I am from india. These numbers are inflated due to our population and government and health sector office pc using linux (ubuntu). 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. 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. And most of them are running linux on virtualbox on windows.
Steam deck is not even officially sold here and imported ones that are sold cost 950$ for the 512 gb variant. So it is a ultra niche item here. .
People here buy desktops only for gaming/content creation, which means most households here doesn’t need/require a desktop. And these people always prefer mac or windows.
Also gaming scene here is dominated by mobile games (because gaming pcs and consoles are too expensive and we have the cheapest internet and phone prices) As for pc games it is dominated by valorant, Minecraft and gtav (fivem rp).
Edit - Many consider this a huge win. But getting market share in the office space for basic browsing and word processing inflates the numbers for actual game/app developers who wants to support linux and they will disappointed seeing the actual usage and they will abandon the linux support. Also the indian market isn’t buying laptop/desktops for browsing, they just use their phone because pc hardware is expensive and phones prices are cheap. And anyone who is buying desktops for serious tasks stick to windows and mac.
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?
It’s a huge win, but not the kind of win people reading the statistic with no context (like me) probably thought.
I’m sure a lot of us looked at “15 percent of desktop PCs in India run Linux” and, regardless of whether it was hasty and irresponsible for us to do so, extrapolated that to, “15 percent of Indian PC users are personally selecting Linux and normalizing its paradigms”.
But in reality, it sounds more like “15 percent of Indian PC users use Linux to launch Google Chrome”. Which is impressive, but not the specific kind of impressive we wanted.
It feels a bit like how I imagine, say, a song artist feels when they pour their heart and soul into a piece of music, it gets modest to no traction for a while, and then years later a 20 second loop becomes the backing track for a massive Tiktok meme, and almost zero of that attention trickles back to their other work.
Most people on MacOS only use a web browser. Most people on Windows only use a web browser. Its nothing to be ashamed of.
No one said it was shameful?
He is trying to discredit the stat just because most of the use is opening a web browser. That’s a fine use for an operating system and just as valid.
Indeed, sounds like a legitimate win to me.
It’s basically a FOSS Chromebook.
All they need is a chrome browser, so why would the government waste money on windows licences? A huge win is when personal pcs switch to linux. Linux doing basic web browsing and word processing is not a huge win.
I would highly disagree with you. Linux doing basic web browsing and word processing is a huge win. Those two are where people who don’t care just default to Windows, which makes it much harder for people who want to use Linux in a professional setting outside of software development. If professional documents default to .odt instead of .docx, that’s massive progress in my mind.
Yes you are right. It will increase marketshare giving it more support.
My sister only uses her MacBook to access Safari and watch YouTube videos. Should she be counted?
Most schools in India already use some distribution of Linux.
My point being web browsing and word processing was never a problem on linux or any other os. It is being used just because it is cheaper and people who buy personal pcs are still on windows or mac and they dont switch
Oh boy, I have had such a different experience… So many websites used to not working.
Linux doing basic web browsing and word processing is not a huge win.
This is what the majority of desktop computers and laptops are used for, so if the majority of people can start using Linux and not care or notice any difference, then that is a huge win. It means more software developed for Linux, more open file formats, etc.
@caustictrap @OsrsNeedsF2P you are entirely missing the point about linux
It’s a win, but not something that has any meaningful impact on normalizing Linux desktop usage.
It’s not going to help the network effects of convincing vendors or manufacturers provide better support for Linux.
The government is probably the biggest customer you can get as a vendor / manufacturer. You’d be insane to not give them whatever support they ask for.
Thank you. The mystery is now solved for me.
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Indeed. I know someone who bought the latest mac laptop. Very expensive, as they are. And all it’s used for is browsing the internet.
And when I say that’s all it’s used for I mean it.
Truth be told, that battery life is sweeeeet. I hope by the time I need a personal laptop arm is more popular or Linux on M chips is fully matured.
I blew in Debian on my Microsoft Surface Pro4. It runs so much better and battery lasts longer too. It’s the shitty 4GB ram version so it was freezing a lot on Windows. Way less on Debian
You cant count out office PCs where do you think all the windows stats come from?
This. OP seems to discredit those numbers based on two arguments.
- They’re not personal computers but work PCs
- Those computers are mostly using a web browser and that’s it - no “paradigm change”
However, this is ignoring that
- those computers counted when they were on Windows too
- those genuinely working from a browser could probably have done so on Windows as well, no “paradigm change” either going on here
- the usage stats are counted from web hits anyway
Considering this, I’m not entirely sure why the numbers wouldn’t be any more or less significant than before.
People who switch to linux on their personal pc know what linux is and why it is better. But people who use office pc dont know what os they are using and they still use windows on their personal laptops and desktops.
You completely missed the point.
You’re using a statistic that literally tracks web views to justify your view that Linux users that just use it for work by browsing the web don’t really count. You say this despite them having counted as Windows users on their work machines, using the same metric, since forever before they had to use Linux.
What you are describing is the commoditization of the desktop market. What follows from that is a lack of profitability. What follows from that is a lack of corporate investment and a lack of corporate leadership. That makes the cycle repeat but faster.
Microsoft already knows the desktop market is lost. It is still a cash cow but they are not investing in it. Azure, 365, and AI are all much more important to them.
