On steam linux has already passed the market share of windows… 7.
This may lead to people looking for options. That is good for the competition.
Linux may be ready to receive some of the users. Not in all areas. There is still work to be done. Unfortunately the users want to change now so it may be to other OS. Maybe MAC or Chrome OS. Unfortunately there is no easy transition or as camping for moving to Linux, like double click this .exe and migration begins.
I moved to Fedora with KDE but that was only possible due to I am a power user. Average Joe will fail and find suitable replacement applications takes time.
I hope some companies with money takes the opportunity to take care of those lost souls. Maybe Red har have money for TV ads?
Everyone migrates to Ubuntu. One finger of the monkey’s paw curls up.
I decided to set up Fedora on my new laptop as it was either take a chance on that or spend like 3 hours debloating a Win11 install.
It’s been over 10 years since I last tried dailying Linux, we have come a long way in that time. Everything just worked out of the box. No fucking around needed.
Even relatively niche stuff like my thunderbolt dock and the laptop’s fingerprint sensor was picked up. And, thanks to the investment Valve has been putting into Wine and Proton, pretty much every game I’ve tried has worked with no issue.
Next time my desktop is due for a clean install I’ll definitely be doing the same there.
frankly, windows reinstalling stuff and changing settings to what they wanted every time it updated is why I left.
Ah, yes, the mythical “Year of the Linux Desktop”—that elusive utopia Linux enthusiasts have been chasing since it’s creation. Newsflash: nobody cares. The year of the Linux desktop isn’t some grand global awakening; it’s just whenever you decide to stop whining about it and install the thing. For me, it was 2002, and guess what? My computer didn’t care either. It just worked. So stop waiting for some cosmic alignment of market share and app support. The year of the Linux desktop is when you make it. Now go forth and sudo (or doas) your destiny…
@furycd001
i use doas btwNice :)
Can you safely remove sudo and completely switch to doas? I don’t see the point having 2 pieces of software that accomplish the same task.
Personally never tried to do that myself, but I’m pretty sure its doable…
“No, golblammit! I said the year of Linux is n-” CLANG!
You mean the year of unpatched Windows 10.
As long as the browsers keep getting patches we’re all good.
You can now pay for extended updates.
It has been near for the past 15 years.
It’s the nearestest it’s ever been !!!11
Its getting nearerer!
what are 15 years for immortal linux. nothing. a blink of an eye
41 version of Fedora.
Sadly almost every average user will most likely just use windows 10 past the end and won’t bother doing anything and eventually just buy new PC in few years. Also some stuff just can’t be done on Linux for work, not that it can’t be done but had problems with people not being able to open the files that were made on Linux libre office. But personally I’ll switch to Linux for safety and try to make it daily driver.
I have solved my work problem by using the online versions of MS office and SharePoint. The desktop versions are just emulated web apps these days anyway. I have only seen MS Project (which sucks anyway) and Excel having features I needed once or twice on the desktop version vs the online version.
Try OnlyOffice it’s basically indistinguishable from Microsoft Office, and available as a flatpak
To put this in perspective, it fell by 0.48%
Windows 10 grew by 0.89%
Linux actually dropped by 0.26% in that same period.
Not that I’d be too concerned about any of that, because that’s all data from reported OS in website visits, so all those are well within the margin of error.
The year of the Linux desktop will happen when a large (EDIT: large, CONSUMER-FOCUSED AND CONSUMER-FRIENDLY) company decides to donate a remarkable amount of resources to the development and maintenance of a specific distro to make it user friendly and give it the feeling that someone who actually knows better than most users is taking care of important stuff in the background.
…Valve? 👀
Novell tried to do that with SuSE Linux in the early 2000’s and I’ve never forgiven them. Edit, AND did deals with Microsoft. Brr.
AND runs all windows programs right out of the box with no faffing about.
TBH: Most private users aren’t really using many programs. They are running chrome. Maybe an email client, but even that is declining. They are looking at pictures with the standard photo viewer and maybe at some PDFs and sometimes they are writing a letter and print it? Linux totally can do that.
Sure, but chances are if that’s your use case, you moved to a tablet years ago. Your photo storage is likely Facebook and Google Photos backup.
