Which Country Has the Highest Share of Linux Desktop Users?

India is a reasonable guess for the largest total number of Linux users because of its population and large technology sector. It may also rank highly by percentage, although government and enterprise Linux adoption alone doesn’t necessarily mean that the average person uses Linux as their main desktop system. Brazil and some other countries could also be strong contenders, depending on the data source and whether the comparison uses percentage or total users.

The answer depends heavily on what counts as a Linux user. Desktop market-share estimates can differ from the percentage of people who intentionally use Linux every day, and specialized systems or government deployments may not be represented accurately. A reliable comparison would need country-level survey data rather than relying only on website-visit statistics.

There probably isn’t a definitive answer because most available figures are estimates based on web traffic, not surveys of people’s primary operating systems. StatCounter can provide a rough comparison by filtering for desktop operating systems and selecting individual countries, but the numbers may be affected by bots, automated traffic, and differences in how often people browse the web from desktop computers. You’d also need to account for each country’s population and desktop-versus-mobile usage before comparing total users.