I believe that we will not discover any secrets if we say that the operating system that is installed on most computers is Windows. Nor if we say that it will probably always be the case, or at least for many years to come. But something is changing with respect to Linux usage, as we read in the reports that NetMarketshare has published in recent months. It's not 100% clear what's going on, but the climb, confirmed this month, began in April, when the world had already been confined by COVID-19 for a month and many of us worked from home.
The news is that this is becoming a trend, or rather that we have been increasing the Linux market share for several months. Specifically, four months, and at the beginning of June we have risen to 3.61% from 3.17% in May. Of course, it is still very little, but in March we were only 1.36%, so we have doubled (and more) our market share in a very short time. In fact, it is the all-time high, although the figures collected by NetMarketshare only span 4 years.
Linux is used now more than ever
El main responsible for this upload is Ubuntu (2.11% to 2.57%), one of the most popular Linux-based operating systems. But, without being able to ask users or do exhaustive surveys, we can only speculate on the reasons:
- The death of Windows 7Microsoft dropped support for Windows 7 earlier this year, a couple of months before Linux started to climb. At that time, many Linux distributions invited users to switch operating systems, and we did the same by writing articles like this.
- Telework. Although many companies use Windows, many others choose free options such as Linux. Any user who is used to working with Linux and has had to work from home will be more comfortable with the same system that they use in their office.
- People are waking up and this is the moment. Well, this is highly unlikely, but Linux performs much better than Windows and is increasingly compatible with more software, including video game titles that were unthinkable a few years ago.
Whatever the reason, right now Linux is used more than ever And, if the rise does not stop in the coming months, how far can we go?