I am from india. These numbers are inflated due to our population and government office pc using linux (ubuntu). These office pcs just require a chrome browser and all the work is done on the browser Nobody here cares what os they use in their office pc. I don’t see anyone here switching to linux on their personal pc other than the IT students who are forced to install kali linux. And most of them are running linux on virtualbox on windows.
Steam deck is not even officially sold here and imported ones that are sold cost 950$ for the 512 gb variant. So it is a ultra niche item here.
People here buy desktops only for gaming/content creation, which means most households here doesn’t need/require a desktop. And these people always prefer mac or windows.
Also gaming scene here is dominated by mobile games (because gaming pcs and consoles are too expensive and we have the cheapest internet and phone prices) As for pc games it is dominated by valorant, Minecraft and gtav (fivem rp).
These numbers are inflated due to our population and government and health sector office pc using linux
That’s…not how inflating numbers works?
These office pcs just require a chrome browser and all the work is done on the browser
I mean, that goes for most people…
Every company I’ve ever worked for does all “work” in the browser. Because all the data is stored and managed in the cloud and you don’t need each client to have a powerful PC, just the one powerful server.
other than the IT students who are forced to install kali linux.
Isn’t Kali a pentesting distro? Strange choice.
Indeed. I know someone who bought the latest mac laptop. Very expensive, as they are. And all it’s used for is browsing the internet.
And when I say that’s all it’s used for I mean it.
Truth be told, that battery life is sweeeeet. I hope by the time I need a personal laptop arm is more popular or Linux on M chips is fully matured.
I blew in Debian on my Microsoft Surface Pro4. It runs so much better and battery lasts longer too. It’s the shitty 4GB ram version so it was freezing a lot on Windows. Way less on Debian
No one cares about india though
Much like your opinion then?
India is the most populous country in the world. Anything happening there significantly alters world statistics. Wow Redditors have made it to Lemmy.
Ah yes, that’s why both CEOs of M$ and Alphabet are both Indians because no one cares.
People were talking the same about China and China became the biggest markets for quite a few companies.
India has similar potential. It is a developing country and believe me a lot of companies deeply care about the potential of the Indian market.
Seems like someone purposely made an account to say this as account is as old as this comment
It contributes to the 4% worldwide linux market share. So think twice when you hear year of the linux desktop.
I will say that your statement that no one cares about what their OS is. it kind of makes the point. If no one cares. Why would you use a nonfree OS? Other than the FUD and that it’s just what was used before.
I guess, the browser is kind of the replacement for the OS in OP’s case, which is again, a nonfree OS/browser.
Still, it’s better to use free os + nonfree browser than nonfree os and browser, but I get your point.
That’s the only reason why the Government chooses Ubuntu. Even in School IT Classes, they use Ubuntu. Children are trained in OpenOffice, GIMP etc in Government Schools, but MS Office in Private Schools.
I was specifically taking about office pcs. People sitting in front of those office pcs have better things to worry about. Their interaction with the linux os is clicking that giant chrome icon and they do whatever the IT guy taught them.
We could mirror your post for windows though, their only interaction with the OS is launching the browser. The vast majority of people running windows only use their pc to run the browser and the office suite, and they use windows because it’s what came pre-installed.
I understand your point that india doesn’t particularly care for linux, but by that same logic the world doesn’t particularly care for windows either.
Linux lacking support for popular multiplayer games here and creator apps is not helping either.
It is not Linux per se lacking support. This is due to those that make apps/games. And, in fairness, to the fact that dev in Linux has been a bit of a mess in the last few years, with all the Wayland & o shananigans
I work in the health sector. All PCs in my hospital (Quite a big one, 90K+ Admissions last year) are Dell Pre Built with a dual core Pentium and 4GB RAM, all running Ubuntu. Everything from Discharge Summaries to Medical Advices are made using Google Chrome in the Hospital Management System.
Considering the health sector is very huge in india because of the population. These health sector pcs contribute a lot to the overall market share in india.
Just like they previously counted for Windows before switching. I don’t understand why you arbitrarily decide that commercial/enterprise use is not a valid piece of market share that’s been part (if not the largest piece of) the counter since forever. Hell, the market share counter literally counts web browser hits lol
So anyone who wants to do something serious on their pc still use windows and mac.
