Comment by jillesvangurp
2 years ago
Interesting that they are counting chrome os separately since it is Linux based. That's another 2%. So 6% of the desktop market is running some form of Linux. There's another 6% unknown, which I bet might include some Linux users that are a bit savvy about configuring their browsers to not leak information. The Unkown line seems to climb faster than the linux line in the graph; which is interesting as well.
I'd imagine it's only as much Linux as Android and FireOS are, which might be argued aren't desktop OSes. But for that matter, ChromeOS might in turn be arguably closer to Android than what would be considered desktop Linux.. (disc: have not used ChromeOS)
I use ChromeOS (Flex on a Lenovo). I believe not counting it as "proper" Linux is more ideological than technical.
Regarding WSL, I have used that too, and happily so. But it's more understandable to count it as not-linux, because of many factors including the Kernel and the file system.
It runs a linux kernel, which makes it a Linux based OS. It probably integrates a lot of linux stuff too, and it of course comes with virtualization support (leveraging the support for this in linux) to run proper linux applications and development tools, etc.
It's big enough to be worth counting separately though. Interesting that regular linux now has twice the market share of Chrome OS.
It still isn't GNU/Linux, and if ChromeOS virtualization counts as Linux, so does WSL, as the technical approach to run GNU/Linux inside its own VM is quite similar in both OSes.
Normal ChromeOS users only have a browser based userspace.
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ChromeOS started as a very weird thing, but increasingly they're moving toward being a reasonably normal GNU/Linux as we know it, with Wayland. And of course a good Android environment.
thing is, on chrome os you can enable debian app support(in two different ways), you basically get both linux apps and android apps, on android it's not that straightforward. Idk how is this done under the hood, but from an user POV chromeos is closer to a windows with wsl2 support with friendlier experience
Unknowns are BSDs.
BSD is counted separately at a minuscule 0.1%. I imagine the proportion of that 6% unknown might be similar.
For desktop?
In fact I would argue that FreeBSD is better as a desktop than server (where you may want package stability). FreeBSD update policies such as choice between quarterly (much like Ubuntu, but twice as often) and rolling puts its into nice balanced spot between Arch-like and Ubuntu-like system.
The problem is however poor hardware support. They still do not support Alder Lake iGPU, you'll need to hack the kernel source to make it working. But once up and running it gives you nicer experience than many distros. Fells like a more stable sid.
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Yes, why? Nearly all my Desktops and Laptops have exclusively FreeBSD on it.