[HN Gopher] Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA
___________________________________________________________________
Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA
Author : marcodiego
Score : 879 points
Date : 2025-07-16 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ostechnix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ostechnix.com)
| sylware wrote:
| I still wonder how they can know that reliably.
|
| elf/linux distros are hardly pre-installed on PCs and forced upon
| users.
| btreecat wrote:
| FTA
|
| >According to the latest StatCounter Global Stats for June
| 2025, Linux now holds 5.03% of the desktop operating system
| market share in the United United States of America. This is
| fantastic news!
| ghc wrote:
| That...does not answer his query.
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| Looks like they track site traffic. [1]
|
| > Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is
| installed on more than 1.5 million sites globally. These sites
| cover various activities and geographic locations. Every month,
| we record billions of page views to these sites. For each page
| view, we analyse the browser/operating system/screen resolution
| used and we establish if the page view is from a mobile device.
| For our search engine stats, we analyze every page view
| referred by a search engine. For our social media stats, we
| analyze every page view referred by a social media site. We
| summarize all this data to get our Global Stats information.
|
| [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > I still wonder how they can know that reliably.
|
| I think the general conclusion is that they don't know it
| reliably; notice the other comments in this thread pointing out
| that the numbers jump up and down more or less every time
| they're measured.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I work in the refurb division of an e-waste recycling company.
| Due to licensing costs and our certifications, we can't sell
| anything with Windows. My coworkers install Ubuntu, but I install
| Linux Mint. We don't have any clue if people keep using Linux or
| install Windows, but it's cool to think we're helping to move
| this needle.
|
| Edit: might as well link to the merch:
| https://www.ebay.com/str/evolutionecycling
| tossandthrow wrote:
| My intuition is that most people, unless they have specific
| needs, just keep it.
|
| Most people likely don't have an opinion besides being able to
| browse the web and will not even be aware that they are not
| using Windows.
|
| So this is great work! Keep it up!
| whizzter wrote:
| I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others that
| receive these machines? A new machine for an enterprise or
| gamer will probably retain windows because it's needed but
| people not using their computers for more than surfing will be
| happy enough.
|
| On that side-note I would also not be surprised if people are
| leaving "computers" altogether in favor of phones, it's a
| capable enough computer today for most lay-people, my ex and
| her parents don't have computers anymore and my daughter hardly
| uses her either.
|
| Those that actually need computers such as developers are more
| prone to use Linux anyhow (especially when Microsoft is pushing
| annoying features such as forced reboots for those dropping
| their computers anyhow onto powerusers).
| WJW wrote:
| Anecdotal evidence, but Steams' Proton compatibility layer
| that lets you run Windows-only games on Linux works really
| really well. I haven't had to log into years and years by
| now.
| fmbb wrote:
| Same. Finally no reason to boot Windows on any machine.
| latexr wrote:
| I've been wanting to do this for years on an old (and
| severely underpowered) MacBook Pro which I use with Windows
| exclusively for Games.
|
| Do you have any recommendation for an extremely lightweight
| Linus distro which installs and runs Steam fine? It would
| be used exclusively for that, so it shouldn't run a ton of
| background stuff.
| tomrod wrote:
| Depends on your view of lightweight, but probably XFCE
| Ubuntu (Xubuntu) will serve you great. Full featured
| without a ton of bloat, historically.
| latexr wrote:
| > Depends on your view of lightweight
|
| Basically, what I care is that as I'm running the game,
| the system is consuming as few resources as possible.
| It's an outdated machine, so every bit matters.
|
| > probably XFCE Ubuntu (Xubuntu)
|
| Thank you. Will check it out.
| tomrod wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Linux. My small business and personal
| life run on it. You can download XFCE/Ubuntu spin at
| https://xubuntu.org/download/. If you develop on your
| Apple system, it will be pretty similar except
|
| - App Installation via repositories is more common than
| single program installs. No DMG files. There is a similar
| concept to DMG with "snap" installs. Steam should
| probably be installed via a snap. You trust the producer
| (Valve). But most software and security should come
| through repos (in CLI, sudo apt update && sudo apt
| upgrade)
|
| - Home directory is /home/<username>
|
| Much of the rest is similar -- Apple's BSD and Linux
| share a common Unix design progenitor.
|
| Linux is way open to rewipe, just pay attention that you
| don't lose files. My first day on Linux in the mid 2000s,
| I somehow overwrite the file system allocation table with
| the content of an MP3. It was recoverable!
|
| Good luck, and have fun!
| delecti wrote:
| Check out Bazzite. It started as a way to approximate
| SteamOS for general hardware.
|
| Or if you have an AMD GPU, you could even try SteamOS
| itself, though it's intended for handhelds.
| latexr wrote:
| I thought about SteamOS but didn't seem viable for that
| Mac.
|
| Bazzite looks to be the next best thing. Probably what
| I'm looking for. Thank you.
| ac29 wrote:
| You can login directly to steam big picture mode using
| gamescope if you have no need for a traditional desktop:
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam#Big_Picture_Mode_f
| rom...
