Linux runs 100% of the world’s Top500 supercomputers and 96% of production Kubernetes clusters surveyed in the CNCF 2025 Cloud Native Survey, yet holds only 7.53% of worldwide desktop sessions in July 2026 per StatCounter. The gap between where Linux dominates infrastructure and where it lives on the desktop is the through-line for every figure below.

Gaming tells a similar story this summer. Steam put Linux at 4.01% in July 2026, up 0.32 points month over month, while SteamOS Holo slipped to 22.24% of the survey’s Linux respondents. The desktop-versus-infrastructure split, and the way SteamOS Holo’s share of Steam Linux users fell as desktop distributions grew faster, are the two things every prior refresh of this page has underweighted.

Key Takeaways

Linux holds 7.53% of worldwide desktop OS sessions in July 2026 per StatCounter, versus 71.18% for Windows.
Linux powers 62.1% of websites with a known operating system per W3Techs, and Unix-family systems account for 92.0% of websites with an identifiable OS.
Every one of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers ran Linux on the November 2025 Top500 list, an unbroken streak since November 2017.
Kubernetes production adoption climbed to 82% in 2025 (from 80% in 2024), and 96% of those production clusters run on a Linux node OS.
Steam’s Linux share reached 4.01% in July 2026, up 0.32 points month over month, while SteamOS Holo’s share of the survey’s Linux respondents fell 0.59 points to 22.24%.
Kernel 6.15 merged 14,612 changesets from 2,068 developers, and AMD led corporate lines changed at 14.9%.
Linux Foundation counted 71,000+ contributors and 3,000+ member organizations in 2024, on a total expenditure of $299.7 million.

Editor’s Choice

Linux runs 100% of Top500 supercomputers, an eight-year streak.
El Capitan leads global HPC at 1.742 exaFLOPS on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Android holds 68.36% of worldwide mobile sessions in July 2026.
Ubuntu leads Linux web-server distributions at 15.1% of Linux sites.
Cloud is a Linux market: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure base their infrastructures largely on Linux, and Linux is represented at over 70% of the server sector.
Ubuntu is used for personal projects by 27.8% of participating developers surveyed by Stack Overflow in 2025.
The container platform market Linux underpins was worth $5.85 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $31.50 billion by 2030 per CNCF.

Windows holds 71.18% of tracked desktop sessions in July 2026.
OS X reads 12.21% and macOS a further 7.61%, which StatCounter reports as two separate rows.
Linux sits at 7.53%, roughly six points above Chrome OS at 1.47%.
FreeBSD rounds to 0%, the only other desktop OS StatCounter breaks out.
StatCounter’s tracking code sits on more than 1 million sites globally, recording billions of page views a month.

StatCounter’s July 2026 desktop snapshot puts Windows at 71.18%, OS X at 12.21%, macOS at 7.61%, Linux at 7.53%, Chrome OS at 1.47% and FreeBSD at 0%. Statcounter’s tracking code is installed on more than 1 million sites globally, and every month it records billions of page views, analysing the browser and operating system used for each one.

Desktop OS	July 2026 share
Windows	71.18%
OS X	12.21%
macOS	7.61%
Linux	7.53%
Chrome OS	1.47%

Source: StatCounter Global Stats, July 2026

One caveat before comparing years: the July 2026 release carries no “Unknown” bucket, while the April 2026 reading this page previously used put 19.28% of desktop sessions there. Readings either side of that boundary are not like-for-like.

The worldwide desktop market share picture that PC gaming data tracks lines up with StatCounter here: Linux is a small slice of a Windows-dominated field.

Unix family covers 92.0% of identified web servers per W3Techs’ August 17, 2026 crawl.
Linux itself accounts for 62.1% of that same denominator.
Windows Server registers 8.2% on the same crawl.
Beyond the web, Credativ’s March 2026 review puts Linux at over 70% of the server sector, against a niche position on desktop systems.
The remaining Unix share splits across BSD variants, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and other Unix-derived systems.

W3Techs’ August 17, 2026 crawl reports Unix-family systems on 92.0% of websites whose operating system it can identify, versus 8.2% on Windows, noting that a website may use more than one operating system. Within that Unix figure, Linux accounts for 62.1% of all identifiable-OS websites directly.

