THIS is what the LINUX COMMUNITY uses??

now since you seem to enjoy me crowdsourcing a few cool terminal programs last month I decided to repeat the process but this time to gather some data about what people actually use on Linux so I made a little non-exhaustive nonscientific survey that I posted on the YouTube Channel's Community page and on masteron and I gathered more than 9500 answers on the disos the type of Hardware the windowing servers the web browsers and the other things that you use so in this video we'll look at the statistics at what surprised me what I was expecting what I was absolutely not expecting and try and find some justifications or explanations for these differences and we'll also look at this Segway to our sponsor this video is sponsored by kasm workspaces and it's a great project for streaming any kind of apps or operating system or desktop straight to your web browser they recently released a new version of kasm VNC that's one of the open- source projects that I featured in my remote desktop video in August and this new version of kasm VNC adds support for multiple monitors for the Linux desktops that you're streaming to your browser meaning that you can now span that desktop across multiple browser windows without having to install an agent or a plugin it's all Native so you can now be a lot more productive when you're streaming those Linux desktops to your browser because because you can take advantage of your multi monitor setup even when you're just streaming that desktop or operating system the kasm VNC open source project is available in the kasm tech GitHub page or you can also find it within the chasm workspaces Community Edition using the links provided in the description so just a quick disclaimer this is only based on a survey that 9500 people who follow me on Mastodon and on YouTube answered it is not supposed to represent the entirety of the Linux desktop Community obviously people who follow me are more likely to like what I create meaning that they're likely relatively interested in flatback whand and a userfriendly desktop experience Ultra Hardcore Rising enthusiasts tying Window Manager fans and the like are probably under represented here also the survey was only about Linux desktop experience so using it as a daily personal computer not for Sur result would probably be very different and Arch would probably not be in the lead in this case and of course it is a small sample 9500 answers isn't bad it's statistically significant but it's still only a fraction of the people who use Linux so take those numbers with a grain of salt okay so let's start with distros and right off the bat I am very surprised at the results Arch and Arch based dros seem to represent 20 29% of answers way higher than auntu and auntu based dros at 22% if we include Linux Mint or 16% if we don't include it it's higher than Fedora which sits at 19% of answers or 22% if we include Fedora derivatives like nobara and that was pretty surprising to me I always felt that in my community Arch and Arch based dros were also ran I was EXP expecting predominantly auntu based dros or Fedora based distributions so yeah Arch is definitely way more popular than I thought so maybe I should stop poking fun at that Dro at some point another surprising number is Nix OS sitting at 7% it is more than Linux Mint it is more than open soua and more than Debian I also was not expecting Nix to be as popular because it's sort of a complex distribution to get to grips with and I always assume my audience would lean more towards simple to setup simple to use things so if we take into consideration the arch numbers and Nyx 's relative popularity I think I have to reexamine one of my biases here even in my relatively userfriendly Linux Community people do have the skills and do have the tendency to run way more complex discs that aren't necessarily Plug and Play Now another thing that surprised me is Steam OS it only got 30 9 answers out of the 9500 meaning virtually no one seems to use their steam deck as their main computer since valve sold millions of these I was expecting to be relatively well represented probably at 3 or 4% turns out that decks probably were sold to people who already enjoy Linux and already have a Linux desktop or laptop that they use as their main computer now still on the drro side of things it's also clear that what we un ceremoniously lump into the immutable dros category isn't where most people go for their desktop systems 89% of people who answered the survey said that they do not use an immutable Dro meaning that these things might very well be the future but they are not the present for most users at least not those who took the survey of course we need to take into account that this survey was meant to represent the main system that people run some people might have a secondary system where they play around with an immutable Dr still it does mean that most people in my community at least just do not run immutable distributions they prefer the tried and true package based non-image-based version of their distributions so already a bunch of surprising results to me and don't hesitate to let me know in the comments if those surprise you as well or if further results in this video also surprise you I'm always open to hearing what you think about this and some potential reasons why certain things might be over represented compared to what I thought they would be next we have the desktop environments and tiling window managers and here again I was surprised at the results plasma is on the surface the most used desktop environment out there at least by people who were reached by and answered the survey it sits at 30% way above tiling window managers but also I voluntarily split the gnome answer into more categories vanilla gnome or gnome with very few extensions gnome with more extensions and various very Divergent implementations of gnome like what obuntu or po ship vanilla gnome sits at 14% but if we tally up all the gnome implementations we land on 35% beating KDE soundly the reason why I split those answers was to try and see if people use gnome as intended by the developers or if they always try to extend it and the answer seems to be that vanilla gnome is not as popular as gnome with more extensions still gnome is a very popular desktop probably because it is the default on a lot of distributions but also because no matter if it doesn't have as many options as KD it is actually very easy to customize using extensions we also see that in my community at least everything else is an also rant cinnamon has good results at 7% xfc sits at at 3% but everything else is pretty