https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/09/linux-smashes-another-market-share-record-for-august-2024-on-statcounter/
Another fresh month and so we have the latest operating system market share details from Statcounter, and it's another impressive showing for Linux from August 2024.
What happened around '20?
I'm asking that because, the way that I'm reading this graph, there's a plateau between '15 and '20, and then a slope upwards.
Rumors that Valve was working on a portable gaming unit had emerged in May 2021
Perhaps. The timing fits considerably better than the other alternatives mentioned until now.
I don't think that it's due to COVID, as it's an upwards slope instead of just a spike, or spike + plateau.
Covid was a time when many people had their eyes opened to big tech not having good intentions. I wouldn't be surprised if covid did make a difference. It was a free option and people often had extra time on their hands to tinker. Lots of people changed jobs after as well. None of those mean there would have been a spike necessarily, but may contribute to an increase in adoption rate.
I don't rule out the possibility that COVID made some people think further on how they interact with software, and that indirectly promoted some Linux usage. However, I don't think that it would create continuous pressure encouraging adoption, that keeps going on four years later.
Another reason why I don't think that COVID is the cause is the timing: the "bulk" of the social impact happened in early 2020, but the slope seems to start near the end of 2020, almost early 2021.
I had extra time during the pandemic and used some of it to permanently migrate to Linux.
I think it's a combination of factors:
Windows 10 and 11 happened
Edit: Also around 2017 DXVK happened bringing high end gaming to Linux
it's definitely having an impact on my customers as they're concerned about staying on Windows
the biggest blocker for them is Windows app parity on Linux
@recursive_recursion Having helped over 200 users migrate from windows to mac over the years, I find that it's more fear than anything. Most folks are just using email, browser and some time of office suite.
So that's why this figure is not in the title. Sharing such posts is disrespectful towards the community.
I think the smashing records is referring to breaking record after record. I'm also curious about the absolute increase of users, 0.1% increase could be a lot of new users in just a month.
Did M$ force more users to install windows 11 or something? What's going on?
Btw, can somebody try and fit that curve to project when it hits 20% or something? That looks like an exponential function.