Does Epic also run on this? I have only seen it running on Windows
On a hospital PC?
Correct Epic is a hospital software company. https://www.epic.com/
Ok, I laughed
What do you want? A stat counter for everyone’s personal PC?
The government of India, the largest country by population, using Linux is… a huge win?
It’s a win, but not something that has any meaningful impact on normalizing Linux desktop usage.
It’s not going to help the network effects of convincing vendors or manufacturers provide better support for Linux.
The government is probably the biggest customer you can get as a vendor / manufacturer. You’d be insane to not give them whatever support they ask for.
All they need is a chrome browser, so why would the government waste money on windows licences? A huge win is when personal pcs switch to linux. Linux doing basic web browsing and word processing is not a huge win.
Linux doing basic web browsing and word processing is not a huge win.
This is what the majority of desktop computers and laptops are used for, so if the majority of people can start using Linux and not care or notice any difference, then that is a huge win. It means more software developed for Linux, more open file formats, etc.
My sister only uses her MacBook to access Safari and watch YouTube videos. Should she be counted?
Most schools in India already use some distribution of Linux.
My point being web browsing and word processing was never a problem on linux or any other os. It is being used just because it is cheaper and people who buy personal pcs are still on windows or mac and they dont switch
Oh boy, I have had such a different experience… So many websites used to not working.
@caustictrap @OsrsNeedsF2P you are entirely missing the point about linux
I would highly disagree with you. Linux doing basic web browsing and word processing is a huge win. Those two are where people who don’t care just default to Windows, which makes it much harder for people who want to use Linux in a professional setting outside of software development. If professional documents default to .odt instead of .docx, that’s massive progress in my mind.
Yes you are right. It will increase marketshare giving it more support.
Indeed, sounds like a legitimate win to me.
It’s basically a FOSS Chromebook.
It’s a huge win, but not the kind of win people reading the statistic with no context (like me) probably thought.
I’m sure a lot of us looked at “15 percent of desktop PCs in India run Linux” and, regardless of whether it was hasty and irresponsible for us to do so, extrapolated that to, “15 percent of Indian PC users are personally selecting Linux and normalizing its paradigms”.
But in reality, it sounds more like “15 percent of Indian PC users use Linux to launch Google Chrome”. Which is impressive, but not the specific kind of impressive we wanted.
It feels a bit like how I imagine, say, a song artist feels when they pour their heart and soul into a piece of music, it gets modest to no traction for a while, and then years later a 20 second loop becomes the backing track for a massive Tiktok meme, and almost zero of that attention trickles back to their other work.
Most people on MacOS only use a web browser. Most people on Windows only use a web browser. Its nothing to be ashamed of.
No one said it was shameful?
He is trying to discredit the stat just because most of the use is opening a web browser. That’s a fine use for an operating system and just as valid.
Thanks for bringing your personal experience on the matter. I will try to comment on a couple of things.
Even though it’s the government who is mainly pushing this change, and not the general public, I think it’s a good thing. Since those machines just use a browser, this is one more reason to move to Linux, because there will be few migration issues. This makes your government less dependent on foreign corporations. I’m from Brazil, and I know how painful it is to see the govern spending millions on software licenses, when we’re in need of so many things. We had a similar government program about 20 years ago, but unfortunately, it didn’t go well.
On most people not using desktops, this is the way things are going back to, just like in the beginning of computing, when computers were professional machines. People who don’t need it for work won’t bother getting one, for the same reason most houses don’t have professional tools.
I think the market share growth is still relevant, and this will create some positive impact in your country in the long run, if they don’t stop the incentive.
You cant count out office PCs where do you think all the windows stats come from?
This. OP seems to discredit those numbers based on two arguments.
- They’re not personal computers but work PCs
- Those computers are mostly using a web browser and that’s it - no “paradigm change”
However, this is ignoring that
- those computers counted when they were on Windows too
- those genuinely working from a browser could probably have done so on Windows as well, no “paradigm change” either going on here
- the usage stats are counted from web hits anyway
Considering this, I’m not entirely sure why the numbers wouldn’t be any more or less significant than before.
People who switch to linux on their personal pc know what linux is and why it is better. But people who use office pc dont know what os they are using and they still use windows on their personal laptops and desktops.
That’s lot of assumptions and a lot of missing the point.
