cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/technology/p/461117/windows-marketshare-since-2010
Windows Marketshare since 2010
for your enjoyment
source https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200910-202511
What is “unknown”? And why is it higher then linux?
“Unknown” is browsers blocking trackers from identifying them. So mostly Linux and some people running Firefox with blockers on other systems.
“Windows” is Windows users and also many Linux users who changed their bowser’s user agent to circumvent sites that sabotage browsers on Linux for no reason.
“ChromeOS” is -again- Linux as it’s based on open ChromiumOS which is derived from Gentoo. (And Google is planning to switch to Android soon… which is again running on top of Linux.)
Old unsupported versions of Windows (and sometimes Windows Server?) may also be included in “unknown”.
Which would explain why unknown peaks when windows crashes. Seems the most likely explanation
If you’re not using “unknown” os, what are you even doing with your life.
My guess is its a catch-all for any OS they couldn’t identify… So some of that could be Windows or Linux with agents or scripts disable. I also didn’t see Android broken out as a separate category while iOS is, so that could be in there too.
i’ve started using templeos. i’m no terry davis, but i do get visions of code during manic episodes, so i’m kinda like terry davis if terry davis wasn’t a good programmer and had to keep asking claude how to do shit
AFAIK they’re using the browser agent to identify the os. Maybe that obscures the os in some cases
That would make sense. Its a bit sad though… would be interesting to have “real” numbers…
I have to use Chromium with a spoofed Windows/Chrome Browser agent on Linux specifically for my bank. Apparently using Linux is an insecure environment in their eyes and they block login attempts completely.
I wonder how many Linux users spoof Windows browser agents for similar reasons.
Counting OS statistics by tracking website is never going to tell “real” numbers.
But what is “real” numbers anyways. Does a raspberry pi count that runs home assistant?
Does a laptop that is only used once a month count the same as one that is daily active?
This is taken from trackers, so blocking trackers renders your os as Unknown.
I really don’t know. Neither the stats collector. That’s the point.
Misconfigured systems/browsers or misconfigured web crawlers.
For those statistic they use trackers so a tracker blocker such as uBlock origin will “confuse” the tracker
In that case they would not even receive the statistic
Probably the tracker register the site visits too (and i would suppose it’s a site-tracker interaction instead of a client-tracker) and those visits that give no data or malformes data are “unknown”
Based on the fact that it rises while Linux tails off, I’m guessing that it’s something in Linux land breaking StatCounter’s collection method. Maybe something like flatpacks and snaps not allowing the underlying OS to be detected properly.
StatCounter determines OS with a tracker installed on many popular websites.
Could be flatpaks, could be ublock.
Open source has no country. I said as much when Russian developers were getting kicked off of Github, and I’ll say it again when people are scraping Windows off their hard drives.
If you’re worried about shit like the NSA compromising Debian’s random number generator - they don’t care about borders, either.
I would think the real growing user base are mobile/phone users (aka Google/Android and Apple/IOS). Windows is dropping because for many people a computer is overkill and all they need is their phone… and Microsoft failed to enter that market.
What I would consider good news is if we were to notice a third mobile OS to get a significant share of users.
This graph is about desktop OSs only. So Windows is dropping in proportion to other desktop systems.
So then what desktop is iOS on?
Based on the original discussion, it was probably on some novelty device that was close to desktop but died soon after. I personally am not familiar with Apple environment, so I really don’t know better.
I love that for them.
