It seems to have plateaued and increasing more slowly. Combining data from Steam and Statcounter reveals this:
this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
107 points (99.1% liked)
Linux
54184 readers
515 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 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There will still be just as many free as in beer linux apps and they will be just as easy to find since you can just turn on the filter for "free and open source" when your searching for an app in flathub or whatever repo and package manager you use, sure more proprietary apps may be developed but the open source ones will be here to stay and could get much more funding from donations if more people joined.
And I don't think it's about hardware development as that is already here, there are plenty options for hardware on linux and that is not a limiting factor.
What is a limiting factor (at least for me) is software support and it is the reason I still dual boot windows and linux. I need adobe for my work I know, I hate it too I wish I could use davinci resolve and other alternatives instead but I can't. I am also a gamer and I play with my friends who run windows, I want to have fun with my friends and if a game doesn't run on linux I still want to play the game even if it means using windows.
If the market share of linux increases then for profit developers will start optimizing applications for it since it will become a major target demographic.
In terms of viruses and regulation they are both fare points which I agree with you on, but I don't think they outweigh the benifets of having higher user adoption (for me at least)
I would be interested to know, is software support is ever a boundary to you?