Windows just had its worst month on record. StatCounter’s newly published numbers for June 2026 put worldwide desktop market share for Windows at 56.61%, the first time it has ever fallen below 60% in the history of the dataset. Linux closed the same month at 4.36%, its highest number in a year. The r/linux crowd found the chart within hours, and the thread that followed was half celebration, half cross examination.
Here’s what the data actually says, what it probably doesn’t say, and why the comments didn’t believe it for a second.
Copying my comment from another thread
Idk why everyone is always looking at statcounter. I still feel like Cloudflare probably has better data.
Especially cause it feels like their “other” category is probably scrappers and bots.
Also noteworthy is that Cloudflare isn’t about Desktop operating systems only. I don’t know how StatCounter operates, but they probably ignore everything that is identified as mobile and Smart TV. Cloudflare is about ANY HTTP connection / request. So its natural that these numbers are quite different, as they are different in their scope anyway.
Liek said, all data is biased, and that’s why we sould rely on multiple sources. The absolute values are really hard to get a precise mapping of, but the trends seem to be consistent. There’s a recent dip in windows usage in that chart as well
I don’t think one data point is better than the other. They are all a small portion of the entire base. Its like looking at different game reviews from different people to get an idea how good it is (I know little odd comparison :D). In example Cloudflare data is only relevant to those communities and sites that can pay for it and don’t have a different solution. Cloudflare is also a “recent” phenomenon; not sure how relevant that info is though…
They’re both likely biased in different ways, different goals to a point. It sounds like statcounter is making some effort to verify unique devices for determining numbers potentially, but Cloudflare looks like it’s just raw requests which is going to bias you towards the noisiest devices. Still useful but I feel like that’s a harder sell if you’re trying to determine market share specifically. I’m not sure how you’d improve either one without drastically raising your overhead.