this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Linux just cracked 10% desktop usage in North America, but no one's sure why (www.techspot.com)
submitted 3 hours ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Enkrod@feddit.org 57 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

10.61% in June 2026, up from 3.56% in May

Tripling in ONE MONTH.

Yeah, I'm sorry everyone. As much as all of us love Linux and (rightfully) hate Microslop, that's a jump that simply cannot be explained just by human users.

Data from Cloudflare Radar appears to support that explanation. Cloudflare reportedly recorded a similar rise in Linux traffic, but the spike largely disappeared when its data was filtered to include only traffic identified as human. The comparison is not a direct match for StatCounter's methodology, but it provides a strong indication that bots and automated systems are responsible for much of the sudden increase.

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 11 points 2 hours ago

Thing is, "Cloudflare identified this as a normal browser used by a human" doesn't mean it actually is a normal browser with a human in the driver's seat. There are going to be both false positives and false negatives (a browser puppeted by Selenium is still a human-usable browser, after all, and could even be taken over by a human in mid-session; by contrast, a browser whose settings have been chosen by a privacy advocate may make some expected indicators unavailable). So it's hard to make any useful inferences.

[–] Unattributed@feddit.online 57 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

StatCounter itself has flagged the possibility that some of the new Linux activity could be bot-related, including traffic generated by AI agents and other automated workloads, which would make the jump appear much larger than a shift driven entirely by human users.

Oh, it's because of AI alright. Because Windows users are tired of it being shoved down their f***ing throats.

(I'm just being sarcastic for the fun of it…)

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 21 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Definitely a mix of both. I estimate bot pollution is likely growing much faster than natural Linux desktop adoption, though. Simply because LLM based bots are appearing everywhere. I wouldn‘t be surprised if Linux Desktop breaks the 25% mark soon just because of bots.

[–] Unattributed@feddit.online 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I do buy the argument that the majority of the shift is due to AI bots / agents. Just looking at the robots.txt I had to implement just to try to keep the majority of bots off my websites is insane (literally 160+ lines of user agents).

But there are some other factors, such as the seemingly steady migration of users from Windows to Linux. I don't buy the Valve hardware argument as much since the majority of those will be used for gaming on Steam, and not likely to be seen by StatCounter or Cloudflare.

[–] naught@sh.itjust.works 1 points 49 minutes ago

Those are just the bots kind enough to specify a real user agent too 🥲

[–] aldhissla@piefed.world 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Because everything else is enshittifying at an increasing rate. News at 10.

Nah, seriously, I remember a time when Macs were considered ultra-reliable ("it just works"), and now when I look at those of my team developing on Macs... jfc it's a Soulslike level of hell.

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

I dunno. I have mixture of Windows, Linux and Mac, and the M chip macs are a fucking beast. Stable, stupid fast, silent, and cool (as in temperature).

I am transitioning all remaining Windows workstations to Proxmox VE based VDIs, but for the people that need a total solution on the road and offline, the mac is hard to beat. Win11 ARM as a VM on Apple silicone runs faster, with less power draw and with significantly less heat than the original installnon raw metal. I'm not sure what dev tools your shop is using for the Macs, but we have had no issues.

[–] Jaysyn@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago

It was bots.

[–] chrash0@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

the AI explanation and reasoning is weak. what does “largely disappears” mean without numbers? Cloudflare doesn’t do vibes; give me numbers. in any case “desktop” surely means that the user-agent reflects a desktop browser and not a CLI tool, right? otherwise this number would be closer to 90% than 10%. unless the agents are intentionally spoofing browser user-agents i don’t buy it.

no mention of Steam’s and Framework’s hardware offering that come with Linux? no mention of the clear mass migrations?

here’s an AI explanation: LLMs are helping people who otherwise would struggle move to Linux

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Crawlers—even the honest ones—have been spoofing browser User-Agent strings (partially or completely) since the beginning of the commercial Internet. Why would they do this? To dodge bad browser-sniffing scripts, which I still run into from time to time.

[–] chrash0@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

sure, but is that implying that 5% of this traffic is bad faith or rogue agents? the tools built into Claude Code and Codex surely have their own user-agent settings.

and why would they spoof Linux instead of Windows?

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 points 20 minutes ago

sure, but is that implying that 5% of this traffic is bad faith or rogue agents?

Given the volume of requests that have been semi-DDOS'ing a lot of servers? 5% is probably an underestimate.

the tools built into Claude Code and Codex surely have their own user-agent settings.

"Surely" is like "assume"—it says more about the speaker than the entity being discussed. They almost certainly don't use completely distinct strings (no one does—they all start with "Mozilla/5.0"); at most they might have tacked an additional bit on at the tail. And that's if they're being aboveboard.

and why would they spoof Linux instead of Windows?

Why not? But actually, this may be due to an incorrect assumption on the part of the stats collectors. Typical strings for bots that admit to being bots don't specify an OS: "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible; ChatGPT-User/1.0; +https://openai.com/bot" as opposed to, say "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/134.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/134.0.0.0" or "Mozilla/5.0 (Android 15; Mobile; SM-G556B/DS; rv:130.0) Gecko/130.0 Firefox/130.0". If they're dumping anything without OS markers into the "Linux" bucket, that might do it.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

Because Microsoft?

[–] HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Because bots

[–] ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 hours ago

Microbots? Microbslopt?

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 1 points 1 hour ago

No, because LLMs

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

found the person who commented without reading the article

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Old PCs with Linux, Openclaw, and a handful of LLM models installed, configured by ChatGPT, can be up and running in less than an hour. Once running, people can have them do all sorts of tasks.

[–] goatinspace@feddit.org -1 points 1 hour ago

[–] Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I read on here a couple of days ago that 6% was human traffic and 4% was bots.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

I believe what you read was from a Microsoft blog which was variously discounted as being (a) a biased source and (b) based on bad processes for generating counter data.

[–] Nikki@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

no one? NOBODY could have seen this coming?

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

People have been claiming that the current year is the "year of the Linux desktop" because of some improvement to Linux usability or action Microsoft took to offend people for decades. The claim has not come true by any reasonable metric for just as long.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Did they start counting Steam Decks?

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

The default user agent string for the browser that comes with the Steam Deck appears to identify it as Linux, so anybody counting that way without explicitly separating it would count it as Linux.

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago

Because SteamOS is just another arch based Linux distro.