According to one source Linux hits over 6% desktop user share

Depending on where you look, Linux on the desktop has somewhere between 4-6% user share on the desktop. Showing it's growing slowly but steadily overall.

A lot of people like to look at Statcounter, which we've covered here at GamingOnLinux quite a few times which currently showings Linux on the desktop at about 4.1% for June 2025 globally. However, there's another pretty big source of data we can use for checking on this – the US government.

Using the US government public data, we can see that over the last 30 days the Linux user share hit an all-time high there at 6.1%. Pretty healthy looking percentage there, and if we filter it to the current calendar year overall it's at 5.8%. That's a surprisingly high number, given their data mentions how they've had "1.48 billion sessions in the last 30 days" to pull the data from.

Going back to Statcounter and filtering to the US, it's also showing an all-time high for Linux at 5.1% too. And then there's our Steam Tracker, showing Linux for gaming has been steadily trending upwards too.

We've all seen the running joke of the "Year of the Linux desktop", and while most celebrations on it are rather premature, we've truly over the last year or two seen quite a seismic shift in how people have been looking at Linux. Not just from data points like these, but the wider consensus when you look at how even bigger influencers have been pouring more time into covering Linux too (and their videos doing well). Look at PewDiePie with 110M subscribers telling people to now install Linux, or how about JayzTwoCents too and various others.

Seems like there's never been a better time to try out Linux on the desktop.