much non-existent whether it's mate Elementary os's desktop called Pantheon Budgy Unity deep in and the like which also means that fragmentation isn't nearly as bad as what people think because you basically only have two major options it's KD or it's gnow and it can also be tying window managers these gathered up 21% of votes meaning that they're actually the third thing used by people far above any other desktop than gnome or KD I asked people which styling Window Manager they used and here we do have some fragmentation hyperland seems to be very popular right now at almost 48% of answers we also have sway at 12% I3 at 11% and then a smattering of others like awesome WM ppwm qtile xmonad and more and here I definitely did make a mistake in that form because I left out a bunch of popular options that I just didn't really know about because the other category gathered up 15% of votes meaning that I forgot at least one major tying WM in there let me know which one you think it is but yeah next time I'll make sure to learn more about window managers to include more relevant options in there still I was also surprised at the results here I was not expecting whan compositors to gobble up 2third of the answers my own person personal preconceived notion was that first tying Window Manager users were a vocal minority compared to desktop users but it's clearly not the case and I was expecting tiling Window Manager users to mostly not like whand and to want to stick to X11 since X11 offers a lot more choice and I was wrong on both accounts not only in my community people seem to really enjoy tiling window managers but they also really seem to enjoy whon compositors which I was not expecting speaking of which whan got 66% of answers here versus 34% for X11 meaning that while Wayland is often criticized in the comments of my videos with stuff ranging from it doesn't work well to it should be abandoned immediately it's Garbo well it looks like most people are actually using whan now again it is a it's my community thing here since I regularly talk positively about whan and try to promote it most people who probably Wayland just do not watch my channel I would assume and so if you asked another Linux Channel about Wayland or X11 you probably would get widely different results I am surprised by this though probably because of the amounts of comments I get criticizing whand compared to virtually no one commenting and saying that Wayland is great so it's probably another vocal minority thing here as for Hardware I asked people which kind of GPU and CPU they used for CPUs AMD and Intel are really evenly matched at 50% for AMD and 49% for Intel the last perc being for Arm based CPUs judging from results from the steam survey that usually places AMD at 70% of Linux Gamers I was expecting AMD CPUs to be over represented here but that doesn't seem to be the case as per gpus AMD takes the lead here but not by much people who only have a dedicated AMD GPU represent 24% of answers and if we add that to people who only have an integrated AMD GPU or some combo using integrated graphics and a dedicated AMD GPU we get to 39% of answer combining the same statistics for NVIDIA we land on 37% only two points lower than for AMD pure Intel configurations represent 22% of answers for integrated graphics and 1% for dedicated intel only plus another per for people who run a hybrid config with a dedicated Intel GPU so at most 24% it is a pretty even distribution of devices here I was expecting AMD to have a lot more I was expecting Intel to have a lot less because they didn't sell a lot of dedicated gpus but I guess a lot of people just run the integrated Intel GPU and I was also surprised at Nvidia having that much support from Linux users and speaking of which people who run an Nvidia GPU predominantly use the proprietary drivers 87% of people who run a dedicated Nvidia GPU use these when only 14% use the nvo drivers presumably these are people with older cards that Nvidia sort of abandoned and for which nvo provides better performance as per the provence of that Hardware a lot of people seem to build their own computers to run Linux on at 44% of answers 40% of people who took the survey bought a PC from a major Windows manufacturer with Windows pre-installed or no operating system if the option was available this is an option I should have added to the form probably I just wasn't expecting major manufacturers to actually let you buy without Windows pre-install apart from that only 4% said they used a computer from a Linux manufacturer like tuxedo system 76 slimbook and the like only 2% use a Mac and interestingly 5% bought a computer from a major manufacturer that came with Linux pre-installed so presumably from Dell or Lenovo as these are the two main ones that have the option as far as I know and it's pretty interesting stuff because it means that people prefer buying from bigname manufacturers with Windows or no operating system rather than buying from dedicated manufacturers that ship with Linux preinstall I paired that question with another one asking how well Linux ran on people's computers and overwhelmingly it seems that Hardware compatibility is really good these days 63% of respondents said that they experienced zero issues after installing Linux and 23% said they did have small problems that they managed to fix only 133% said that there's still Hardware that doesn't work at all on their PCS and 1% said that their computer performs really badly under Linux and of course since a lot of people answered that they built their own PCS chances are things were going to work well in the first place because they presumably pick the components well to run with Linux if they buil that computer specifically for Linux but still it does seem to indicate that Linux Hardware troubles are mostly a thing of the past for a lot of users now as per specific packaging formats I also asked people if they used flat packs snaps or app Images exclusively mixed with other packages or not at all here again the results seem to contradict the VOC local minority that criticizes flat pack because 66% of people who answered use these flat packs mixed in with packages from other sources and 6% only use flatback apps meaning that we're at almost three qus of respondents that do use flat packs daily the results are not as positive for other formats though Snaps are not being used at all by 84% of people who answered and 54% of people are just not using app Images at all and of course since I regularly talk positively about flatback and way less so about snaps and app Images chances are people who follow me are already pretty much liking