I wonder how much scraping bots skewer the counters. They create a lot of traffic and majority of them run on "Linux Desktop", even though some modify the user agent.
Would be curious to see stats for e.g. subset of GPU-accelerated devices which can be detected in JS. Not as a true bot-filter of course, but as a uniform and widely-available metric biased towards real users.
I don't and that's why I say it would be curious to see the numbers that could potentially expose the bots-vs-users discrepancy.
Without numbers an educated guess looks like this:
1) Even if say 70% of bots set Windows UA, the remaining 30% of Linux UA will still skew the numbers noticeably because 30% is much more than the "natural" Linux market share.
2) Many bots don't modify the UA just because they don't care and are not being blocked often enough, not on the domains that they scrape.
3) Many bots don't modify the UA because they care a lot and follow the strategy of emulating a real chrome desktop user with high fidelity. In this case it's better to leave the real Linux Chrome UA than to risk being detected by discrepancies between the UA and the browser capabilities detected by JS.
Both things that seem to be happening due to the current LLM hype. Everyone locks down their data from scrapers while complaining about increased bot traffic.
Both, it's both, and they're meeting in the middle. Windows has taken a nosedive with 11, while I can say at least for KDE that it has been improving massively in stability over the past few years, and Proton has made gaming on Linux possible. Adobe being Windows-only is still a big hold for lots of people, but unlike decades ago, today lots of top software like Davinci Resolve is now nativelly compatible. Pinta is no Paint.NET and Okular can't match Adobe Reader, but eventually they just might be good enough.
One day we'll look back at the legacy pile of self contradicting nonsense that Windows is and wonder how we ever used it productively.
I wonder how much scraping bots skewer the counters. They create a lot of traffic and majority of them run on "Linux Desktop", even though some modify the user agent.
Would be curious to see stats for e.g. subset of GPU-accelerated devices which can be detected in JS. Not as a true bot-filter of course, but as a uniform and widely-available metric biased towards real users.
Do you have any source of that? I'd guess most of them just use a windows User Agent to avoid being flagged.
I don't and that's why I say it would be curious to see the numbers that could potentially expose the bots-vs-users discrepancy.
Without numbers an educated guess looks like this:
1) Even if say 70% of bots set Windows UA, the remaining 30% of Linux UA will still skew the numbers noticeably because 30% is much more than the "natural" Linux market share.
2) Many bots don't modify the UA just because they don't care and are not being blocked often enough, not on the domains that they scrape.
3) Many bots don't modify the UA because they care a lot and follow the strategy of emulating a real chrome desktop user with high fidelity. In this case it's better to leave the real Linux Chrome UA than to risk being detected by discrepancies between the UA and the browser capabilities detected by JS.
None; the survey is done using the steam client app.
You sure you aren't confusing the Statcounter study with the Steam study?
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I suppose that would imply that scrapers are scraping more or there are more of them.
I think they meant that the bots would account for a signicant portion of the total measured market share, not necessarily an increasing portion.
Both things that seem to be happening due to the current LLM hype. Everyone locks down their data from scrapers while complaining about increased bot traffic.
I remember some MLM pusher telling me back in 2009 that smartphones were going to take off or something because it hit some magic 2-4% threshold.
I genuinely think Windows got worse, and Linux people started recommending Fedora instead of Ubuntu/Debian-branch.
Microsoft pushes us away, good Linux distros keep us from going back.
Sometimes I wonder if SteamOS being seamless and having a handy switch to desktop feature is what will bring about the year of the Linux desktop.
Maybe if they defaulted to plasma mobile?
I don't see most casual users plugging a keyboard and mouse into the steam deck.
Hope it is the inflexion point ! moved to Linux (Ubuntu on Framework-13) since Nov 2022, not going back into walled gardens !
When the year of linux desktop comes,
it won't be because linux became better than windows,
but because windows became worse than linux.
Both, it's both, and they're meeting in the middle. Windows has taken a nosedive with 11, while I can say at least for KDE that it has been improving massively in stability over the past few years, and Proton has made gaming on Linux possible. Adobe being Windows-only is still a big hold for lots of people, but unlike decades ago, today lots of top software like Davinci Resolve is now nativelly compatible. Pinta is no Paint.NET and Okular can't match Adobe Reader, but eventually they just might be good enough.
One day we'll look back at the legacy pile of self contradicting nonsense that Windows is and wonder how we ever used it productively.
same thing next year then?
... again.