[HN Gopher] Linux desktop market share climbs to 4.45%
___________________________________________________________________
Linux desktop market share climbs to 4.45%
Author : naves
Score : 264 points
Date : 2024-08-21 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ostechnix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ostechnix.com)
| randomdata wrote:
| Nearly 6%, really. Only misreported due to a certain browser not
| including 'Linux' in its user-agent string.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| Which browser?
| randomdata wrote:
| Chrome.
| sva_ wrote:
| Chromium at least does include "Linux" in its user agent
| string.
| randomdata wrote:
| I'll take your word for it, but the source code suggests
| not on all Linux distributions:
|
| https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/2594d9f12f00ecd
| fbc...
| pantalaimon wrote:
| I get Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64)
| AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0
| Safari/537.36
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Having switched back to Linux after many years, even looking at
| Mac OS feels like poverty now. Not because of the UX or hardware
| but because of the company behind it.
| juujian wrote:
| Feels like poverty?
| dima55 wrote:
| They can't afford more mouse buttons?
| GordonS wrote:
| That'll be the "next big thing" they'll gushing about on
| stage: an incredible new mouse with TWO (2!) buttons! Of
| course, it'll be a $600 upgrade...
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Linux seems to be the only OS that makes good use of the
| middle mouse button, unfortunately many mice are not
| designed for that kind of wear on the button, so this is
| always the first to break :(
| nequo wrote:
| Maybe the thought of buying one brings up mental images of
| going broke?
|
| Decent hardware that Linux is happy with is definitely much
| cheaper than a decent MacBook.
| nawgz wrote:
| That seems like a bit of an emotionally driven non sequitur, to
| say the least!
| adamwong246 wrote:
| Poverty is not quite the right word. "Sterility" is the word I
| would use. My linux machine is a complex, fiddly beast, which I
| treat like a bonsai tree. My mac, however, gives me "dead mall
| vibes" in comparison. It's not all bad, I get more work done.
| But it certainly does not feel "alive" in the same way my linux
| machines feel.
| tmiku wrote:
| The "alive" point hits the nail on the head for me, and
| covers the full system health spectrum - my underspec'd
| homelab/project laptop certainly feels alive, in the sense
| that only things that are alive can cough up blood.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Yeah that's a better way to put it. I meant "poverty" in a
| somewhat spiritual sense, like a lack of aliveness that
| you're talking about. It is weird to talk about operating
| systems this way I guess, but it is how it feels.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| https://yotld.com
| drhagen wrote:
| How much of this is due to non-technical users simply using
| phones and tablets instead of laptops and other devices with
| "desktop" OSes?
| wmf wrote:
| So you're saying there could be a constant number of Linux
| desktop users who are a larger percentage of a shrinking
| market. I suppose anything is possible.
| kibwen wrote:
| Without knowing the methodology that StatCounter is using, the
| numbers themselves aren't especially meaningful, although a
| consistent upward trend in those numbers could be showing
| something real.
|
| In any case, ChromeOS is also Linux, so tack that on there as
| well, along with whatever portion of that 7% "unknown" that you
| think is reasonable (which could be a relatively large portion,
| depending on methodology).
|
| (Also, the bar chart shown in the article is messed up because
| they're charting the value of each item averaged over the
| previous year.)
| mrweasel wrote:
| For numbers I did like to see absolute numbers. While I have no
| doubt that people are switching to Linux, but an increasing
| number of people are also just giving up on computers in favour
| of just using their phones for everything. Some of the increase
| in percentage Linux is seeing could also be due to Windows and
| Mac users dropping having a computer in general.
|
| That's not to say that people aren't switching, I see no reason
| to get a new Mac next time I'm replacing my laptop. My work
| will be done more easily on Linux at this point.
| Aachen wrote:
| It could also be showing that the market is consolidating
| towards big tech and that only those wanting to stay with their
| independent statistics provider are still with StatCounter. In
| turn, the users of services with such morals could be more
| likely to be Linux distribution users.
|
| I don't have data better than StatCounter, but if we're
| thinking of methodology and whether it could be accurate, this
| is a possibility to take into account
|
| The optimist in me wants to not leave unmentioned that Linux is
| more accessible than ever and information easier to come by
| while Windows has never been shittier (which old Windows
| version shipped with tracking and ads?) and macOS is still
| priced and protected the way it always has been: much easier to
| dual or live boot Mint. Come for the freedom and stay for the
| ease of use. It's no coincidence that Microsoft made it very
| easy to use Linux software within Windows now (obviously
| without contributing the inverse mechanism, that'd be stupid):
| people want it. I really hope there's more truth to this than
| to the first paragraph
| jimmar wrote:
| Linux seems to be stealing more market share from OSX than
| Windows: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/desktop/worldwide.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Two Unix systems and one is increasingly infuriating
| professionals.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Windows is shipping with its own Linux already, so it's getting
| harder to complain about Windows.
|
| Embrace, extend, extinguish.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Could you explain what you mean in your first paragraph? In
| what sense does Windows ship with Linux?
| gamepsys wrote:
| OP is talking about WSL.
|
| I've seen some technical documentation, such as readmes for
| source code, that assumes the user is on a Windows laptop
| running WSL. At this point in time if I see anything
| mentioning Ubuntu I just assume it's written with WSL/Azure
| in mind.
| resource_waste wrote:
| There are ads everywhere on Windows. And onedrive hijacks
| your filesystem.
|
| Even at my fortune 20 company I see: "DNC RATINGS COMPARED TO
| RNC" clickbait crap. I'm amazed my company lets that garbage
| through. Probably because we have legacy software + some
| corruption with purchasing. Sharepoint... really?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| No one was ever fired for hiring MS, etc.
|
| I don't use or plan to use Windows outside of VMs. But I
| think WSL made a difference to a lot of developers.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'd want to know a lot more about why macOS dropped ~5% in one
| month, why unknown doubled in ~1 year, why ChromeOS has more
| than 50% variance between halves of the school year, how
| ChromeOS had more users in the middle of summer '23 than the
| middle of spring '24, and more before I'd make any bold
| conclusions on how much what is changing and from where.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| OSX has become a bloated pig of an operating system, and it's
| not that great as a unix system.
| satnam14 wrote:
| It's so strange. I'm an android user myself but majority of
| my dev friends are iPhone users. I can't see them switching
| because they of Apple ecosystem - mainly iMessage. So I'm
| really curious what's driving people from OSX to Linux
| SCUSKU wrote:
| I'm a macOS user but would be interested in getting a linux
| desktop, I've heard Linux Mint or PopOS are pretty good just from
| a ease of use perspective? I've used Ubuntu in the past and had
| all sorts of display graphics driver problems.
|
| I know it's an impossible question, but nonetheless, what's the
| best distro to use for someone who just wants a useable desktop?
| andrepd wrote:
| Linux Mint is an outstanding project, like you said focused on
| stability and ease of use. It's been my daily driver for over a
| decade!
| zappchance wrote:
| I was looking around a while last year and those two are the
| exact ones I landed on, with a slight lean towards Pop!_OS due
| to the team behind it striving for maximum "out-of-the-box"
| usability.
|
| Linux Mint has a special place in my heart as it was the first
| distro I used back in my high school computer science class and
| it holds up exceptionally well today. It's also community
| driven compared to Pop!_OS which is developed by System76.
| ilaksh wrote:
| If you want to avoid all driver issues you should probably be
| asking about a hardware/OS combo, not just one or the other.
|
| But over the last few years I haven't had significant problems.
| benrutter wrote:
| I think a lot of stock gets put into distros for driver issues,
| but a huge factor is the hardware you're running on.
|
| Some distros like popOS intentially bundle drivers for newer
| graphics cards and the like, but that aside, if you don't have
| really hardcore requirements, picking decent hardware that's a
| few years old will probably smooth out your journey a lot,
| regardless of which distro you pick.
|
| If you're coming from macOS you might be happy to pay a premium
| for a purpose built machine as well (I have a System 76 laptop
| which has served me really well for a good 5 years or so now
| with no sign of slowing down)
|
| As an aside, Linux Mint, PopOS and Ubuntu (the three you
| mentioned) are all great choices for a reliable, stable
| desktop.
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| Fedora is a good desktop and if you have Centos/RHEL experience
| your muscle memory can be useful.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Seconded. I can also just recommend Fedora.
| rahen wrote:
| Fedora strikes a good balance between stability and being up-
| to-date and secure. It's also the recommended distribution by
| Privacy Guides: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/
|
| I really, really want to migrate from macOS to Fedora on my
| M1 MBA but Asahi isn't completely there yet.
| acomjean wrote:
| I've been daily driving popos for about 5 years. I'm not an
| admin by any stretch and it's worked great. Upgrades and
| everything mostly flawless. I came from a 13" MacBook Pro
| (2015), it took a little adjustment but it's been great
| overall. The good thing about POP is that we've found ububtu
| software works on it.
|
| We ended up installing popos on our work Linux (Ubuntu)dell
| because we had trouble installing the nvidia drivers for the
| card we got.
|
| I had one hiccup 4 years ago where it wouldn't upgrade to the
| next version because I did some out of band install. (It was a
| usb to hdmi adapter...) It was a little to get it sorted but I
| never ended up with a unbootable system..
|
| I don't like the PopOS name though..
| supportengineer wrote:
| I never had any trouble using Ubuntu, but I tried Mint for a
| project (I needed to import video over Firewire, and
| apparently, the kernel support for this has been removed) and
| Mint worked great for this project. I was so impressed I kept
| Mint installed because everything just worked.
| kryptec wrote:
| I ended up moving to Linux Mint in 2018, as I need a new laptop
| and was annoyed that the current generation of Mac laptops
| didn't come with any USB ports. It's been my daily driver
| since, and I've been pretty happy with it in general.
|
| You should be able to try either distro with a live usb which
| will give you an indication if anything will break immediately
| on your system.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| I had a pretty good experience with Manjaro and KDE. KDE Plasma
| 6 in particular feels very nice, though nothing is as polished
| as macOS.
| resource_waste wrote:
| I'd avoid outdated linux (Debian-family like Mint). Try Fedora.
| foresto wrote:
| > I've used Ubuntu in the past and had all sorts of display
| graphics driver problems.
|
| Were you by any chance using Nvidia graphics hardware?
|
| If you play games, you'll likely have the best overall
| experience with AMD graphics. (Assuming the GPU model isn't too
| new; it can take some months for the drivers to catch up to new
| models.) Most desktop distros will have everything you need; no
| need to go downloading drivers from vendors or turning to third
| party software repositories.
|
| If you don't play games, either AMD or Intel graphics ought to
| be good.
