(This is my seventeenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)
Gardiner Bryant is one of several people rejoicing over Linux making up roughly 10% of the current North American market. (YouTube version here.)
Insert here the general caveat that how OS usage is measured can vary greatly depending on who’s doing the measuring and how they’re doing it, but 10% is generally where I’d expect to see MacOS firmly entrenched.
Naturally, this is cause to bicker and argue.
TechSpot spends some time pointing out that sure, it’s a bump, but we don’t know why. (I have some guesses.)
I’m again going to point out that it’s not just the numbers, but who’s measuring them.
I’ll also reiterate that one shouldn’t tie their identity around a single thing. As much as I prefer Linux to other operating systems, it’s not because Linux is amazing; It’s because the others have gotten so much worse.
(You just need to hear a Linux fan get upset to know no one hates Linux as much as a Linux user. We’d switch if there was something better.)
But at 10% or 5%, Linux has still been progressively hitting better numbers as more people get tired of the mess that is Windows. MacOS is better, but comes with its own problems as Apple works to thwart “Right to Repair” and make things proprietary where they can.
And as people get frustrated and reach for something else, many of them are finding that the penguin-themed OS isn’t the terminal-only kind-of-works-if-you-customize-everything hot mess that it was 20 years ago.
I mean … it still can be, if that’s what you want, but that’s a niche I’m not in.
Years ago, when my lab was full of aging computers and there was no funding in sight, I took the plunge and got some Raspberry Pi computers. Those tiny little boards were so underpowered, but they worked well enough for my students to get some work done.
I’d used Linux before, even daily driving it on a Netbook @ 2009, but this was my first time managing it for my students and for the most part they didn’t care.
Some even preferred it.
Very quickly, I learned that it was cheaper to get a used computer from a thrift store. If I got a laptop it would often have more RAM, a larger hard drive, and a built-in monitor. These wouldn’t run the Raspbian OS (a specific flavor of Linux made specifically for Raspberry Pis) I’d been using, but my practice there made installing and maintaining Linux Mint much more efficient.
Again, my students didn’t care. Many barely noticed.
My Kindergarten students, enamored with Tux Paint, Tux Math, and Tux Typing, thrived.
Last year, when my family were sharing Christmas wish lists, my kid sister said she wanted a computer that “wouldn’t give her sass.” She expected some advice from me, given my job description, so she laid out her use cases.
Instead of bringing her a recommendation, I brought her a laptop. It was far from new and would be considered underpowered by modern standards, but it had Linux Mint and a few software options that met her use cases. I spent maybe 10 minutes giving her an overview of how it worked compared to Windows and Mac.
My sister’s a mother of two, she doesn’t have time to make computers be a full time hobby, but not once has she complained about it. It works. It does what it needs to do. It doesn’t give her “sass” like she expects from other devices.
If my sister and my 5 year old students can manage Linux, it’s no longer too hard for the average person.
But don’t just take my word for it, give it a test drive. It’s best if you try it out on an older device. If you have a computer from 2010 or later that’s collecting dust because you bought a new one, that’s an ideal candidate for a first attempt. Not because you’re likely to screw things up, but because you’ll be less afraid to do that.
You might find that using a computer isn’t as bad as some companies expect you to assume.