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433 points Sporktacular | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.223s | source
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015a ◴[] No.36995730[source]
> But before you declare this a triumphant moment for desktop Linux, it's important to note that some of these Linux users are not, in fact, using Steam on a desktop. The Linux version "SteamOS Holo" 64-bit is the most popular reported, at just over 42 percent of the Linux slice of pie. That indicates that a huge portion of these Linux users are actually playing on Valve's Steam Deck portable, which runs Linux.

There's such a deep seeded, systemic bias against linux that it actually can never win, to any degree or magnitude, because the moment it starts winning we just move the goal-posts for the flimsiest of reasons to ensure it can't quite claim that victory.

Linux is obviously and clearly the most popular operating system kernel on the planet. Oh, no, that's no good a measure, servers are messy, let's refine it to most popular consumer operating system kernel? Oh... it, could also reasonably claim that title? No no, no Android, that doesn't count. Nope, No Chrome OS either, you can't have that, that's, well, that is linux, but its not. Just nice, pure, desktop linux, yes, perfect, arch linux, kde desktop, that'll never trend up and thus is the perfect new-new definition of desktop linu--wait hold up, I'm getting word this is, not possible, its actually SteamOS? Nope, kill it, that's not desktop linux either, kill it.

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voidr ◴[] No.36996734[source]
If we just counted the kernel, then it is possible that Minix could be the most popular "OS" because it's burnt into every Intel CPU, however it's probably not a helpful metric. If we equate Android with Linux, we can also say that MacOS is the most popular mobile operating system because iOS uses the same kernel as MacOS.

I consider 2 things to be the same OS if they can natively run the same unmodified binary files and if we look at it this way, Linux is on a losing streak: - I cannot download an app on Android and run it on Debian - I cannot compile a program on one version of the same distro and run it on another version of the same distro

The moment I will be able to compile a program that runs on both Arch and Android, we can start adding the stats up, however I doubt tis will happen anytime soon looking at the poor attempts at fixing this.

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1. circuit10 ◴[] No.36997662[source]
> The moment I will be able to compile a program that runs on both Arch and Android

You can! You will need to have a UI wrapper around it on Android but if you compile it in the right way there’s no reason this can’t work (assuming they use the same CPU architecture of course)