|
| Nvidia drivers can be made to work well with most games, and
| certain distros make the setup easy, but they come with baggage
| and hassles. They're huge, and they have a long history of
| integrating poorly with the OS overall. The problems they
| caused me outside of games were part of what drove me to stop
| buying their hardware.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Get a cheap used laptop for ~$300 and run linux on it, you will
| be surprised at how much value you can't get out of that. I use
| it as a dev machine, although I only do embedded work and some
| web work on it. I still drive with my Mac, but I use the linux
| laptop over tigervnc and it work fine over ethernet. I would
| suggest looking at pop_os or mint. Both are stable LTS users
| but do seem to keep up with drivers and kernels reasonably
| close to "newish"
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Fedora
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Linux on desktop is just a solid workhorse. My 13+ years laptop
| is chugging along happily with Ubuntu and my Windows8 10+ years
| beefed up desktop takes 10 minutes to start and 5 minutes to open
| a browser and basically a broken mess of security holes.
| ogogmad wrote:
| What about the 6-monthly and 2-yearly forced upgrades? How are
| you faring with those?
| prmoustache wrote:
| forced? how?
| Aachen wrote:
| I imagine they mean security support, but are overlooking
| LTS somehow
| myth_drannon wrote:
| It's not forced, but it's a trivial upgrade if you have a
| basic setup. I also have a desktop where I do some hobby AI
| development and once in a blue moon, Nvidia drivers would
| break the system because of kernel upgrades.
| wcchandler wrote:
| I've been a linux desktop user for a long time now (~25 years?).
| I generally don't talk about it, as it's not a suitable
| environment for a lot of people. So I'm always surprised when I
| stumble upon somebody using it. Just recently I took a Google
| Cloud training course and the instructor used it as his daily
| driver. Not only was this impressive to see "out in the wild" but
| it was nice to see all the tools needed to lead a remote training
| course worked in his setup. He had a webcam working great (even
| focused/panned on him as he moved). He had a powerpoint/slideshow
| going. He had zoom/teleconferencing software working. And it all
| worked through the course. There was never 10-20 minute pause
| because something wasn't working right. Having this level of
| viability and operability is something I never expected to see.
| oblio wrote:
| Sorry to be a downer but a cloud instructor is still a techie.
| I'd be way more impressed with a lawyer or an accountant using
| it but I've never seen one so far.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Having this level of viability and operability is something
| I never expected to see.
|
| It's unexpected even in the case of techies.
| perbu wrote:
| fwiw; I worked in a company that was kind of a Linux pioneer
| back in the 90s. We ran Linux for everyone. The accountant
| ran a VM for his accouting software, but except that
| everything was Linux. And once set up, it worked very well,
| for techies and non-technical alike.
|
| If you get past installation and initial setup, using Linux
| in a desktop role isn't really challenging if you've got
| access to support.
| szundi wrote:
| I don't believe lawyers can live without ms office
| rossant wrote:
| I sometimes work with lawyers and doctors. As a Linux
| user I always need to have a macbook around for when I
| need MS Word.
| trelane wrote:
| It used to be that they couldn't live without _Word
| Perfect_.
|
| Funny how that changed.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| It's 2024 and we're suprised by a webcam working. It makes me a
| bit sad somehow.
| fanatic2pope wrote:
| I cannot even remember the last time I plugged in a web cam
| and it didn't work on Linux. Just yesterday I borrowed a USB
| inspection camera from a friend in order to help me run a new
| ethernet line to my shop. The kit came with a "WIFI dongle"
| that you are supposed to use with your phone and some random
| app, but instead I just plugged it into my laptop, fired up
| Cheese and it came up immediately.
| bpfrh wrote:
| External webcams are no problem, agreed.
|
| New-ish laptops with intel tiger lake procesors use MIPI
| cameras with ipu6 and don't work out of the box or only on
| specific kernel/distro combos.
|
| There are efforts to mainline the driver and it is better
| than 2 years ago but still a big step backwards[1]
|
| [1]https://github.com/intel/ipu6-drivers
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| To Intel's credit ipu6 packs a ton a ton a ton of super
| advanced capabilities in. Having a good video pipeline is
| a huge edge. That it took a while for upstreaming to get
| really into gear on Linux does not super astound me. This
| feels like a place where we need to expect the open
| source world to have to find its purchase first before
| traction forward can really start.
|
| This was a super shitty experience though. It really felt
| unplanned & chaotic. Hopefully some of the kernel
| architecture carved out for ipu6 is good & useful for
| running other video pipelines.
|
| Most webcammers don't knowingly think heavily on color
| science, but ideally our devices can.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| We owe Apple here.
|
| The lack of device drivers for iOS means that manufacturers
| had to start getting serious about ensuring their devices
| follow USB class specifications, because otherwise they
| will not work on an iPad.
|
| Linux (which has USB class drivers) has only benefitted
| from this.
| silisili wrote:
| Yeah, 20ish years ago I remember having to compile alsa
| drivers, network drivers, cups drivers, etc. I can honestly
| see why some left and never came back.
|
| That hasn't been the case for a long time now. I can't
| remember the last time I plugged something in that didn't
| work. My home setup is a minipc with wireless kb and mouse on
| a unified USB receiver, hdmi to a large monitor, bluetooth
| speaker, wireless printer, and USB webcam with mic.
|
| I didn't have to do a single thing. It all just works. And it
| has for years, through various distro hopping.
| AQuantized wrote:
| This comment is a bit odd to me since I don't think those basic
| things you mention have been difficult to get working on most
| distros for quite a while now.
| michaelt wrote:
| I mean, Ubuntu _did_ break screen sharing for a while 2 years
| ago [1]
|
| [1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/1407494/screen-share-not-
| wor...
| ryandrake wrote:
| These threads always seem to oscillate back and forth between
| "It's 2024 and you can't get Peripheral X working with
| Linux!" and "Peripheral X's have worked for 20 years now!"
| chihuahua wrote:
| That probably means that it works for some people, but not
| all. So if you want to use peripheral X, maybe you get
| lucky and you have just the right versions of hardware and
| software, and it works. Or maybe you're unlucky, and it
| doesn't work, and you can spend months trying to get it
| work. It's just not how I want to spend my time.
| fsflover wrote:
| It's just that some people check the Linux compatibility
| before the hardware purchase, while others rely on pure
| luck.
| pizza234 wrote:
| That's pretty much impossible. In a sibling thread I
| explained that even if a machine is Ubuntu certified, it
| doesn't necessarily mean that it's compatible in real
| world.
|
| Assembled PCs tend to be more compatible (because of more
| standard components), but on the othe hand each
| individual component doesn't receive the coverage
| (testing) as laptops. There was no way for me to know
| that my mobo's sleep is broken on Linux, even if the
| previous mobos from the same producer had good
| compatibility.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > In a sibling thread I explained that even if a machine
| is Ubuntu certified, it doesn't necessarily mean that
| it's compatible in real world.
|
| I've never even heard of Ubuntu certification. I instead
| search for people who are using the product I wish to buy
| with Linux, and see what they say about its
| compatibility. This always works. So it is not pretty
| much impossible.
| tomwheeler wrote:
| I'd imagine that the Linux users who report success are
| probably more selective when it comes to hardware. It's
| been my primary OS for 25+ years and I've seldom faced
| compatibility issues, but I also do my research and buy
| accordingly.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| It depends on which day of the week it is.
|
| Ok a bit flippant, but I've been running KDE on my NUC as a
| secondary desktop for years now. Most of the time it works
| fairly well, but then suddenly something breaks or needs
| tweaking. And when it does it's often not trivial for a non-
| geek to handle.
|
| That said, if they can get Krdp working properly, I'll almost
| certainly switch to KDE as my main driver, and demote Windows
| to my secondary.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| I'm always befuddled by comments like this. I have been daily
| driving Linux (arch,btw) for quite a while, and I have never
| once had a driver issue, even with NVIDIA graphics cards. The
| only times I run into issues is when I am trying to run games
| with anti-cheat, but even that is being worked on by Valve.
| Linux mostly just works in my experience, I don't see where the
| idea comes from that its a huge blocker, minus the lack of
| specialized software.
| bpfrh wrote:
| Friend of mine got a new laptop which i recommended without
| looking closely on the specs, as it was listed as supported
| on ubuntu a lenovo yoga x 11 gen I think.
|
| Found out afterwards that the version with windows
| preinstalled(that the friend bought, because of the cheap
| windows licence that maybe needed) comes with a special mipi
| camera from intel with ipu6 out-of-tree driver that only
| supports specific kernels and specific distros and while
| there are packages for ubuntu I couldn't get it to work.
|
| Linux works if you don't buy the wrong hardware, windows
| works on any bought hardware.
|
| I'm not against linux and I use it and most of the time it
| works out of the box, but this "most of the time" will bite
| you when you stop looking at specific reviews and driver
| support and just buy a laptop.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > but this "most of the time" will bite you when you stop
| looking at specific reviews and driver support and just buy
| a laptop.
|
| I've never once looked at reviews. The only time I've been
| bitten in the last 20 years was when given a MBP for work
| (the intel model with butterfly keys).
|
| There's definitely edge cases out there. But these days
| they're exactly that: edge cases.
| aborsy wrote:
| I have used Linux desktop for around two decades on my
| laptops and never had any issues with drivers or anything
| else. Various distributions have worked very well out of box
| with different models of laptops and PCs.
| pizza234 wrote:
| "It works perfectly" statements are invariably false.
|
| For starters, Bluetooth has been broken on Linux until
| recent times (a couple of years, probably, maybe less),
| because of the piece of crap that Bluez is. In some Ubuntu
| distros, Bluetooth may still have some broken functionality
| (I remember examining the configfiles).
|
| Ubuntu's hibernation was broken last time I've checked,
| because the setup was setting a 2 GiB swapfile, which is
| not enough for the RAM of modern machines. My last
| installation, last week, still set the same size.
|
| So there you go.
| pizza234 wrote:
| I'm a hardcore Linux user, and most of my machines always had
| some driver issues.
|
| The laptop I'm writing from needs my mobile phone as wifi
| bridge, because the Linux driver is poorly written, and it
| causes extremely poor signal quality. I also can't workaround
| tearing that plagues the whole desktop environment.
|
| My other laptop has issues with the speakers that will never
| be fixed. And another one or two issues that I can't
| remember.
|
| I wanted to buy a certain Lenovo laptop that is officially
| Ubuntu certified. Lenovo doesn't offer the OEM Ubuntu that
| they used for the certification though, and the vanilla
| version doesn't work (I've stopped checking after an year or
| so).
|
| My desktop has a wake from suspend problem.
