Why has the Linux Desktop market share decreased in India by nearly 10% on StatCounter?

That big drop could easily be explained by the rising "unknown". Usually these counters work through either website browser strings or through counting package manager hits, both of which are subject to a lot of whims

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No-Photograph-5058@reddit

youtube blocks firefox and adblock (linux users most likely are using these browsers), Linux user uses user agent switcher to make youtube think they are Windows/Chrome user > Linux number goes down

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ilep@reddit

> youtube blocks firefox

youtube doesn't block firefox, I'm watching a video right now

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dkopgerpgdolfg@reddit

They don't fully "block", but they do provably make things worse for adblocking firefox users. Eg. long delays before videos start.

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Wheeljack26@reddit

They do? Never noticed

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dkopgerpgdolfg@reddit

There are already many comments abut that here, so just in short: Not everyone is affected, but still a notable amount of people.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Adblockers need to scan the JS of the page and delete the scripts for the ads. That needs resources and time.

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No_Hovercraft_2643@reddit

less than executing and loading the add scripts. and most of them block in the requests part, before the request is executed, based on name of the file and domain. so that they can't load the js that displays the ad.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Then IDK.

YT prevents adblocker users from using their plarform if they detect you (when I used Opera I had to deal with that). So I doubt the adblocker being detected is the issue.

But I heared some saying that YT is slower on Firefox without using Switch agent

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hipnaba@reddit

there was an "ad-blocker" arms race for a week or two a while back, but youtube lost. i'm using chrome and ad blockers work on youtube without issues.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

I though the V3 manifest prevented that

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Shap6@reddit

nope. still plenty of ad blockers on chrome that are V3 compatible

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hipnaba@reddit

no idea about that. ublock origin did stop working, so i tried other ones. it was weird for some time. one day, yt wouldn't play anything because of a blocker, another day worked fine, then one day the extension wouldn't load at all, then it worked, and so on. works fine for a while now.

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Because Chromium wanted to prevent this, so I think adblockers resist by finding ways to Skip adds until Google finds out the issue and patches It. On the long therm only Firefox based, Vivaldi and Brave Will have adblockers

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hipnaba@reddit

i use a custom version of Chromium. it's actually made by google. they call it Chrome :P. it is literally an arms race. some days i would see sponsored links in google search results, some days i wouldn't.

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dkopgerpgdolfg@reddit

Do you even hear yourself? You doubt something that you state yourself to be true?

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No_Hovercraft_2643@reddit

So I doubt the adblocker being detected is the issue.

i don't think they will block all detected adblockers. first, it makes it easier for adblock developers to fine tune it to not be detected. and slower video could convince someone to switch to the phone, where it is faster, but has ads.

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RandomDamage@reddit

This is why I use FF with an ad blocker on my phone, too (yes, it works)

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No_Hovercraft_2643@reddit

maybe also use grayjay.

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dkopgerpgdolfg@reddit

I'm aware, and you didn't read my full post.

Sometimes it's ~ 10 seconds delay, while all other websites, and past Youtube from some months ago, don't require nearly that much time to load (with or without adblock)

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Ok-Winner-6589@reddit

Still can be just YT trying to block firefox, not the addblocker

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Enip0@reddit

I've seen enough people say that so I believe it, but as a daily Linux, Firefox, and uBlock origin user, I've never actually had a delay before my video starts.

I wonder if location plays a role and for whatever reason they don't do it in Europe.

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NonXtreme@reddit

You might just get used to it and don't notice it. Which is what happened to me. I never noticed it until one day I need to open YouTube on chrome and it's night and day, how much faster YouTube is on chrome.

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Far_Piano4176@reddit

i dual boot windows and linux and i see problems far more often on windows/firefox than linux/firefox

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Hyster1calAndUseless@reddit

I'm in Europe. It happens to me.

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GodsBadAssBlade@reddit

Yeah my delays are at most like 3 seconds, but its not dilly dallying as far as i can tell

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k-phi@reddit

From my experience YouTube on Firefox works fine

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SosseTurner@reddit

Funny thing is, the delay is still shorter than the ads they'd force you to watch otherwise, I rather have the video loading 10 seconds than watch 40 seconds of unskipable ads, though the slowdown for adblock users shouldn't happen either way.

