Linux

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?

You cant count out office PCs where do you think all the windows stats come from?

These numbers are inflated due to our population and government and health sector office pc using linux (ubuntu).

They are not inflated. Office use is the majority of desktop use elsewhere in the world too. It's very much a apples to apples comparison.

These numbers are inflated due to our population and government and health sector office pc using linux

So just like Windows numbers being massively inflated because of corporate computer fleets?

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.

Right, so again, the mostly the same with Windows for both office and personal use.

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.

What are you expecting exactly? Is the choice of each person supposed to be formally announced? Are we supposed to real into a populated areas and declare like Micheal Scott "I declare: I'M USING LINUUUUUX!"?

People here buy desktops only for gaming/content creation, which means most households here doesn't need/require a desktop.

You just described the entire world. This is far from unique to India. Most people I know don't have a desktop and maybe have a laptop, and I live in North America.

Not to be conceded, but I'm guessing this post is in response to my comments from a couple days ago?

I really don't understand your point. It's like you're saying "the users in India don't count because they're not using Linux the way I do".

Does that mean that all the workstations at CERN don't count? Or that the systems up on the ISS don't count?

To me (and I'm certain most people in general would agree) the ISS story is very important, because they were originally running Windows on those systems, but it kept crashing. They switched to Linux to get more stability out of those systems and have been using Linux ever since.

Also, does the story of the City of Munich switching to Linux not count either? It's supposed to be a major win, btw. A city government switching away from Windows and choosing to go with Linux is huge. I see it the same way with India. The more often people are Linux in the wild, the more normalized it is and the more mind share it generates. And mind share is huge in getting people to make a certain choice. It's the reason why product ads are everywhere. The more often you see a product/brand, the more likely you are to say to yourself "that's the thing I'll buy".

Before anyone says Munich switched back to Windows, they didn't. Microsoft made an under-table deal with some officials with the at-the-time in power government to switch back to Windows if they set up a Microsoft office in Munich. Then a new government was voted in a few months later and said "hell no, we're continuing with the Linux rollout" and that's where we are today. The City of Munich is a Linux success story.

Ultimately your post was just stating some facts and then waffling on about how it doesn't count.

People just use the software they need and it works. That's not a bad thing. That's how it's supposed to be. I mean imagine paying for a whole OS just to run chrome. Now that would be crazy and stupid.

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.

Microsoft is as ubiquitous as it is specifically because of decades long efforts to be the default in government offices around the world. So the Indian government using Linux definitely counts as a win.

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.

P.S. that I also own a Steam Deck (and use as my only PC) probably doesn't help my everyman-credibility much 😅

In my defence, I could afford/justify it only because a good friend volunteered to buy it for me and bring it over. I wish things were different. But I'm happy I have one, at least.

I get what you're trying to say but I work in a large healthcare organisation in the UK and our PCs run Windows. Most of the work across our organisation is done within a virtual machine window for our Electronic Patient Record; the local OS on the PC is largely irrelevant. The exception is that office is used for email and that causes a drag on moving away from Windows - people are used to using Outlook rather than just using a webmail or other tool.

Windows has that market share currently largely through inertia rather than going for the most cost effective option. The 15% in India with government and health sector use does count, it's quite an achievement to have successfully deployed a vendor neutral operating system for other tools to be deployed on to. Shame it's using Chrome though. In the UK Healthcare we're wasting huge sums licensing and maintaining Windows when we really shouldn't be.

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.

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 don't see anyone here switching to linux on their personal pc other than the IT students who are forced to install kali linux.

I think someone is pulling your leg. All the IT / engineering students I know use either a normal Linux distribution like Ubuntu, or Windows. Kali is for cybersecurity people and wannabe h4X0rs.

“Nobody cares” is how Linux will eventually win on the desktop. It becomes viable for most people when they no longer “need” whatever they were using before. As Linux is free, it will win when it becomes “good enough”.

Office use dominates desktop use everywhere in the world at this point. So, nothing in India sounds unique per se. In wealthier countries, Windows can be purchased because it does not cost that much and so it just makes sense to reduce risk and go with the flow. Compared to India, there is a reduced incentive to ask if Windows is needed.

In the USA in particular, there is a wealthy creative class that props up the macOS numbers. MacOS having 25% share in the US is an anomaly driven by software development, media production, and lifestyle. Economically, this is more of a hardware choice than an OS decision. The prevalence of Mac laptops drives these numbers.

Outside of office use, the next biggest category is gaming. Again, if money is no object and you are buying the latest NVDIA kit, Windows still has an advantage. This is changing though.

The Linux gaming tech stack is rapidly improving and NVIDIA specific issues are finally being addressed. I see the next 24 months as pivotal. Linux gaming is likely to be the vector that drives Linux adoption in the first world. That will be sticky adoption. Developers will follow. In the US, this will create enough exposure to push Linux to the mainstream. If Linux becomes mainstream in the US, the barrier to adoption drops all over the world. See first paragraph.

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.

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.

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.

Where's the truth in your claim? Whether the numbers are from ignorant office goers or eloquent nerds, it still counts

80% of computer usage is just a browser. you can swap in any OS, it does not matter for the end user.

thats very fair and doesnt take away from that 15% at all

a browser is all most people use their computer for anyway

But are them false?