JayzTwoCents, a channel with over 4 million subscribers, released a video about replacing Windows with Linux on a gaming PC. This garnered over 1 million views between July 9th (original release date) and July 16th (today’s date as of writing) on a channel that typically gets between 100k and 500k views per video.
This may suggest that there is an audience of, at minimum, 500k+ people who clicked on the video for Linux and not for the channel itself.
Its the Year of Linux again, its finally getting the attention it deserves. Until next year when another Year of Linux when it’ll get even more attention.
It’s interesting how every YouTuber is simultaneously getting more techy this year (or I am just noticing it more since PewDiePie switched to Linux). I just watched a Hank Green video about HTTP status codes 
I think people are starting to learn about enshittification and why it’s happening and how tech and the tech companies behind enable it to everyone’s detriment.
People are starting to have enough already and it’s about time if you ask me.
You’re delusional if you think Desktop Linux in its current state will ever catch on with the average user. If you do not understand why, you either have no offline or “normal” friends (coworkers do not count).
There will be more videos like this in the near future because YouTubers are not very creative when it comes to new video ideas, so they just copy what popular channels do (e.g. pewdiepie).
Don’t send me that "5% of Web users use Linux now” link without showing me the exact user-agent breakdown of that survey.
I don’t think Linux is going to dominate any time soon, especially not in the professional world.
But I think a lot more people are starting to realize that if they only really need a browser Linux is more than enough.
And a lot of people technical enough to build and set up their own gaming PC are also starting to realize that they can still play most of the games they care about without issue on Linux.
Paired with more privacy invasive practices on a more privacy aware population frustrated at being forced to switch away from something they’re used to and like. It’s starting to nudge people.
The big question is, is that growth sustainable.
There are also security concerns given that Linux anti-virus essentially doesn’t exist in personal computing.
Honestly the biggest barrier has nothing to do with the usability of linux. It’s just that if you go to a store to buy a computer, it’s not going to have linux preinstalled. And the average user simply is not going to learn to install their own OS or even understand that that is something you can do.
I don’t think anyone here thinks it’s overtaking Windows any time soon. Did you not catch that the first reply was a joke? “The year of the Linux desktop” is a meme.
I’d agree big tech YouTubers tend to be boring, but pretending like the growth of Linux has nothing to do with it is just cope IMO. Linux wasn’t this good not too long ago, it makes sense it’s beginning to get more attention now. Even new gaming consoles are often using Steam OS or Bazzite.
Are you saying Statcounter is flawed? I won’t disagree since I’m only vaguely familiar with the methodology but I’d love for you to elaborate on if it’s just bots or if there’s other issues. Either way there are various other sources that give us indications to the size of desktop Linux users and its growth. Linux is even more popular than macOS among (most) gamers. There’s no need to be so aggressively contrarian, it’s okay for us to take a small W.