@HopperMCS @rher @Zergling_man GNU/Linux is in use directly by at least a 500 million people - unfortunately most people don't even realize that they're using it, as people tell them it's "just Linux" and written "just for fun by Linus";
https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-users-never-heard-of-gnu.html
https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html

There is no precise way to determine how many GNU/Linux desktop users there are, as it doesn't spy on the users.


~5.5 billion people use GNU/Linux indirectly via all the routers on the internet and all the webservers and all the other important servers that need to work that run GNU/Linux.

GNU/Linux greatly assisted getting the internet to work and to scale (the internet couldn't possibly have gotten as big as it is now if routers ran fully proprietary OS's, that cannot be easily fixed, or at all, that have a per install cost) and also consider the GNU Zebra BGP implementation.


Have a landline phone or a fax line? That's most likely served by asterisk (or degenerately a proprietary version) on GNU/Linux.

Have a mobile phone? That's most likely served by asterisk on GNU/Linux and the computers that control the mobile towers likely run GNU/Linux too.

Android wouldn't have been possible without GNU, too bad Android doesn't include GNU, to prevent the users from having freedom.

Access any popular website? That's usually being served from Apache or nginx or lighttpd, running on GNU/Linux.

I can keep going, but it's only really useful if I was to go into the specifics.


All free software depends on the solid rock of GNU libraries and GNU software like GCC, GNU autotools and GNU make etc.


Yet, few people have heard of this wonderful fully free OS (could it be because a proprietary agenda pushes the idea of "Linux" hard, so people never end up learning of the existence of GNU, or get the wrong idea as to what it is about).