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skunk_funk@reddit

Shhh, they may be listening!

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adithved@reddit

You are right, I experienced it too! I was running Firefox on Fedora.... But from past few days I am not seeing youtube problem but still some sites dont work like I can't pay my credit card bill I will have to boot into windows or do it through android.

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Maybe_Factor@reddit

youtube blocks firefox and adblock (linux users most likely are using these)

No, it doesn't. I'm watching a youtube video right now using firefox with an ad blocking addon, and on linux to boot.

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No-Photograph-5058@reddit

Yeah but they screw around with it enough to make it worth setting that up

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Maybe_Factor@reddit

Not really... It works fine as-is... I cbf setting up browser spoofing so my video loads 100ms faster

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FLMKane@reddit

The difference is more like 5 seconds

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Maybe_Factor@reddit

I can assure you it doesn't take 5 seconds to start a video on YouTube

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FLMKane@reddit

Man y'all are just willfully ignorant. YouTube hard coded a 5000ms delay for Firefox in JavaScript, and this was exposed right here on Reddit. Read through the original post if you want:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/s/LZpzxUY9MY

I know you're just gonna keep arguing and downvoting, but that doesn't change the fact that someone actually went and found the exact code snippet.

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Maybe_Factor@reddit

Ok. On the other hand: I have lived experience using Firefox and have never experienced this mythical delay. That's not wilfully ignorant... I'm just telling you it simply doesn't happen to me.

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deep_chungus@reddit

They don't just fuck with adblockers they do a/b testing on different browser and blocker configurations

I get a couple seconds delay that doesn't mean they're not testing a 5 second delay on someone else

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Debisibusis@reddit

I'm just telling you it simply doesn't happen to me.

No, you said it does not happen and that the issue does not exist.

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FLMKane@reddit

Wow what an arrogant thing to say. Your lived experience doesn't fucking matter relative to actual evidence.

We literally have the source code that google was injecting, and yet we have you trying to make excuses for them.

Btw what makes you think I don't use Firefox? It's my main desktop browser.

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Maybe_Factor@reddit

I'm not saying there was never JavaScript code doing a delay. I'm just saying I never experienced it. That's not an arrogant thing to say at all...

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FLMKane@reddit

No, you initially claimed that the delay was about 100ms. Then I corrected you saying it was 5sec. Then you said that wasn't the case and I refuted you by pulling up the original expose.

Then, instead of accepting that your original position was wrong, you changed the goalpost and brought up your "lived experience".

And now you're again implying that it's all about you, because YOU never experienced it.

That is an extremely arrogant and self centered attitude.

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alicefaye2@reddit

are you serious? what you’re saying is verifiably, provably false.

youtube intentionally stopping adblock users from accessing youtube, proving it has been done before: https://youtu.be/XBRroOQUEEM

youtube says yes, they have done this to try and squash ad blockers: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23970721/google-youtube-ad-blocker-five-second-delay-firefox-chrome

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SamiSapphic@reddit

Tbf what's 5 seconds vs YouTube's new 30 second unskippable ads? Provided they never fully block adblock users and do these dirty tricks instead, it'll still be better than the AI ad slop Google pushes now.

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FLMKane@reddit

Current enshitification makes us miss THE OLD enshitification! Brilliant!

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Provoking-Stupidity@reddit

I'm using Firefox on both Mac OS and Linux with uBlock Origin and many Youtube videos have 5,10,20 second pauses before they'll start to play.

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Maybe_Factor@reddit

That sucks. I use ublock origin too and there's just not really a noticeable delay. Maybe they just aren't doing those delays in Australia?

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ack202@reddit

I use ublock origin on Firefox with linux and this is news to me. My video loads are pretty much instant on youtube.

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Provoking-Stupidity@reddit

No idea. If it's a small channel you don't get them but if it's a larger monetised channel that would normally have a big ad placed on it by Youtube that's when it happens.

