Network scans find Linux is growing on business desktops, laptops
- Reference: 1754477111
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/06/lansweeper_finds_linux_growth_on/
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Lansweeper finds a lot of CentOS Linux out there [1]READ MORE
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.
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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.
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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.
[5]Fungus-inspired Linux hack gives Amiga a Doom-only brain
[6]When hyperscalers can't safeguard one nation's data from another, dark clouds are ahead
[7]NetBSD 11 prepares for launch with 57 supported platforms
[8]Antivirus vendors fail to spot persistent, nasty, stealthy Linux backdoor
There is the infamous case of the German city of Munich, which has [9]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 [10]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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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/06/lansweeper_centos/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJN8CdJAbqbT_UXxyh6_OgAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJN8CdJAbqbT_UXxyh6_OgAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aJN8CdJAbqbT_UXxyh6_OgAAAIk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/06/cordoomceps/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/04/when_hyperscalers_cant_safeguard_one/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/05/netbsd_11_is_near/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/05/plague_linux_backdoor/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2004/08/12/munich_oss_still_on/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/26/lyon_leaving_microsoft/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Coluld be good, could be bad
> Android is not short of attacks and that's basically Linux
"Basically" Linux, insofar as it uses a (modified) Linux kernel. But how many of those exploited Android vulnerabilities are actually kernel vulnerabilities?
You may be correct about the attack surface issue, but then again doesn't Linux already present a massive -- and, you'd have thought, tempting -- attack surface in, e.g., the server, networking and IOT domains?
Re: Coluld be good, could be bad
Android handset manufacturers are responsible for their own system updates. The prevalence of vulnerabilities often comes down to manufacturers not pushing updates in a timely manner, if at all.
Most reputable Linux distros (for desktop or laptop) push updates quite fast - on average, much faster than Windows equivalents.
Re: Coluld be good, could be bad
And the updates install a LOT more quickly, and painlessly, than Windows. How often do you need to reboot linux after updates? - probably once every couple of months, with most updates just installing in the background. I only have one Windows instance, it runs in a linux-hosted VM. My wife has some specialist software that will only run under MS, drives me crazy when it's doing it's "...please do not turn off" business. Must say though, it does seem quite stable in a VM!
Re: Creative counting
Years ago Microsoft said Windows was more secure than Linux because it needed fewer security updates per year. They achieved this important statistic by delaying all security updates until next Tuesday.
Can't wait to see the figures...
After Win10 becomes EOL...
Linux Desktop at work
So far my only experience of using Linux in a work desktop environment, was a very positive one.
This was a few years ago now, I was working in a UK government office (as a consultant), along with a small team of Java developers (also from the same consultancy). Can't say which uk gov department, or any specifics of what we were delivering.
We'd been brought in to do some software development, specifically Java, I was acting as lead dev/designer (plus help with things like building local scripted/automated test environments for unit testing).
When we got there, we were supplied with client provided laptops (nothing unusual there), but it turned out these all had Ubuntu installed, which was a first for us!
I was already familiar with Linux myself, I'd used various flavours at home for years (including Ubuntu), desktop, servers, header-less etc, and I'd cut my teeth on AIX boxes years earlier, so this was a pleasant surprise for me. But it turned out no one else on our team had ever touched Linux desktop before, or even command line on servers etc. (We were almost entirely Windows back then, including servers).
But it seems the client had pushed adoption of Open Source. So all Laptops and servers were Linux, all tooling (build/deploy/manage etc) was OSS, although they did still use Outlook for email (this MS usage was gov wide, whereas OSS was specific to just this department). Outlook etc was via the web versions.
I became the defaco Linux SME for the team, and walked them through the differences compared to Windows etc. (It's also how I ended up doing all the automation side of things, as I was already familiar with things like shell scripting etc).
Within a few days, the whole team had adapted to using Linux, with the devs realising that many of the tools they'd used via a bit of a cludge under Windows, were just native under Linux. Even the IDE the team used (one of the Eclipse based ones) was also Linux native, so no learning curve there.
About 6 months later, when the project came to a close, the team were actually sad to see their Linux laptops having to go back!
This is so far, unfortunately, my only experience of Linux desktop in a professional environment, in over two and a half decades!
Maybe the real year of the Linux desktop was the friends we made along the way.
Security
No one should be surprised. Historically *nix was a multi-user system where even in the 60's you worried about could a different user on the system access your files, could a user bring down the system by being a resource pig, ... Windows began as a PC (Personal being the operative word) that initially did not even support networking. Well, sneakernet. It was kind of a big deal in the early 90's I think it was when cards started getting available for microsoft PC's to get on the LAN. So not surprised a system that was never designed to be secure has had trouble while a system designed to be secure has better security.
Can you say "Windows Recall"?
The fact there is no easy way to turn that thing off for real is a security nightmare.
Coluld be good, could be bad
"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...
The paucity of attacks on Linux systems is probably as much to do with the relatively small attack surface as any inherent security in Linux. If the market penetration significantly increases expect the naughty people to put more effort into finding Linux attack vectors. Android is not short of attacks and that's basically Linux so a few of those bad folk already have the right sort of experience.
Or maybe not, I try not to be overly cynical, but in the world today that seems to be an impossible and pointless task.