|
| To be fair though, I have no doubt that if one chooses a
| certain machine (laptop) based on Linux compatibility, they
| will be happy - but it implies a certain sacrifice upfront.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| I felt taken back before mid-2000 reading this comment. I mean
| it's been easily 15 years since those very basic things
| _really_ just works on all the major Linux distributions.
| neogodless wrote:
| I recently tried Linux Mint, initially Cinnamon, then
| installed KDE Plasma. In the former fractional scaling was
| badly broken. In the latter, I couldn't control screen
| brightness.
|
| Overall almost everything worked but not all things. And I'm
| used to working through technical hiccups and being patient.
| But ultimately there's no guarantee "Linux" will be fully
| functional on your unique hardware setup, and it's still
| challenging to choose distribution, windows manager, desktop
| environment, etc and there's no way to know which combo is
| best for your hardware without a lot of time consuming trial
| and error.
| chgs wrote:
| My mother-in-law remarried about 5 years ago. Her husband used
| to operate some oven cleaning business pre retirement, not
| exactly "techie"
|
| He uses linux, has done for years, he just wants something that
| works.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I've been a linux desktop user for a long time now (~25
| years?). I generally don't talk about it, as it's not a
| suitable environment for a lot of people.
|
| Same: I was already using Debian 1.1 (1.1, not 11) on the
| desktop or something like that.
|
| But why not talk about it? I switched both my wife (she's very
| OK with tech) _and_ my mother-in-law (she 's not good with
| tech) to desktop Linux.
|
| If my mother-in-law can use Linux, everybody can. Most people
| nowadays only need one app: a browser and Linux is totally for
| that use case, which is about 99% of all users' out there's
| usecase.
| mulmen wrote:
| I switched to desktop Linux about a year ago. Fedora Sway Spin. I
| have done a major version upgrade without issue. None of the
| buttons moved. Nothing broke. Just business as usual. No
| complaints about the OS itself. The final straw was a Steam game
| that wouldn't launch on Windows 10 but worked in Steam/Proton. I
| haven't booted Windows since.
| resource_waste wrote:
| Fedora woke me up to how Fedora is the best.
|
| I'm not even going to say Linux, because people confuse it with
| Ubuntu/Debian/Mint GARBAGE. Never use that later crap for
| desktop. Its so outdated and buggy. You are using the terminal
| on a daily basis to get basic features working, if your
| hardware works at all.
|
| Fedora is so good, I feel offended I didn't know about it until
| now. I am bitter against M$ and bitter against Canonical.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| Is it including or excluding the SteamDeck users?
| KTibow wrote:
| Most Steam Deck users aren't browsing with it
| HideousKojima wrote:
| IIRC StatCounter's numbers are based on browser user-agent
| strings. I'm guessing most Steam Deck users are mostly using it
| for games as opposed to one web browsing, so probably not.
| aborsy wrote:
| As a Linux desktop user, I installed windows in a VM to use an
| application that is not available for Linux (a printer app made
| by a vendor was available only for Windows and macOS).
|
| Awful! Slow, bloated, my files by default were uploaded to
| Microsoft (and the setting is easily reversed with updates if
| turned off), lots of advertisement everywhere I click, edge is
| slow, ...
|
| Glad to be a Linux user! The quality of open source software is
| frankly very high. The only limitation is that some drivers or
| software are not made for Linux.
| tigeroil wrote:
| I know it's a minor detail but the other day I was using
| Windows for something and I was amazed by how sluggish even
| task manager felt.
| Aachen wrote:
| What blows me away is how poor printers still work. On a bare
| Debian laptop, I just walk up to it and it prints via USB
| with no configuration needed. Network printers I think auto-
| discover reliably as well, but it has been a few years since
| I've done that (we have a tendency to not trust printers at
| our small security firm so we don't hook them up to the
| network)
|
| At least they've solved that you had to wait 2 minutes
| anymore when plugging your mouse into a different USB port
| before it finds the driver from Windows Update again
| tambourine_man wrote:
| C'mon Adobe. Release CC for Linux. Bless a DE or ship your own.
| Linux's market share will only increase and your suite should be
| pretty platform abstracted by now, anyway.
| pluc wrote:
| Didn't they buy then bury Corel?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| No, but why would that matter?
| tomovo wrote:
| If Google is paying Apple effectively not to make its own
| search engine, I would not be surprised if Apple and/or
| Microsoft were paying Adobe not to port CC to Linux.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I don't think we need a conspiracy theory. Most likely they
| don't bother with 5% market share, most of which probably
| have strong feelings about closed source in general and Adobe
| in specific.
|
| But if/when Linux reaches 10/15% that may change.
| amlib wrote:
| Wasn't Mac OS less than or around 5% for a long time after
| the 90s? If they thought that was sustainable, maybe Linux
| should be close by now? Of course there are many other
| things to also take in account, so who knows.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Linux is getting better all the time and Windows is getting worse
| all the time. We'll definitely make it to 5% eventually.
| conqrr wrote:
| I used Linux first as a 14 year old kid in the 90s who found
| Win$ows to become slow overtime and we couldn't afford a new
| computer. Fell in love with Linux instantly given the
| customization and efficiency. Not needing things like an
| AntiVirus was huge. I haven't looked back at all and its likely
| what drove me into CS. Sometimes constraints are a good thing. We
| had a few courses in Undergrad (outdated of course) that required
| students to run things like LAMP server and GCC and there was a
| good culture of running Ubuntu and other distros. I would have
| done 30+ installs for my classmates and ran into all sorts of
| issues with laptop drivers, overheating etc. Things are probably
| better on that front now with compatible hardware, (I only buy
| linux compatible hardware so I'm not sure).I really wish to see
| more widespread adoption especially in developing countries.
| k_bx wrote:
| Bought $2k laptop Acer Predator Helios Neo 16. Windows 11 doesn't
| install at all (can't see the hard drive). Win10 installed but
| touchpad doesn't work (even after drivers install), network
| didn't work (neither ethernet nor wifi) without external USB
| stick, and so on. After internet connection and installing all
| updates touchpad and dynamics still don't work.
|
| Pop OS works near-perfectly.
| jtokoph wrote:
| Doesn't it come with Windows 11 preinstalled?
| k_bx wrote:
| Mine came with no OS. I need Linux primarily, but still
| Windows occasionally for Mission Planner and other Windows-
| only apps. So I've installed a second M.2 disk and had this
| terrible experience with Windows installation afterwards.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Where did you manage to get one of those without Windows pre-
| installed? I was looking at one to replace my outdated
| Predator, and was hoping to save the ~$100 on the license.
| k_bx wrote:
| In Ukraine. So.. it depends on how much do you want it haha
| https://rozetka.com.ua/ua/acer-nhqlveu00a/p416822133/
| ziddoap wrote:
| The shipping might end up being more than the Windows
| license, haha. Thanks though!
| anemoknee wrote:
| Today I learned there's a laptop out there with a mouthful of a
| name like that.
| k_bx wrote:
| Their official network drivers are called Killer and are very
| malware-looking ("unknown developer" blocked by windows).
| It's unbelievable. Looks like some weird spyware junk too.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Intel acquired Killer in early 2020, the drivers are
| definitely signed. You may have loaded legitimate malware.
| k_bx wrote:
| From acer.com? Search for acer predator helios neo 16
| (PHN-16-71)
|
| Looks like this https://imgur.com/xelfxZB
| zamadatix wrote:
| This one? https://www.acer.com/us-en/support/product-
| support/Predator_...
|
| The drivers are definitely signed by Intel e.g.
| https://i.imgur.com/yMr1bD5.png
| anemoknee wrote:
| Further tangent, but I remember seeing Killer NIC's booth
| at ComicCon in 2007 with that very cool, very pointy
| heatsink (I assume that is what it was, anyway...?).
|
| https://pcper.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/a3d4-card-
| front...
| minkles wrote:
| I would be embarrassed to own something with a stupid name.
|
| "Hey so what laptop did you buy?"
|
| "Well I went for the ACER MEATGRINDER Z980 JUGULAR MOSH RAZOR
| in the end. The keyboard is 100% sRGB!"
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Loads better than it being "Acer ZXGT423LV" which is the
| trend with smartphones and many other devices today. I'll
| happily take an "embarrassing" name over that mess.
| brink wrote:
| Same experience with the new 2024 Zephyrus G16 and the latest
| official Win 11 image. Crazy. I had to inject drivers into the
| boot image using nlite.
| eqvinox wrote:
| Last time I got myself a new laptop (2 years ago), I just
| removed the SSD (with Linux on it) from the old one and put it
| in the new one. (It was larger than the included one anyway, I
| had previously upgraded it.)
|
| ...it simply booted and continued working as before. No driver
| reinstall, no reconfiguring things. I don't remember but I
| don't think I even had to muck with BIOS/UEFI boot settings or
| anything.
|
| Downside: a year later the SSD died ;D (possibly age/use
| related, it was 5~6 years old at that point)
| threePointFive wrote:
| I had a similar issue trying to do a Windows reinstall on a
| Dell laptop. The cause was due to the default setup of Intel
| RST for the storage. The suggested fix was injecting the RST
| drivers into the Windows installer. I couldn't get that to work
| and ended up installing it in a VM then cloning the VM hard-
| drive onto the laptop's via Clonezilla. Unfortunately it was
| for work so just using Linux wasn't an option.
| michelsedgh wrote:
| I wonder if more people are using linux as a desktop or
| generally, people are using less desktop devices with the rise of
| phones and tablets. What i mean is, before even old people and
| the normal users would need desktop and they would prefer windows
| and mac, but now i feel like they are generally less probe to use
| desktops and dont need them so that might be contributing to the
| sudden market share rise of linux maybe? U know what i mean?
| bogwog wrote:
| Semi-relevant but a few years old, a 2021 VFX industry survery
| found that around 60% of workstations run Linux, and that number
| is expected to continue growing.
|
| What's interesting to me is that VFX and game dev are kind of
| similar in terms of software and expertise, but game devs
| predominantly use Windows. I wonder why that is?
|
| Source:
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/15b-4GMTSEE9tyqeQdBfy_LZnxQI...
|
| (From https://vfxplatform.com/linux/)
| ido wrote:
| Because the games have to run on windows
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| And both Unreal and Unity both mostly only work on Windows.
| (Linux support very sketchy)
| hollerith wrote:
| >VFX and game dev are kind of similar in terms of software and
| expertise, but game devs predominantly use Windows. I wonder
| why that is?
|
| The deliverable of a VFX project is a video file or an artifact
| that goes into a video file (no complex dependency on Windows)
| whereas most games need to be able to run on Windows.