The casual people doggedly hanging onto PCs likely have some obscure software they need to run on it, either for work or personal use.
That’s not completely accurate. Remember, a lot of people want a full keyboard for typing; and an iPad with a keyboard is way more expensive than a mid-range Chromebook. Plus, a whole generation of students are growing up and entering the workforce having used nothing but ChromeOS for their entire middle school and high school careers; for them, a Chromebook feels very familiar.
Microsoft is VERY close to losing every install advantage they have. Gaming, corporate, devops, and government are the only use cases their leads are still in any way commanding in; and they’re fiddling while Valve puts the finishing touches on Steam OS, they’re about to lose their tenth consecutive K12 graduating class who will go into the workforce more familiar with ChromeOS than Windows, devops is increasingly moving toward web portals, and government…well, let’s face it, that’s not a particularly lucrative single game to win.
Google has already eaten Microsoft’s lunch and dinner. And now they’re about to split Windows’ breakfast with Valve. Unless they make some major changes, and quick, Microsoft is going to go into the 2030s less relevant than they’ve been in decades.
We’ve been through this before.
When Windows dropped most 32 bit support, desktop Linux had a chance just like this, but it didn’t happen then either. Unless some distro becomes a perfect 1:1 replacement for Windows on all hardware, with no changes in installation procedure. (including when it’s purchased) as well as: All software must run not only perfectly, but exactly the same, with everything from installation to every moment of use exactly the same, otherwise people will use Windows unpatched, or go out and buy new hardware.
In my opinion, the year of Linux on the desktop will only come when the desktop is abandoned, and it is no longer a commonly used platform.
Yes, it’s bleak, but we’ve been down this road before. Unless a distro becomes perfect, no significant change will come.
Scoop up that hardware being discarded, install your favorite distro (because you will be supporting it) and give it away to someone to learn Linux. There will never be a mass exodus, just install, educate, and chip away 1 user at a time.
Removed by mod
Even if there was a perfect drop in replacement it wouldn’t change anything. People bitch and moan about windows all of the time but the reason they use it is bc that’s what came with their laptop.
Reinstalling a new OS is the biggest problem, people will learn how to do things but they won’t go out of their way to do it.
Write a BadUSB script to back up their files, nuke the drive, install mint, then repopulate the files (or just leave them a free USB with their files on it to transfer back) be the change you want to see in the world!
(For legal reasons this is a joke).
Given this explanation, I am amazed I was able to use an iPad after having an android tablet. I had to pick new apps! Relearn the settings! In a different hardware!
I’m honestly proud of myself. Thanks.
I’m just pissed iPads don’t have NFC. We use one to clock in at work and it would save me time if I could create an NFC tag with my password but iPads have no NFC radio.
Look, I like Linux too, and I think governments should definitely use it to move away from Microsoft.
But as long as prebuilt PCs and laptops are sold with Windows, people will stay accustomed to it and be way more hesitant to switch. You can tell them, ‘It works just like Windows! It just looks a bit different!’ Yet their minds will still think, ‘New = scary.’ and won’t use it.
The issue for me as a potential advocate to my immediate circle of friends and family is that I don’t want to become the only source of tech support. Now realistically they’ll probably have fewer issues, but as soon as they want to fix something they’ll have to come to me. No they won’t Google things, and if they do they won’t understand it.
That was true in the past. But in the last 10 years people have stalled their PC upgrades. That’s the real reason why they don’t move to Win11, because they don’t want to buy a new PC. And that’s where Linux is going to get that market from MS.
Removed by mod
There are more devices that ship with Linux or actively advertise support for it than ever tho. Of course far from the majority, but it’s a start that you can get basically anything with Linux if you want
When new OEM PCs comes with Linux pre-installed is when stuff happens. Not before then. Windows 11 adoption will be slow cause of their exclusion of old hardware. That old hardware will be scrapped or people just keep Windows 10 on it, regardless of security warnings.
The Desktop Linux experience, with gaming and all, seems pretty close to fulfilling everyone needs at this point. But it would not surprise me if Microsoft goes around paying OEM manufacturers to not bundle anything but windows with their products.