The point being game/app support matter a lot and you don’t get them because office pc uses linux for web browsing. If these developers follow the 4% market share they will disappointed by the actual usage. Windows doesnt have this problem eventhough it is fading away from enterprise.
What you are describing is the commoditization of the desktop market. What follows from that is a lack of profitability. What follows from that is a lack of corporate investment and a lack of corporate leadership. That makes the cycle repeat but faster.
Microsoft already knows the desktop market is lost. It is still a cash cow but they are not investing in it. Azure, 365, and AI are all much more important to them.
I use Microsoft Teams on Linux every day. You can say I just click the icon and do not care what OS I am using. What you miss is that Microsoft does not care either.
If I can “not care” what OS I am using, I can choose Linux. If I do “‘not care”, it is very hard for Microsoft to monetize me. If they cannot monetize me, they do not care either. They will stop investing in keeping me on their OS. At some point, Linux is better and the obvious default.
The question is not how long it takes Linux to grow. It is the inevitability of it and the fact that the trend will be one direction over time. Once large numbers of people switch ( even if Indian office workers or Greek military ), most of them will not switch back.
I love loved how when Microsoft published docs on how to install and configure Linux on their desktop PCs, everyone was like “wtf??? Do they hate money?” completely missing the fact that home edition Windows is probably bringing them nothing or close to nothing, and that the real money is in B2B.
You completely missed the point.
You’re using a statistic that literally tracks web views to justify your view that Linux users that just use it for work by browsing the web don’t really count. You say this despite them having counted as Windows users on their work machines, using the same metric, since forever before they had to use Linux.
But are them false?
Every single one of my friends are on Linux. Only one of them is in “IT”. Most of my family is on Linux, because they didn’t want to deal with viruses and ads. (I don’t even “IT” for any of them, so I wasn’t consulted. At best I introduced them to the fact that Linux is at least as usable as Windows many years ago). A lot of my colleagues are on Linux; now, most of them are devs, but some of them are on macs and until Apples’s Proton-clone becomes a viable option running Linux on them is just cleaner.
Obviously, we’re less than a rounding error all summed together. Obviously, most of that number is from government issue systems. But it’s not as bleak and impersonal as it seems.
But so what?
Why do these numbers matter at all? Is it inherently virtuous for a country to have a high number of willing Linux users? Or is it because at least these machines waste fewer resources, run cooler, and more secure? Then does it matter who and why installed Linux on them?
If their users are fine with using a browser for all their work, and the offices can buy these PCs for cheaper than Chromebooks after our infamous taxes, not to mention avoid being ewaste for much longer, this is a win-win situation whichever way we look at it.
I think it’s a win. For most people the computer is a tool to look up information and communicate, etc. If they can do that with free software, we all benefit, even if they don’t fall down the rabbit hole and spend endless nights configuring tiling window managers and arguing about vi vs emacs.
Lately I’ve felt an itch to put together a manual for these people, a sort of “Linux for people who don’t really care about Linux”-manual. The problem I guess is that they are not likely to seek out a manual to begin with.I already made something like this. A complete lucid guide for Linux/Windows computing. It covers everything and I barely have things to update in it.
As a physiotherapist, I liked this part especially: “Take computer breaks every hour, and rotate your eyes and shoulders.” :)
This is me since childhood/teenage years, without ever being told these things. I had to tell people what is feasible and essential.
And the amount of support requests I used to get when my family was on Windows (and it was mostly but not all cracked copies, before Microsoft stopped doing anything about it) was much higher too.
Obscure hardware issues that require savviness and extensive googling is always the biggest concern with Linux, but even there, the gap is much smaller these days.
Meanwhile, the retirees who’ve used Windows all their working life, never complained even once. I guess if they were so busy with work even a day’s confusion with how the “Windows” layout for KDE Plasma differs from the actual one they were used to might be frustrating or too disruptive; not anymore though! And that was before all the Copilot mess!
Most people don’t care about Linux. They don’t need to. It’s not just fine, but probably a good thing!
I actually want a steam deck, just to show my friends linux can do most gaming. But it is so expensive here in india.
I thought maybe now that the OLED is out the OG would be cheaper, but nope.