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've been gaming on Linux for about a decade now full time,
| and somewhat before that too. I don't have a single Windows
| machine any more. My laptops are running Arch, my wife's
| personal Laptop runs Mint, her work machine is Windows
| because it has to, my work machine is Ubuntu, and my 5yo
| plays Minecraft on an Arch + Gnome laptop.
|
| 7-8 years ago it was pretty frustrating to spend PS4k+ on a
| gaming rig to be unable to play a bunch of titles but I
| will not use Windows, I just accepted it.
|
| Fast forward to today, and I'm playing Helldivers 2, with
| its anti-cheat and everything online with my nephew who's
| on Windows and getting far, far better performance (granted
| my PC is also more powerful). I can play the modern DOOM
| games with better performance than if I was running Windows
| on the same hardware.
|
| My point is, Linux gaming is only getting better, I now
| also own a ROG Ally which I "flashed" (installed the same
| way you would any other Linux distro) with Bazzite straight
| out of the box without even booting Windows and I can play
| the single-player games I like to while travelling, or can
| have a quick game of Helldivers with my nephew if I'm not
| near my PC but have a stable connection. When I need/want
| to I can plug it into a monitor/kb/mouse with a single
| cable and have a full desktop with HDR, VRR etc.
| threetonesun wrote:
| I'm mostly a Mac user but I tested Windows 11 versus
| Bazzite in VMs in my Unraid server, and the Windows 11
| install was a nightmare to then be left with a nightmare
| UI and a bundle of GPU driver issues, meanwhile Bazzite
| took two clicks and worked.
|
| Obviously there are very cutting edge drivers you can't
| get on Linux, and Nvidia support is questionable, and
| some anti-cheat doesn't work, etc, but if you mostly play
| games released in [current year - a few] on hardware
| released [current year - a few] it's really a much more
| enjoyable experience.
| kwanbix wrote:
| I hate W11 to the point that I am still running W10 (IoT)
| on my machines (I also run Solus and Mint). That said, I
| have never experienced what you say in the first
| paragraph.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Windows has at least three screens in the install that
| are upsells on other Microsoft products, plus a screen
| where you have to disable multiple analytics trackers.
| The GPU driver issue might have been a VM issue but to
| get even basic support I needed to install the AMD
| drivers, and ended up in some endless loop of the
| installer telling me it could install drivers for my GPU,
| installing them, then saying it wasn't supported. I
| figured the issue out eventually, after watching the AMD
| installer (with ads!) run for the Nth time, but like I
| said I'm not trying anything cutting edge, so drivers
| baked into the OS that I don't have to think about are
| much nicer.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've never really used old hardware, and generally I've
| not had too many issues using the latest hardware with
| Linux. I don't tend to buy PC hardware on release day
| either, so within a few weeks/months of release when I'm
| buying, drivers are usually available. I've been through
| a half dozen generations of Intel laptop for work usually
| with Nvidia GPUs but my current one is the first with an
| Intel Arc GPU, for which there are no Ubuntu 24.04
| drivers as far as I'm aware, and I'm not entirely sure
| whether it is/can run the dedicated GPU right now or if
| I'm using the iGPU; but my work doesn't require GPU accel
| beyond my desktop and my IDE and terminal (Alacritty).
|
| The biggest issue I find is external devices that need
| firmware flashing require some crap piece of Windows
| software from the manufacturer in order to flash, so I'll
| spin up a Windows VM and USB passthrough to do the update
| then blow it away again.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| I hear this all around and I am myself running GNU/Linux
| almost all the time, but running games on Steam on my
| default OS, which is a Debian with KDE currently, that is
| more miss than hit. I even know someone who has almost the
| same hardware, also runs a GNU/Linux system and for them
| almost all games work using Proton. For me however they
| don't. I already tried proprietary graphics card drivers
| instead of the ones that come with the OS for amdgpu, HWE
| kernel, another distro, using Steam installer downloaded
| from website ... nothing seems to fix the issue. When I
| click on the big green "Play" button in Steam, for many
| times it loads for a moment, and the button turns into a
| blue "stop" button, but then just turns back into a green
| "play" button, never starting the game. Mind, some games
| work, like Stardew Valley for example. But I think those
| are mostly already made to work cross platform.
|
| I have no idea what I can still try, and it annoys me, that
| for most games I still have to reboot into Windows to play
| them. I seem to have had more luck following guides for
| using WINE for specific games in the past, when I made
| games like StarCraft 2 work better than on Windows, than I
| have had with Steam and Proton so far.
|
| So anecdote. It is not smooth sailing for everyone yet,
| unfortunately, and I don't know what the issue is.
| esseph wrote:
| Debian is just not going to have access to as much up to
| date software as it probably needs, even with testing
| back ports, to run well. I say this as a very long time
| Debian user that is really struggling in this day and age
| to find a place for Debian among my devices at this
| point.
| doodlesdev wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what distribution have you been using
| lately instead of Debian?
|
| Anecdotally, I've been using Fedora Workstation for a few
| years already, and my Steam + Proton Experimental
| experience has been fantastic with an AMD GPU using the
| drivers that come with the kernel.
|
| Although I must admit, I miss having a Debian-based
| distribution sometimes, because in some situations I
| can't find rpm packages for more specific things I'm
| trying to do in my system. The problem is I just don't
| know any other distribution that's not Debian Testing
| that could work like Fedora Workstation but with .deb
| packages.
| esseph wrote:
| Fedora Workstation (42)
|
| I add flathub.org and remove the fedora flatpak repo. The
| few other things I need are in copr/terra, but honestly
| they are very rare. I think I have maybe 1 piece of
| software per thing that doesn't release a native .rpm
| (ghostty is one)
|
| https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/
| https://terra.fyralabs.com/
|
| When it comes to Steam, I go to steam -> settings ->
| compatibility -> Enable Steam Play for all titles
|
| I have used Nvidia GPUs and more recently switched to an
| AMD 6700. No issues with either.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Which steam do you use? I have heard that some people
| have issues with the Snap, Flatpack or Native versions.
