I still wonder how they can know that reliably.

elf/linux distros are hardly pre-installed on PCs and forced upon users.

Looks like they track site traffic. [1]

> Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 1.5 million sites globally. These sites cover various activities and geographic locations. Every month, we record billions of page views to these sites. For each page view, we analyse the browser/operating system/screen resolution used and we establish if the page view is from a mobile device. For our search engine stats, we analyze every page view referred by a search engine. For our social media stats, we analyze every page view referred by a social media site. We summarize all this data to get our Global Stats information.

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology

> I still wonder how they can know that reliably.

I think the general conclusion is that they don't know it reliably; notice the other comments in this thread pointing out that the numbers jump up and down more or less every time they're measured.

FTA

>According to the latest StatCounter Global Stats for June 2025, Linux now holds 5.03% of the desktop operating system market share in the United United States of America. This is fantastic news!