| bogwog wrote:
| I don't think that's it. Games also need to run on consoles,
| mobile phones, and sometimes web browsers. Cross platform
| development isn't a new concept in game development, and all
| major commercial game engines work on Linux (well, they do
| today at least)
|
| Most software used in the VFX industry does officially
| support Linux, and a lot of those tools are also used in game
| dev. Maybe Unity and Unreal's Linux support hasn't been
| great, and that's the only reason?
|
| I guess it's easier to get into gamedev than VFX as an indie,
| and if you have little/no technical background then there's a
| good chance you're on Windows or Mac when you start looking
| up Unity/Unreal/etc tutorials, and then you just stick with
| what you know.
| jayd16 wrote:
| The market is on Windows and the engine/tools target Windows
| first. Visual Studio, Maya, Adobe, etc have dominated
| historically. Jetbrains and Blender have gained ground but run
| well on Windows.
|
| I'm not even sure you can deploy to an Xbox or Playstation from
| Linux/Mac officially but I haven't tried this gen.
|
| With WSL and containers etc, getting something on Linux from a
| Windows machine is way easier than the other way around so
| there's really no driving force towards Linux.
|
| But I'm also very confused by your link. Do you mean the visual
| effects industry or whoever uses this VFXPlatform project that
| added Windows and Mac support much later?
| bitwize wrote:
| 1) If you want to sell your game, you go where the users are
| buying: Windows.
|
| 2) Visual Studio still offers a second-to-none developer
| experience. If you're targeting Windows exclusively (which you
| are in PC gamedev), Visual Studio is pretty much a must.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I get the impression that career Windows C++ programmers, and
| especially game programmers, tend to really like Visual Studio.
| Especially IntelliSense and the debugger. To the extent that
| equivalents exist on Linux, the consensus seems to be that they
| require way too much setup for a UX that isn't nearly as good
| (I vaguely recall one statement along the lines of "like going
| back to the 80s, and not in a good way").
| isk517 wrote:
| After all of the frustration I experienced getting Windows 11
| setup in a way that was comfortable for me to use I'm ready to
| switch to Linux the next time I need to reinstall a operating
| system. So glad that SteamDeck is making Linux gaming viable. Now
| we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same driver
| support Windows gets.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| https://youtu.be/OF_5EKNX0Eg?si=fFi2L2k2J6TvTRtc
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The above would be Linus Torvalds saying
|
| > _Nvidia has been the single worst company we have ever
| dealt with. So, Nvidia:_ [angrily for moment, wags a middle
| finger to the camera] _fuck you._
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| I had similar feelings about Windows 11, but I recently found
| the Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC build, and it works
| perfectly for me.
|
| Debloated and no ads. You do have to do a little bit of
| troubleshooting, install extra components (e.g. to install the
| Microsoft store), etc., but it was significantly easier than
| debloating a regular Windows 11 install.
|
| https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Why would I want to roll the dice with Windows install media
| from a third-party site instead of just using Linux (and
| possibly making it work better?)
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| You can verify the integrity of the files yourself. They
| provide instructions.
|
| https://massgrave.dev/genuine-installation-media#verify-
| auth...
|
| > instead of just using Linux (and possibly making it work
| better?)
|
| I want a PC that can play games without hassle. I love
| Linux, computing, and complexity, but sometimes I want
| something that just works consistently.
|
| Linux has gotten better over the years, especially as far
| as compatibility goes, but it's still _much_ harder to use
| than Windows.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Linux has gotten better over the years, especially as
| far as compatibility goes, but it's still _much_ harder
| to use than Windows
|
| I dispute that notion
|
| I was a Windows user from 95 all the way to 10. Yearly
| formats with fresh installs were a constant through the
| whole time.
|
| Ever since I switched to Linux things are surprisingly
| stable. My laptop is running as well as my fresh install
| from more than 2 years ago.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| If you installed your favorite distro on the average
| person's computer then they would likely not have a
| positive experience.
| klaussilveira wrote:
| Care to elaborate why? Everything the average person uses
| in 2024 is browser based. As long as Chrome is there,
| they won't notice any difference.
| minkles wrote:
| I just got off the phone from my aunt who was filling
| forms in with Adobe Reader, editing word documents sent
| from her solicitor.
|
| No it's not all in a browser. That's a shitty assumption
| and one that should not be forced upon anyone.
|
| I always wonder how many people have been fucked over by
| a helpful relative giving them a Linux install with a
| browser and telling them to get on with it ...
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| You're right to some extent, which is why Chromebooks are
| fairly popular.
|
| But, if we're talking desktops, I suspect most desktop
| users want much more than just a browser. Either for
| gaming, office use, creative use, etc.
| jsight wrote:
| Honestly, I'm a huge fan of Chromebooks for this reason.
| They are secure, easy to setup, and generally have really
| good battery life.
|
| The keyboards are really bad for a developer, though.
| Otherwise, I might use them a bit more.
| tiahura wrote:
| Word Excel Outlook PowerPoint
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I disagree. I use Linux mainly because it's just simpler
| than Windows. MS went on a pretty dark path in recent
| years with anti-user behavior, dark patterns etc.
|
| The caveat is that I don't play games on my computers.
| For gaming, Windows is still the best choice.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| I agree, which is why I'm suggesting the LTSC build which
| fix the issues you're describing.
|
| The average person, though, still would prefer regular
| Windows 11 over your favorite Linux distro.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| I don't know if you see the irony of stating how
| difficult Linux is to use just after telling which hoops
| to jump to make Windows usable. Modern Linux requires way
| less than that.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| For managing SQL Server and other enterprise grade
| infrastructure and resource planning. And at least for now,
| many many other Windows based multi platform development
| tools that aren't yet practical on Linux desktop. Although,
| progress is being made in that direction, which is great to
| see.
| binkHN wrote:
| I thought about going down this route, but decided not to; if
| Microsoft is purposefully making it challenging to make
| Windows usable, why should I devote resources trying to fight
| it?
| minkles wrote:
| Ah you'll spend all that time trying to get Linux to do all
| that and then it'll hit a wall somewhere and 1-2 apps you
| really need won't work so you'll be ready to switch back to
| Windows 11 the next time you need to reinstall an operating
| system.
|
| They all suck the same. In different ways.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I've been on Mint for 2 years. Never looked back.
|
| I never hit that wall you speak of. Has been so amazing I
| donate 20 bucks every year to the project, just because I
| feel it has no right being at the same time free and that
| good.
| minkles wrote:
| Congratulations.
|
| That did not work for me. Once in the last 25 years of
| trying apart from a small bit between 2003-2004 when Fedora
| worked.
| rahen wrote:
| It always has...
| minkles wrote:
| Apart from the bit where it didn't like the fractional
| scaling that still doesn't work properly, the power
| management issues, the absolutely terrible inconsistent
| user experience, the poor photo management and editing
| applications, the non-existent support for working with
| other people via the apps that they use etc etc.
|
| It works for a narrow group of vocal people who use it
| for specific tasks but generic and usable, it is not.
| rurp wrote:
| I get that you strongly prefer Windows, and that's fine,
| but this part...
|
| > the absolutely terrible inconsistent user experience
|
| really? That would make sense as an argument for MacOS,
| but Windows is an absolute dumpster fire when it comes to
| consistent UX.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| I've shared this before but in recent years (basically Win8+)
| it's actually been the opposite. I've had to help companies
| set up Linux systems running wine because they have better
| compatibility with ancient "must have" applications.
|
| These days for 90% of users, the only "must have" application
| is a web browser anyways.
| minkles wrote:
| It works until you need Excel. I have yet to find a
| business which doesn't use Excel in some capacity. As in
| proper Excel, not somewhat dubious compatibility Excel
| (LibreOffice).
|
| I'd still argue large swathes of things we take for granted
| on other platforms don't exist or don't work either.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| You run the best OS for productivity as a base and virtualize
| other systems you need.
| rurp wrote:
| Eh, it depends on what you're using it for. I switched to
| Linux around six years ago and am quite happy about it. It's
| not all rainbows and sunshine of course, but at this point I
| _much_ prefer it to the alternatives.
|
| If Microsoft and Apple weren't continually making their
| platforms worse I might switch back to one, but they have
| been continuously going in the wrong direction for many years
| now, while Linux keeps getting incrementally better.
|
| I actually booted up an old Windows 7 PC the other day and
| had forgotten how clean and nice the UX was. An OS like that
| is not bad, but Windows 11?! Good lord, I want nothing to do
| with it and would much rather deal with some occasional rough
| edges in Linux.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| > Now we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same
| driver support Windows gets.
|
| We're already there: AMD has first class upstream Linux
| support!
|
| I played steam games for ten hours on 6.11-rc3 last week with
| zero problems, on a very old userland (Debian bullseye). The
| amdgpu driver was built-in, not a module.
| kmarc wrote:
| We organized a LAN PARTY (oh my, what a flashback) in 2005 in
| our student hostel, where we played CS / Half Life on wine,
| under Linux.
|
| I thought we were already there, 19years ago
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| I'm not using Wine, it's all native. That's the big deal
| for me: it took zero effort from me, it Just Works.
| xrd wrote:
| Well, if this is steam, isn't it proton, which is wine
| underneath?
|
| I'm not discounting your experiences at all, btw. My 11
| year old has been using Ubuntu as his main gaming rig,
| and the NVidia drivers work incredibly well and Steam
| games just work. It's still mind boggling to me that it
| works so well.
|
| And, I no longer have to troubleshoot removing Windows
| virii from his computer.
| kmarc wrote:
| Sure, I didn't want to belittle your experience at all.
| It's great that vendors think about Linux as first class
| citizens on desktop , too.
|
| My understanding though, is that most of "steam games"
| are still windows binaries + wine + patches (proton,
| etc). It's well hidden behind a nice GUI, but the tech
| couldn't exist without the legacy of pure old wine.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| Hahaha not belittling at all, I'm just old enough that
| "running X with Wine" means "spending hours upon hours
| pulling your hair out until X barely works" to me.
| Getting it for free feels like cheating :)
| frio wrote:
| Yes you are :). You just no longer have to set it up
| yourself. Steam runs Proton (their own WINE
| fork/distribution) under the hood for windows games.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| Well sure, but the point is it's done for me, and more
| importantly, actually tested by the developer in many
| cases.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Developers don't care, they target Windows as usual, and
| let Valve do the needful.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| UT2k4 supporting Linux was so progressive back then
| randmeerkat wrote:
| > UT2k4 supporting Linux was so progressive back then
|
| Will we ever get UT2k2X?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I don't see Epic making anything that will take players
| away from their golden goose.