By the numbers: Linux powers 62.1% of the web with a named OS per W3Techs, its Unix family reaches 92.0%, and the wider server sector runs over 70% Linux per credativ’s March 2026 review. Together, the three cuts describe the same picture: Windows is a minority server operating system almost everywhere the workload matters.

Recent Developments

Steam’s July 2026 survey put SteamOS Holo at 22.24% of its Linux respondents, down 0.59 points, while CachyOS rose 0.28 points to 14.31%.

August 17, 2026: W3Techs updated its Linux server report, putting Linux at 62.1% of websites whose operating system is known, with Ubuntu leading distributions at 15.1%.
July 2026: Steam’s July 2026 hardware and software survey put Linux at 4.01%, up 0.32 points month over month, with SteamOS Holo at 22.24% of Linux users.
April 28, 2026: Fedora Linux 44 shipped with kernel 6.19.14, GNOME 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6.
April 23, 2026: Canonical released Ubuntu 26.04 LTS “Resolute Raccoon” as the first LTS series to ship on a 7.x kernel, with support through April 2036 on Ubuntu Pro.
January 20, 2026: The CNCF announced 2025 survey results showing Kubernetes production use at 82% and Linux underpinning 96% of production clusters.

Linux on the Top500 Supercomputers

100% of Top500 systems ran Linux on the November 2025 list, the eighth consecutive year of the streak since November 2017.
El Capitan leads at 1.742 exaFLOPS on Red Hat Enterprise Linux at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Frontier follows at 1.353 exaFLOPS.
Aurora and JUPITER Booster each exceeded 1.000 exaFLOPS, putting four exascale Linux systems on the November 2025 list.
JUPITER Booster at EuroHPC / Jülich measured at 1.000 exaFLOP/s, making it the first European exascale system.
Geographic distribution: the United States leads with 171 systems, Japan follows at 43, and Germany and China tie at 40 each.

Every system on the November 2025 Top500 list ran an OS based on the Linux kernel, extending the streak to its eighth consecutive year since November 2017. El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory led at 1.742 exaFLOPS on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, followed by Frontier at 1.353 exaFLOPS.

System	Site	Performance (ExaFLOPS)	OS
El Capitan	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US	1.742	Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Frontier	Not reported	1.353	Linux
Aurora	Not reported	>1.000	Linux
JUPITER Booster	EuroHPC / Jülich, Germany	1.000	Linux

Source: TOP500 List, November 2025

The United States led geographic distribution with 171 systems as of the November 2025 submission, Japan followed with 43, and Germany and China tied at 40 each.

Linux in Cloud Infrastructure

Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure base their cloud infrastructures largely on Linux systems, and Linux is represented at over 70% of the server sector, per Credativ’s March 2026 review, and the workload mix explains the concentration.

Server sector: Linux is represented at over 70% per Credativ’s March 2026 review.
Cloud adoption carries Linux with it, because most cloud infrastructures are built on Linux to begin with.
Container platforms such as Docker and Kubernetes primarily run on Linux, as does Proxmox virtualization.
AI workloads extend the same dependency, since most AI frameworks run on Linux.

Why it matters: The desktop-versus-server gap inside a single vendor’s own review is the cleanest statement of the Linux split: a rounding error where people click, the default nearly everywhere a workload runs unattended. Cloud migration is what makes that gap self-reinforcing, because a company moving workloads off its own hardware lands on Linux whether or not it chose Linux.

Linux in Kubernetes and Container Orchestration

The CNCF’s 2024 annual survey put Kubernetes production adoption at 80%, up from 66% in 2023, with 93% of respondents in production, piloting, or evaluating. In 2025, production use climbed to 82%, based on 1,300 respondents (a 73% year-over-year increase in the panel).

Kubernetes production adoption: 66% (2023) > 80% (2024) > 82% (2025).
96% of production Kubernetes clusters surveyed in 2025 run on a Linux node OS. Across the wider population, Linux sits beneath most clusters as the node operating system: CNCF’s 2024 survey put Linux under 78% of all Kubernetes clusters globally.
Linux also powers 75% of Docker containers per the same 2024 CNCF cut.
The application container market reached $5.85 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $31.50 billion by 2030.

The jump aligns with AI/ML workloads standardizing on Linux-based Kubernetes distributions during the same window.

