It seems like Linux is only installed by three hackers or geeks, that is to say, a minority. But it turns out that it is an immense minority, and I emphasize how immense it is, since it is being used by more users than apparently seen in some statistical studies based on the queries of operating systems to certain web pages in certain geographical areas and that they do not represent the whole current picture well.
For example, if you do that survey In the United States, where Windows is triumphant and there is a large following of Apple, the polls will be very unfavorable for Linux. On the other hand, that same survey is carried out in China, one of the most populated countries and where Linux is present in the majority of computers, the result would be very different and favorable for the penguin platform. On the other hand, neither in one case nor in the other we are throwing real data.
What we already have to be clear about is that in Linux servers it sweeps, and in supercomputers it is around 98%, in mobile telephony not to mention that Android is the leader (not only in mobile devices, but it is the most used OS in the world) and it is based on Linux, the IoT, etc., and we only have to check the desktop sector. It is paradoxical that Linux was created for the desktop sector and that is the only sector where it falters, sweeping the rest for which it was not created. This gives an idea of its versatility and flexibility to adapt to everything ...
Well, the guys at SUSE have carried out a new study in 2016 and have released interesting data, since they assure that they are already 86 million users on the desktop. From 1991 when the only user was Linus Torvalds until 2016, that is, in 25 years it has increased to exceed the 86M that SUSE talks about, a quite important feat considering the depth of Windows and Mac in this sector.