If you have friends or family in the US or UK though, perfect favor to call in :)
OP, you say those folks only launch a chrome browser and so aren’t choosing Linux themselves. Fine. But looking at it from the system perspective, they’re inadvertently learning how to use Linux. How to make WiFi selection in that interface. How to deal with patches and upgrades and vulnerabilities and hacks. Sure, they’re basically only using the browser. But do they never download a file? Open it in the system file browser? Attach it back in the browser?
All of these user interactions are what define a person’s experience on a system. If you think of one of the main differences between iOS and Android, you’ll see how in iOS files are a second class citizen and apps are first class citizens. That means iOS defers to the app first and then considers a file as an independent entity. That’s a strategic decision that defines how generations of iOS users perceive the world around them. It’s what helped companies like Notion become the behemoths they are because everyone accepted that if you want to build a knowledge base, you can just start writing text in an app or browser and not consider files as the first point of contact for the knowledge base user.
By using Linux on a day to day basis, those users are slowly unlearning what they’ve come to understand is the default behavior of a system - most likely whatever Windows does.
Somewhere down the line they’ll crib and hate on windows enough to what something different. That might end up being Mac, but for a large swathe of people, it might end up being some Linux variant too.
They don’t interact with the file system or ui. They call the IT guy if they cant login or connect to the network.
Sounds exactly the same for a regular IT help desk job in a company that runs all windows or Mac.
Aren’t files second-class citizens of Android too?
The analogy broke down somewhere as I wrote it. Perhaps I should have said “mobile” instead. 😃
Nobody here cares what os they use in their office pc.
Yup, that’s how it’s supposed to be. You turn on your PC to get your office work done, not to reinstall display drivers each day.
Gone are the days when you needed to compile your own modem drivers to access Internet from your Linux PC.
The Linux experts here are using their technical knowledge to perform advanced tasks like setting up server clusters for AI-generated furry porn, they are definitely not the ‘average’ Linux user.
No. Just, no. This is exactly what Windows users also do. Most people open it, copy/paste files, write documents and open web browser. I consider it a sign of Windows becoming less important and more niche.
These numbers are inflated due to our population and government and health sector office pc using linux (ubuntu).
That’s not a bad thing at all. Maybe gamers aren’t on Linux yet, but that’s hell of a lot of average non tech people exposed to Linux, are forced to be familiar with it, and if offered, would probably go Ubuntu at home too if all they need is Chrome. That’s how they know how to go to their email and whatever.
People that don’t care about computers don’t care what the operating system is, they go with what is familiar. That often comes from school/work, or even friend groups. If all your friends have a Mac, you’ll probably get one too just so they can help you and share tips.
That’s also a whole bunch of computers that when they’ll be sold later, will also be wiped with Ubuntu on them, and sold to people that are likely to have worked with them at work. They can either keep Ubuntu, for free, or choose to pay extra for a Windows license and install it.
Defaults are powerful.
Gamer here i switched to linux because windows somehow stopped reading my storage drive while linux here works fine but aside from a few games not running its quite decent
Default here is chrome not linux. These people aren’t exposed to linux file system or the linux way of doing things. They just click on the chrome icon. They all still use windows om their personal laptop and desktops. They dont switch just because their office runs chrome.
So Chromebooks aren’t popular there?
I kind of get where you’re coming from. Because you don’t see people using it in your vicinity, it doesn’t seem popular.
However, as others have pointed out, many many people get a computer just to browse and open a word processor. That would remove lots of windows and mac devices from the stats too. And if corporate devices weren’t counted, that’d be a lot too.
Do you believe the majority of people even know what OS they’re using?
they just use their phone because pc hardware is expensive and phones prices are cheap.
Lol, this is so wrong and misleading. Like the whole post. Even for 350 dollars you could buy a used laptop which probably is more able to properly browse/word process than any of your smartphones.
And for $200 you can get a smartphone that is more than good enough
For text processing? Okay, checks out.
With Google Docs it works. If you need more a cheap tablet and Bluetooth keyboard & mouse is still cheaper
Yes, and I place the smartphone on my smartphoneholder glasses so I can actually see what I am typing on my bluetooth keyboard… oyoyoyoyoy
@Bene7rddso @dino And sometimes the thing you need ends up being the one you get first. I need a phone and can get by without a PC.
Phones in India can be bought for near 50$, and that provide everything a common citizen (and I mean mandatory government app and messaging) need. And 50$ still isn’t cheap for most of the population. It’s a totally different economy than usa