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Shoxx98_alt@reddit

The rise of more privacy-focused forks of FOS browsers like Librewolf could explain the "unknown" thing

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A_Random_Sidequest@reddit

Linux halved in 1 year?

impossible...

that "unknown" is too big to make this chart anything useful... this graph is useless.

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Yugen42@reddit

No one knows how these counters really work, so hard to say. actual desktop linux usage probably didnt drop by 10 percentage points (=60%ish)

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ScratchHistorical507@reddit

No one knows how these counters really work

Not really true, they do explain it. What they don't tell you is from which websites this information is received. Because it's not simply the partner websites sending them the browser fingerprints that contact them, it's JS embedded into websites. So if you use a script blocker, you aren't being counted for all I can tell, or they are just listed unter "unknown". Since I'd say it's safe to say that Linux users are more likely to use such script blockers, Linux will always be underrepresented.

Also, when it comes to this image, it's really not that difficult to say. The form of the graphs for Windows, Linux and unknown do match up. This most likely means that Windows and Linux didn't massively lose users, but they were categorized as unknown instead. So either there was a surge in the usage of script blockers or other measurements which made it impossible for Statcounter to correctly classify the website visitors. Since there doesn't seem to have been any shift in browser market share in that time frame it won't have been a mass exodus of former Chrome users to e.g. Brave or Firefox, which by default have better blocking against these things, so it will be extension related.

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zeth0s@reddit

Moreover OP is not considering this is share percentage. Linux might have increased 20% but the share might have dropped depending on the absolute number of unknown and total

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shaun2312@reddit

You can't produce MSFT how to videos on linux

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Dry_Access532@reddit

As a indian I change my useragent to windows since my stupid work sites does not open on linux for some reason.

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Abaz202@reddit

Why Unknown OS is so popular? Where can I see screenshots of this OS?

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codeIMperfect@reddit

lmao

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Existing_Self_4249@reddit

Don't know. Such counters generally collect data from browser visits, which the package contains identifiers that reveal the OS running the browser. But this can be easily modified with browser extensions - like for Firefox, it's User-Agent Switcher and Manager, thus the statistics isn't that reliable.

So bro, maybe it's just people who use GNU/Linux in India haven't visited that website that much during this time?

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Adorable-Fault-5116@reddit

We gotta stop using statcounter

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Nexis4Jersey@reddit

It hasn't been accurate in a long time..and had that so many people like to hold it up like its the all mighty.

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gaua314159@reddit

Don't care, just happy to see the windows decline lol

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gmdtrn@reddit

It's probably just software that prevents fingerprinting of the PC through the browser. There is no "unknown" OS with that large of a market share.

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ATShields934@reddit

Increase in VPN usage?

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testfire10@reddit

Also really hard to tell the drop what with the odd choice of scale on the vertical axis…

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andymaclean19@reddit

The windows and unknown curves mirror each other quite closely. To me that suggests that whatever ‘unknown’ is that’s something running on Windows.

I interview Indian developers multiple times per week and they screen share to talk me through their code. More or less without exception right now they are using windows, WSL and Linux. They show me Linux code with VSCode (usually) running natively in windows and accessing the WSL via the remote execution plugin.

This seems to have got more popular recently, and we even have people doing it in the company as a preference to desktop Linux now. People like the combo.

Since many Linux users are technical, WSL would be my first guess here.

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nitbuntu@reddit (OP)

But that’s been around for a while. So seems odd that this has led to a dramatic fall in a year. WSL2 does render ui, but can’t see that as being the reason. Very odd!

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Ice_Hill_Penguin@reddit

Microsoft call centers hiring everybody there to do Windows support I guess.

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stobbsm@reddit

I would suggest that “unknown” contains a lot of Linux users who are masking their agent. I’m one of them most of the time.

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kombiwombi@reddit

I doubt they are making the Agent string so much as running an ad blocker, so the statcounter code never runs.

But let's not even pretend that this service is even close to accurate.*'d love to see the User Agent strings for a big site like Google or Amazon.

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stobbsm@reddit

Then it likely wouldn’t show at all. I’d like to see a breakdown by browser as well.

