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http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-3p-Browser-Market-Share
According to Net Applications' Netmarketshare, the Linux market share on the desktop as judged by browser interactions may now be above 3%.
The company is reporting a 3.37% Linux marketshare for August 2017, a rise from 2.53% a month prior and the first time they have reported the Linux desktop marketshare above 3%.
They report Windows meanwhile at 90.7%, macOS at 5.94%, and the other operating systems statistically at zero. Their monthly report can be found here.
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Linux Browser Marketshare Strikes Above 3%
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday September 03 2017, @04:46PM (9 children)
Year of the Linux desktop is finally here! A decade or so to late or whatever ...
Overall I find it interesting that Chrome is 2/3 of the entire market for browsers. Still there is very little complaints in that area compared to say when IE pulled the same numbers, then it was all about how Microsoft was killing the market, when Google does it then it's apparently fine cause Google = the Internet or some such explanation.
So what could be behind the data cause I seriously doubt there has been a massive increase in people running Linux as their desktop OS. So is it smartphones or tablets or IoT:devices or are people just faking data and user agent switching?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2017, @05:32PM (1 child)
When Microsoft did it, it was a problem because MS bundled their browser with the OS and forced OEMs to not install an alternative. Nowadays Chrome (at least the Windows version) has its market share because people are actually choosing to use it. Also Chrome is cross platform, whereas IE is/was Windows only.
It is a little concerning that they have so much market share, but there is no sign of the market share being abused to lock-in customers to their platform, so not the same as when Microsoft was in that situation.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2017, @06:27PM
No sign if you follow the example of this story and focus on the desktop, perhaps. Android is dominant on mobiles. I lost the link to the article that explains that, if a manufacturer wants to include one of Google's apps, it must ship them all. Some other concerns over Google's dominance:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/23/how-google-controls-androids-open-source [theguardian.com]
https://www.cheatsheet.com/gear-style/with-android-does-google-have-a-monopoly.html/?a=viewall [cheatsheet.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2017, @06:15PM (5 children)
When internet exploder was the dominant web browser it was a real problem because it was not standards compliant. It's fair to say Micro$oft pretty damn close almost captured the entire internet as web pages were developed for IE, not real standards compliant web browsers.
Not saying the current situation isn't worrying, just very different.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 03 2017, @08:32PM (4 children)
There was, i think, an attitude within Microsoft that whatever they did was a standard.
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Sunday September 03 2017, @11:41PM (2 children)
There is, I do believe, still much of this attitude present, though it's not quite as all-pervasive as it used to be.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @07:58AM (1 child)
What is a "microsoft"?
*Posted from my Android tablet, running free and open source software that Gill Bates can never get his hands on, ever. *
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Chromium_One on Monday September 04 2017, @09:11PM
MS is trying, oh yes, they're trying.
So far they've been contributors to Linux kernel code, though as far as I know that's been entirely benign - patches to allow Linux to run better under Hyper-V and such. Also looking at the entire Linux subsystem for Win10 - how long until they're trying to add code back to upstream wholesale? Bet ya their line of thinking is something like "Give it time and us acting like responsible community members, and maybe some patches later don't get checked as thoroughly as they should." Then there's the entire CyanogenMod thing. MS was a financial contributor and was starting to contribute code to the project as well. Pretty sure I'm not the only one who is REALLY happy that it all fell apart and Lineage OS got organized so quickly.
Not as directly damaging, note that last I looked, MS is still collecting something like $5/pop in patent royalties for a great number of Android devices sold. Insert argument here about good and bad points of current IP law, software patents, etc.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @06:06AM
ref provided https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 04 2017, @08:14AM
Which rock have you been hiding under?
People here are (or the green site) quite unhappy about the browser situation, and discussions about Firefox gets tons of comments.
The difference is that IE got big because Microsoft forced it on Windows users, so we blamed Microsoft. But Chrome has gotten so big because Mozilla is doing everything they can to get rid of Firefox users with every single update, so we blame Mozilla instead.
Many of us preferred Firefox, but have found that it no longer does what they want, and reluctantly switched to Chrome. A few of us are still holding out, worrying when the update that will break the remaining add-ons will be forced upon us (by security holes for those who simply stop updating), and we too will have to give up.