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Linux Desktop Market Share Surpasses 10% in North America
(linuxiac.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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The headline is dramatic but the reality, and the article content, are more equivocal.
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.
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.
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
In that case they'd bump the stats for any os, not just Linux specifically
That's exactly what I said...
Reading comprehension is overrated anyways
It could be that they don't smartly loop through operating systems based on the actual distribution. Like an even split Windows/macOS/Linux.
Sounds like they figured out most of the previously unspecified traffic, comes from Linux based systems.
But you're right about an unknown amount of that traffic is from servers.
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. :(
It could also be that they decided to change the criteria for what they identify as a Linux device. Especially when they don't have enough metadata because of good privacy settings.