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i_am_bruhed@reddit

What could possibly be the unknown?

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ApplicationMaximum84@reddit

Browsers configured to hide the operating system.

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Laura_The_Cutie@reddit

Usually linux that doesn't get recognized

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sluuuurp@reddit

Source? That sounds unlikely, if 50% of Indian desktops used Linux I feel like I’d have heard about it.

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matorin57@reddit

These trackers also use user agent strings, so it could just be the user agent string is being obfuscated on purpose to hide, or there is just some browser that is popular that isn't correctly setting it.

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i_am_bruhed@reddit

Then it is good. Tho I have absolutely no idea who is using anything apart from Windows, mac or linux here. Probably some big corporations or something?

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thesereneknight@reddit

I don't exactly remember, it was a long time ago. One of the state government had switched to some Linux and one had switched to Ubuntu.

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LvS@reddit

It's close to 50% market share according to that stat, so half the people you know are using it.

You know about as many people using Windows as you know using Unknown.

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Laura_The_Cutie@reddit

I mean a small share uses bsd based OS but i don't think it's a big cut

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kryptobolt200528@reddit

BSD is a tiny tiny minority, maybe in the hundreds..

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Laura_The_Cutie@reddit

That's what i said ?

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jirka642@reddit

AI web crawlers. They are pretty much DDoS-ing every website on the internet. Our AWS costs dropped to a fraction of what they were after we banned the IP ranges they use.

I assume that they are "Unknown" instead of "Other", because they don't set the "user-agent" header at all, instead of using some unrecognized value.

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james_pic@reddit

I wouldn't be surprised if it were LLM scraping bots. I know a few websites have reported being plagued by them.

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Waakaari@reddit

It's a Pokémon

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i_am_bruhed@reddit

Who's that POkeMon ?

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MartinMystikJonas@reddit

Someone who uses browser or browset plugin that hides OS identification. Many browsers started doing this in default settings.

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bje332013@reddit

I was wondering the same thing. I have heard of Solaris, but from what I've read, it's based on Unix, not Linux. Also, why would the share of Solaris be increasing when Linux is generally free of cost, open source, and its adoption and level of support keeps getting better and better?

Maybe that 'unknown' category accounts for Chrome OS or whatever Google has developed / is developing. It may not be out yet for I know, or might just be a beta version. I don't really care. I have no plans to increase my reliance on Google.

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dkopgerpgdolfg@reddit

I wonder why you think of Solaris specifically?

I mean, there are many minor OS. Haiku, ReactOS, ...

And none of them would suddenly jump to >40%, it has to be a problem of the counter software that doesn't recognize some Windows/Linux/... installs properly.

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bje332013@reddit

"I wonder why you think of Solaris specifically? There are many minor-but-usable OS. Haiku, ReactOS, ..."

I don't use any PC-based OS that is less widely used than Linux, and don't care to. I thought of Solaris because I've been exposed to machines running it.

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antii79@reddit

ReactOS

usable

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Antrikshy@reddit

Secret OS, that is doing a sneak takeover and will reveal itself.

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SUPREMACY_SAD_AI@reddit

you wouldn't download a Secret OS

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5c044@reddit

unknown is a mirror of windows so it is users that were using windows that switched to something else or did something to their config to obfuscate their browser.

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0riginal-Syn@reddit

While everyone wants to use Statcounter, it is actually a horrible source. It requires visitors to have visited a site that uses their tracking services. Unfortunately, that is about 0.5% of websites and none of the top million or any major websites. Second, their tracking code is blocked by anyone using ad blockers, and a very higher percentage of Linux users use them. Finally, their statistics databases have a hard time categorizing Linux, and you will often find them not identifiable depending on the setup, thus putting them in the Unknown and Other category.

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f-__-f@reddit

Do you know any others website or metrics to get an number of Linux users? Steam hardware survey is pretty good for gamers and young people I think

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matorin57@reddit

Alot of users in general use ad blocking. Also people are mentioning AI web scrapers which could also explain the unknown since they apparently don't set the user agent string.

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Laughing_Orange@reddit

With unknown being this high, I don't think we can take the other numbers seriously.

