Apple Mac had sunk to about 2% in the mid ‘90s, after the failed Mac laptop (lead batteries, no backlighting), failed Newton, failed GX, dead-end 680x0 processors, the ridiculous Centrum line, the release of Windows 95, etc. It came back over time with healthy high single digits, not counting iOS and iPad OS.
Desktop Linux going from under 1% to 3% IS a healthy jump, and that is despite having almost no presence in the phone
or laptop market, even as laptops have become the main “desktop” in much of corporate America, and moreso since COVID.
It has been a long climb, but because Linux’ presence is HUGE in Internet server market, is not processor centric, and is explicitly based on UNIX, the root system is EXTREMELY strong.
For us Freepers, it is relevant as software that allows endless variation and MUCH less privacy intrusion than Microsoft and Google (Chrome OS/Android), and the “updates” are not mandatory, and neither are hardware upgrades.
Yeah a slow climb to 3% on the desktop, in addition to half of the server world, is a big deal. I am typing this on my well-provisioned Ubuntu desktop, which does 80% of what I need.
Around 2005, I had a specialized PC104 CPU where I ran a Debian OS on my railcars. Linux kernel code added a dependency on a new CPU instruction that was not supported by the SOC custom CPU on the Diamond Systems PC104 CPU board. I was locked into an old kernel. A change in administration occurred on January 20, 2009. The project was defunded upon the arrival of Obama. I sent the obsolete CPU boards back to the project office. The problem was overcome by events (election) and never resolved.