Steam’s July 2026 Hardware & Software Survey put the operating-system split at Windows 93.67%, OSX 2.32%, and Linux 4.01%. CachyOS climbed to 14.31% of the survey’s Linux respondents in July 2026, up 0.28 points month over month.

Linux reached 4.01% on Steam in July 2026.
That reading is up 0.32 points month over month.
Windows held 93.67%, and OSX held 2.32% in July.
SteamOS Holo led the Linux side at 22.24% of Linux users, down 0.59 points month over month.
CachyOS ranks second on the Linux side at 14.31%, up 0.28 points.
Bazzite takes 7.73%, the Freedesktop SDK 25.08 Flatpak runtime 5.37%, and EndeavourOS 1.69%.

Bazzite held 7.73% of the survey’s Linux respondents in July 2026, the Freedesktop SDK 25.08 Flatpak runtime 5.37%, and EndeavourOS Linux 1.69%. Deeper Steam statistics track the same monthly movement across other hardware categories on the platform.

Worth noting: Linux gained 0.32 points on Steam in July 2026, and SteamOS Holo’s share of Steam Linux users fell as desktop distributions grew faster. That share sits on a widening base, so a smaller slice is not a smaller contribution. The July 2026 split shows the distribution mix broadening around the Deck.

Android and Mobile Linux Distribution

StatCounter’s July 2026 mobile snapshot shows Android at 68.36% and iOS at 31.6% worldwide, with KaiOS at 0.01% and Linux itself at 0.01%. Android, KaiOS, and Linux all appear in that same July 2026 worldwide mobile breakdown, alongside Windows at 0.01% and BlackBerry OS at 0%.

Android holds 68.36% of mobile sessions worldwide.
iOS holds 31.6%.
Together they cover 99.96% of the global mobile OS market.
Android’s Linux-kernel base means the Linux family dominates mobile at effectively 68.38% (Android + KaiOS + direct Linux).

Every Android release ships a mainline Linux LTS kernel with vendor patches applied on top, and KaiOS is a Linux derivative too, which is why the mobile market is overwhelmingly a Linux market.

Linux Kernel Development Statistics

14,612 changesets merged in kernel 6.15 from 2,068 developers, including 262 first-timers.
Intel led corporate contributors by changesets at 1,755 (12.0%).
Google followed at 983 (6.7%), Red Hat at 889 (6.1%), AMD at 881 (6.0%).
AMD topped corporate lines changed at 125,923 lines (14.9%), ahead of Intel’s 94,150 (11.1%).
Google contributed 67,461 lines (8.0%), IBM 48,682 (5.7%), Red Hat 43,981 (5.2%).
50.2% of commits carried Reviewed-by tags per LWN’s analysis, across 195 distinct employers.

Kernel 6.15 merged 14,612 changesets from 2,068 developers, including 262 first-time contributors. Intel led corporate contributors by changesets with 1,755 (12.0%), followed by Google at 983 (6.7%), Red Hat at 889 (6.1%) and AMD at 881 (6.0%).

AMD led corporate lines-changed at 125,923 lines (14.9%), Intel followed at 94,150 (11.1%), Google contributed 67,461 (8.0%), IBM 48,682 (5.7%) and Red Hat 43,981 (5.2%). That AMD passed Intel in lines changed while Intel held the changesets crown is a structural shift, driven by heavy AMDGPU driver contributions rather than by lots of small commits.

Linux Foundation Membership and Projects

Linux Foundation’s 2024 Annual Report highlights 71,000+ contributors, 3,000+ member organizations, 11 new projects added in 2024, and over 7,500 new contributors welcomed across projects. Total 2024 expenditure was $299.7 million, up from $269 million in 2023.

71,000+ contributors across all Linux Foundation projects.
3,000+ member organizations spanning industry verticals.
11 new projects added in 2024.
$299.7 million in 2024 expenditure, up from $269 million in 2023.
43% of 2024 revenue ($125.1 million) came from donations and contributions; membership dues added $133 million (42.7%), project services $83 million (26.7%), and events $58 million (18.6%).

The revenue percentages sum above 100% because the report counts overlapping categories separately (a member organization can be counted under dues, donations, and project services in the same year). The dollar figures are the primary numbers to trust.