|
| Fortunately UT2k4 is still fun and plays well, even on an
| ancient PC, and looks decent enough.
| nailer wrote:
| There was a UT reboot, but as the other poster mentioned,
| when Fortnite eventually took off, they removed everyone
| from the project around May 2017.
|
| Website is still up, but only partially functional. Check
| out the character design for Samael.
|
| https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/en-US/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/unrealtournament
| pjmlp wrote:
| That was back when I still believed, eventually I decided
| running Windows with Virtual Box/VMWare or macOS UNIX, was
| less of an headache.
|
| Just a couple of months ago, yet another motherboard where
| UEFI and Linux distributions don't get along without some
| gimmicks.
| kemotep wrote:
| Can confirm. Playing Elden Ring on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Just
| installed the Steam flatpak, enabled proton, installed the
| game, works just as well if not better than my Windows
| install. Nothing extra to install gpu driver wise this is
| practically vanilla OpenSUSE install with Steam really the
| only extra thing, playing online with multiplayer summons,
| etc.
| manmal wrote:
| Interesting that multiplayer works well, I thought anti
| cheat guards would prevent this in many games running on
| Proton.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Bought an AMD GPU as my most recent graphics card for this
| reason. I was able to play just about all my Windows games
| without issue, except for multiplayer games that rely on
| anticheat that does not run on Linux.
|
| When Win10 goes out of support I'll probably be using Linux
| as my daily driver for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad
| Valve put in the work.
| Farfignoggen wrote:
| Now ask yourself the same question but only for iGPU/dGPU
| compute API support from AMD on Linux and I do not think that
| you or anyone will come to the same conclusion on Linux!
|
| And really Valve/Linux Community is more responsible for
| AMD's Opensource Radeon drivers and Gaming performance on
| Linux than AMD is!
|
| Even Intel has better Blender 3D iGPU/dGPU Accelerated Cycles
| rendering support for Intel's ARC/Earlier iGPUs and dGPU
| hardware(Via OneAPI/Level-0) and iGPU/dGPU compute API
| support on Linux. And so really one must first consider what
| Linux Opensource applications need proper iGPU/dGPU compute
| API support so they do not have to use the slow and power
| hungry CPU rendering/whatever fallback instead.
|
| And Blender 3D used to support OpenCL as the iGPU/dGPU
| compute API for AMD and Intel Graphics but even back then
| AMD's OpenCL component was not easy to get installed and
| working on Linux. And Linux/MESA had the old clover OpenCL
| implementation in the MESA drivers but that was not kept
| updated for OpenCL feature set support! And even with the
| newer Rusticl OpenCL Implementation in MESA that's just been
| created is that Rusticl/OpenCL implementation been fully
| enabled in any Ubuntu versions or Ubuntu derivatives
| currently?
|
| Look at support for AMD's ROCm/HIP in Linux and for
| Consumer/Client iGPUs and dGPUs and that's rather limited and
| Polaris dGPUs have long since been dropped form the ROCm/HIP
| support matrix and Vega iGPU/dGPUs are on borrowed time for
| ROCm/HIP support.
|
| So be careful there giving too much credit to AMD's iGPU/dGPU
| efforts on Linux as there's more to that story. And Look at
| Blender 3D where that works with Nvidia's CUDA and Works with
| Apple's Metal and iGPU compute API support there and dGPUs as
| well.
|
| And I'm on Linux Mint and never going back to Windows but all
| my older AMD iGPU/dGPU hardware has never been properly
| supported for Blender 3D's iGPU/dGPU accelerated Cycles
| rendering. Intel's got better iGPU/dGPU compute API support
| on Linux but for ARM Based Processors Apple's the only choice
| there for proper Blender 3D iGPU support and no mention of
| Blender 3D iGPU accelerated Cycles rendering support for
| Qualcomm's Adreno X1 iGPUs on the Snapdragon X Elite SOC
| based laptops or Mini Desktop PC(Coming soon for consumers).
| dangus wrote:
| Creators can spend their life savings on Nvidia hardware,
| we're just here to play games.
| rapatel0 wrote:
| NVIDIAs latest Linux driver is open source (they were kinda
| forced to because of data center usage of GPUs and GPL
| requirements for kernel extensions)
|
| It's a matter of time.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| They have an optional open-source kernel module. It's still
| pretty far away from being upstreamed and their userspace
| driver is still fully closed source
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Is there a significant difference between built in and
| loadable module?
|
| Aside from source availability and maybe the risk of version
| mismatch, I mean.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Yes, the Nvidia proprietary driver has a kernel module that
| must be installed separately from the kernel. Most distros
| that focus on desktop usage and/or gaming handle this for
| you in a relatively simple way, but even with that, if you
| use a cutting-edge kernel you'll often end up with an
| unbootable system due to the kernel updating before the
| nvidia kernel module does. If you _need_ nvidia on Linux,
| either use the (much worse, but rapidly improving) open
| source drivers or a distro that uses consistently supported
| kernels like Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop!_OS
| hintymad wrote:
| > same driver support Windows gets.
|
| Naive question: Most of ML workload in a datacenter runs on
| Linux, for which I assume there's good driver support. Why do
| we say that Nvidia does not have enough driver support on
| linux?
| emporas wrote:
| As far as i know, Nvidia drivers are not stable enough. When
| a driver crashes in a data center the computer might reboot
| and continue the operation after some minutes. When a player
| plays a game and the graphic card crashes, he might readily
| switch to Windows.
| eitally wrote:
| It's a reasonable but naive question. There's a big
| difference between Nvidia offering driver/CUDA support for DC
| hardware vs providing driver support for desktop/gaming gear.
| There's also a big difference between the quality &
| consistency of driver support for desktop GPUs between Nvidia
| & AMD.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| It's the very same driver. And one big selling point of
| NVIDIA has always been that you could run CUDA on your
| consumer card too - unlike AMD where their compute stack of
| the day would only run on a select few cards of the last
| generation.
| talldayo wrote:
| > Why do we say that Nvidia does not have enough driver
| support on linux?
|
| It's a long story.
|
| Nvidia has provided pretty-good datacenter/CUDA support on
| Linux for a long time, now. The problem is desktop Linux.
| Nvidia wanted to focus on supporting the old x11 desktop
| server at a time when most distros were switching to Wayland
| as a replacement. Nvidia tried to fix the issue by giving
| Linux devs a proprietary render API to develop Wayland
| support on, but it was largely rejected since it required
| writing a lot of platform-specific code. For a few years, the
| only way to properly accelerate Wayland on Nvidia hardware
| was to use the reverse-engineered Nouveau drivers that broke
| most desktop software - a catch-22 for Nvidia users that
| wanted a more updated desktop experience.
|
| Very recently, a few things started changing. For one, Nvidia
| started to shuffle around their proprietary GPU code to make
| their hardware more open and modular. For two, starting with
| 510-series drivers and continuing through 535 and 555, Nvidia
| has started to make Wayland support a priority. In the long-
| term this should resolve the issue of Nvidia GPUs requiring
| special workarounds to support modern desktops.
| hintymad wrote:
| Ah, did you mean that supporting GPGPU for CUDA workload is
| quite different from support GPU for graphics (or for all
| the GPU functions)?
| talldayo wrote:
| They are pretty distinct. Having good CUDA drivers didn't
| mean raster graphics were accelerated well, and for a
| while the bulk of Nvidia's efforts were focused on a
| depreciated backend.
|
| The good news is that those days are _mostly_ behind us,
| with the more recent Nvidia drivers. Guess the crypto /AI
| boom helped them find the cash to hire better Linux devs.
| rapatel0 wrote:
| The latest NVIDIA driver is open source
| jayd16 wrote:
| What frustrated you?
| Modified3019 wrote:
| There's definitely been a sea change in efforts to provide a
| better UX when it comes to gaming. When steamos released, it
| seems to motivate scattered efforts to start congregating
| together in a more coherent way. See also:
|
| https://bazzite.gg/
|
| https://chimeraos.org/
| iechoz6H wrote:
| This comment would almost make sense 20 years ago (too)!
| brettermeier wrote:
| What about using rufus with preset settings like not have to
| use a Microsoft Account and so on? Just drop a Windows iso in
| it and it will make a nice Windows copy out of it.
| taeric wrote:
| I really don't think I can say enough good things about the
| Steam Deck. If you haven't seen it, they have even supported
| the device helping people install Windows on it.
|
| I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past.
| Given time, I'm sure they will do more in the future. Today,
| though, they are such a breath of fresh air for the support
| they have shown.
|
| Link:
| https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BA...
| feoren wrote:
| > I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past
|
| Oh man, what did they do in the past? I have Valve on my very
| short list of "good companies". Go ahead and rip off that
| band-aid: what are you referring to?
| taeric wrote:
| Worst I know of, is that they were among the early movers
| on loot boxes. That said, my understanding is that their
| were not the same as the ones people grew to hate? I don't
| actually know the details that heavily.
| __s wrote:
| https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
|
| Steam still has Linux at only 2%, but agreed, I've been playing
| most Windows games fine through Proton
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I kind of wonder or suspect that user agents are being
| misidentified. I have heard that sometimes Android gets
| identified as Linux. (which I guess is actually not wrong, but
| you get the point...)