I use Microsoft Teams on Linux every day. You can say I just click the icon and do not care what OS I am using. What you miss is that Microsoft does not care either.
If I can “not care” what OS I am using, I can choose Linux. If I do “‘not care”, it is very hard for Microsoft to monetize me. If they cannot monetize me, they do not care either. They will stop investing in keeping me on their OS. At some point, Linux is better and the obvious default.
The question is not how long it takes Linux to grow. It is the inevitability of it and the fact that the trend will be one direction over time. Once large numbers of people switch ( even if Indian office workers or Greek military ), most of them will not switch back.
I love loved how when Microsoft published docs on how to install and configure Linux on their desktop PCs, everyone was like “wtf??? Do they hate money?” completely missing the fact that home edition Windows is probably bringing them nothing or close to nothing, and that the real money is in B2B.
That’s lot of assumptions and a lot of missing the point.
The point being game/app support matter a lot and you don’t get them because office pc uses linux for web browsing. If these developers follow the 4% market share they will disappointed by the actual usage. Windows doesnt have this problem eventhough it is fading away from enterprise.
thats very fair and doesnt take away from that 15% at all
a browser is all most people use their computer for anyway
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.
Does Epic also run on this? I have only seen it running on Windows
On a hospital PC?
Correct Epic is a hospital software company. https://www.epic.com/
Ok, I laughed
Considering the health sector is very huge in india because of the population. These health sector pcs contribute a lot to the overall market share in india.
Just like they previously counted for Windows before switching. I don’t understand why you arbitrarily decide that commercial/enterprise use is not a valid piece of market share that’s been part (if not the largest piece of) the counter since forever. Hell, the market share counter literally counts web browser hits lol
So anyone who wants to do something serious on their pc still use windows and mac.
No. Just, no. This is exactly what Windows users also do. Most people open it, copy/paste files, write documents and open web browser. I consider it a sign of Windows becoming less important and more niche.
Do these private computers run a properly licensed version of Windows? What’s the cost for a license? Same as in other countries?
And another thing I wodered: Is there more Linux expertise available than in other countries? I guess the average person from India isn’t in IT. But there’s lots of IT, lots of companies from my country have outsourced parts of their IT. I occasionally watch tutorial videos or university lectures on Youtube either in english with a heavy accent or for domestic use and not in english. Some of them discuss some crazy niche Linux topics or software development, which is also oftentimes deployed on Linux infrastructure. Or is it just because India is a big country and it’s just a matter of scale that I get to see some videos from over there?
Do these private computers run a properly licensed version of Windows? What’s the cost for a license? Same as in other countries?
Only the big ones. Pirated Windows is extremely cheap, and Microsoft doesn’t care too much as they want people using Windows. A new proper licence would be Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000. This is a considerable sum for the average Indian.
Is there more Linux expertise available than in other countries?
I don’t know that much about other countries. I do know that we are probably the most Linux-friendly country in the world. But most of the senior people in the FOSS community are from Europe / US / East Asia.
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.
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.
I actually want a steam deck, just to show my friends linux can do most gaming. But it is so expensive here in india.
I thought maybe now that the OLED is out the OG would be cheaper, but nope.
If you have friends or family in the US or UK though, perfect favor to call in :)
I think it’s a win. For most people the computer is a tool to look up information and communicate, etc. If they can do that with free software, we all benefit, even if they don’t fall down the rabbit hole and spend endless nights configuring tiling window managers and arguing about vi vs emacs.
Lately I’ve felt an itch to put together a manual for these people, a sort of “Linux for people who don’t really care about Linux”-manual. The problem I guess is that they are not likely to seek out a manual to begin with.And the amount of support requests I used to get when my family was on Windows (and it was mostly but not all cracked copies, before Microsoft stopped doing anything about it) was much higher too.
Obscure hardware issues that require savviness and extensive googling is always the biggest concern with Linux, but even there, the gap is much smaller these days.
Meanwhile, the retirees who’ve used Windows all their working life, never complained even once. I guess if they were so busy with work even a day’s confusion with how the “Windows” layout for KDE Plasma differs from the actual one they were used to might be frustrating or too disruptive; not anymore though! And that was before all the Copilot mess!
Most people don’t care about Linux. They don’t need to. It’s not just fine, but probably a good thing!
I already made something like this. A complete lucid guide for Linux/Windows computing. It covers everything and I barely have things to update in it.
As a physiotherapist, I liked this part especially: “Take computer breaks every hour, and rotate your eyes and shoulders.” :)
This is me since childhood/teenage years, without ever being told these things. I had to tell people what is feasible and essential.
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.
To your first point, I don’t know about other people but I generally assumed the numbers were mostly due to office deployments, whether government or private.
Your statements about most people not having a computer are also true in the United States. When I worked support for a smartphone manufacturer I encountered so many people who not only did not have a computer, they didn’t have any internet service at all. They just use their phone for everything and rely heavily on the unlimited dataplans that are so ubiquitous nowadays. It didn’t even seem to be an age-related decision as I spoke to both young folks and folks approaching retirement age who had made this decision. As an IT worker who grew up with techy parents, the concept is wild and outlandish to me, but it’s the reality of how many people compute is they have no laptop or desktop, and may not even have Internet service
But are them false?
80% of computer usage is just a browser. you can swap in any OS, it does not matter for the end user.
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.
