I am from india. These numbers are inflated due to our population and government and health sector office pc using linux (ubuntu). These office pcs just require a chrome browser and all the work is done on the browser Nobody here cares what os they use in their office pc. I don’t see anyone here switching to linux on their personal pc other than the IT students who are forced to install kali linux. And most of them are running linux on virtualbox on windows.
Steam deck is not even officially sold here and imported ones that are sold cost 950$ for the 512 gb variant. So it is a ultra niche item here. .
People here buy desktops only for gaming/content creation, which means most households here doesn’t need/require a desktop. And these people always prefer mac or windows.
Also gaming scene here is dominated by mobile games (because gaming pcs and consoles are too expensive and we have the cheapest internet and phone prices) As for pc games it is dominated by valorant, Minecraft and gtav (fivem rp).
Edit - Many consider this a huge win. But getting market share in the office space for basic browsing and word processing inflates the numbers for actual game/app developers who wants to support linux and they will disappointed seeing the actual usage and they will abandon the linux support. Also the indian market isn’t buying laptop/desktops for browsing, they just use their phone because pc hardware is expensive and phones prices are cheap. And anyone who is buying desktops for serious tasks stick to windows and mac.
What do you want? A stat counter for everyone’s personal PC?
The government of India, the largest country by population, using Linux is… a huge win?
It’s a huge win, but not the kind of win people reading the statistic with no context (like me) probably thought.
I’m sure a lot of us looked at “15 percent of desktop PCs in India run Linux” and, regardless of whether it was hasty and irresponsible for us to do so, extrapolated that to, “15 percent of Indian PC users are personally selecting Linux and normalizing its paradigms”.
But in reality, it sounds more like “15 percent of Indian PC users use Linux to launch Google Chrome”. Which is impressive, but not the specific kind of impressive we wanted.
It feels a bit like how I imagine, say, a song artist feels when they pour their heart and soul into a piece of music, it gets modest to no traction for a while, and then years later a 20 second loop becomes the backing track for a massive Tiktok meme, and almost zero of that attention trickles back to their other work.
It’s a win, but not something that has any meaningful impact on normalizing Linux desktop usage.
It’s not going to help the network effects of convincing vendors or manufacturers provide better support for Linux.
Indeed, sounds like a legitimate win to me.
It’s basically a FOSS Chromebook.
All they need is a chrome browser, so why would the government waste money on windows licences? A huge win is when personal pcs switch to linux. Linux doing basic web browsing and word processing is not a huge win.
My sister only uses her MacBook to access Safari and watch YouTube videos. Should she be counted?
My point being web browsing and word processing was never a problem on linux or any other os. It is being used just because it is cheaper and people who buy personal pcs are still on windows or mac and they dont switch
Oh boy, I have had such a different experience… So many websites used to not working.