| Also for proton there are different "versions" you can
| try, experimental or 9 is usually what I run.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| $ dpkg --list | grep -i steam ii steam-devices
| 1:1.0.0.75+ds-6 all Device
| support for Steam-related hardware ii steam-
| installer
| 1:1.0.0.75+ds-6 amd64 Valve's
| Steam digital software delivery system ii steam-
| libs:amd64
| 1:1.0.0.75+ds-6 amd64
| Metapackage for Steam dependencies ii steam-
| libs:i386
| 1:1.0.0.75+ds-6 i386
| Metapackage for Steam dependencies ii steam-
| libs-i386:i386
| 1:1.0.0.75+ds-6 i386
| Metapackage for 32-bit Steam dependencies
|
| I am not using Snap, or Flatpack. I either used apt or an
| installer from their website. I don't quite remember.
|
| When a game doesn't work and the described symptoms
| happen, I usually try a few different Proton versions via
| the game's settings, but this has not helped me make a
| game run. If anything for some games it has reprocessed
| shaders or similar things that Steam games do before
| launching, maybe. But the result stays the same. Game is
| not starting, button changing back to "play" button.
| endorphine wrote:
| Hang in there for Trixie. Some things should be better
| there, especially around WINE performance, cause of the
| upgraded kernel
| jandrese wrote:
| For me Proton works sometimes, but I've had much more
| success with the third party Glorious Eggroll versions that
| include the Microsoft Codecs used by many games for in-game
| video.
| agoodusername63 wrote:
| The case that this is true is only if you don't have an
| Nvidia GPU or don't play D3D12 games.
|
| I tried it, discovered that Nvidia has a known regression
| that causes anywhere up to 25% lower performance compared
| to Windows in GPU limited games in D3D12, and immediately
| went back to Windows.
|
| I'll never understand why people keep championing Linux for
| gaming when it has such a severe regression on the most
| common gaming GPU vendor. Steam says 75%. An Nvidia
| employee even stated that the fix is not trivial so they're
| not committing to a timeline for a fix. This is a year+ old
| issue. They're never fixing it because it doesn't affect
| CUDA.
|
| https://github.com/NVIDIA/egl-
| wayland/issues/164#issuecommen...
| philistine wrote:
| Add it to the list of the death by a thousand cuts of
| Nvidia as a gaming powerhouse. I would have said that
| they would have fixed it eventually to be chosen by Valve
| for a Steam Deck, but they're gorged on AI money at this
| point. I don't think they're the future of gaming GPUs at
| all. They're very slowly abandoning the market through
| those cuts.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > I think this plays a huge part, is it elders/poorer/others
| that receive these machines?
|
| I know that a large portion of our business is to other
| resellers and businesses. FWIW, long before I started working
| here, I replaced XP with Xubuntu on my parent's computer
| about 15 years ago. I told them that "it works like
| Windows[0]", showed them how to check email, browse the web,
| play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer and
| scanner worked great! I expected a call from them to "put it
| back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was
| Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was
| different, then guided her on how to change the game type to
| klondike.)
|
| [0] If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd
| like to point out that most people don't care about how
| operating system kernels are designed. They care about things
| like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes
| programs.
| keyringlight wrote:
| One thing I wonder about with people moving to linux is
| whether "it works like windows" can act as a safe and
| comfortable landing point, but then how many people explore
| and prefer the options that they then have access to.
|
| One aspect MS has been criticized for over the past few
| versions of windows is that they are opinionated about how
| the base windows UI operates and looks for a very large
| number of users. One of the things I find interesting on
| the subreddits for some distros is a lot of posts is
| showing off how they've customized things, so you can nudge
| people towards the theming support or panel components you
| can swap out, or that you can have drastically different
| DEs with different operation models yet handle the same
| applications.
| bargainbin wrote:
| Would just like to add it's not needed so much now. I'm a
| pretty avid gamer and I've been using Bazzite as my OS now
| for months without issue.
|
| Proton has completely changed the game (pun not intended).
| All that's really missing now is the big studios who won't
| release their anticheat for Linux.
| shaunpud wrote:
| I thought the Windows license was burned into the BIOS, so a
| reinstall would pick it up automatically?
| aquova wrote:
| That might be even worse then, you'd be reselling a machine
| which was licensed under the previous owner's Windows key
| art0rz wrote:
| How is that worse when the key is bound to the hardware and
| non-transferable anyway?
| master-lincoln wrote:
| why would it be non-transferable?
| art0rz wrote:
| Sorry, I thought it was a reply to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44581124
| mr_toad wrote:
| OEM licenses are legally (and practically) tied to the
| machine. There's no way to transfer it.
| tremon wrote:
| In case of OEM, the license is never directly owned by the
| owner of the machine; the license is tied to the hardware,
| and you're selling it on with its license key attached. If
| you activate Windows using a bought license, that license
| does not get copied into the hardware.
| ergsef wrote:
| I worked selling refurb computers and this wasn't the case
| from Windows 95 - XP. The rise of TPMs and EFI is after that
| time so it's possible some newer system provides a way of
| tying licenses to computers, but it's not BIOS.
| jve wrote:
| Well, it's been 2 decades so things do have changed.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/activate-
| windows...
|
| https://superuser.com/questions/1575650/how-does-a-
| windows-d...
| mr_toad wrote:
| https://superuser.com/questions/1108151/windows-license-
| stor...
