this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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My guess is the increase is due to two factors: Linux based vms scraping PH content to create tensor training models for nsfw AI image generators and individuals in the U.S. visiting behind a vpn that’s registering to the client as a Linux device. I’d visit the link but I’m not behind a vpn.
User agent logging is often done by running javascript locally on a machine, so the vpn would just pass the javascript to the local machine on which it would be run, so the data wouldn't be effected that way.
Sometimes TLS fingerprinting is done to try to identify bots and not sure if bots would be included. They probably would be included because if they were blocked, then the javascript catching user would never be run on their machine, although I'm unsure of whether such bots would run useragent fingerprinting javascriot yo try to blend in or block it to avoid unneeded processing.
I don't know why your browser would report itself as a linux browser just because it's behind a proxy or VPN
Or, and hear me out, what if they actually have good engineers and know how to sanitise their analytics? And at the risk of sounding crazy, what if the reason that the Linux share is rising is because it’s genuinely becoming more popular?
Crazy talk, right?