Posted on 05/14/2025 9:55:49 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Numbers don't lie
Recently, however, I was looking for web search engine popularity numbers. The usual sites people use for these numbers, such as Statcounter, as Ed Bott recently pointed out, have real problems. So, I went to the most reliable source I know of, the US federal government's Digital Analytics Program (DAP).
This site gives a running count of US government website visits and an analysis. On average, there are 1.6 billion sessions in the last 30 days, with millions of users daily. In short, DAP gives a detailed view of what people use without massaging the data.
According to the source data, in 2025, Linux users made up 5.4% of visitors. That proportion is way above any other legitimate numbers I've ever seen.
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1. Windows isn't Microsoft's priority
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2. Linux gaming is viable now
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3. Linux is not hard to use
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4. Installing Linux desktop software is easy
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5. Linux is much safer than Windows
(Excerpt) Read more at zdnet.com ...
Yes. But let's not forget that properly speaking, Linux is the kernel. Not the operating system. The operating system is a kernel plus a huge body of additional system software and applications.
The creation of a UNIX-like kernel was a huge achievement for Torvalds. No argument whatsoever.
The creation of a UNIX-like operating system -- minus the kernel -- was a huge achievement for Richard Stallman and the rest of the Free Software Foundation that developed GNU, many years before Torvalds started his work on the kernel. The shells, the commands, the C compiler, the libraries. All that is GNU, not the kernel, not "Linux". (It's kind of a shame they could never get their own kernel done.)
Remember that Torvalds credits GNU with the fact that Linux -- as an operating system -- was even possible. These days people call the operating system "Linux" despite the FSF's nagging reminders that strictly speaking it should be called "GNU/Linux". Nobody cares, nobody calls it "GNU/Linux" outside of the FSF. Oh well, that's life. :-)
LOL you took the words right out of my mouth!! :-)
I’m getting ready to spin at least one laptop up with it.
I’ll add - having Software as a service ...to the company.
“I have one machine with my original first ever Linux install that I still use now and then. Mint 18.3 I loaded about nine years ago now”
I have an old pc I haven’t used in years loaded with dual-boot Win98/Slackware Linux 4. It may be pre-Y2K. Kept it for parts at the time.
“Actually, I shouldn’t give Torvalds all the credit. Linux might still actually be nothing but a a niche product if not for Richard Stallman’s GNU Project. Because all Torvalds created was a reverse-engineered UNIX kernel. The GNU Project — which Stallman had up and running before Torvalds created his kernel — provided the applications that made the kernel useful even to people who can’t code.”
There you go... Absolutely. :)
“I’m getting ready to spin at least one laptop up with it.”
Holler if you get stuck with anything. Good luck! :)
I will—thanks!
“I have an old pc I haven’t used in years loaded with dual-boot Win98/Slackware Linux 4. It may be pre-Y2K. Kept it for parts at the time.”
Isn’t that cool? From what I understand they are actually running very light CLI versions of linux on old 286 machines... Almost nothing is too old for Linux... :)
Wish we could do something about the social engineering hackers...
I always thought about the possibilities of implementing a reverse access virus. Anyone who breaches the system without authorization gets an executable virus packet back to the origin source... Fight fire with fire... :)
Hyper-V comes with prefab Ubuntu VMs you just choose. You have to install Mint from the downloaded ISO. There are config issues I haven’t figured out.
I am running Linux Mint on the laptop I have connected to our TV to stream video. That’s the only thing I use it for. I never log into anything. Since I never input any sensitive information, I don’t worry about the updates, though usually do it once a year or so.
Oh I see. I misunderstood. Hopefully you can get it. :)
Simply that the 5.4% is probably an underestimate, just given the historical context of linux users, most of them are probably trying to prevent fingerprinting just being a smaller pool to begin with. Hell I don’t even use hardware mac addresses.
“Simply that the 5.4% is probably an underestimate, just given the historical context of linux users, most of them are probably trying to prevent fingerprinting just being a smaller pool to begin with. Hell I don’t even use hardware mac addresses.”
Oh absolutely! No way it is accurate.
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