| izacus wrote:
| Windows XP has been launched 23 years ago. Things may have
| changed inbetween.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The biggest issue right now is really the upcoming EOL of
| Windows 10. Most of these machines will be old enough (pre
| Intel 8th gen or Zen 2) that they won't be officially
| supported by Windows 11.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I make a note of both in listings where that is applicable.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not burned into the BIOS, instead Microsoft maintains a
| database mapping licenses to hardware identifiers. But
| transferable licenses still exist, and enterprise volume
| licenses are yet a different beast, so it all depends on what
| Windows license the PC was originally sold with, if any.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> It's not burned into the BIOS, instead Microsoft
| maintains a database mapping licenses to hardware
| identifiers. _
|
| Wrong. IT IS 100% stored in the UEFI firmware, specifically
| ACPI tables, MSDM field. Only if that exists, it is then
| verified on-line for activation to make sure the license is
| genuine and matches the device ID you're referring to for
| witch the license was sold(typically for OEM) or if it's
| portable.[1]
|
| On linux you should be retrieve the license via something
| like: sudo strings
| /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDM
|
| OR sudo acpidump | grep MSDM
|
| [1] https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-find-
| windows-10-oem-prod...
| mr_toad wrote:
| It's in the ACPI tables, in ACPI Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM),
| not the BIOS. An home user might be able to active it, but
| the repair shop probably can't legally.
| tremon wrote:
| If it's tied to the hardware, there is no valid reason why
| the repair shop wouldn't be able to activate it -- a repair
| shop will use the same public license servers as consumers
| will.
|
| Btw ACPI is a specification, not a separate piece of
| hardware. ACPI tables are stored in BIOS nvram, there is no
| other place for it to go.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| On most machines we sell that's probably the case. I don't
| know of anything that stops me from linking people to the
| official Windows installation media on Microsoft's site, so I
| do that even on the listing.
| exiguus wrote:
| Actually, as a long time Linux Desktop user, i have at least 4,
| refurbished bought Notebooks in my place yet. Beside the 4,
| another 3 new new bought Notebooks.
|
| The reason why I buy refurbished is, that my use-cases don't
| need the newest hardware and for a long time, older hardware
| was more compatible with Linux and BSD for me. Also, you get
| for a small price, high quality hardware.
|
| If you now ask yourself, why that many notebooks? Notebooks are
| like handbags. They have to match the occasion.
| tempfile wrote:
| I am the same. I decided a few years ago that I really really
| like the thinkpad t450, and have gradually bought 5 of them
| online for a total cost of about 300 USD. I may never need to
| buy a laptop ever again.
| exiguus wrote:
| Yes, over the past 15 years I bought at least a dozen used
| thinkpads of the X series (x201, x220, x230 and x1). Most
| of them are now with other family members and friends (they
| are now also Linux Desktop user). And I still use 3 of
| them. One daily, the other weekly, and the 3rd for
| conferences. Beside that, I am also a fan of the T and yet
| of the P series. And I have a small collection of thinkpads
| with the big blue logo from the A and R series, but that's
| mostly just for fun.
| sevensor wrote:
| Agreed! Old laptops are more than powerful enough for Linux,
| and I like having purpose-oriented computers. The hobby
| programming computer doesn't have games on it and is at any
| rate too weak to run them. The music laptop has every flac I
| ever ripped from a CD, and precious little disk space for
| anything else. And so on.
| RALaBarge wrote:
| Hey, that seems like a cool gig
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| It is! If my supervisor didn't kick everyone out at 5 and
| lock the place, I'd probably work all night everynight
| nerding out over everything in there.
| sevensor wrote:
| The link is appreciated! I like the selection of ruggedized
| laptops.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Thanks! I've been going through my to-do stack, and there was
| quite a few there. They've been selling fast! I've got a
| stack of Toughbooks to go through, too... someday.
| Pxtl wrote:
| How do you keep them auto-updated? I've just started on Mint
| and I'm disappointed how the software installer/updater still
| needs the admin password.
| tremon wrote:
| You can either configure unattended updates (e.g. cron-apt or
| unattended-upgrade), or you can give system administration
| privileges to other users so they can accept pending updates.
| I don't think the latter is granular enough to only allow
| package upgrades, it also allows installing/removing
| packages.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I've sold linux mint laptops on ebay and I always reach out
| after sale basically saying "just to be clear, this isn't
| running windows, it's linux. I'll be happy to cancel if this
| isn't what you expected"
|
| and 100% of the time the person was like "yes! Linux is what I
| wanted"
|
| Well alright then, there you go...
| fsflover wrote:
| Some related earlier discussions:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41312883
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39600172
| owebmaster wrote:
| Wow! That's a day growth actually. What happened? Is it Steam
| OS?
| owebmaster wrote:
| *great. Can't edit this comment, strange.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I don't believe this number for even a second.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| I have literally never seen a Linux desktop in the wild.
| Speaking as a "normal" person who occasionally builds PCs for
| friends, fixes family computers, etc.
|
| I have an old ThinkPad with Linux, but agreed, no way this can
| be true.
| fsflover wrote:
| I installed Linux for my non-technial relatives and they
| happily browse the web and use LibreOffice.
| CalRobert wrote:
| My wife works at a Dutch company where they all run Ubuntu
| (mostly because they're frugal)
| ahartmetz wrote:
| I'm not particularly surprised anymore to see Linux on
| people's laptops in public, usually while travelling (you
| don't usually see people using laptops in public much
| otherwise). That is mostly in Germany where I live. Linux is,
| of course, also very common in universities.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| The article is on the US statistic though. If it was a
| global statistic it wouldn't surprise me at all.
|
| When it comes to laptops, we have a lot of MacBooks out
| there, and an endless Sea of $400 low quality Lenovos and
| HPs eternally marching to the garbage bins.
