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by p_ing
39 days ago
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Those production numbers for the Neo are global and from unnamed supply chain sources. I'm not sure why you brought the US workforce population into the equation as that mixes up scales, nor is there a 1:1 relationship between people and computers (I have 5 x86 systems and 2 M-series laptops in my home between work and personal use). Lenovo shipped roughly 16m units in Q1 2026 at #1, with Apple shipping roughly 6m in the same timeframe at #4, WW. [0] Linux is hardly a blip and even the Steam survey #s back that up if you want to be targeted towards a particular audience. It's a lot of noise in forums like this, not so much on the general street. Windows overall gaining ~1.1% with Linux overall declining ~0.8% (and macOS continuing to be poorly represented for obvious reasons) in April. [0] https://www.idc.com/resource-center/press-releases/1q26-pc-t... |
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Good point. Fixed.
> Linux is hardly a blip and even the Steam survey #s back that up
The IDC link doesn't provide Linux numbers. These links [1][2] do; [2] backs up the numbers you're quoting. The trouble is how to interpret them in context - are the 1% changes per OS on a monthly basis even statistically significant?
The statcounter numbers show desktop share for linux as 5.2% in December, 2.8% in February, 3.1% in March, 2.63% in April. Chrome OS as 4.3%, OS X as 15%, macOS as 8.8%. There's an interesting huge peak for OS X in Oct 2025, Linux in Dec 2025, macOS in Jan '26, with 'unknown' showing a continuous rise to 9.4% in April. Even Windows is showing monthly variations with 58% at the lowest and 65% at peak.
I don't know what to make of those numbers. And how do you separate that from the ebbs and flows to Steam and Statcounter properties?
I think one can make a case for 7 million Linux users in the US, with 18 million if including Chrome OS. Now throw in say 50% of the Neo worldwide buyers, so say 2.5 million (to grow to 5 million at new production levels), and the analysis holds up. What's even more important is the trend - and that seems to be on the upswing, and may not be showing up in these measurements quite yet. And I'm sure MS has internal dashboards showing windows users in some detail.
Linux users are notoriously hard to measure. macOS users are not broken out by country. So that leaves us reading the tea leaves, so to speak, based on sales numbers and estimates on the US breakdown.
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...
[2] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...