Hey everyone, so, I’ve been digging into something that’s been bugging me for a while now – just how many ladies are actually using Linux? You know, it’s 2023, and we’re all about tech and stuff, but it still feels like a boys’ club sometimes. So I decided to roll up my sleeves and figure this out.
First off, I hit up the usual spots – you know, Reddit, Stack Overflow, and some other forums where the techies hang out. I was just poking around, reading posts, and trying to get a feel for the general vibe. What I found was pretty interesting – lots of folks are asking the same question, like “What percentage of Linux users are female?” Most answers were just guesses, though. Some said 10%, others were like, “Maybe 20%?” It was all over the place.
Then, I started looking for actual surveys. I mean, who doesn’t love a good survey, right? I stumbled upon a few that were trying to figure out the whole Linux user demographics thing. One survey, I think it was about Ubuntu, said that most people found it “easy” or “very easy” to install. That’s cool, but it didn’t really answer my question about the gender split.
I also found some stuff about women’s contributions to the Linux kernel. It was pretty neat – something about women making up around 9.9% of the population and being responsible for 6.8% of the activity. I was like,”Hey, that’s something!”
But then, I went back to those forum threads, and it was a bit of a mixed bag. Some were saying, “Yeah, there are tons of women in Linux!” and others were more like, “Nah, it’s probably less than 1% in some distributions.” There was this one comment that stuck with me, though. It was talking about trans folks in the Linux community, and it got me thinking about how we even define these categories. Like, someone said, “trans male is ftm because trans men are men, trans fem is mtf.” It’s complex, you know?
So, after all this digging, what’s the conclusion? Honestly, I’m not sure I have a solid number. It feels like it’s somewhere between 10% and 20%, but that’s a big range. And it probably depends on what part of the Linux world you’re looking at. Plus, there’s the whole question of how we’re even counting and who’s identifying as what. It is way more complex than I thought going into this.
I guess the big takeaway here is that there are definitely women and non-binary folks in the Linux community, and their contributions are super important. But we’ve still got a long way to go in terms of understanding the real numbers and making sure everyone feels welcome. I did find that Windows is still king of the OS hill, with 73% of users on desktop and laptop, followed by Apple’s macOS at 15%, then Linux at 4.5%.
Anyway, that’s my little adventure in trying to figure out the percentage of female Linux users. It’s been a bit of a wild ride, but I think it’s an important conversation to keep having. If any of you have more insights or data, I’m all ears! Let’s keep this discussion going.