High or low, all Linux usage stats are fake.
If that’s a joke, I don’t get it.
If that’s real, I don’t know why.
Help?
Ask yourself:
- Where do these stats come from?
- What do they actually measure?
- How can the total number of all Desktop Linux users or devices be known to anyone?
The fact of the matter is, none of these stats actually measure the number of users. Most of them are just totally flawed guestimates based on what is often limited web analytics data collected by them.In fact, not even the developers of a single distribution can guess the number of people/devices using/running that specific distribution. A distribution like Debian for example has mirrors, and mirrors to some mirrors, and maybe even mirrors to some mirrors to some mirrors. So if Debian developers can’t possibly know the number of Debian users, do you think OP’s site knows the total number of Desktop Linux users?
And let’s not get into the fact that the limited data they collect itself is not even reliable. View desktop site on your Android phone’s browser. Congratulations! Now you’re a desktop Linux user. No special user-agent spoofing add-on needed. You’re even running X11. Good choice not following the Wayland fad too soon.
I’m assuming they mean tracking Linux users is difficult since most distributions don’t have any kind of telemetry or tracking and there’s no company keeping track of their user count like Microsoft or Apple. However, it’s not like it’s impossible.
The closest thing to telemetry on Linux is Chrome OS.
What’s been going on over in the Apple world?
Probably just bad count. In the data starting in 2023, you can see “unknown” suddenly rise and windows dip, then immediately after macs get a boost to finally dip again while windows get a boost.
Must’ve been the release of multiple things and in Nov 2023 the data was corrected or a new product with windows on it was released.
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