this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/north-america/#monthly-200901-202607

https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&groupBy=os&dt=28d&loc=north-america&filters=deviceType%253DDESKTOP

Cloudflare stats also seem to support peaks of 15% usage but around 9-10% on average. In the United States alone, the market share for Linux is nearly 12% now for the whole month and Cloudflare stats suggest peaks of up to 25% (!) Linux desktop usage on certain days and times.

The trendline suggests this is just the start. When will companies realize they cannot ignore Linux anymore?

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[–] dadarobot@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

whats the difference between osx and macos?

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 3 days ago (2 children)

The OS was renamed at some point; the first versions of the Unix/NEXTstep-based OS made by Apple were named Mac OS X, then at some point they switched to "OS X" (which hardly anyone ever actually said), then at some point to "macOS". So it's somewhat silly that they are separate lines and I don't know what the difference is on that graph.

[–] CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.today 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I thought the X was in reference to the roman numeral for 10. Mac OS X == Mac OS 10. They sat on version 10 for a long time and then moved on so it's no longer X.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 3 days ago

Yes, this is true (although the name change happened years before the major version was no longer 10) and doesn't contradict anything I wrote. But the first version of Mac OS X was an entirely new OS technologically unrelated to Mac OS 9; not the case for later version jumps.

[–] dadarobot@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

so is macos people running the apple chips and osx is people still running x86/64?

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 3 days ago

In general no, at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#macOS the name change happened several years before the architecture change. But I don't know what the distinction is on that graph; it's possible it just depends on how the OS is called in the user agent string?

They renamed the OS a while ago at this point, but the user agent isn’t always updated.

Ex on iPhone the user agent is Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_7 like Mac OS X)…