Most Popular Computer Operating Systems 1985 - 2024

These are the most popular computer operating systems from 1985 to 2024, based on market share. The latest numbers from 2003 on are readily available from Wikipedia and Statcounter. The first half of the video required a bit more research, which entailed finding and converting sales figures into market share. These numbers may be different based on what OSes are included in the stats, this is why different videos have slightly different numbers.

[kholeu]

The MS-DOS comeback at the end was pretty unexpected

[lankimanc]

LINUX! 💪🏼 Never lost and coming back strong.

[jeremybach]

Ms dos in 2000: I will be back. Ms dos in 2024: I’m back.

[kumarnkvc]

6:26 Vista gets beaten by MS-DOS. Most satisfying 😂

[charlesballard]

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for WinXP. It was just a STABLE operating system in my experience. And so many great games were written for it.

[jantack]

The ups and downs of Linux surprised me:
2005 > 2%,
2008 > 2.5%,
2011 < 1%,
2018 > 2%
2023 > 3%
2024 prob. > 4%
I am already looking forward to the Linux reaching the 5% mark in the next 2 years.

[napnip]

Switched to Linux a few years back and have never regretted it. Right now running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and it's running surprisingly stable for a rolling release.

[r.a.]

Currently using 7
XP filled my teenage years
98 made my childhood
And was old enough to see 3.11

[NagaDoesContent]

that 0.2% of MS-DOS people:
"I ALWAYS COMEBACK"
edit: 1 MONTH AND WE ARE CLOSE TO 1K LETS GO BOYS
other edit: yey 1k likes tysm!

[cyberkiller]

Windows 2000 was my most beloved operating system.

[Kennyov]

Thank you for leaving behind the information on the names of all the music pieces used in this video. That is, all of them except the best one which is the first.

[CapnCoconuts]

> 3.9% market share

The year of the Linux desktop is coming, my friends

[richardlincoln]

Amiga O/S was up there - programming for it, you started at address $4 - the only guaranteed address, then used that to ask the O/S for more functionality which was loaded dynamically.
It seemed like magic in the late 80s, coming from the C64 which was basically a list of routines at fixed memory addresses.

[vaclavkrpec]

This is the realm of PC (broadly speaking). If you’d look at the numbers in the cases of all installations (including handhelds, wearables, servers, VMs, Docker images and especially cloud-based runtime envs), you’d see a very different picture.

[HarkoretoDaBone-nfff]

The 90s was the golden era of personal computing. I'm so glad to get the chance of experiencing it. It helped me to keep up with all the technology changes.

[D_Greg_D]

Used Windows for all of my life. Went to Linux in April 2023 and I have no reason to come back, it works perfectly.

[bsjdjs]

Note- this is desktop market share timeline only

[whohan]

I just love it when (rather detailed) usage and vending stats go into the compilation of such videos. Soothing

[DMoneySmooth]

For me, it was the AmigaOS. Introduced me to video production with Newtek’s Video Toaster. Some of you might be more knowledgeable than I am, but I think that Amiga/Newtek connection lives on today. Amiga/Newtek did the Video Toaster Card, Newtek then did the Video Toaster System, Newtek then did the TriCaster, now Vizrt has the TriCaster Hardware and Software…. Now everyone has some type of “Creator” software (Procreate, Final Cut Pro, VideoStudio Pro, DaVinci Resolve, etc.). Certainly made an industry, too bad Commodore didn’t see the benefits.

[jeffcook]

It's amazing to see how much of a juggernaut DOS was for so long. Add onto that all the Win 3.x installations that needed DOS. I remember my copy of Win95 needed to 'see' that you had DOS so I had to feed it a DOS 6.22 floppy to let it finish installation.