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Equivalent_Bird@reddit

That Unknown means the distro is not in their database, API calls, RSS... but anything not Windows, not macOS, not Chrome OS, and can have variety distros not in their database, what could that be?

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wesleysmalls@reddit

iOS, iPadOS, Unix variants, BDS variants, bots, crawlers etcetera

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natermer@reddit

It is because Statscounter publish graphs are nonsense.

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DistributionRight261@reddit

Because of digital ID indians might be hiding everithing they can.

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InflationUnable5463@reddit

we've had digital ID since 2016ish and nobody cares lmao

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DistributionRight261@reddit

oh they do

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IlIIllIIIlllIlIlI@reddit

All these do is track web data user agent

Changing user agent changes this data. I have my use agent sent to Chrome win 10 for may websites because many websites that "dont work" on Firefox suddenly work perfectly if the user agent is set to chrome

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Jeoshua@reddit

When the data-set includes over 45% "Unknown", it's hard to pull actual facts from it in any real way, as most of the data is inconclusive. We certainly can't tell "why"; we barely know "if".

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MarcCDB@reddit

More importantly, WTF is "Unknown"?

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bmullan@reddit

Linux isn't licensed like Windows or Mac OS so how on earth can anyone anywhere say how many Linux desktops or Lenox servers are out in the wild

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doxx-o-matic@reddit

Didn't China just release a completely new OS called HarmonyOS or something like that? It is supposed to put Windows and iOS to shame and it's built on a proprietary kernel. That could be the "unknown" we are seeing.

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MaybeTheDoctor@reddit

A stat counter with 40% unknown is useless and meaningless

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Bretzelking@reddit

rare self burn

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SamiSapphic@reddit

Wonder if this isn't to do with India's increasing authoritarian problem? I guarantee that there's a level of pressure for Linux users to switch to Windows or Android/chromeOS, especially if they intend on scope creeping what digital ID does, and what devices it must therefore be stored on.

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ha1zum@reddit

Someone's bot farm just got shutdown or something

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qwefday@reddit

"Unknown" could just as well be a Linux system.

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IrrerPolterer@reddit

What is that unknown??

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vexed-hermit79@reddit

They're probably being counted as unknown os

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lo5t_d0nut@reddit

Must be Indians really appreciating the drop of Windows 11 so much they drop Linux

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yahbluez@reddit

The question is and was how did they get this data. Nearly all PC/NB you buy are soled with preinstalled windows and count as windows no one knows that the customer install ubuntu.

How did they get this data?

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mulletarian@reddit

Could there be some specific distros with masking getting popular in India that is eating up both the windows and regular Linux numbers?

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Top-Yellow-4994@reddit

A few scam call centers were probably closed.

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princefakhan@reddit

Lol they are way too stupid for Linux

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Itchy_Journalist_175@reddit

As far as I can tell from the youtube channels chasing scammers, scam call centers use Windows. I’m guessing some pirates version to make sure they remain in brand.

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AnEagleisnotme@reddit

I wouldn't be suprised if scam call centers are often weirdly corporate and professional

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plasticbomb1986@reddit

You will be surprised: Check it out on YouTube: Jim Browning, Kitboga, Scammar Payback, Trilogy Media.

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Known-Watercress7296@reddit

Illuminati, 4chan confirms

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6gv5@reddit

I guess for the same reason Firefox gets lower numbers than reality because of user agent id strings being altered to identify as Chrome to badly conceived sites that stupidly enforce it although working perfectly with Firefox. Being the Windows and Unknown curves almost identical although out of phase suggests that all of a sudden either Windows became too shy to announce itself or more likely something else replaced it, possibly a combination of Linux and MacOS.

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OrganizationShot5860@reddit

IIRC "Unknown" is most likely either a combination of Linux and other systems like FreeBSD.

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beefcat_@reddit

"Unknown" makes up half of this list and there's no way the bulk of those people aren't actually using Windows, Linux, or macOS. These stats seem meaningless.

inb4 someone corrects me to say Haiku is actually almost as popular as Windows in India

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