I recently made the switch and motivated a friend who is still on win7 to go to linux. While installing and setting up his system i realised that you still need some konsole handling skills, that normal windows user not really have. To me thats normal, growing up with dos and win311, but if you started with win 2000 or later. Thats all new stuff.
I think laptops/computers that are all ready setup completely usable, should be a thing, thought.
I think that a lot of people are missing this, my first Windows was Windows XP, so I’m pretty much used to doing everything through a GUI
Same, but I learned (rather quickly mind you) enough of the CLI to get by, and continue learning to this day. I looked up a few “Bash basics” and “linux terminal basics” videos on youtube and followed along like it was a class which really helped. And whenever I have to figure out how to solve an issue I have (for instance my airpods didn’t want to connect through the GUI at first) and it gives me a CLI fix (bluetoothctl in this case) I try to remember it, or I can always go “ah fuck what was that command again…” and search it again, or I put some of those in a textfile called linuxcommands.txt that I can reference back to, or I can try
bluetoothctl -hfor help, orman bluetoothctlfor the manual for bluetoothctl (and that works with most CLI programs.) Honestly sometimes I prefer the CLI now.Now I need to learn all of the symbols and hotkeys and for loops and cool shit like that, but I’ll get there.
But it would not surprise me if Microsoft goes around paying OEM manufacturers to not bundle anything but windows with their products.
They already did that in the 90s
i dont think we’ll have any large amount of preinstalls until the anticheat problem is solved
also you are just simply lying to yourself if you think desktop linux experience is fulfilling - i force my entire family to use linux and trust me the experience is not even close to being fulfilling for everyone
Anticheat is kernel compromise. No one should be using games that use that, or OSes that allow it.
As for fulfillment, unless you need very specific apps to do your job, I’m sure it can be fulfilling with the right DE and distro. For me, I’m using Linux since 1998, and I still prefer Mint over Arch, for example. It just works.
i didnt say “we need kernel anticheat on linux” i said we need a solution for it
Probably because its not preinstalled in more hardware?
its a paradox and the manufacturers arent gonna be the ones to break it - why would they go out of their way to do linux preinstalls? they would gain literally nothing out of it (in fact they might lose money if they have a contract with ms)
Afaik don’t most of the manufacturers contract with windows requiring them to only preinstall windows?
It sounds like Valve is going to release SteamOS, so there could be a number of handhelds with Linux pre-installed soon.
Dell has done this for a while now. You just can’t buy them in store, you have to custom order them.
The windows 11 ads worked. I installed Linux a month ago and would say the transition is done and iam really happy.
Same here.
Migrated my home studio/gaming rig to Nobara this year. The only reason I have Windows still on a drive in my PC is because the sim racing titles I enjoy (mainly iRacing) use anti-cheat and I’m also a little bit scared of bricking my expensive peripherals trying to get them working on Linux. Seems like it’s very possible, but I’m still hesitant.
That said, literally every audio peripheral I have works perfect, as well as all my VSTs. Concerning gaming, the only title in my steam library that is giving me issues is Counter Strike 2 which I’m not interested in playing right now anyway.
10/10, would recommend migrating to Nobara.
Nice to her! Which vsts do you use? Sadly i stopped doing music some years ago, but i have bitwig and some bought vsts. I wondered using them will be an issue. Like if they have an installer for windows.
I had a big Waves set for a long time but I spent a year away from home with nothing but a work laptop and got used to free and stock Reaper plugins only. I enjoyed the simplicity so much that I purged my VST list down to what I was using on that laptop. I have some Aberrant DSP, Valhalla, Voxengo, among others. Some instruments too, namely Surge XT, Cardinal, GGD Drums, Vital, Redtron Mellotron, and a couple guitar sims. That’s what I can think of right now.
The plugins install via WINE just like they do on Windows, then you sync them with Yabridge for use with your DAW. It was pretty easy to get it all running.
I wonder how many people would notice if when upgrading from windows 10 to 11, windows is replaced by KDE themed to look like windows 11.
They will notice that their programs no longer work. .exe is not working. But my mom said: there is no longer any wait time at shutdown. She meant waiting for Windows update.
