36 Fascinating Linux Facts and Statistics in 2026

Windows dominates the majority of the operating systems market, with 82.56%, however, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other operating systems to consider. Linux actually powers a lot of global technology, some of which you probably didn’t even realise.

Linux refers to a family of open-source operating systems. These use the Linux kernel and include Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro, etc. Linus Torvalds, who created the original Linux code, was born in Finland. I bet you didn’t know he actually has an asteroid named after him!

Linux is incredibly powerful, though it only holds a 0.89% market share. It’s for this reason that I felt it was imperative to dig a little deeper under the covers to find out more about Linux.

General Linux Statistics

• The Linux kernel has around 27.8 million lines of code in its Git repository
• In 2019, 100% of the world’s supercomputers run on Linux
• Android holds the highest OS market share with 38.9%
• 96.3% of the world’s top 1 million servers run on Linux
• Of the top 25 websites in the entire world, only 2 websites aren’t running on Linux
• Linux was launched on September 17, 1991

Linux Usage Statistics

• 85% of all smartphones are based on Linux
• The Linux market share on desktop is 1.89%
• Linux holds a 1.19% market share of operating systems in Europe
• In the U.S., the operating system market share for Linux is 0.96%
• In the U.K., the Linux market share drops to 0.62%
• In 2018, the number of Linux games available on Steam reached 4,060
• 95% of the servers that run the world’s top 1 million domains are powered by Linux
• In 2018, 25.3% of professional developers used Linux
• In 2019, 54.1% of professional developers used Linux
• 83.1% of developers claim that they prefer to work on Linux as opposed to other operating systems

Linux Demographic Statistics

• Of users using Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, 22.3% are in the U.S.
• 59% of people using Ubuntu use the English language
• 98% use amd64 OS architecture
• In 2016, 10.5% of the developer population were women
• Of the Linux kernel git population, 9% are women
• The countries that use Linux the most are India, Russia, and Cuba
• Utah and Canada in the U.S. prefer Linux to other states

Linux Code Statistics

• Systemd now has nearly 1.3 million lines of code
• There were nearly 75,000 code commits to the kernel during 2019
• The top contributors by email domain were Intel and Red Hat
• The top contributing individuals were Linus Torvalds, with 3.19% of the commits
• There were 4,189 different contributors overall in 2019
• Systemd had 43,000 commits in 2019
• The top contributor was Yu Watanabe with 26.94% of the commits

Interesting Linux Facts

• 90% of Hollywood’s special effects are made on Linux
• 90% of the public cloud workload runs on Linux
• Every major space program uses Linux
• 96.3% of the world’s top 1 million servers run on Linux
• Sony’s PS4 runs on Orbis OS, which is developed on a Linux-based kernel
• In 2018, 75.16% of smartphones worldwide ran on Linux

References

• https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all
• https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/06/linux_2020_kernel_systemd_code/
• https://itsfoss.com/linux-runs-top-supercomputers/
• https://www.alexa.com/topsites
• https://www.zdnet.com/article/can-the-internet-exist-without-linux/
• https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/cloud-computing-statistics/
• http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/934972/india-linux-share-in-desktop-os-market/
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/761434/number-linux-games-steam/
• https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-market-share/
• https://haydenjames.io/81-percent-smartphones-powered-by-linux/
• https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-developers-primary-operating-systems
• https://w3techs.com/technologies/comparison/os-linux,os-windows
• https://www.linuxfoundation.org/2017-linux-kernel-report-landing-page/
• http://events17.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/Gender-diversity_analysis_of_technical_contributions_in_the_Linux_Kernel__3__speakerdeck.pdf
• https://princessleia.com/journal/2010/11/its-official-over-5-of-ubuntu-members-are-women/
• https://royal.pingdom.com/linux-popularity-across-the-globe/
• https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/interesting-facts-about-linux
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-share-held-by-mobile-operating-systems-since-2009/
• https://aws.amazon.com/what-is-aws/