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I am done with windows after issues with the quality of windows
| updates (even security updates!), dark patterns everywhere, pushy
| anti competitive nudges to Microsoft products, copilot privacy
| issues, and things like ads in the start menu. I want to use
| Linux but the main issue for me is battery life of common Linux
| laptops, especially since standby doesn't work reliably.
| AmVess wrote:
| I hope adoption of Linux accelerates.
|
| Windows has become incredibly anti-user. I built a new PC
| recently. No internet because the latest version of the Windows
| 11 installer didn't have a realtek Wifi driver on it. This driver
| was present in the Windows 10 installer.
|
| If I didn't know the work around, I would not have been able to
| install the OS.
|
| Ok, so I got the OS installed, and was greeted with an OS with 4
| different UI styles glued together from W7 on up. Keep in mind,
| the OS in its entirety has UI elements dating back to Windows
| 3.1.
|
| Still no WIFI drivers which I had to hunt down and wait because
| the OEM's website was spittling out corrupt data for a while.
|
| WIFI up, Windows update missed a bunch of drivers. Installed them
| manually.
|
| After about 45 minutes, finally got the OS ready to install apps.
| Basic apps. Office, dev stuff, photo stuff. This took over an
| hour, what with Windows updates, and all.
|
| I also put the latest copy of Fedora on my laptop. No internet
| connection needed. Typed in username, passcode. Installed in
| about 10 minutes. WIFI working out of the box. One reboot later,
| I had a fully functioning OS that came with everything I needed.
| 20 minutes total, perhaps.
|
| Microsoft has completely thrown away any notion of usability
| while Linux is accelerating towards it.
|
| I still can't quite wrap my head around requiring internet to
| install the OS while also not providing a means to access the
| internet via WIFI.
|
| And then of course there are all the other issues surrounding the
| OS that has been talked about at length here.
|
| Finally, Windows 11 is a buggy, slow, unresponsive mess of an OS,
| and it makes using Windows 10 feel like a breath of fresh air due
| to its comparative responsiveness and lack of bugs. Keyword is
| comparative. Windows 10 is still a corpulent waddling pig of a
| sloppily glued together OS.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Moved to Linux Mint a few months ago and 90% of the Steam games I
| play work the same (or better) which surprised me. Dev experience
| is way better and I haven't had to tinker with much at all,
| Bluetooth controllers connect just fine and no more bloat +
| spying by default.
| gamepsys wrote:
| I had the same experience about 5 years ago.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| I don't trust these stats at all. I'd like to see a breakdown by
| user agent.
|
| It makes much more sense to me that ChromeOS is becoming more
| common than that everyday users are switching to Linux.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > It makes much more sense to me that ChromeOS is becoming more
| common than that everyday users are switching to Linux.
|
| It's not necessary for anyone to switch to Linux to see this
| behavior. These are shares. I'm actually not surprised by these
| numbers because I've noticed Windows users use their desktops
| less, instead doing more with other devices. I wouldn't be
| surprised to see the number rise to 20% or more in the next few
| years even if there's no pickup in folks moving to Linux on the
| desktop.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I switched to linux desktop about 2.5 years ago.
|
| TBH, I'm ready to go back to windows.
|
| The way I put it, driving a car with a driver's seat that looks
| like 747 cockpit is pretty cool and definitely very powerful. And
| it has auto-pilot if you just want the basics.
|
| But man, if you want to do more than the absolute basics, a
| regular Toyota corolla drivers seat is _way_ more accommodating
| and intuitive. You don't need to spend a year studying the
| machine to use it fluidly.
|
| Linux is cool, the idea incredible, but man, searching for guides
| that tell you to turn cryptic knobs, flick unlabeled switches,
| and push seemingly random buttons just to get the window to roll
| down has become too taxing for me. Especially when half the time
| it doesn't even work.
|
| I want a GUI, .exe's, and hover text on options. There is a
| reason every consumer grade linux/unix OS hides the terminal
| (android, iOS, macOS).
| aaomidi wrote:
| You practically described how I feel every time I run into an
| issue on windows and have to resort to editing undocumented
| registry keys.
| AndroTux wrote:
| And that happens how often? Once a year? On Linux, that's
| more like one a day. Once a week if you're lucky.
| JrProgrammer wrote:
| I have no idea what you are talking about, I've used fedora
| for over a year now and aside from some tweaking, which I
| explicitly did myself, I've never had to go into some weird
| configs to change anything.
|
| It just works
| soerxpso wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what exactly you're doing with Linux
| that's causing that? I use Arch daily (programming, gaming,
| web browsing, etc), and the last time I had to do anything
| more complicated than `sudo pacman -Syu` to configure my
| system was over a year ago.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Can you be specific? I like to tinker with my config so am
| not the comparison point, but my partner, two young
| daughters and my mother are all on Linux and neither do I
| help them, nor do they use the terminal.
|
| My mother switched to Linux several years ago and the
| amount of questions I receive are less than when she used
| Windows, mainly because if she encounters issues it's much
| easier for her to find a solution herself.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Linux is great for grandmas and linux junkies.
|
| If all you do is check email and watch youtube, it works
| excellent. Its when you are someone in the middle that it
| becomes a huge PITA.
| AndroTux wrote:
| Exactly. I'm someone who can fix his broken Linux install
| because the driver update broke something again or
| because the display scaling is fucked again or because
| the game won't launch on Steam or because wayland crashed
| again or because the application is missing some weird
| dependency, but I really, really don't want to. I want to
| use my computer to do my work. I don't want to work on my
| computer.
| keyringlight wrote:
| I'd agree with that, my sense is there would be a lot of
| benefit from adding GUIs that bridge the gap and show
| what they're doing. So instead of firing up a text editor
| to reach into the depths of /etc or googling the huge
| breadth of guides that essentially have "copy this into
| the terminal and pipe into grep" to get information
| sometimes without providing context. Another aspect to
| this is setting up guardrails on what is being done, and
| feedback on limits, which could increase confidence in
| using the system instead of treating it as something that
| will shatter at the slightest wrong touch or an
| appliance.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I think honestly PEBCAK.
|
| I use an AMD GPU. When I installed windows, windows kept
| insisting to downgrade my drivers. I looked it up and the
| official solution on Microsoft was a regedit to disable
| auto updates for GPU drivers.
|
| This actually happens pretty often when I'm using windows
| as a power user.
|
| On Linux, I've setup endeavourOS once (and by setup I mean
| installed it, and then installed Flatpak for the rest of my
| applications). I run yay every once in a while and
| everything works.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Meh if you're not picky about the way your desktop
| looks/acts then you can install it and run __aslongas__
| linux has the software you need. If you use office/play
| games all day long linux probably isn't for you because it
| simply doesn't have the the software you want to run which
| is the most important thing for people. That isn't the
| fault of linux it's just a market fact. Linux has
| everything I need and 80-90% of the games I play install
| easily via steam. I mean I know I'm giving up a little, but
| it's just games. I prefer to have a stable system that
| isn't spying on me 24/7 and trying to insert ads between
| myself and my very prodigious computer time.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Or worse, the knobs don't exist because Daddy knows what's
| best for you, and you can't have the source to implement
| those knobs yourself either.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I've found Pop!_OS to be completely boring in a good way,
| though I do think there are some rough edges that are inherent
| to Linux as a sort of hacker first OS, if that makes sense. I
| also buy Corollas or at least cross shop them when looking for
| a car.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Can you outline what things you were messing with? I am a long
| time linux user, and I haven't configured my computer on the
| command line in years. Everything works, so there is no need to
| change much. Last time was 3 years ago, when I really wanted an
| pipewire ahead of time, and so I spent some time installing and
| configuring it. That was indeed painful.
|
| Otherwise, I fight with python on the command line, but you do
| that on Windows and Macos as well.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Just recently I got the urge to play dwarf fortress again.
| For the first time on Linux too.
|
| Of course you need to run dwarf therapist, a 3rd party
| program, alongside the game to manage your dwarves. Dwarf
| therapist hooks into dwarf fortress to load data about your
| game in real time.
|
| Of course, as I have come to normally expect, it didn't work.
| It could not find the active game session, despite the game
| running.
|
| So you get on the linux answer machine (google) and start
| looking for those cryptic codes to painfully ctrl+shift+v
| (note: cannot have ctrl+v like every other interface on
| earth) and offer up to the emotionless terminal god with the
| hope that things work after submitting those magic characters
| (no response or confirmation, you just try to do the thing
| you want to do again to see if it worked).
|
| This time around it was "ptrace_scope" settings. What is
| that? I have no fucking idea, I just want to use dwarf
| therapist.
|
| https://github.com/Dwarf-Therapist/Dwarf-
| Therapist/blob/mast...
|
| So I follow those steps to make a permanent adjustment,
| including getting this thing called "libcap2-bin" (again, no
| idea what that is, could be installing a botnet for all i
| know). And as I have come to expect, it doesn't work.
|
| So instead now I have to run a terminal command (i have it
| saved in a text file on my desktop) everytime i turn on the
| PC to disable ptrace so I can run dwarf therapist.
|
| Compare this to windows:
|
| Download dwarf therapist.
|
| Run it.
|
| Works first time.
|
| It's just such a classic linux experience.
| eqvinox wrote:
| The 'funny' thing here is that you've run afoul of security
| restrictions, apparently dwarf therapist hooks into dwarf
| fortress as a debugger (=ptrace) to mess around with its
| interna. Why it does that is beyond me, there are better
| ways to achieve similar things (e.g. LD_PRELOAD).
|
| This (hopefully) doesn't hold in the general case, but for
| this very specific instance the classic Windows experience
| of it "works first time" seems intimately tied to the fact
| that it is a less secure OS.
| Yasuraka wrote:
| >getting this thing called "libcap2-bin" (again, no idea
| what that is, could be installing a botnet for all i know)
|
| If you get it via a package manager (like apt or dnf), it's
| almost guaranteed to not be malware unless some nation-
| actor is out to get you.
|
| Funnily enough, this is something that Windows never solved
| (store is garbage and incomplete, winget is powerless and
| incomplete) and remains a prime vector for malware after
| all these years, despite a bunch of bandaids that are
| ultimately useless.
| keyringlight wrote:
| winget seems like a minimum effort to say they have
| something that seems like a package manager, from what I
| can tell it's a big index that either hooks into the
| msstore, or points to a regular installer with a version
| number that usually runs in silent mode.
|
| Packaging like linux has had for decades would seem like
| a huge uplift for windows if they could do it, especially
| if it could be done with modern approaches to isolation.
| 3np wrote:
| This is a Dwarf-Therapist thing, not a Linux thing.
|
| I mean, how well does it run on iOS? (It won't)
| amlib wrote:
| So... you are complaining that a software that hacks into
| another software on linux needs more effort to work
| compared to windows? I think that's a completely reasonable
| outcome in this case. Care to give a different one? Look,
| I'm completely aware of linux shortcomings and deal with
| them constantly, but I also think it's a far cry from how
| hard it used to be 15 years ago, or even 5 years ago! Maybe
| you are making things harder for yourself trying to run
| games on a "too stable" system like Debian or and old
| Ubuntu LTS? Usually people recommend more bleeding edge
| stuff for this like a Fedora or Arch based distro. There
| has been a bit of an upheaval in linux world lately, things
| are changing constantly and being on the bleeding edge
| isn't as bloody as it used to be. In exchange, you get
| better support for apps, which is the key thing lacking in
| linux since... forever.
|
| Anyway, I also have my linux bullshit story of the day.
| I've been playing Nintendo Switch games on the Yuzu
| emulator for over two years now but things took an
| unexpected turn when Nintendo sued the Yuzu devs and took
| over the project, being hostile to anyone trying to fork it
| or even host it anywhere. If you are a windows user you can
| just keep using your installation and whatever "setup.exe"
| to keep reinstalling it because it's a stable api/abi
| system (until maybe windows 12 comes and breaks stuff). On
| a "unstable" linux distro, your yuzu installation is now
| constantly bit rotting away due to libraries apis and abis
| changing over time as the system updates. So now
| occasionally when I try opening yuzu and I'm greeted
| with... absolutely nothing (why linux DEs have such a hard
| time showing generic error messages when an app crash or
| exits ungracefully? That would be great feedback to the
| user, anyway, I digress).
