GNU/Linux users per 1000 windows users

TLDR: In 2020 the fraction of Linux users doubled compared to Windows users. Compared to 2008 the Linux-user fraction rose by factor 5.

Every year people ask “is it finally the year of the Linux Desktop?”.

In 2020 the answer is clear: since 2008 almost every year was a year of the Linux Desktop: Compared to Windows users there was reliable superlinear growth:

PDF (drucken)

The source of this graph is data I collected over the past decade every July from OS market share. Except for the 2022 data which is from October because I missed taking the data point in time. They do browser detection, so the data is far from perfect, but at least they have data we can use:

As a second datasource, here’s this data as reported from statcounter (postprocessed from their csv export to be GNU/kw and filtered to just july; and ignoring Chrome OS):

July 2025 is still preliminary.

Thanks to gamingonlinux and The Linux Experiment (video) for referencing the statcounter data.

GNU/Linux is growing. (though there is a dip during the pandemic)

When will you migrate? Did you migrate already?

This is based on an older German article I wrote in 2010 and updated regularly: GNU/Linux gewinnt gegenüber Windows und MacOSX an Marktanteil

Germany and Europe

I’m from Germany, so that’s my main interest, and Europe is trying to move towards sovereign IT, so that’s important. Because of that, here’s a EU+Germany plot, all from statcounter:

Germany

Date	Windows	Linux	Chrome OS	Unknown	GNU/kw
2009-07	94.84	1.19	0	0.08	13
2010-07	92.6	1.54	0	0.15	17
2011-07	91.41	1.62	0	0.2	18
2012-07	88.58	2.18	0	0.05	25
2013-07	88.77	3.2	0	0.03	36
2014-07	88.76	2.45	0.04	0.28	28
2015-07	87.18	2.77	0.07	0.82	32
2016-07	82.51	3.56	0.08	3.01	43
2017-07	80.43	4.15	0.1	1.98	52
2018-07	81.61	3.33	0.11	1.37	41
2019-07	78.16	3.44	0.08	5.01	44
2020-07	77.07	3.87	0.11	1.8	50
2021-07	74.78	2.79	0.36	3.32	37
2022-07	75.96	2.61	0.43	2.45	34
2023-07	77.79	2.94	1	2.02	38
2024-07	76.35	4.82	1.58	3.78	63
2025-07	69.94	5.74	1.65	4.62	82

July 2025 is still preliminary.

EU

Date	Windows	Linux	Chrome OS	Unknown	GNU/kw
2009-07	94.55	1.32	0	0.09	14
2010-07	93.08	1.25	0	0.07	13
2011-07	91.32	1.22	0	0.08	13
2012-07	88.41	1.33	0	0.03	15
2013-07	90.03	1.71	0.01	0.05	19
2014-07	88.88	1.75	0.13	0.6	20
2015-07	86.91	2.09	0.2	1.35	24
2016-07	83.72	2.12	0.23	3.39	25
2017-07	83.48	2.35	0.33	1.73	28
2018-07	82.98	2.1	0.37	1.91	25
2019-07	78.07	2.08	0.47	5.51	27
2020-07	77.09	2.39	0.54	2.16	31
2021-07	75.8	3.34	0.87	4.62	44
2022-07	78.71	2.54	1.66	2.84	32
2023-07	76.79	2.93	1.77	2.93	38
2024-07	76.01	3.41	1.65	4.29	45
2025-07	71.65	4.35	1.17	6.85	61

July 2025 is still preliminary.