this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
754 points (98.6% liked)
Linux
47952 readers
1420 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I find the concept of 'market share' applied to FOSS projects quite confusing.
What's confusing to you? If Linux has higher desktop use, wouldn't it bring more and better quality apps and games.
I would assume that “market share” is related to the relative number of units sold/number of active subscriptions/fraction of total sales in terms in revenue, or some similar metric. I run a variety of different distributions on servers (bare metal, VMs and containers) and desktop computers. Do they all count equally? Without giving it more thought, I wouldn’t even know how to determine the market share of Ubuntu in my own home in a sensible way.
With Windows, I can just count the number of active licenses. Oh wait, its zero.
For once, Redhat and Suse do have market share, because they are companies. Other distros not so much. Then the reliability of the numbers, since you can only guess it from downloads and useragents.
But that will also bring the problems that Linux is supposed to be safe from.
such as?
Security issues.
Edit: Before you reply, I know no OS is 100% secure but it is one of the advantages of linux nonetheless.