Linux holds a market share of approximately 14% in India.

That's because even a grey market Windows key costs US$20 nowadays and that's over ₹1,600. For comparison purposes, the largest Indian banknote is ₹500.

Windows Activation Scripts are free 😉
- ...but not legal. Being poor doesn't necessarily mean you're inclined to break the law. Besides, Linux is useful if you perhaps want to later get a job in the tech field.
- why go through the trouble when linux is free?
- Is this real and safe? Why is Microsoft letting it be hosted on their own platform?
  
  I looked at the code but the "single file version" is 10377 lines of Batch. They want me to do the power shell equivalent of curl abc.com | bash. The official website looks legit but I have no idea if this is safe or how they're doing it.
Do you have to pay for Windows still? I thought they made it free to download
- While it is free to download it, the license still costs. Though they seem to let you use it unlicensed for an unlimited amount of time with some restrictions (like not being able to change the background image and an ever present watermark). At least this was true for windows 10. No telling if/when they will drop that feature though, especially if loads of people start using it unlicensed like that (though I doubt that has any effect on people using it that way or not).
- Only for existing users+machines who are upgrading. New machines gotta pay up.
No largest note was ₹2000 but just recently it got banned maybe government likely going to launch new notes?
- Was, but no longer is. It is officially discontinued, making the ₹500 note the largest for now. I would expect the Government to quickly launch a new large-denomination note. India is still a largely cash society and the largest note being worth 6 USD is surely going to be inconvenient for everyday citizens.
People activate windows? Most of the pcs that i have seen using windows are not activated

Hopefully people in India are spreading the world of Linux. Blessed they be.

I hear even the cows run Linux. They only peer into Windows from time to time.

Is that why India has the best programmers?

nope. that's why India has a lot of sweatshops and our assholes of western managers exploit them.

It's a little puzzling to me that Linux isn't popular in low-income countries. Why wouldn't it be the OS of choice there? Do we need to become linux missionaries? I imagine it would be easier to convince people who can't buy an iPhone to use FLOSS than those who can drive to an Apple Store and waddle over to get yet another one.

Probably because it has to compete with piracy there, not with Microsoft and Adobe and such.
- ironically enough i think microsoft (at least until very recently) has had a very lenient stance on piracy exactly because of this
  
  piracy is the key to the consumer market in developing countries, consumer market is the key to enterprise (where the actual money lies)
- I remember switching to linux because windows was shit and because I was afraid of getting caught using pirated warez. Is there no fear of that there?
Puzzling? Windows comes preinstalled or can be pirated. Also, it's popular, Linux isn't. No puzzle on sight.
Same as any other country, people use what’s preinstalled

However following that trend Chrome OS and Android have really boosted Linux’s numbers
They know little about open source. Microsoft is exclusively in schools and government, and that is what they grow up with. They probably know more about pirating Windows, than using Linux legally. There is also a good kick-back in terms of MS license mark-ups for middle-men businesses. One would hope there is some mandatory education around different OSs as I'm sure kids would love to explore and modify software.
- It feels like those kinds of countries are perfect targets for linux and FLOSS.
Two reasons, low income means no culture of paying for software, and easily corrupted government and administrations which companies like Microsoft have no problem taking advantage of to push their products to city halls, schools, hospitals, universities etc.
I don't think many people buy windows, laptops already comes with it and ones how can build a pc already know how to get windows for free, as far as iPhone goes, why would any one choose floss if they can't afford iPhone? They usually choose Google services
They don't choose. Choice is something to make when people have enough time and resource. Instead they use what they are familiar with and have little time to grab and learn a new thing.
Free software comes with an implicit cost while pirated Windows doesn't, ironically.

Also have no idea why Windows share dropped so low in April 2023. Perhaps some Windows update caused them to be recognized as unknown device

I read somewhere that was caused by linux-based botnet ddos or something like that. So windows share didnt drop but linux share significantly increased.
Maybe something with the hwid activation?
I do remember reading India declaring a switch for government computers a while back. So maybe that?
- That would be a permanent increase /decrease.

Say the line bart!

This will be the year of the Linux desktop

I find the concept of 'market share' applied to FOSS projects quite confusing.

What's confusing to you? If Linux has higher desktop use, wouldn't it bring more and better quality apps and games.
- I would assume that “market share” is related to the relative number of units sold/number of active subscriptions/fraction of total sales in terms in revenue, or some similar metric. I run a variety of different distributions on servers (bare metal, VMs and containers) and desktop computers. Do they all count equally? Without giving it more thought, I wouldn’t even know how to determine the market share of Ubuntu in my own home in a sensible way.
  
  With Windows, I can just count the number of active licenses. Oh wait, its zero.
- For once, Redhat and Suse do have market share, because they are companies. Other distros not so much. Then the reliability of the numbers, since you can only guess it from downloads and useragents.
- But that will also bring the problems that Linux is supposed to be safe from.

I am contributing to this number by installing Ubuntu Linux on my relatives old laptops.

Do Mint
- Actually It is Lubuntu with LXDE.

A lot of people are comparing windows to linux, but windows worldwide has only about 70% market share.

There are way less mac os and chrome os users than worldwide

I'm not sure adblockers change the OS they report. Other tools I know for a fact do it.

Edit: However, as @[email protected] mentions, adblockers don't have to change what OS is reported to change the overall statistics. They explain how in a comment below.

There are also other ways to fingerprint a derive based on how your cpu renders the html canvas.

Content management doesn't affect usage numbers. I think it has to more with user agent switching

And 12% in Norway

You can identify OS without an adblocker it's usually in the user agent

Citation needed for "most Linux users use adblockers"

I feel like if you're techie enough to use Linux, then you'll figure out that ublock origin is a thing