Linux

The critical mass needed to tip the scales is not high. Once Linux has enough market share to matter as a customer base, game studios will switch to developing as cross-platform for it by default, so that they don't lose launch sales. Once this happens, a lot of people won't have any reason to stay on windows anymore as gaming was the only thing holding them back. This will then create a virtuous cycle of users migrating and games (and then apps) switching to it. Along then come hardware vendor supporty and then pre-built PCs and laptops. If the tipping point is reach, the rate of market share gain will be exponential.

The same thing happened with Internet Explorer 6

The only thing that can stop this is outside pressure from software giants like Microsoft through lobbying the Governments, buying out game studios or buying exclusivity, or strong-arming hardware vendors.

Oh yeah

This is the year

People are really late to the party but better late then never....

Linux is awesome.

That was me, I switched my desktop and laptop to ubuntu.

Is it actually truly the year of the Linux desktop?

Wow, if it keeps going at this rate, it'll be the year of Linux on the desktop (50% share) in 2079.

I helped! I installed Linux Mint on 2 of my friends aging laptops.

All the linux fanboys just ejaculated at once

Proud to be one of them. I tried to disable the job that runs windows update, they said I don't have permission, so I switched to Ubuntu on every single computer except the one that runs VR games.

As a bonus, as an enthusiast for artificial intelligence stuff, more programs run on Linux than they do on Windows

Is Linux actually growing, or are other users simply buying fewer computers because their phones have reduced the need for personal computers?

Glad to be part of the trend. Literally just yesterday, I got rid of Windows and installed Pop OS instead.

I wish librewolf had a toggle for its user agent. The default user agent is windows and you can't change it without extensions

Seriously considering swapping over to my Linux partition as main and virtualizing the Windows side this weekend. Still need the Windows because well, I make Windows software.

There are no longer just 5 of us! There are now 6 of us, YES!

Clear victory

After many years of thinking about it i finally gave Linux a try on my main PC and was met with the unfortunate realization that HDR support was non existent for NVIDIA cards and had to switch back to Windows.

Glad to be part of the trend! Recently converted my 12 year old MacBook Pro to Fedora and it's running incredibly well. Have used command line Linux for work for years, but have really been enjoying it with a GUI in a desktop setting.

If I wasn't a noob gamer I'd have no use for Windows. Unfortunately I'm too dumb to figure out how to make games work, even on Mint.

What's with the big spike in "unknown" at the same time as Windows market share going down a bunch?

For me, the Year of Linux on the Desktop was 2021. There's literally only one computer in the house running Windows anymore, and that's simply to run some of the pro-level software I use for gig work (and so I'll never be entirely rid of it).

Proton's improvements were a big step in transitioning my PC gaming to Linux. There are still a lot of games that won't run on Linux, but... there are so many that do, so I don't feel like I'm missing out.

Do you all think that if the market share gets high enough we'll see ports of professional software like autocad or adobe?

The revolution is coming!

That is very little and propably due to steam deck.