|
| Obviously normal/noob linux user would already be
| helplessly stuck, but I carry on. Running yuzu on the
| terminal reveals the error message, A library is missing.
| Running ldd on it reveals even more libraries missing. The
| rotting is on. I now have to run some commands to find
| which library pertains to which package (it's not always
| obvious) and find a way to get an old package containing
| it. Hopefully, Arch based distros have this nifty tool
| "dowgnrade" that lets you downgrade or download old
| packages. Now I have to extract all relevant libraries and
| put them together on some directory. I then have to run
| yuzu with special env vars such as LIB_PATH= LIBS= to make
| it load such libraries. To my demise it's not over yet,
| some libraries are loaded as dependencies of other
| libraries, which were not previously present, so ldd
| couldn't possibly find them. I have to repeat all steps
| again until all dependencies are met.
|
| Finally, I can play some fucking Zelda. But by now I'm too
| tired, and it's too late. Maybe I should just have remained
| a Windows user 18 years ago after all. But before those
| intrusive toughs can complete, I think about all the
| bullshit people have to put up when using Windows,
| honestly, Linux bullshit is worth it.
| resource_waste wrote:
| You didnt mention which distro.
|
| Are you using outdated Linux? (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint)
|
| Or modern linux? (Fedora)
|
| Too many people fell for Ubuntu's Free CD marketing 20 years
| ago and repeat a prayer that its 'sTaBlE'. Its not stable,
| Outdated linux is garbage.
|
| Since switching to Fedora, I install RPM fusion + Nivida and
| never touch the terminal. I don't use app managers either, I
| just havent had a reason to use either app managers or the
| terminal in the last 1.5 years.
| eqvinox wrote:
| > Are you using outdated Linux? (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint)
|
| > Or modern linux? (Fedora)
|
| Citation needed. As an application developer, I'm seeing
| interest and activity on Fedora and Ubuntu decrease, and
| Debian and Mint increase.
|
| (I'll agree with Ubuntu being a "trap", though not really for
| any reason related to stability.)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Without knowing what distro you use it is impossible to derive
| any meaning from your post.
| dark__paladin wrote:
| I have had a lot of luck using the Plasma desktop environment
| (on Arch). Super customizable, to the level of hyper
| specificity you've described (down to the pixel, sometimes),
| and is mostly intuitive how to make these customizations.
|
| My local machine basically looks/runs like Windows 10, but with
| the KDE Plasma logo in the corner instead of Microsoft Windows.
|
| I have a similar setup using Cosmic on Pop_OS!
| zokier wrote:
| > TBH, I'm ready to go back to windows.
|
| I'm ready to go back to Windows 7. But between Windows 11 (or
| 12 or whatever), ios ("macos"), and Linux, it's not so simple
| anymore. It's just bad options all around.
| albertopv wrote:
| I had a very old HP laptop. I installed Ubuntu 20.04, no
| problems. Laptop board died. I bought a mini pc, different CPU
| and GPU. I moved Ubunuty SSD from HP laptop to mini pc as it
| was, and it worked. Without doing anything all was running:
| wifi, gpu, bluetooth (even better than corporate Win11 laptop).
| I run Steam and I was playing just like before my old games.
| Magic.
| minkles wrote:
| 100% agree with this.
|
| From my perspective, Linux only works for people if you give a
| fuck about Linux and make it part of your core being. Some of
| us give a fuck about solving the problem, not the tool.
|
| There is nothing more frustrating when I'm told "have you used
| Linux on the desktop". I literally use it on the server, have
| done everything down to writing kernel modules, have brought up
| startups and piles of infrastructure on it for 25 years but
| fuck no, it isn't going to the desktop _because it doesn 't
| solve any problems there, only creating new ones_.
| feoren wrote:
| Despite the downvotes, I agree with you: I only care about
| getting the thing done. I don't want the OS to matter. I
| don't want it to be part of my identity. I don't want to
| think about the OS _at all_. Whereas most people using Linux
| are like: "whatever, once you read all the man pages and
| understand how the process isolation model works and find the
| right Discord chats to ask your question and know which
| packages to download and pick correctly from the 743
| different distributions and make sure all hardware you buy is
| Linux-compatible and configure your kernel to sudo dev/null/
| then you really don't have to jump down to the console more
| than once every few weeks" ... sorry, it's still currently
| much easier to unplug the internet when you first install
| Windows, edit a few regex keys to disable some ads, and then
| tell that popup "later" every few weeks. While the latter is
| infuriating, it takes two orders of magnitude less upfront
| mental load.
| paretoer wrote:
| You can't be using KDE Plasma then.
|
| I don't even know how to access the KDE Plasma help because it
| is just so easy to use.
|
| I am writing this on a $500 ASUS Vivobook that came with
| Windows 11. The hardest thing was making the KDE thumb drive
| because Windows kept giving me a blue screen of death.
|
| Once installed everything just works.
| lovecg wrote:
| Finally, 2024 will be the year of the Linux desktop!
|
| On a serious note there seems to be an interesting lesson here
| about what sort of products just don't seem to work in a non-
| commercial open source model. Specifically, simple user friendly
| UIs for non-power users seem to require financial incentives and
| competition.
| sebtron wrote:
| Nice news, slow and steady grows in the past decade :)
|
| Regarding the article...
|
| > While Linux's growth is noteworthy, it's important to view it
| in the context of the overall desktop operating system market:
|
| >
|
| > Windows remains dominant with a 72.08% market share
|
| > macOS holds steady at 14.92%
|
| > Chrome OS trails at 1.41%
|
| >
|
| > Linux's 4.45% puts it firmly in fourth place, ahead of Chrome
| OS but still well behind the market leaders.
|
| Uhm what? And some people claim LLMs are great at summarizing
| data...
| api wrote:
| Linux can win the desktop by just sitting still while Windows
| makes itself more and more awful and user-hostile.
| halotrope wrote:
| Linux Desktop got so much better in recent years but it also
| stayed the same. If you're trying to be productive and not just
| switching between editor and terminal windows there are still
| endless frustrations that never end.
| systemtest wrote:
| I used to run Linux on my desktop as a teenager, but now as a
| middle aged man I just want to sit down after work, boot up my
| computer, click the icon of my favourite game and relax for a
| bit.
|
| And for that, I prefer Windows. I have stopped caring about my
| distro, my window manager, my desktop environment, the package
| manager I use. Even my wallpaper is just the default Windows 11
| one.
| mysteria wrote:
| With modern hardware it's also completely viable to have a
| Windows VM idling in the background on a Linux desktop to run
| things like MS Office. Local RDP performance (with FreeRDP/etc.)
| is excellent and suitable for business or dev work that doesn't
| require accelerated graphics. You can have shared directories, a
| shared clipboard, and so forth.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| In case you're wondering if it's real growth, or just noise:
|
| 2009: 0.69
|
| 2012: 0.85
|
| 2015: 1.5
|
| 2018: 1.69
|
| 2021: 2.38
|
| 2024: 4.54
| skwirl wrote:
| As a user of 27" 4k monitors, the terrible 150% DPI scaling has
| been a dealbreaker for Linux desktop for me for years. Every so
| often I will go out and search to see if it's any better, and I
| always find people insisting that it works "perfectly" now, and
| then I will go and try to replicate what they did only to find
| out that "perfectly" means something very different to Linux
| desktop users who clearly have never used MacOS or even Windows
| with fractional DPI scaling.
| gamepsys wrote:
| As a 4k monitor user, I think KDE has DPI scaling on par with
| MacOS.
| binkHN wrote:
| Seconded; while the occasional legacy program might have
| issues, I'm happily doing 4K with scaling in KDE with
| Wayland.
| jsnell wrote:
| Statcounter's "stats" are garbage, and should not be reported on.
| They're computed from untrustworthy information generated from a
| skewed and undisclosed sample, and processed with an unknown
| methodology. All that's published is aggregate data that's so
| coarse that it's impossible to actually reason about what's
| happening and what's driving the changes to the number.
|
| But fairly regularly their stats are either so volatile or so
| absurd that it's obvious they have no relationship with reality.
| Like when they reporter Windows 8.1 climbing from 0.1% to 6%
| market share in the US in late 2023.
|
| One could easily come up with half a dozen other explanations for
| this Linux desktop market share number that are as plausible as
| the hypothesis of significant growth in desktop Linux usage.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Though I agree that Statcounter's stats are garbage, their
| methodology is somewhat known. They have connections to
| supposedly 3 million websites that run their script, that
| script records each hit, and the end stats say 4.45% of desktop
| hits come from Linux.
|
| It's unclear what sites they, but I doubt it's a representative
| sample. Even if it is, like one person figuring out which site
| was tracked setting up a refresh script could be enough to
| meaningfully damage the data.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StatCounter
| jsnell wrote:
| We know the methodology by which they collect the data, which
| is why we can tell it's a skewed sample. We don't know how
| they process it.
|
| It's not possible to reliably determine the operating system
| from just the user-agent. You could try to enrich the UA data
| with other signals, but all of those avenues are either being
| closed off by the browsers as fingerprinting vectors or are
| going to have trouble distinguishing Linux and Android.
|
| Likewise we know they do some filtering of bot traffic, but
| not the details of how or even the proportion of traffic
| they're filtering out (which would at least allow us to
| reason about the quality of that filtering).
| EasyMark wrote:
| How many people actually change their operating system user
| agent though--especially to linux? it's gotta be less than
| 1%
| luyu_wu wrote:
| I'm one of thosr who have, Microsoft office webapps love
| to misbehave with Linux useragents! I know Linux friends
| who spoof useragents for privacy reasons as well!
