Network Scans Find Linux Is Growing On Business Desktops, Laptops
It might not be the year of the Linux desktop just yet, but ongoing cyberattacks and a general desire for a more secure posture are driving some businesses to the way of the penguin, according to asset manager Lansweeper.
On the face of it, the movements appear small. Lansweeper’s scans of its customers’ networks show Linux usage on business endpoints (desktops and laptops) climbing from 1.6 percent in January 2025 to 1.9 percent in June. On assets that appear for the first time after March 1, 2025, usage reached 2.5 percent.
However, considering that the results were pulled from a pool of approximately 18.5 million devices (14 million consumer devices and 3.5 million business machines), the change is more than just a rounding error.
The change is also not a linear one. Lansweeper CTO, Guido Patanella, told The Register that the trend was more along the lines of exponential. Not a blip, but in Patanella’s words: “I think there will be a continuous acceleration.”
Although the impending demise of Windows 10 might be a factor in some decisions, Patanella reckons the driver is security. “It is certainly more down to the hardening of systems,” he told us, pointing to cybersecurity concerns and a seemingly relentless increase in vulnerabilities. To be clear, Linux is not immune to vulnerabilities (and has had its fair share of howlers), but Patanella said that “an exponential growth of … threats and attacks [was] creating nervousness in IT organizations responsible for security.
And then, of course, there are the engineers who prefer to use Linux on the desktop. Patanella noted that another driver was aligned with “DevOps-related activities” and technology development overall.
The growth, according to Lansweeper, is still gradual, although it will accelerate if Patanella’s prediction turns out to be correct. Europe is slightly ahead of North America in terms of Linux adoption. However, there are outliers – Business Services and Government show significantly higher Linux adoption in Europe compared to North America. At the same time, Technology & Telecommunications stands out with almost 7 percent Linux adoption in North America.
While Linux might rule the roost in the datacenter, things are a little different when it comes to the desktop. Here, software compatibility, training, and familiarity are priorities. While Linux has made significant strides in recent years, the Windows and Mac worlds still have considerable traction with users.
There is the infamous case of the German city of Munich, which has flip-flopped between Linux and Windows over the last few decades. More recently, other organizations have begun to take the open source option more seriously. The French city of Lyon, for example, recently decided to move from Microsoft to open source office and collaboration tools.
Lansweeper’s figures suggest that Linux may be poised to make significant inroads into the private and public sectors. Rather than a desire to embrace open source, the driving factor is a need to harden an organization’s security posture. ®
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