Top Linux Distributions Among Developers

Ubuntu leads personal Linux use at 27.8% of surveyed developers and professional use at 27.7%.
Debian follows at 11.4% personal / 10.4% professional.
Arch Linux reaches 8.0% among developers.
Stack Overflow’s 2025 survey drew 49,000+ responses across 177 countries.
Android surpassed Ubuntu for personal use for the first time at 29% vs 28%.
Linux is used by 78.5% of developers globally as a primary or secondary operating system per the 2025 Stack Overflow panel.

Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey drew over 49,000 responses from 177 countries and reported that Android surpassed Ubuntu for personal use for the first time (29% vs 28%). Ubuntu was used by 27.8% of participating developers for personal projects and 27.7% professionally, with Debian at 11.4% personal / 10.4% professional and Arch Linux at 8.0%.

Linux distribution	Personal use	Professional use
Ubuntu	27.8%	27.7%
Debian	11.4%	10.4%
Arch Linux	8.0%	not reported

Source: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025 (49,000+ respondents, 177 countries)

Linux in Embedded Systems and IoT

Embedded and edge hardware reaches for Linux where power, price, or vendor freedom rules out Windows. The IoT universe is the clearest example: Android alone accounts for 68.36% of mobile-class device sessions per StatCounter’s July 2026 data, and every one of those devices is a Linux kernel installation.

Android-based devices (all built on Linux) dominate mobile at 68.36%.
Linux Foundation projects span 3,000+ member organizations and 71,000+ contributors, with 11 new projects added in 2024.
SteamOS on the Steam Deck is functionally a consumer-embedded Linux system.
KaiOS, a Linux derivative, is broken out separately in StatCounter’s mobile OS table.

Embedded Linux is hard to pin down precisely because no single body counts routers, smart TVs, cars, and industrial controllers. This is also the layer where cybersecurity statistics matter: kernel CVEs on the LTS branches propagate straight through the Android security-bulletin pipeline.

Linux Distributions on Web Servers

Ubuntu leads at 15.1% of Linux web servers per W3Techs’ August 17 crawl.
Debian follows at 5.9%.
CentOS holds 1.2%.
AlmaLinux at 0.3%, Amazon Linux at 0.2%, and Rocky Linux at 0.2% each register a minor share.
76.8% of Linux sites do not expose their distribution to the W3Techs crawler.
Ubuntu plus Debian together hold 21.0% of all Linux sites.

The takeaway: Ubuntu at 15.1% and Debian at 5.9% lead the named distributions on Linux web servers, together carrying 21.0% of all Linux sites. Because 76.8% of Linux sites hide their distribution string, the true distribution mix is only partially observable, and the concentration is almost certainly higher than the crawler can see.

Roughly 1 in 4 Linux web servers exposes its distribution to the outside world, the complement of the share above. Some of that opacity is deliberate: distribution strings are an attack signal, and hardened production hosts strip them.

Is Linux Growing?

Yes, on the metrics that matter for infrastructure. Linux is represented in over 70% of the server sector and is expected to keep growing through 2026, per Credativ’s March 2026 review, and CNCF measured Linux at under 78% of all Kubernetes clusters globally in its 2024 survey and under 96% of the production clusters surveyed in 2025, two different cluster populations. StatCounter’s July 2026 desktop reading stands at 7.53%, stated on its own because that release drops the “Unknown” bucket earlier readings carried.

Why Do Hackers Prefer Linux?

Security professionals and adversaries alike favor Linux for the same reasons: source-available kernel, granular permissions, package-managed tooling, and unrestricted network stacks. Every major penetration-testing distribution (Kali, Parrot, BlackArch) is Debian- or Arch-derived, and kernel 6.15 alone drew contributions from developers at 195 employers across its 14,612 merged changesets, keeping the kernel’s defensive and offensive surface both auditable and current.

Conclusion

Linux dominates the layers that define modern computing: 100% of Top500 supercomputers, 96% of the production Kubernetes clusters surveyed by the CNCF, over 70% of the server sector and, via Android, 68.36% of the global mobile OS market. Desktop share sits at 7.53% per StatCounter’s July 2026 snapshot, and on Steam’s opt-in survey panel Linux holds a 4.01% July share.

The near-term calendar is dense. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on Kernel 7.0 and Fedora 44 shipped five days apart in April 2026, and the CNCF’s 2025 survey is the newest Kubernetes node-OS read. Deeper productivity-suite data lives in the Microsoft 365 statistics roundup.