According to the StatCounter, Linux on the desktop has continued to rise and remains above 4%, with this being the healthiest it's ever looked on the desktop.
I’m guessing there’s a reduced pool of desktop pc users, thus Linux users are now slightly bigger in proportion? There has been big advances regarding Linux adoption, too.
Proton making Linux better for gaming, which was the biggest excuse for holdouts. Steam deck showing you could not only game on Linux, but do so while sitting in a tree, with long term support implied by show of confidence from a large corporation.
Windows steepened its enshittification spiral.
The pandemic put a lot of people in a more experimental space, and they tried a lot of shit. And a lot of people picked up new skills. Including Linux 101.
And people saw authority in general start failing in a big ways. A lot of people started questioning shit. Including corporate hegemonies.
Windows 11 was officially released. That giant spike in late 2021 almost perfectly matched when Windows 11 was released. The Steam Deck was released in early 2022. So, from the graph, I would say the two main contributing factors are Windows 11 sucking to no one’s surprise and the Steam Deck exposing people to Linux gaming.
what happened in 2021 that started this trend?
Windows 11 got quite a few people to look into trying Linux
I personally didn’t think Win11 was that big of a downgrade over Win10, But I also didn’t like 10 to begin with so I didn’t need much convincing.
Windows 11 is what finally got me to permanently switch over to Linux too lol
W10 release is what moved me to linux. My worstation got noticeably slower for CAD and my wife’s laptop became a brick
I’m guessing there’s a reduced pool of desktop pc users, thus Linux users are now slightly bigger in proportion? There has been big advances regarding Linux adoption, too.
Probably a number of factors. Some I can think of that may have contributed:
Did you dare to say something positive about Electron? Blasphemy!
Proton making Linux better for gaming, which was the biggest excuse for holdouts. Steam deck showing you could not only game on Linux, but do so while sitting in a tree, with long term support implied by show of confidence from a large corporation.
Windows steepened its enshittification spiral.
The pandemic put a lot of people in a more experimental space, and they tried a lot of shit. And a lot of people picked up new skills. Including Linux 101.
And people saw authority in general start failing in a big ways. A lot of people started questioning shit. Including corporate hegemonies.
Windows 11 was officially released. That giant spike in late 2021 almost perfectly matched when Windows 11 was released. The Steam Deck was released in early 2022. So, from the graph, I would say the two main contributing factors are Windows 11 sucking to no one’s surprise and the Steam Deck exposing people to Linux gaming.
I would say steam deck, both in actual installs and in raising awareness, but that wasn’t until 2022