Desktop Linux just cracked 10% market share - and Windows 11 is mostly to blame
Business Home Business Enterprise Software Desktop Linux just cracked 10% market share - and Windows 11 is mostly to blame Windows is in decline, and both Macs and Linux are gaining ground at its expense. Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing EditorSenior Contributing Editor Aug. But it's important to take StatCounter's numbers with a grain of salt.
- ▪Business Home Business Enterprise Software Desktop Linux just cracked 10% market share - and Windows 11 is mostly to blame Windows is in decline, and both Macs and Linux are gaining ground at its expense.
- ▪Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing EditorSenior Contributing Editor Aug.
- ▪But it's important to take StatCounter's numbers with a grain of salt.
ZDNet files mainly under tech. We currently carry 355 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | ZDNet |
| Canonical URL | https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-linux-desktop-finally-cracks-the-10-market-share-barrier/ |
| Publication time | Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:42:03 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-05T12:45:41.657Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-05T12:45:41.657Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | _BC6p9Xh7F8d · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Business Home Business Enterprise Software Desktop Linux just cracked 10% market share - and Windows 11 is mostly to blame Windows is in decline, and both Macs and Linux are gaining ground at its expense. Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing EditorSenior Contributing Editor Aug. 5, 2026 at 5:42 a.m. PT Statcounter/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET key takeawaysThe Linux desktop has continued its slow growth.Windows blunders have helped Linux make gains.People are finally figuring out Linux is easy to use.Believe it or not, according to StatCounter, a web analytics company that's been tracking end-user operating systems since 1999, desktop Linux has now reached an all-time high of 10.65% in the North American market.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at ZDNet.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from ZDNet
