Linux has surpassed 5% desktop market share in the US (5.03% in June 2025), per StatCounter, driven by privacy concerns, rising costs of Windows/macOS, and user-friendly distros like Ubuntu. Community celebrates amid gaming and enterprise boosts, though challenges like software gaps persist; analysts eye 7% by 2027.
Important note: Linus Torvalds was recently seen in a first ever photo with bill -the biggest farm land owner in the US and the reason covid vaccines are patented - gates. This could be the reason. Of course they are surveiling the percentage of competition in THEIR market. So - tinfoil hat ON - if torvalds gets funky ideas now or we start seeing major shifts in policy, we need to raise the alarm immediately.
Anyone who’s been following Kernel development for a while knows that big tech has been all over Linux for a while, and I’d count the relatively recent inclusion of rust in the Kernel as a major shift in policy. Linux has sponsors, not donators. Also since the Linux Foundation and most of their infrastructure is based in burgerland, they have to follow US law.
I’m not trying to be a doomer, but Linux is far less autonomous than people like to think. However, since it’s FOSS anyone can just modify it and rip out the junk. And it’s still the only FOSS Unix-like that supports most modern Hardware, which probably makes up most of its value.