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Windows is the overwhelmingly dominant operating system running on PCs around the world, and it's been that way for decades. Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) ubiquitous OS enjoyed a 72% share of the global desktop operating system market at the end of 2023, with Apple's OS X a distant second at 16%. These figures come from Statcounter and should be interpreted as ballpark estimates, but it's clear that Windows reigns supreme.
While Windows remains dominant, it has lost some of that dominance over time. According to Statcounter, Windows' market share has dropped more than 20 percentage points since 2009. The increasing popularity of Apple's Mac computers explains most of that decline, but not all of it.
Linux, in all its variants, has become far more prevalent over the past 15 years. Linux had a market share of just 0.68% in 2009. In 2023, that share had ballooned to 3.82%. That's still tiny compared to Windows, but a fivefold increase is notable, nonetheless.
While the odds have always been stacked against Linux in the battle for OS supremacy, a fairly recent development could pave the way for further erosion of Microsoft's market share.
PC gaming breaks free
While Linux distributions have become more user-friendly over time, with some even doing a pretty good job of mimicking the Windows experience, they still require a level of technical know-how that is beyond the typical PC user. Linux is extremely popular among software developers, with around 45% of developers reporting Linux as their preferred OS. But most PC users are not writing code or doing anything more technical than the occasional spreadsheet.
For users who are tech-savvy enough to use Linux but don't, one reason for sticking with Windows is the state of the PC gaming industry. Because Windows dominates in terms of market share, PC games are often developed for Windows exclusively. Going through the trouble of porting a game to Linux rarely makes commercial sense, given its minuscule market share.
Steam, the leading PC gaming platform, recently published a list of the top-grossing games of 2023. Except for a handful, nearly all of them are built for Windows only. The latest Call of Duty is Windows-only. Cyberpunk 2077 is Windows-only. Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the best-selling games of all time, is Windows-only. The list goes on.
With almost no chance that major game developers will ever bother bringing their games to Linux natively, Valve, the company behind Steam, has taken matters into its own hands. Driven by the need to make its handheld Steam Deck, which is powered by Linux, a success, Valve has been working on a compatibility layer called Proton. Built on top of work done by others over the years, Proton translates the Windows-specific bits and enables games built for Windows to run on Linux-based systems.