[vlovich123]

Desktop and laptop sales have been declining worldwide for years and while laptops have dipped up in 2023 desktops continued their downward trend.

My hunch it’s less that people have suddenly discovered Linux and more that desktop sales have been slipping for a long long time so either it’s shifted to Apple or people stick with just phones and tablets. Thus it’s not necessarily that Linux market share has increased because of increasing numbers vs a dedicated minority sticking with a dying market segment.

[surgical_fire]

Unless I misunderstood something, the graphic shown on the article does not imply that. Linux market share grew from a decline from OSX and ChromeOS, while Windows share is more or less stable.

[pessimizer]

Desktop and laptop sales are declining, but that's probably because they're all fast enough now and there's no reason to replace them unless they break. That's actually more room for Linux, because the big two OSes are gradually going to leave those people behind. Most people are going to have fairly new phones in their pockets and super-old laptops at home.

Anecdotally I've been getting a lot of calls from normies afraid of surveillance and now AI in the OS (both Mac and Windows), asking how to switch to Linux. The ones on Windows also very much hate Windows.

I have a feeling that Microsoft and Apple will not mind this, Linux desktop share getting that high is in fact a comforting, Firefox-sized claim that consumers have other, freer, functional options. It also allows their most disgruntled users to leave rather than become obsessively angry with an OS they've been trapped with.

[surgical_fire]

> Desktop and laptop sales are declining, but that's probably because they're all fast enough now and there's no reason to replace them unless they break.

This, and a lot of people got new desktops/laptops during the pandemic.

I actually got my laptop in late 2019, and it is still running smoothly. Back in thr day a 5 year old laptop would be ancient. Now it still runs fine everything I want on it.

I also think current hardware is lasting for a longer time than before. I remember I used to have a lot more issues with faulty components after a few years of use, etc.

[monkeyfun]

Another thought, though I'll fully disclaim I didn't look into data on sales:

What's being counted as desktop sales?

Because I would suspect that more gamers and hobbyists than ever are simply putting together mid and high-end PCs themselves out of parts, rather than buying prebuilt.

It's been made trivially easy even for the totally inexperienced and uninformed by simply copying popular youtube guides, and I suspect the pandemic chip shortage price hikes greatly increased consciousness about prices even after it muchly recovered.