Linux distro developer shares info on downloads

Aug 19, 2020 04:16 GMT  ·  By

The market share of Linux has increased substantially in 2020, and this made many consider the open-source world the worthy Windows alternative that it should have been from the very beginning.

And while it’s obviously pretty difficult to determine how many users are making the switch from Windows to Linux to make this continuously growing market share a dream come true, statistics shared by the makers of Zorin OS, a popular Linux distribution, indicate that more and more users come from non-Linux platforms.

More Windows users giving a try to Linux

More specifically, Zorin OS developers explain that their latest OS iteration was downloaded massively by users running Windows and macOS on their devices.

“With over 900,000 downloads since its release nine months ago, Zorin OS 15 has been our biggest and most advanced release ever. 2 in every 3 of these downloads were coming from Windows and macOS, reflecting our mission to bring the power of Linux to people who’ve never had access to it before. None of this could be possible without the help of you – the community – who have spread the word and helped the project to grow. We would like to thank all of you for making this release as enormous as it has been!” they say.

And needless to say, Zorin OS isn’t even the most popular Linux distro, so there is a chance that the download numbers of Windows users who get Linux are even bigger in the case of Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others.

We’ll never know how many Windows users make the switch to Linux, but right now, it’s pretty clear that the migration is real and is happening. It remains to be seen, however, how this would change the operating system world in the long term.