More than 250 million computers are sold each year and NetMarketShare reports that 2.87 percent - roughly 7.2 million users - are using those computers to run Linux. Once thought of as a niche IT crowd, this user base of data scientists, developers, application engineers, scientists and more is growing - stepping into sought-after roles across multiple industries and becoming essential within their companies. Now, I'm excited to share Lenovo is moving to certify the full workstation portfolio for top Linux distributions from Ubuntu and Red Hat - every model, every configuration.

While many users prefer to customize their own machines - either on hardware without an OS or by wiping an existing client OS, then configuring and installing Linux - this can raise uncertainty with system stability, restricted performance, compatibility, end-user productivity and even IT support for devices. Now that these users are making their way out of the proverbial shadows and onto the enterprise floor, the demand is high for an out-of-the-box solution that removes the barrier for deployment of enterprise-grade hardware within a Linux software ecosystem.

Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system has historically been rising in market share thanks to the slow depreciation of Windows 7 OS, and Microsoft's efforts to push it as only Windows OS available for desktop users. However, according to the information by NetMarketShare, a company providing statistics about the market share of Internet Technologies (browsers and OSes), Windows 10 has seen a decrease in market share. This news is a surprising discovery, given that the OS is expected to be gaining new market share slowly, given that Windows 7 has reached the end of life in January.

From 57.37% of market share in February, Windows 10 got down to 57.34% in March and 56.08% in April. While this may seem just like a few percentage decrease, given the massive amount of PCs available, it can be counted in thousands. What could be the reason behind this is the current COVID-19 related pandemic and slower demand for office PCs, as everyone is working from home now. This was a big growth sector for Windows 10 as the previous version of Windows, the 7, was very popular in office space before its EoL. Of course, this is just a speculation which you should take with a big grain of salt. Some of the interesting things to point out is that Ubuntu, a Linux kernel based operating system, has massively increased its market share from 0.27% in March to 1.89% in April.

According to web analytics company StatCounter, January 2018 was the year of the OS world's "flippening" - where Windows 10 finally surpassed the old, trusty Windows 7 in users' systems. According to the firm, Windows 10 in January was present in 42.78% of the worldwide desktop market share, just a hair above Windows 7's 41.86%. Windows 8.1 stands as the ugly duckling, with only 8.72 percent of the market still holding on to that OS.

Now, granted, one analytics company does not a trend make; there are a myriad of factors that might explain discrepancies between different companies' estimates. however, the fact remains that this is the first time Windows 10 is reported to have surpassed Windows 7 in terms of pure number of live systems. Also to take into account is that even in analytics firms that don't display these results, Windows 10 is clearly gaining traction against Windows 7 - one needs only look at the trendlines for both OSes on NetMarketShare, for instance, to see that there's a clear, positive momentum for WIndows 10 when compared to Windows 7. It's only a matter of time until all firms report the same, really. Still, this news comes years later than what Microsoft had hoped for with Windows 10; adoption of the OS hasn't been quite as predicted by the company. Still, Microsoft's ongoing work on the software, clear roadmap and support efforts seem to be paying off.