to get somewhere.
The Steam Hardware and Software Survey doesn’t include any data on ChromeOS, because there’s no Steam on ChromeOS, but it says that there’s a total market share for Linux of 3.2% with the most common Linux Distro being Arch with a market share of 0.32% (probably due to the Steam Deck), followed by Mint with 0.24%.
So double the maket share to get roughly to the 6.3% total Linux maket share from PH, and we get Arch with 0.64% and Mint with 0.48%, which is both much much lower than the 2.4% of ChromeOS on PH.
Standardization is a requirement. Whether that still gives the user the ability to color outside of the lines on what’s considered “standard” will be the key factor.
a little funny to see someone say the same exact thing as me, but conclude the opposite thing
https://fosstodon.org/@Logical_Error/115674824627182408
that 1% gain translates to a lot of people. app devs will hopefully target linux now as there are finally a sizable amt of people on the platform. its breaking the chicken and egg cycle
no need to worry about the software fragmentation. it gives OEMs a choice on how they would like to sell a system. we dont want to be like android now do we. i see it as a plus
Yeah, I wish they’d made the second graph show percentage point difference instead of percentage growth.
You can get a good approximation, multiply the pie graph percentages by a plausible population of PornHub users, get plausible numbers for each group, use those numbers to work out plausible numbers for the second graph
AI agents and web scrapers surely
I would expect AI scrapers to fake a windows user-agent tbh.
Why? Isn’t it likely that it’ll just report e.g. “python-requests” for the user agent, and it’s up to the server side to decide what that means?
That user agent would make them easily identifiable and therefore blockable. It’s more likely that they are trying to hide as a legitimate user.
Good job gooners.
ChromeOS always disturbs me. Is there a 2.4% out there casually watching porn on side with their chromebooks during highschool geometry?
And why they switching to linux?
Surely there are people who bought Chromebooks for college? Or boomers who bought the $245 Chromebook instead of the $285 Win10S manufactured ewaste laptop?
chromebooks during highschool geometry
Nah, most of the school equipment/networks are monitored/blocked to hell and back. I’m not saying they can’t find loopholes, but they’re severely hampered, and when they get caught, it’s a big deal.
A lot of that chromeOS is people buying the cheapest hardware at Walmart and using it as their faptop.
Just like a lot of the Linux is probably steamdecks.
Year of the Linux gooning
It’s better to stay away from windows if you’re having a wank.
Genuine curiosity from someone not deeply familiar with the details - what sort of operating systems fall under “Other” for desktops?
BSD, Haiku and pretty much anything that hides or manipulates the user agent string.
Pretty much everything other than TempleOS. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Haiku OS, Redox OS, Sculpt OS etc.
Imagine TempleOS for PH :) I’m not saying I don’t think it happens … but the irony.
Well, technically it’s not possible since OS doesn’t have network connection. At least unless someone learns C† and implements network connection into it. If Terry said it would be complicated, it’s probably a hard task. :)
Here’s an option :)
I love when they give us this hard data. You can take this proof and shove it down hater’s throats and perhaps even in other parts of their body.
The safe word is “Torvalds”.
And the password for extra punishment is “closed source”