flatback so that could explain this cue but also I think it's pretty clear that flatback is the format that people will just go towards if they have to pick between flatback snaps and app Images it's just the most accomplished of the three right now on the topic of applications Firefox seems to be the absolute most popular browser here at 68% with an extra 9% for Firefox derivatives like Liber wolf Brave takes a sizable 8% Chrome 6% and the rest is pretty anecdotal of course here as well since I regularly talk about privacy and how chromium based browsers are the bane of the open web maybe people who follow me use Firefox a lot more than the rest of Linux users but also Firefox is the default for virtually every Linux drro so I am not super surprised here as for using applications made for a specific desktop environment most people seem not to care too much about that 59% of people who answered said that they prefer apps made for the desktop environment they use but they wouldn't limit themselves to them if there's a gap that is filled by an app made for something else 37% of people just do not care about that at all and will use any app using any toolkit on any desktop and only 4% draw a hard line at the toolkit used by an application completely limiting themselves to what looks right on their desktop this one doesn't really surprise me I am pretty hardcore myself on using apps that are meant for my desktop but even I will use stuff that was not designed for KD plusma specifically if it works better than the alternative now a few other things to finish most people who answered run Linux only without another OS that's 63% of answer 30% run a dual boot with Windows 1% dual boot Linux with Mac OS and 2% run a Linux plus Linux dual boot the remaining 4% run various configurations of Windows plus multiple Linux distros or Windows plus Mac OS plus Linux people also don't seem to Define themselves as Dro Hoppers as 42% answered they've been using the same Dro for a while 33% said they almost never switch dros and 21% said they do switch from time to time but they will stick to what they use for long periods of time and of course I did not set specific time limits that I would consider to be a long time for using a drro because it will be different for most people so I let people Define themselves into each of these categories without assigning arbitrary time values and finally people use their Linux species for virtually everything under the sun 80% of respondents said they use them for laser and learning 80% for general office work 58% for gaming 44% for developing native programs as in not web apps and websites 41% for web dev 34% for other Pro activities like Graphics design video editing and the like which seems to confirm my viewpoint that people saying that Linux is not ready for General desktop use or for professional instances they just misinformed like a lot of people are using Linux for any kind of task available we might have some gaps but we're definitely a usable solution right now okay so what did we learn here well personally I can now re-evaluate my biases at least for my community I thought Arch Linux was kind of a niche thing and Nyx OS as well but I learned that a lot of users who watch my content are also pretty Advanced or at least are able to use this Ros that aren just plug and play with a graphical installer and click next 20 times which is interesting I also learned that gnome and KD are really kind of on par in terms of usage but tying window managers are way more popular than I thought just like Wayland is way more popular than I thought as well just like flatbacks are way more popular than I thought as well and Nvidia is in the same case also so I have to reevaluate my priorities on what I cover on the channel now and maybe hopefully this taught you a thing or two so don't hesitate to let me know in the comments what you think about those numbers did they surprise you did they not do you have any explanation on why these numbers might be so high or so low are there any biases linked to my Channel or the community or do they reflect what you were thinking about what people actually use let me know in the comments don't hesitate to like the video as well so I know you enjoy this kind of content and I can make more in the future and in the meantime let me tell you about this video sponsor tuxedo computers they make laptops and desktops that ship with Linux pre-installed as we've seen in the server this isn't necessarily your favorite way of getting a computer but it's definitely one that you should try because it means that everything runs perfectly under Linux all the hardware is supported no matter the dis you use because tuxedo contributes Upstream when they encounter issues in their testing of the hardware and if those patches haven't been accepted yet they have repos that let you install all of that they have a big range of devices that will cover every price point and every need whether you need something for general office work lightweight to little laptop or you need a high-end workstation or a gaming computer they have it all all the devices are very customizable you can also open the laptops repair them and upgrade them you can have your own custom keyboard layout your own logo laser edged on the lid of your computer you decide how things work I only use tuxedo computers these days to run the channel and to game so I can only recommend them so if you need a new computer and you plan to run Linux on it check out the link in the description below and get yourself something from tuxedo okay so thanks for for watching the video I hope you enjoyed it if you did you know what to do like subscribe turn on notifications write a comment recommend it share whatever you know how things work and if you really enjoy the channel and you want to support what I do I left plenty of links in the description of the video with a bunch of perks for patreon members and YouTube members as well so thanks for watching and I guess you'll see me in the next one [Music] bye [Music]

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 140,644

Keywords: linux, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux tutorial, linux 2023, opensource, linux tips, distro, linux for beginners 2023, linux vs windows, linux tutorial 2024, linux usage data, linux statistics, linux most popular distro, linux most popular desktop, linux best distribution, linux best desktop, gnome vs KDE, arch linux best, wayland vs W11, what linux users use, linux user statistics, linux maket share, linux best GPU, linux best laptop

Id: 8V8uQbIFlh0

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2024