Linux has nearly half of the desktop OS Linux market

Opinion Linux is now a bit greater than three 3 per cent of the desktop OS market, excluding the simply over 4 per cent that’s ChromeOS. Which is additionally Linux, however the unsuitable form of Linux.

Web server statistics aggregator Statcounter introduced final week that as of June 2023, Linux accounts for 3 per cent of desktop working system use. However, that is nonetheless surpassed by ChromeOS, which signifies that desktop Linux has lower than half of the desktop Linux market. If you are feeling that it is a bit bizarre, we agree with you.

Apparently, desktop Linux use measures 3.08 per cent, lagging a few quarter behind the utilization of ChromeOS at 4.15 per cent. The downside with that is that ChromeOS is additionally a Linux distribution. It’s a wierd distro, non-standard in a number of methods, however present variations are constructed on the foundation of Gentoo Linux, switching from an Ubuntu foundation some years earlier.

We really feel {that a} extra correct reckoning could be that Linux has now reached 7.23 per cent of Statcounter’s utilization figures, with ChromeOS at simply over half: 57.4 per cent of the complete. That looks like a extra constructive interpretation, one which Linux followers could be eager to make, however apparently not. By instance, Linux advocacy web site Linuxiac would not even point out ChromeOS in its write-up.

(As an apart, we suspect that quite a bit of the 3.23 per cent of OSes grouped below “Unknown” are in all probability additionally Linux customers, simply extra-paranoid ones who’re obscuring their user-agent or one thing.)

Why should not ChromeOS rely? It’s a Linux kernel and a Linux userland on prime of the commonplace glibc C library. You can open a shell. If you need, you’ll be able to run a Debian container and when you’re in there set up and run any Debian app; The Reg FOSS desk’s experimental ChromeOS Flex machine runs Firefox and DOSemu.

If somebody stated “Android is not a Linux,” that’s defensible. You cannot simply obtain it at no cost, and you’ll’t run it by yourself generic off-the-shelf laptop. There have been a number of experimental Android-based desktop OSes, however to this point they’ve all flopped. On its native platform of smartphones and tablets, you’ll be able to’t run odd Linux apps on Android. It’s a special type of beast, though technically it’s a Linux inasmuch because it has a Linux kernel. But that is about it. It even has a bizarre, non-standard, non-GPL libc, “Bionic”. By default and until cracked, apart from the kernel, it has nothing else Linux-like about it. No shell, no desktop, no X11 or Wayland, nothing.

But that is not the case for ChromeOS. Underneath its distinctive GUI layer – which, not like the one in macOS, is open supply – it is a comparatively commonplace Linux which might run commonplace Linux apps, out of the field, on each x86 and Arm. As such, it is the most profitable desktop Linux there may be.

It’s not a typical Linux, as a result of typical Linuxes are instruments for nerdy hacker varieties, and that sort of OS won’t ever, ever go mainstream until somebody forces individuals to make use of it. (As the authorities of the People’s Republic of China is presently doing, however that’s irrelevant to this. No Google inside the Great Firewall means no ChromeOS.)

ChromeOS is a desktop Linux with the Linuxiness stripped out. No alternative about partitioning. No bizarre dual-boot mechanisms. No alternative of desktops or bundle managers. No bundle supervisor!

But in each manner that issues, it’s mainstream, it’s commercially profitable, it is a polished end-user desktop OS, and it is a Linux.

So naturally the Forces of FOSS hate it. Of course they do. And how do they specific that contempt? By saying it isn’t a True Linux.

Unix is sort of a faith: by some means, it encourages schisms and splinter sects, all of whom deny that the others are authentic. It’s virtually a defining attribute.

Ignoring all the industrial Unixes as they’re successfully all useless now, and simply taking a look at the FOSS ones, there are a few dozen rival sects: NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, Minix, HURD and L4 and its varied splinter teams, Plan 9 (9front, HarveyOS, Jeanne and many others.), Inferno, xv6, v7/86, and of course, Linux and its thousand distributions.

• AlmaLinux challenge climbs down from being a one-to-one RHEL clone
• Three indicators that Wayland is turning into the favored technique to get a GUI on Linux
• SUSE declares its personal RHEL-compatible distro… once more
• Oracle pours gas throughout Red Hat supply code drama

Precisely two (2) Linux-based OSes have loved large-scale industrial success as user-facing GUI methods for non-technical customers. One has billions of customers, the different a major fraction of a billion. Both are from Google, and each share a defining attribute: the FOSS world rejects them.

ChromeOS is available in two flavors: there’s odd ChromeOS, which you’ll be able to solely get by shopping for {hardware} constructed to run it (similar to Apple’s macOS), and there is ChromeOS Flex. Flex was once known as Neverware Cloudready. Neverware grew from Hexxeh’s remixed and rebuilt ChromiumOS for odd PCs. Hexxeh made ChromeOS Flow, and that’s the direct grandparent of ChromeOS Flex: each are ChromeOS for generic PC {hardware}. That is the vital angle. It exhibits that ChromeOS is simply one other Linux distro.

ChromeOS Flex will not be like Android. It is a Linux in each manner that issues. It’s each small-f free and it is open supply; there have been a number of remixes and rebuilds. It runs on generic package with odd BIOS or UEFI, together with with Secure Boot. It has a desktop, albeit its personal distinctive one. You can pop a shell and set up and run any arbitrary Linux app.

It seems to be like a Linux, it acts like a Linux, and it runs like a Linux. It is predicated on a generic Linux kernel, and it does Linuxy stuff with Linuxy binaries like another desktop Linux.

It would not have systemd, however thank the nice god Torvalds and his apostle St Cox that isn’t but a requirement for a Linux distro. It has upstart, which was one of the most widespread init methods.

It is 100% on-brand for the Linux world that when one particular kind of Linux-based OS goes mainstream, and is utilized by roughly half the human race, the True Believers of the Linux world disown it. Android will not be a Linux. OK, they form of have a degree.

But ChromeOS, and particularly ChromeOS Flex? Of course, all the advocates decry it as not being a True Linux, however then once more, this simply shortly descends right into a “no true Scotsman” argument. As it’s, the Fedora lot suppose Ubuntu is junk, and the Debianisti suppose every little thing else is junk, and the Arch people suppose they’re the true leading edge, Slackware fanatics think about everybody else newbies, whereas the NixOS people suppose all the relaxation are nonetheless in the stone age someplace… ®