|
| Ultimately my observation is just anecdotal, but I have
| built a lot of computers for people worked on a lot of
| family PCS, etc, and have never once worked with a Linux
| system in that context in 25 years of doing that stuff. I'm
| not interacting with a tech oriented crowd though
| (obviously those people would be chatting about tech
| instead and I would never be touching their system).
| Perhaps the tech oriented crowd is big enough to hit 5%, or
| perhaps Linux gaming is moving the needle, but I can't
| imagine 1 in 20 system is Linux in the US. I just can't.
| Zigurd wrote:
| 20 years ago my kids were getting hand-me-down work
| laptops with Linux installed on them. Apart from their
| peers thinking that they must be in some kind of cult, it
| did the job of keeping them much safer from malware.
|
| Linux has been very usable for a long time. Windows 11,
| being deliberately unusable on older hardware that works
| perfectly well is enough incentive for more people to try
| an alternative. That's not going to move the needle in
| corporate IT but it's enough for a couple percentage
| points of the installed base.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Windows 11, being deliberately unusable on older
| hardware that works perfectly well is enough incentive
| for more people to try an alternative
|
| The extreme majority of users doesn't care about that,
| they'll stay on Windows 10, they don't give a single fuck
| about the fact that it'll stop receiving security
| updates.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The people who manage your work PC of course won't
| migrate away from Windows just because of Windows 11. But
| home users faced with a few hundred dollars of hardware
| replacement will probably consider a less expensive
| alternative. That might be just letting it rot. But it
| also might be ubuntu, mint, or Chrome OS
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| That's literally my point. Home users don't give a crap
| about the fact that their OS isn't supported anymore.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| FWIW, statcounter is showing 5.49% for Germany - which
| seems more plausible to me than 5% for the US, but
| whatever.
| pawelduda wrote:
| I installed Ubuntu on my parents' PC back in 2014. Never had
| to reinstall, only had to upgrade to LTS every few years. The
| only problems I encountered were with nvidia drivers on
| update that had to be dealt with but nothing too insane. It's
| been used almost daily, only migrated to SSD at one point to
| speed it up. 18~ years old machine.
| andyferris wrote:
| I have to ask - what OS do AI-training web scrapers tend to
| report? (A mixture? One with > 5% linux market share? Sorry,
| being a sceptic, otherwise I think this is fantastic news if
| accurately measured).
| triknomeister wrote:
| Anything that's automated today is linux. So, I'll assume
| almost 99.99%, or may be BSD in some cases.
| baal80spam wrote:
| So basically the 5% number is pulled out of thin air.
| input_sh wrote:
| Any scraper out there that doesn't want to identify itself as
| such is very likely to spoof the most commonly used OS +
| browser combo (Chrome + Windows), regardless of what it's
| actually running on.
| Nab443 wrote:
| I tend to think that they mostly should be using their own user
| agent, and if not be desguised as the most common ones to avoid
| being detected too easily. Web scaping probably has been mostly
| running under Linux before the age of AI anyway. I'm not in the
| field, so if anyone more trustworthy info on that...
| eloisant wrote:
| Yes they run Linux, but they either have their own user agent
| (not included in the stats) or are spoofing a real world web
| browser... In which case they might be spoofing Chrome on
| Windows even if they run on Linux.
|
| Either way I don't think the 5% are impacted by scraping
| bots.
| viraptor wrote:
| None https://platform.openai.com/docs/bots There's no reason
| for those bots to report any specific OS
| hollerith wrote:
| Good question. Most of these headlines about Linux market share
| ("mind share"?) are _completely_ uninformative about how
| widespread the use of Linux is in reality.
|
| 12 years ago or so, a similar headline appeared, then someone
| explained that the Chinese government had recently cracked down
| on Windows pirating (to appease the Americans) with the result
| that some PC vendors had stopped including (pirated copies of)
| Windows with the computers they sell (shipping some Linux
| distro instead of course) but since pirated Windows install
| media was still widely available, there quickly grew a cultural
| practice in which the consumer installs Windows (or gets his
| more technically-inclined cousin to do it for him) as soon as
| he gets his new PC home. But the headline reported on a
| statistic that did not catch this cultural practice because it
| counted only the OSes on computers when they were sold (i.e.,
| "OS shipments").
| cowboylowrez wrote:
| I wonder if they used firefox to download internet explorer?
| okasaki wrote:
| What's "windows pirating" when Microsoft offers public ISO
| downloads and you can activate them with MAS?
| hollerith wrote:
| The details of how the Chinese PC buyer gets Windows on his
| new PC is irrelevant to my point (as is whether it deserves
| the name "pirating").
| da_chicken wrote:
| Most of these types of surveys do their best to filter out
| robots.
|
| With over 50% of Internet traffic being robots, the results
| really don't make any sense at all if you don't.
| dosinga wrote:
| If you zoom out to say the last 10 years you can see that those
| graphs go up and down like crazy. The error bars on these numbers
| must be huge.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Yeah. A critical mass is needed and we seem to be there, but
| keeping it a system for "power users and up" (and for total
| laypeople but managed by others) is also desirable.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Linux now has a bigger desktop marketshare than firefox. I never
| would have imagined history would turn out like this. Firefox had
| the easy job and desktop Linux had the hard one.
|
| This will lead to a virtuous circle for Linux unless someone does
| something; privacy issues are leading people to the OSes where
| you get to freely choose your level of privacy. Anybody have any
| more weird old unix patents to throw at them and slow it down?
|
| edit: maybe the way to stop Linux is heat up the war against all
| general purpose computing. Linux could be used to run
| unauthorized AI.
