Is the era of Windows dominance coming to an end?

Whenever possible I like to use Linux software on all of my PCs. Many of my colleagues also have a similar preference and so I would consider it quite normal for people to choose Linux as a desktop operating system in preference to Windows. However, I do realise that my world view might be slightly skewed and Windows might still be the overwhelming favourite operating system in the real world.

I wrote before , that Google Analytics tells me that roughly a quarter of the readers of my blog are using Linux, but this is a small and unrepresentative sample. I recently received a newsletter from the Google Analytics team where they analyse data from hundreds of thousands of sites (including mine) which have enabled anonymous data sharing.

The following table summarises their statistics about the relative popularity of various operating systems at the start of this year as compared with the year before. I assume it is probably typical of the Internet as a whole.

% Visits from OS	Nov/09 - Feb/10	Nov/10 - Feb/11	Difference
Windows	89.9%	84.8%	-5.1%
Macintosh	4.5%	5.2%	+0.7%
Linux	0.6%	0.7%	+0.1%
Other	5%	9.3%	+4.3%

You can see that the percentage of people using Windows is indeed going down (even if it is still the lions share of the market at about 85%). What is interesting is that most people are not moving to Linux or Macintosh, but are moving to "Other". I suspect that this is mainly a reflection in the increasing number of people using various mobile devices to access the Internet.

I think that this is great news, because variety is very important for the health of the Internet.