Ubuntu or Mint

Probably depends how you define things. Like, is Xubuntu Xubuntu or Ubuntu with Xfce included by default? How much change is necessary before it's not "debian with added bits"?

I guess GNU/Linux, musl+busybox/Linux in not really popular

I think a lot of people just got trolled in this thread.

Ubuntu for sure, about every companies I worked at were using Ubuntu as main dev. And now in the new company I work for, it's WSL2 in Windows, using Ubuntu too.

Only non-Ubuntu I used in companies was CentOS.

So pretty sure Ubuntu is the most popular/used.

Ubuntu 100%, if you count how many distros are ubuntu based (and collaterally debian based), but I believe it is the most used one even if you only count official ubuntu releases

Maybe arch would be quite high, if you count the steamdeck as desktop (maybe), and the big increase on arch users in the past couple of years (wen't from being rare to 1 in 3 users saying "I use arch btw")

Chrome OS.

If we are talking about desktop PCs, maybe Ubuntu, but based these reports it's Arch.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam%3Fplatform%3Dlinux&ved=2ahUKEwjdg9iH-d2FAxXjppUCHVjoCJUQjjh6BAgbEAE&usg=AOvVaw208M9_ZU0zQ2BXwz8ei5Oa

https://youtu.be/8V8uQbIFlh0?si=Zc-AG7Ojf1V0y8sT

There is not a reliable way to determine that, by design.

PC deez nuts

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/?ref=itsfoss.com#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system says for developers: Ubuntu, then WSL, then Debian, then everything else, then Arch, then...

Android also has personal use that ranks higher than WSL but professional use that ranks a tiny bit higher than Debian. Not sure if it's a Linux distro, but it's tangential.

@AprilF00lz@lemmy.ml pretty difficult as there are no accurate figures for Linux distro installs - many sit behind home or corporate firewalls, sharing the same IP addresses.

But back in 2015 Dell was claiming that 42% of their PC sales in China had their Kylin OS installed - https://www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/1857948/chinese-os-last-more-40-cent-dell-pcs-china-now-running-homegrown. Kylin has been improving for 23 years now so is a pretty stable Linux OS too I guess.

If you count Ubuntu and all disto's base on it as one, then it would top the list.

define "most popular" please

for instance https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity, does that metric fit your definition?

Anyway whatever the answer it doesn't really matters, at the end of the day it is always Linux anyway, regardless of package manager, desktop environment or init.

I'd just warn you against Ubuntu, because its company Canonical is behaving a lot like a young Microsoft these days.

Thst depends in a lot of things.

What do you mean with "PC"? Is a smartphone a PC? Is a steamdeck a PC? The Laptop of a government employee? A Raspberry Pi? What about a TV-box or an e-reader?

Because if you mean in general on non-server hardware it's probably some weird Chinese/indian fork for their government PCs.

Otherwise it could be Arch due to the steam decks, but then again it depends on how tightly you define "distribution". As others have mentioned, is Xubuntu their own distribution or does it count as Ubuntu? What is Mint/Pop!_OS?

But no matter what, it's not MX Linux.

Amongst Steam users, the most popular desktop distros are:

• Arch Linux 64 bit 7.66% -0.49%
• Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS 64 bit 5.54% +5.54%
• Linux Mint 21.3 64 bit 3.77% +0.21%
• Manjaro Linux 64 bit 3.42% +0.07%
• Other 29.41% -1.37%

According to a recent survey.

PC-BSD