| goku12 wrote:
| I came to say this as well. The market share of Linux in the US
| is 5.03%, while the same for Firefox is 4.23%! [1]
|
| It's not an apples to apples comparison. But the userbase is
| largely the same, and it's easier to switch a browser than it's
| to switch an OS. So it does have a significance.
|
| [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-
| share/all/united-s...
| Shorel wrote:
| > Linux now has a bigger desktop marketshare than firefox.
|
| This means many Linux users install an alternative browser, not
| to use Firefox. That's funny, but so true.
| theowhfbfn wrote:
| Is SteamOS included? I am not really surprised. Linux is quite
| often only usable option, now when Win 10 is not really
| supported.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Why not use Win 11?
| malfist wrote:
| Because it's actively user hostile? Microsoft shoving their
| spyware and unwelcome AI into it regardless of consent
| lvass wrote:
| For video games as of today, SteamOS presents double digit
| performance gains on average over Windows, running Windows
| games on Steam Deck and similar platforms.
| dmantis wrote:
| 1. Ads
|
| 2. Built-in cloud AI spyware / Copilot
|
| 3. Millions of abandoned laptops that had been made 4-5+
| years ago. Basically electronic and ecological waste:
| machines from 10 years ago work perfectly fine if you change
| thermal paste and don't hit them too much. Even if you don't
| care about the planet, you might care about your wallet
| though.
| pndy wrote:
| 3 is especially ironic with that green leaf and energy
| recommendations slapped in settings
| seabrookmx wrote:
| Because there's lots of good hardware out there that's
| unsupported by Windows 11, but supported just fine by Linux
| distros.
| Symmetry wrote:
| That's twice the number Valve reports for Steam users which
| includes a lot of Steam Decks that come with Linux installed, so
| it seems high, I would have guessed somewhere in the 1 to 2
| percent range. In some countries you have mass Linux deployments
| to schools or government IT systems that could give you a number
| like this but I'm not sure what could be driving it in the US.
| fghjl wrote:
| I assume the problems still are that (1) no Desktop Linux is at
| the level of macOS or Windows, and (2) the only one close is
| still RedHat, but most want Debian-based or something else.
|
| MacOS is the best model for a successful desktop Linux to use.
| Trim down the kernel/drivers to just what runs on that spec
| hardware, only support that spec hardware, focus effort on the
| OS and ecosystem, keep it stable, make upgrades trivial, and
| give it freedom to run other software, terminal apps, etc. And
| most of all- focus resources on these efforts and charge a lot
| of money for it!
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| I'd argue desktop Linux passed "the level of windows"
| sometime around Windows 8 or KDE5.
|
| I have way more stability issues and complicated upgrades on
| Windows.
| redeeman wrote:
| in 2003 it was WAY easier to install linux than windows.
| You had to mess with floppys for sata drivers and shit to
| install windows.
|
| and KDE was always ATLEAST as easy as windows, arguably
| more. At this time lots of older crappy hardware people had
| also only had win98 drivers, giving people immense
| problems. It mostly worked better on linux. This still goes
| today.
| akho wrote:
| That was long true by that time. On supported hardware, and
| if you don't need applications that are not on Linux, it
| was fine in the first Ubuntu releases at least.
|
| (in comparison with the state of Windows at the time, of
| course)
| blashyrk wrote:
| Macos window/desktop management is also stuck in 2001 with
| "magic gestures" tacked on. For someone who hates using these
| gestures especially when connected to an actually good kb/m,
| the base desktop experience is horrible. The dock is
| completely useless, the various cmd+tab or cmd+` shortcuts
| are unwieldy, Spotlight is growing increasingly worse year
| after year.
|
| Rectangle/tiling window managers on top is the only way to
| make it workable.
|
| Apart from wm, the existence of application notarization is a
| downright insult (though Windows is also guilty of this with
| smartscreen but to a much lesser extent).
|
| Apple's "pay us 100 bucks a year or we'll tell your users
| that your program is malware" is just another step in the
| inevitable game of locking down macos and turning it into a
| mobile-like hellscape
| huh___ wrote:
| What gestures are you talking about? I think you can turn
| those off, and I'd be surprised if there isn't a way to
| turn off the rest with a 3rd party or custom tool.
|
| Application notarization isn't a problem anymore- you just
| have a single accept dialog. That problem that made you do
| a trick to get past it was only a problem years ago, due to
| whomever the moron was that thought that was a good idea.
| The current way is acceptable.
|
| I install homebrew and random apps with no problems.
| theanonymousone wrote:
| I can't think of any logical reason to exclude ChromeOS and count
| it separately,and a good portion of the "Unknown" category may as
| well be Linux.
|
| The "real" number shouldn't be far from 10%, if not already
| exceeding it.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > I can't think of any logical reason to exclude ChromeOS and
| count it separately
|
| Because virtually nobody who says "desktop Linux" means
| ChromeOS.
| theanonymousone wrote:
| And that's (almost) as wrong as saying BSD is not Unix
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| So here's the thing. Chrome OS is absolutely a Linux
| distribution. It's even a GNU/Linux distribution (based on
| Gentoo), unlike say Android/Linux, which is doing its own
| thing. But... When people say "desktop Linux", they mean
| one of the user-controlled distros, not the locked down
| appliance that is ChromeOS. It's like how nobody who says
| they want a Linux phone mean Android. Technically correct,
| but not what people mean.
| resource_waste wrote:
| I think Fedora should be taken out too. Fedora stands alone and
| shouldn't be lumped in with the rest of the LinuxOS.
|
| Fedora going up is a sign of progress. Regular Linux going up
| is just a sign that Windows sucks.
