SJVN / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
At long last, after years of waiting for the “Year of the Linux desktop,” we’re getting somewhere.
According to the US Federal Government Website and App Analytics, which I trust far more than I do StatCounter, 6% of its visitors over the last month were using Linux operating systems.
Downright impressive
This website keeps track of US government website visits and analyzes them. On average, there have been 1.6 billion sessions in the last 30 days, with millions of users participating daily.
If you add in Android (16.2%) and Chromebooks (0.8%), you’re talking about 23% of visitors using Linux, which puts it above MacOS (11.7%), Windows 10 (15.7%), and Windows 11 (15.3%), which is downright impressive. Take that, Windows.
Also: Yet another European government is ditching Microsoft for Linux – here’s why
These numbers are based on billions of visits to over 400 US executive branch government domains. That’s about 5,000 total websites, and it includes every Cabinet department. DAP gets its raw data from a Google Analytics account. DAP has open-sourced the code, which displays the data on the web, and its data-collection code. Best of all, unlike the others, you can download its data in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, allowing you to analyze the raw numbers yourself.
An all-time high
The feds aren’t the only ones showing that the Linux desktop has become a real player.
According to the web analysis company StatCounter, the US Linux desktop market has stepped over the 5% mark. To be exact, in June 2025, the Linux desktop reached a new high of 5.03%. Indeed, if you add in ChromeOS, a Linux distro that uses the Chrome web browser as its interface, the Linux desktop has reached an all-time high of 7.74%, according to StatCounter.
Also: 7 things every Linux beginner should know before downloading their first distro
Before you break out the champagne, though, keep in mind that StatCounter’s numbers should be taken with a mountain of salt. Both Ed Bott and I find StatCounter’s statistics to be questionable. As Bott recently said: “StatCounter’s ‘market share’ reports are a great excuse for tech bloggers to crank out a story each month, but they bear only the most casual relation to the real world, and most of those month-to-month spikes are simply statistical noise.”
Why? StatCounter’s methodology doesn’t count PCs or users. Instead, it counts web pages containing its tracking code from over 1.5 million websites. Every month, the company records about 5 billion page views. For each page view, it records the browser and operating system.
Also: Want to save your old computer? Try one of these 8 Linux distros for free
That sounds good, but when it comes to counting users and their operating systems, it’s very fuzzy. In other words, StatCounter’s numbers are good for general trends, but you shouldn’t rely on them for specifics.
Linux is growing
With that in mind, there is good news for the Linux desktop. Over the last few years, Linux’s desktop share has been slowly climbing, but its rate of growth has been accelerating. By StatCounter’s numbers, in 2020, the Linux desktop only had about a 1.5% market share. In 2021, it touched 2%, and the following year it reached 2.76%. By 2023, it reached a new high of 3.12%. In 2024, it jumped to over 4%. In the global market, it’s not yet at 5%, but it’s still well above 4%.
Also: 5 of the easiest, quickest Linux distros to install – and I’ve tried them all
This means that, although we can’t be certain of the exact numbers, Linux is clearly growing. Let’s look closer.
sjvn/ZDNET
While I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since almost the beginning, it took nearly 20 years for it to reach a 1% market share on desktops — but you used to need to be a techie to get the most out of Linux. After getting to 1% in approximately 2011, it took about a decade to double that to 2%. The jump from 2% to 3% took just over two years, and 3% to 4% took less than a year.
Also: You can try Linux without ditching Windows first – here’s how
Get the picture? The Linux desktop is growing, and it’s growing fast.
Want to join in?
If you got a Windows 10 PC that can’t jump to Windows 11, there are plenty of easy-to-use Linux desktops that resemble Windows with which you can get started.
Get the morning’s top stories in your inbox each day with our Tech Today newsletter.