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >We don't know how they process it.
|
| I don't think they do. 4.45% of hits from UA's set to
| desktop report Linux. There's no more processing done.
| That'd explain why some random countries end up reporting a
| huge number of Linux users or the seemingly random spikes
| and drops the data shows.
|
| >Likewise we know they do some filtering of bot traffic,
|
| Do we? Could it not be ignoring certain UA's that report as
| bots, like cURL or google crawler?
|
| You seem to think they must be doing something to justify
| their data, but as we don't know what they're doing the
| results are trash.
|
| I think they don't do anything to justify their trash data.
| I've seen no reason to give them any credit.
| drewg123 wrote:
| FreeBSD at 0.01%. There are dozens of us! :)
| eqvinox wrote:
| "Linux's 4.45% puts it firmly in fourth place,"
|
| I don't think it makes sense to count "unknown" as being in third
| place...
| franczesko wrote:
| "As awareness of data privacy issues grows, more users are
| turning to open-source alternatives like Linux"
|
| I'd love to see Linux for mobile devices just because of that
| reason. Old school "what happens on device, stays on device"
| underseacables wrote:
| I think the more people that have to suffer with windows 11, the
| more they will turn to Linux. To the average user, Linux is still
| a clunky, disjointed operating system, but despite its flaws it's
| vastly better than Windows 11.
| mrinfinitiesx wrote:
| Good. Linux desktop is the future.
| lvl155 wrote:
| I think Windows 10 was the best desktop experience. There was a
| period when OSX was nice. Linux is doable but it's always 80%
| there (speaking strictly in terms of DE). Things break more often
| than I'd like. Not a problem if you do everything in terminal.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Windows has a lot more jank these days than the average Linux
| desktop.
| lvl155 wrote:
| 11 is horrible. Windows 10 was GOAT for awhile right after
| they released WSL2. If you can give me Windows 10 environment
| with Debian as the base, that'd be perfect.
| dangus wrote:
| And then when Windows 12 comes out you'll be saying Windows
| 11 was the GOAT right? I thought Windows 7 was the GOAT!
|
| I'm the person with the unpopular opinion that I would take
| Windows 11 over 10 any day.
|
| Windows 10 has too much in the UI that still feels like a
| bridge between old and new.
|
| They both run the same apps, so to me all the nitpicks and
| philosophical problems people have don't really matter much
| to me. I haven't found anything in Windows 11 that "doesn't
| work" or is even mildly annoying and it has a bunch of new
| stuff that's genuinely useful.
|
| Like, it finally has screen capture utilities that don't
| frustrate me to use when compared to macOS. A bunch of
| little basic UI stuff like that where I feel it's an
| improvement. The Windows Shell is a major improvement. The
| notifications/quick settings area makes a lot more sense
| now.
|
| Windows 11 remembers where your windows were when you
| undock from a second monitor. Little stuff like that where
| it was just slightly more frustrating to use than my Mac.
|
| Windows 10 is also more poorly aware/optimized of modern
| hardware than a lot of people realize. It is an _old_ os
| now. Things like automatic HDR in games just isn 't there.
| (Really, gaming is an area where Windows 11's new features
| are quite clearly worth the upgrade)
| yorwba wrote:
| The highest share seems to be in India with 16.21% Linux.
| https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india
|
| I wonder whether that's real or a mirage caused by Linux servers
| masquerading as desktops.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| India is rather poor, Windows screams for new hardware (and
| Windows 11 just obsoleted perfectly fine hardware that's still
| plenty fast).
| Karliss wrote:
| Statcounter data is based on website visits. It is very
| unlikely that any significant fraction of them are being used
| for browsing web, or even have a graphical interface with web
| browser installed for doing it.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I've always assumed the sites they track lead to some serious
| small sample biases in certain countries. It's an Irish
| company, so I'd guess most of their sites are European language
| based and wouldn't be surprised if there's a high amount of
| tech sites.
|
| For example, it wouldn't be that surprising if they got data
| from HN, or a similar site. What portion of Indian desktop hits
| to this site do you think report using Linux?
| apatheticonion wrote:
| Across the week, I go between Linux, MacOS and Windows - my work
| issued device runs MacOS and my personal desktop PC dual boots
| Windows and Linux. I am biased towards Linux because I like it
| but it's far from perfect.
|
| UX is a passion of mine and something I'm a little pedantic about
| and while Linux has made strides, it still has a long way to go
| in this department though it's _so close_ and constantly getting
| better.
|
| Gnome and KDE all have their little inconsistencies and/or lack
| of functionality. Individually they are minor but together they
| make it feel unpolished or incomplete.
|
| Below is a non-exhaustive list of things that I feel could be
| improved - don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it constantly
| - nit picking is my way of finding areas to improve it so I can
| recommend it in earnest to friends looking for a bit of OS
| strange.
|
| Some things that I think could be improved;
|
| ===
|
| - Gnome; has an incomplete file manager, though generally no file
| manager available on MacOS or Linux beats the one on Windows 7 or
| 10.
|
| - Gnome; Window snapping doesn't always work for Chrome and in
| general window snapping needs some love.
|
| - Gnome,KDE; While Chrome has its own style on all platforms, it
| somehow feels less congruent to Linux desktops than it does to
| MacOS and Windows - plus you can't drag tabs off the window in
| Wayland Chrome.
|
| - KDE; Password keychain stuff. Feels like this needs to be
| native to Linux and not the DE.
|
| - KDE; (minor) If you have a high refresh screen, KDE will use
| 60hz for workspace transition animations but 144hz for everything
| else.
|
| - Gnome; Window decorations on Gnome are overly padded which
| makes the interface feel unpolished and somewhat clumsy compared
| to the tight fonts and spacing you see on Windows and MacOS. I
| assume this is because Gnome aspire to make a play for a mobile
| OS one day in the future?
|
| - Gnome; The Gnome/libadwaita guidelines prefer a application
| menu design that is obscured from view resulting in too many
| clicks - I think this is also related to their mobile play. I
| believe that Cosmic gets this right.
|
| - Linux; Please fix application installations. Flatpak is kind of
| okay but I constantly have issues with it so I tend to avoid it.
| I really love MacOS's "Foo.app" "executable folder" concept. It
| feels similar to AppImage but I don't think that's going to win
| the packaging wars any time soon.
|
| - Fedora 40 + AMD GPU; This is my configuration but it might
| affect other distros/hardware - Steam doesn't launch from the
| icon right now. You must install Steam then launch it from the
| terminal.
|
| ===
|
| There are lots of areas for improvement but regardless - every
| new release of Gnome and KDE gets better and better.
|
| Steam has helped put Linux gaming on the map, that combined with
| the poor experience of Windows 11 has encouraged IT savvy people
| & gamers to genuinely consider running a Linux desktop for the
| first time.
|
| Also the Cosmic desktop is shaping up to be a real strong
| contender in the Linux DE space and I am excited to see what
| happens there.
|
| It's an exciting time to be watching the desktop computing space
| and I am hopeful that the additional attention Linux is getting
| will continue to push investment into polishing the desktop
| experience.
| binkHN wrote:
| > Gnome and KDE all have their little inconsistencies and/or
| lack of functionality. Individually they are minor but together
| they make it feel unpolished or incomplete.
|
| Fair, but for how many years now has Windows continued to have
| a legacy and "modern" way of accessing the OS's settings?
| binkHN wrote:
| I recently migrated from Windows to Linux. I bought a new machine
| with Windows 11 Pro preinstalled and it was a cesspool of
| Microsoft ads for their services coming from within the OS and
| preinstalled apps. It was happening so often, and affecting my
| productivity while annoying the heck out of me, that I decided
| Windows is hindering more than it's helping; I bit the bullet and
| installed Linux for the first time.
|
| Fast forward and I've been on Linux for more than 6 months now
| and, while it's not all roses, my overall experience has been far
| better than Windows 11. I still remote into a Windows machine
| regularly for things that I have not yet migrated to Linux and,
| while it's a familiar space, it's no longer a space I want to be
| in.
| leoedin wrote:
| I'm surprised about the amount of negativity in the comments
| here. I've been running PopOS on a few different machines for the
| last 4 years or so. It's been almost seamless. I can't think of
| the last time I even considered booting into windows - in fact I
| recently wiped my dual boot partition because I needed the disk
| space.
|
| I'm not really a desktop power user - I don't even bother
| changing the wallpaper usually.
|
| I think it's just so much easier now - almost every app is a web
| app. The stuff I run locally - development tools mainly - all
| have Linux versions.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| +1 for PopOS as a daily driver and have barely used Windows at
| home in the last 5 years (outside of my work computer at
| least).
|
| I love being free of Microsoft and Windows (and Aople and
| Facebook for that matter, but they're beside the point). On the
| way to minimising Google as well.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It only took 30 years, time to update growing projections for the
| next 30 to come.
|
| It will be beating the 10% mark?
| INTPenis wrote:
| Atomic Linuxes really are the gateway for regular people to use
| Linux.
|
| I've been using Linux since the 90s and I never really would
| recommend Linux to anyone unless there were very special
| circumstances.
|
| But today I'd gladly recommend for example Fedora Atomic, I
| haven't tried other atomic Linux distros but the key feature is
| being able to revert back to a previous state in the boot
| manager.
|
| No software will ever be perfect, but once an issue happens a
| non-technical user must be able to easily revert back to a
| functional state so they can proceed with their work and life.
| Otherwise the OS is worthless to them.
|
| And sure you've been able to do this with BTRFS and snapshots but
| Fedora Atomic is the first time I've personally seen a distro
| come with this feature out of box, while also being very modern
| and easy to use.
|
| Just the other day I did an ostree upgrade and after rebooting
| Firefox couldn't play videos, Steam wouldn't even start. I just
| wanted to get on with my day so I simply rebooted into the
| previous commit. An end-user is given time and breathing room to
| wait for the issue to be resolved and try another update.
| arcastroe wrote:
| I've been using UWF on Windows. It essentially resets all
| changes on reboot so that every reboot is back to a clean
| state.
|
| But I'll take a look at Fedora Atomic. What you describe sounds
| promising.
| openrisk wrote:
| The beauty of this decades long race is that the end game is
| still ambiguous. The Windows desktop trends towards being a thin
| client for opaque cloud services, which means at some point the
| Linux desktop proposition will be quite dramatically different,
| with its emphasis on local, private, open source etc.
|
| In any case, for power users the Linux desktop is already a
| formidable platform.
| karmakaze wrote:
| What part of Windows 11 is thin? Ads in the Start menu?
| openrisk wrote:
| Who mentioned Windows 11? Ever heard of Windows 365 and
| "cloud pc"?
| karmakaze wrote:
| I didn't think that was a thing folks used, or want to use.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| There's already a massive gap between Windows and macOS. Though
| I feel like that gap between Windows and Linux is nominal.
|
| I do think that Apple will continue to piss off engineers
| enough that over time Ubuntu or another mainstream distribution
| on a high quality laptop will be a popular choice for a
| plurality of developers.
| geoffbp wrote:
| Year of the Linux desktop
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I wonder just how much of this has been driven by third-party
| vendors dropping Windows 7 users. I know it's not zero, because I
| helped a die-hard Windows 7 user switch to Linux specifically due
| to the Steam deadline. It's easy to chalk that kind of
| stubbornness up to a generic "fear of change", but in his case I
| think he very specifically loathed the direction Microsoft took
| with 8/10/11.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-21 23:01 UTC)