Here's my theory of the huge increase in just 1-2 months...

I think it's a little bit of several factors, all playing in favor of Linux.

First of all, I'm not so convinced that the increase is due to an increase in ChromeOS. Two different statistics sites that separate Linux and ChromeOS actually register a decrease in ChromeOS marketshare over the last 1-2 months while registering an increase in Linux's marketshare.

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide [External Link]

https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp [External Link]

So, honestly, I think Linux is really growing... The reason in my opinion:

The recent events over the past few months: the WannaCry and Petya debacles were huge in the news and a significant number of people and businesses were affected, making them consider (and apparently take action) on switching to Linux. In the past (5-10 years ago), events like these might have turned people to Linux, but Linux 5-10 years ago was still to "hostile" for the average user (hello, wireless connections) and they just went back to Windows (that was my case)... Today? Things have improved A LOT. Hardware now works out of the box, driver performance and features are everyday closer to Windows levels, GUIs for programs are replacing the daunting CLI stuff... Things are getting much more "average user friendly".

So, I really think people are slowly turning their heads over to Linux... This rate of adoption will slow down a lot over the next weeks while the ransomware fears dissipate, but I still think we will stay over 3% and maybe reach 4% by the beginning of 2018.

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I tell you this, I'm from a country where almost nobody can afford games, even at ~3$ or something like that (you can guess the crappy country I'm at)... But as soon as I can (a couple of months or less), I'll pay for this game, hopefully full price and not on a sale... or even better, they could sell it directly from their site and get a better chunk of the money. I'll see what's the best way to thank those guys for such a humbling decision!... As Liam said, massive respect for the developers!

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: ertuquequenot to mention the absolutely unjustified "Capitalization Of Every Word In His News Titles".

That's how they format headlines in the US. It's common practise.

I know it is a common practice in the US, but that's a really bad habit! (and I'm very glad you guys in the UK and other places don't do that)... It's not that uncommon to stop for a few seconds trying to understand a title that says something like: "People Claim That An Apple Is Better Than Other Brands"... It would be much easier to immediately understand it if it just said: "People claim that an Apple is better than other brands"... That way you know they're referring to the Apple brand and not just an apple fruit... This not-that-uncommon problem defies the very purpose of a title, which is to give a quick look at the content of the article. I'm not a native English speaker by any means (Latin America here), the English I've learned is basically self taught, and from time to time I find myself having better grammar than native English speakers. (The same thing happens -probably more- with Spanish articles/posts). But it's frustrating to see that in what are more or less "high profile" web sites. Not to mention that when I've pointed grammar mistakes or bad habits on these sites, responses are "dismissive" in the best of cases.

Just in case, I find the grammar in this site to be VERY, VERY good, and the "For spelling, grammar and other corrections click here" button is absolutely well thought and a professional way of addressing those problems.

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It is indeed quite annoying the clickbait tendency of Phoronix title articles... not to mention the absolutely unjustified "Capitalization Of Every Word In His News Titles". People don't seem to understand that this stupid habit just creates confusion when reading it!

Anyway, I agree with @rkfg's comment that according to Netmarketshare's update, Linux has reached an "all time high" market share... I check every month their updates and I take this increase as very likely due to last months WannaCry and Petya's attacks to the Windows ecosystem. I think it's realistic to think that some Windows users and/or institutions would dip their toes in Linux over the past few weeks to see if they do the switch... Maybe some of them actually did.

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Thank you very much!

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Fantastic article/interviews!

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Thank you very much for the tip!

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As far as I know, Flatpak is more distribution agnostic than Snappy, Snappy has some Ubuntu-ish stuff that some people (developers) are not very comfortable with when packaging for other distros... At least that's what I've read.

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Fantastic article! This is exactly what I wanted, a list of recommended games for itch.io... Please, keep these ones coming from time to time.

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It might be a "gaming" unrelated question, but... Does anyone of you know how to activate OpenCL under Linux for an AMD Radeon R9 390?... I tried a couple months ago without luck (Although I don't consider myself an expert), I'm waiting for better features support in their drivers, but it seems that it's still not possible, please, someone correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks.

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