| tgeorge wrote:
| I think the Unknown category could be custom standalone devices
| like Playstation, FireTV, webOS, and Switch which have browsers
| to make those stats but could be BSD based. And, I wouldn't
| exclude ChromeOS also, I thought it's built off of Gentoo
| Linux.
| jsnell wrote:
| The statscounter data is not reliable, and it is just
| embarrassing how often these posts make it to the HN frontpage.
|
| You even have a demonstration in this very article, with the
| surge of classic Mac OS to 7% for _several months_. The data is
| obviously nonsense, and when it has errors nobody at the company
| cares about them. But when they have persistent "data reporting
| issues", why are we supposed to believe any of these numbers?
| elsjaako wrote:
| Note that OS X goes down for the same period. I believe Apple
| is calling it MacOS now.
|
| So that looks like it might be some change in how Apple
| computers are reporting their OS.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "mac OS" not "MacOS". MacOS is for the older pre-OS X
| versions.
| Longhanks wrote:
| "macOS" not "mac OS", to align with "iOS", "iPadOS",
| "watchOS" and "tvOS".
| antipurist wrote:
| It's "macOS" [1] if you really want to be pedantic.
| However, it's still "Intel Mac OS X" in Safari UA even on
| M1 MacBook, so why Statcounter data includes both OS X and
| macOS remains a mystery.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/macos/macos-sequoia/
| IshKebab wrote:
| I don't understand why Statcounter reports them separately
| though. They're just two different versions of the same OS,
| and those are grouped for other OSes in this chart. Makes no
| sense.
| jsnell wrote:
| Indeed, OS X goes down, and obviously none of us actually
| believe that. But not only does Statcounter report that
| clearly faulty number, but they have yet to fix the problem.
|
| This happens all the time. When their numbers are clearly
| wrong, they don't care about the numbers enough to fix even
| the glaring problems, their sample is unsound, and their
| methodology is unpublished, why exactly are we supposed to
| give _any_ of their numbers any credence?
|
| What you've written is the first I've heard of a recent
| change to the Safari on OS X user-agent string, and I see no
| indication of it in my access logs. What's it supposed to be
| now? It seems a bit unlikely, and given Safari never ran on
| classic Mac OS, it seems like a company that's supposed to
| specialize in analytics should be able to handle it...
| arp242 wrote:
| > the surge of classic Mac OS to 7% for several months
|
| I'm not sure what's up with listing both "OS X" and "macOS",
| but I'm quite confident it's not classic Mac OS.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Can you even have a successful TLS handshake with Mac OS 9 ?
| MrRadar wrote:
| There is a port of Mbed TLS to Classic MacOS[1] which has
| TLS 1.2 enabled but per the README.md probably not the
| right cihper suites (it only has AES-CBC ciphers enabled by
| default) to connect to servers configured per the widely-
| used Mozilla "intermediate" recommendations[2] (which
| require AES-GCM or ChaCha20 ciphers).
|
| [1] https://github.com/bbenchoff/MacSSL [2]
| https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS
| bichiliad wrote:
| This could be related to the re-versioning of macOS from 10.x
| to the year of the release.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Additionally, with the number of people who use ad blockers on
| Linux and given that statcounter mostly uses 3rd party JS tags,
| I highly doubt these numbers are correct.
|
| There's a discussion in a peer thread about how people never
| notice its Linux and keep using their refurbished machines as-
| is. This too, is surprising to me, as my own experience as well
| as the ones I've heard in person from IT folks and IT-related
| forums online, people immediately notice that the UI looks
| different and panic as to how to achieve their current tasks.
| I'm skeptical of that entire thread too.
|
| In general, I just wonder how much of any popular forum is just
| people LARPing. I do wish that it didn't occur here, though
| it's undoubtedly difficult to moderate.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| > people immediately notice that the UI looks different and
| immediately panic as to how to achieve their current tasks
|
| This was probably a bigger problem 10 years ago than it is
| now. Plenty of people never do _anything at all_ with their
| computer besides opening a browser. No matter what OS you
| use, "click the Chrome logo" still applies.
|
| I've watched my grandparents use a computer. I guarantee I
| could swap out Windows for KDE or Cinnamon and, as long as I
| make the wallpaper the same and I put the Chrome icon in the
| same place, they wouldn't notice anything had changed. I'm
| not actually going to do that, because then I become the only
| person in the family who can tame their computer if it starts
| acting out, but still.
|
| Also, Microsoft's own UI isn't a steady target. Windows 11
| is, dare I say it, more akin to Plasma 6 than it is to
| Windows 7.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Unless they're using JS for something specific, getting the
| user to load anything at all would give them the OS from the
| useragent string in almost all cases. I'd believe their URLs
| being included in default filter lists though.
| oefrha wrote:
| Pretty sure OS X and macOS should be combined, not doing that
| feels like amateur hour, very puzzling. But even with that in
| mind, you see wild ups and downs as large as 3.5% a month from
| 10/24 to 11/24 to 12/24 to 01/25 and there's no way in hell
| actual deployments are fluctuating like that. Error bars like
| that make a number of 5% pretty meaningless, however feel-good
| it is.
|
| Also, for people unfamiliar with the Apple ecosystem: the OS X
| => macOS rebranding happened back in 2016, IIRC the Safari user
| agent never ever included macOS (Safari on M4 Macs running
| latest macOS 15.5 reports itself as "Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7" in
| its UA), so absolutely no idea where they're getting this new
| "macOS" category. Maybe they publish technical details of their
| methodology somewhere? I can't bother to check.
| necovek wrote:
| Don't confuse percentage points with percents.
