Over the past three months, Linux's share of the desktop operating system market has risen by 0.35% from 1.65% to 2%. This comes nine months after it initially beat out Windows Vista in September 2015 when it reached 1.74%, decreasing back to 1.57% shortly thereafter. If Linux market share continues to increase at this rate, it could reach Windows 8's 2.45% in a matter of months.
Linux itself is composed of numerous distributions, the most popular of which was once Ubuntu which, as of 2010, had as much of Linux's market share as Windows 7 does the whole operating system market's (about 50%).
While there aren't any current graphs showing individual distribution market shares (most likely due to the sheer number of them), DistroWatch tracks the popularity of Linux distributions based on the number of page views they each receive on their website. From this, it appears Ubuntu seems to have lost some popularity and is now being overtaken by Linux Mint.
| Ranking | Distribution |
|---|---|
| 1 | Mint |
| 2 | Debian |
| 3 | Ubuntu |
| 4 | Fedora |
| 5 | Manjaro |
Windows 10 use has continued to steadily rise since its release in August 2015 and is currently at 19.14%. This corresponds to the gradual decrease in the market shares of Windows 7 and Windows XP.
Windows 10 Market Share
Windows XP Market Share
Windows 7 Market Share
Sources:
Overall OS Market Share Graphs
Linux Distribution Market Share Pie Chart
DistroWatch Linux Page View Rankings
I think citing DistroWatch to get an idea of popularity is completely inaccurate. It may be okay as evidence for what newer users are interested in, but a lot of people go directly to a distribution's website instead of going through another website. I highly doubt Arch, Fedora and Gentoo users visit DistroWatch. There's also the fact that plenty of companies use Red Hat, Suse, CentOS and other in-house distros. I love Linux, but I don't think it will see exponential adoption growth any time soon considering how much of the community wants to do things their own way instead of coming up with a common solution. It's the paradox of choice, really.
That's really cool. I had no idea Linux was gaining this much popularity. I've used Linux on and off for a long time but started using it full time a couple years back after discovering how much I hated Windows8. Now I cringe when I have to use a Windows computer. I started out with RedHat, then used Fedora full time, and currently run OpenSuse with KDE desktop. What's your favorite distro and desktop?