[TriLUG] Steam says that two percent of its users are now on Linux

[John Vaughters]

2% sounds about right for the user community. Seriously how many not-techies do you know that use Linux. The User community will be last to fall. 
 
Although I have not investigated the numbers, but If you include Apple as Linux and include all the phones, tablets, laptops, servers, pc's and embedded computing devices. Linux is already the largest OS out there. This is the trend that counts for me. It is impossible for Windows to keep up with the Linux Dev cycle and hours of code time. 
 
Arm processors are exploding linux into every little device you can dream of. I personally gave up trying to convince people that this is occuring, because most people are not aware of the amount of computing devices in their lives that run off Linux/BSD and their variants.
 
So the big question is when will the PC/laptop fall to Linux as the operating system of choice? 
 
Don't hold your breath. People still love Microsoft and as much as we the techies know how much better linux is for it's power and software choices, the average person still loves windows. Since Work continues to buy us Windows, we have to suffer and this is why the Linux community has greatly beefed up their tools, so we can Linuxize our windows. I don't know about you, but cygwin and gnu software is the first thing I load on my windows. It is irritating but thanks to the crafty Open Source people, Cross compiling tools like Qt, Java, C++ and many others make it easy for windows to continue happily. 
 
Take comfort that Linux drives MS to be better and more cost effective and who knows maybe they will eventually cave and merge the good parts of Windows with Linux in the future. They may have to just to survive, but not anytime soon.
 
 

________________________________
From: Brandon Van Every <bvanevery at gmail.com>
To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, March 6, 2013 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Steam says that two percent of its users are now on Linux

It's not huge, it's 2%.  Based on pent up demand.  If it *continues* to
grow over the coming year, that would be a good sign.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every