[wayneftw]

Yet another one of these comments.

When XP came out, people were switching to Linux.

When Vista came out, people were switching to Linux.

When 8.x came out, people were switching to Linux.

When 10 came out, people were switching to Linux.

Now Windows 11 came out, naturally people are still switching to Linux.

Guess what? People are going to continue switching platforms and talking about it.

Oh and 25% of developers are generally running Linux, 25-30% are on a Mac and about 40-45% are on Windows...and Windows usage is trending downwards year after year. [0]

[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-...

[pjmlp]

Still good enough to power about 85% of desktop computers worldwide, one games console and game streaming service, all of which also need developers.

[makeitdouble]

It's closer to 75%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

[pjmlp]

With Linux topping 2.3, what an achievement in 20 years, since XP was released (ChromeOS doesn't count it is a browser).

[makeitdouble]

ChromeOS is a lot more than a glorified browser these days. Android apps are a big part of the experience, and the linux subsystem is one toggle away to runs alongside.

The only real show stoppers left are the usually wimpy hardware it comes with and the lack of polish, but otherwise it has come a long way. I would completely consider switching to it instead of linux if I had a Dell laptop for instance.

[wayneftw]

Oh, gee well I thought we were on a developer/techie forum.

McDonald's is also one of the most popular restaurants. I eat there once in a while. I still run Windows boxes to play games too.

And it's more like ~30% for Windows when you measure against all operating systems, not just the desktop ones. [0] Android is the top dog since at least October 2020 when it went to over ~40%.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share

[pjmlp]

Android runs ART + C and C++ NDK APIs, the fact that there is a Linux kernel underneath matters zero to app developers.

[wayneftw]

Of course. But the fact that I was pointing out was that the Windows percentage is actually quite small in the grand scheme of things.

[danShumway]

I don't understand what you're getting at. When you develop for Xbox, do you connect a keyboard to your Xbox and launch Visual Studio directly on the console?

What do the Xbox or XCloud have to do with developer marketshare? They're targets, not development platforms. Are you arguing that the Stackoverflow stats are wrong?

[pjmlp]

Actually you can do that with a DevKit, yes.

Stackoverflow stats reflect the vocal audience that bothers answering their surveys.

That is the problem with statistics, when there is a chicken and two people, each has eaten half.

[danShumway]

> Actually you can do that with a DevKit, yes.

I mean, with sideloading on an Xbox technically sure, you can do anything. But to be clear, your average developers are not doing development on Xboxes directly, they're using Unity/Unreal and treating their Xbox as a compile target. And certainly they're not doing remote development on XCloud, that would be a wildly inefficient way to write software when instead you could just develop locally on any machine.

> Stackoverflow stats reflect the vocal audience that bothers answering their surveys.

Do you really genuinely think that Stackoverflow's blog is so unrepresentative that it's undercounting significant numbers of developers that are installing Visual Studio on an XBox?

I still just don't understand what conclusion you're trying to draw. Am I just misunderstanding what you're saying, or are you really arguing that these are development platforms that people are commonly using as their daily driver to write software? Because... they're not. There's not a hidden uncounted majority of people who bought Xboxes because they love the experience of hooking them up to their computer peripherals and using them as their software development platform.