• @[email protected]
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    2624 days ago

    Probably depends how you define things. Like, is Xubuntu Xubuntu or Ubuntu with Xfce included by default? How much change is necessary before it’s not “debian with added bits”?

    • @[email protected]
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      424 days ago

      Probably based on how the OS defined itself. Steam is able to gather information like this easily.

    • TechNom (nobody)
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      224 days ago

      I don’t think that either of them count as ‘Linux distributions’. And sadly, it matters. Even the bugs are not consistent across distros.

  • @[email protected]
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    1524 days ago

    Ubuntu 100%, if you count how many distros are ubuntu based (and collaterally debian based), but I believe it is the most used one even if you only count official ubuntu releases

    Maybe arch would be quite high, if you count the steamdeck as desktop (maybe), and the big increase on arch users in the past couple of years (wen’t from being rare to 1 in 3 users saying “I use arch btw”)

    • @[email protected]
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      23 days ago

      In professional work space, ubuntu will probably be highest. Second place I would guess Fedora

      As personal workstation I would guess arch (even without steam deck) followed by mint or some flavour of Ubuntu

      • @[email protected]
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        724 days ago

        I don’t think Arch is more used than Ubuntu, unless maybe if you count all the Ubuntu flavors separately

  • Papamousse
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    24 days ago

    Ubuntu for sure, about every companies I worked at were using Ubuntu as main dev. And now in the new company I work for, it’s WSL2 in Windows, using Ubuntu too.

    Only non-Ubuntu I used in companies was CentOS.

    So pretty sure Ubuntu is the most popular/used.

    • Monkey With A ShellA
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      24 days ago

      It’s the only version I’ve come across as a pre-installed option for bought systems, particularly from Dell. A big thing going for it is if you search ‘how to do X in Linux’ you can pretty safely bet some or even most top hits are Ubuntu related.

  • oscardejarjayes [comrade/them]
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    924 days ago

    Hannah Montana Linux is probably the most popular Linux distro.

    In all seriousness, popularity isn’t necessarily the best metric for what you should run on your computer. Ubuntu might be fairly popular, but it also isn’t particularly good.

    • Aatube
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      1924 days ago

      That’s because SteamOS, the operating system preinstalled on the Steam Deck, is based on Arch.

      • lemmyvore
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        524 days ago

        I don’t understand why they haven’t offered a way to filter out the Deck from those results. It skews every category (CPU, GPU etc.)

        • @[email protected]
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          223 days ago

          Not really…That’s not a linux user metric it’s a steam user metric. Seems fine to include the steam hardware platform

    • @[email protected]
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      624 days ago

      Worth keeping in mind that the steam deck uses a distro based on arch, so it might be inflating the arch numbers in that steam survey.

    • @[email protected]
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      224 days ago

      With Steam having a gaming audience I’d argue that this has at least a slight bias towards Arch, as the latest kernel versions and other software are often advantageous for gaming in particular.

      But even with the Steam numbers note that Arch is just listed as one single variant, while Ubuntu has separate entries for different versions. Ubuntu LTS 22.04 alone is so close to Arch that it’s probably ahead once you include all versions.

      • Aatube
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        324 days ago

        IDK about Coreboot, but Android has a completely different userland. The only thing it has in common with Linux is the kernel. Nearly everything else is different. Everything else I agree, but only if you mean WSL2, which is basically an enhanced virtual machine, instead of WSL1, which translates system calls to Windows.

        • lemmyreader
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          324 days ago

          IDK about Coreboot, but Android has a completely different userland. The only thing it has in common with Linux is the kernel.

          Completely different ? How so ? Last time I did an adb shell I could use ls and find afair.

          • TechNom (nobody)
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            324 days ago

            There are two components that define a Linux distribution. The first is the kernel. The other is the core user land that includes the coreutils and libc. This part is made of GNU coreutils and glibc or compatible alternatives like busybox and musl. Every Linux distro has this. The other user land software stack are also similar across distributions, like X/Wayland, QT/GTK, dbus, XDG, etc.

            In Android, everything in the user land is different. It doesn’t have the same coreutils or libc unless you install it. ls and find are so common across *nixes that Android coreutils may be reimplementing it. Then you have APKs, surfaceflinger, etc that are not part of regular Linux distros.

            An easy test for this is to see if a Linux program compiled for your platform runs on your OS. Linux programs easily run on alternative distros. But Linux programs won’t run on Android or vice-versa, unless you install a compatibility layer.

              • Aatube
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                424 days ago

                Not in my book.

                (source: me book)

                The differences said in the link above cause a drastically different developer & user experience.

  • GadgeteerZA
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    524 days ago

    @[email protected] pretty difficult as there are no accurate figures for Linux distro installs - many sit behind home or corporate firewalls, sharing the same IP addresses.

    But back in 2015 Dell was claiming that 42% of their PC sales in China had their Kylin OS installed - https://www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/1857948/chinese-os-last-more-40-cent-dell-pcs-china-now-running-homegrown. Kylin has been improving for 23 years now so is a pretty stable Linux OS too I guess.

    • Aatube
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      324 days ago

      At least in the consumer market, most Chinese people still use Windows or macOS. These 42% may be the public sector.

  • @[email protected]
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    24 days ago

    define “most popular” please

    for instance https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity, does that metric fit your definition?

    Anyway whatever the answer it doesn’t really matters, at the end of the day it is always Linux anyway, regardless of package manager, desktop environment or init.

    I’d just warn you against Ubuntu, because its company Canonical is behaving a lot like a young Microsoft these days.