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[–] 73 points 1 month ago (4 children)

The headline is dramatic but the reality, and the article content, are more equivocal.

For comparison, Statcounter recorded Linux at 5.52% in June 2026, so the share nearly doubled in one month

This seems... optimistic? As the article notes this is really the proportion of HTTP requests made from that operating system, not the actual number of desktops running it. What are the odds this spike is due to some Sparkling Botnet (AI company) doing a scraping run with agents that identify themselves as Linux desktops? I think that or any number of other scenarios are more likely than that the entire increase is truly new organic desktops running Linux.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago

    I think that would certainly add (a lot of) noise to the data, but seeing as there's still a net drop in windows, it's still a good month for linux. Sucks that they can only use http requests. :(

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Scrapers wouldn't identify themselves as using Linux. They want to blend in.

    I think it's more likely for Linux users to visit the site in the first place.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 child)

    I assume they'd cycle through a list of valid user agents. That might make their noise a constant for all major OS's if they did that

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  • [–] 5 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

    In that case they'd bump the stats for any os, not just Linux specifically

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