|
| 25%+-3.5% means it's 5%+-0.7% for proportional error bars.
| They don't have to be linear, true, but they are certainly
| not 5% +- 3.5% either.
| necovek wrote:
| The article claims this is due to Apple rebranding OS X back to
| MacOS with newer releases.
|
| Are you disputing that? Or did you miss that in the article?
| jama211 wrote:
| That's not classic macOS... that's modern macOS, as in post OS
| X dude
| zokier wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| Cloudflare has also OS stats available and I'd imagine they are
| far more reliable. Some silver lining of them having such wide
| dragnet on the web. They report 4.4% Linux desktop marketshare
| in the US. Tbh I believe the summer vacation season probably
| influences the numbers here, but there is some real growth too.
|
| https://radar.cloudflare.com/explorer?dataSet=http&groupBy=o...
| 827a wrote:
| 1. Radar is also reporting a Linux increase over the past
| month: 3.3% to 4.4%.
|
| 2. Both StatsCounter and Radar break out Linux and ChromeOS;
| if you combine them, StatsCounter hits 7.7%; Radar hits 6.3%.
|
| 3. That being said: Both StatsCounter and Radar experienced
| an anomalous drop in ChromeOS clients & rise in Linux clients
| over the past month. StatsCounter took ChromeOS from ~4.4% to
| 2.7%. Radar took it 2.6% -> 1.9%.
|
| This kind of implies that something changed with a major
| ChromeOS device out that; some model/version maybe changed
| its UA and started reporting itself as a Linux device
| instead.
| juliusdavies wrote:
| I find this compelling, alongside the fact ChromeBooks are
| well placed in retail shops and usually the cheapest things
| you can buy. They are also ubiquitous in elementary
| schools. This is more about ChromeBooks than linux.
|
| Add the fact that all my kids hate their school
| chromebooks.... maybe this isn't such great news for Linux
| afterall.
| ronsor wrote:
| School Chromebooks are usually locked down (i.e. full of
| spyware) and poorly maintained. It's no wonder that
| children dislike them.
| zokier wrote:
| ChromeOS drop is pretty easily explained by it being
| predominantly used in education and schools being closed
| for summer. And that drop muddies all other numbers,
| because of course the percentages of others go up when one
| goes down. In summary, I'd wait until November (or at least
| October) before making any broad conclusions.
| 827a wrote:
| Yeah, schools being out explains the major drop in
| ChromeOS devices; check out Radar's 12 month view and how
| ChromeOS data looked August/September 2024.
|
| But if it significantly explained the rise in other
| percentages, we'd see all the other shares go up.
| However, Windows and MacOS are flat; 64% and 30%,
| respectively, last and this month.
|
| Only Linux went up; so its likely there's some genuine
| linux desktop adoption going on. But the rise in Linux
| marketshare is pretty steep; two months ago Radar
| measured it at 2.6%, now its 4.4%.
|
| It could be legit. There's been a significant uptick in
| tech Youtubers pushing linux content (LTT and Jayz have
| both done recent videos on it), including the Lenovo
| Legion Linux vs Windows perf comparisons which found
| Linux to be faster, Lex Fridman just interviewed DHH and
| they spoke at length about linux setups (~1M viewers on
| that likely), and the pushback against Apple in the tech
| circles is reaching a fever pitch.
| danso wrote:
| Mentioned this in another comment [0], but analytics.usa.gov
| has the % of visitors on Linux operating systems at 5.7% in
| 2025, up from 4.5% in 2024. Of course "visitors to U.S.
| government websites" is not fully representative of all U.S.
| computer users, but it's worth noting.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44582058
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I wonder what a more reliable measure would be. Maybe something
| like the "Crane Index" where we count the number of new
| software packages for Linux. Particularly, it makes sense to
| focus on paid software, because there's actually some bar to
| entry there (setting up an LLC, accepting payments, etc.) I
| haven't actually looked into this, but I think the initial data
| for this figure is zero, and we're projected to reach zero by
| next year.
| weberer wrote:
| You can also look at the Steam survey as another data point.
| Linux use among English speakers is just above 5%, but the data
| is biased toward power users/ gamers.
|
| https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
| sylens wrote:
| There has been noticeable momentum this year with the Windows 10
| end of support date looming near and the continued
| enshittification of Windows 11.
| ryandv wrote:
| Based on the history of the tech industry, Linux adoption should
| be kept at this level and advanced no further. This is already
| the sweet spot for the "year of the Linux desktop," which should
| be celebrated by experts, technical users, and the sufficiently
| motivated.
|
| Once the unwashed masses start coming in, the software and its
| interaction patterns pander to the lowest common denominator and
| the quality of the medium degrades.
| bboygravity wrote:
| So is this the reasoning to keep Linux as hard to use as
| possible?
|
| * just open the terminal and type this magic spell to make x
| work *
| DaSHacka wrote:
| I'd imagine they would say: "if you find that difficult, then
| yes"
| redeeman wrote:
| kinda like when people write to eachother, just open up your
| whatsapp, and type in a magic spell to let your friends know
| they are invited to dinner tonight..
| brabel wrote:
| With the difference that if you get a single character
| wrong you will get an error that might as well be written
| in Greek.
| fsflover wrote:
| You're probably talking about enshittification [0], which
| typically affects centralized for-profit entities, not
| community-based free software projects.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41277484
| willhslade wrote:
| Mozilla says hello.
| fsflover wrote:
| Firefox is for-profit and centralized.
| megous wrote:
| Linux based distributions solve this by not being a
| monoculture, no?
|
| Pandering to the masses would be in the form of specific
| desktop environment, and maybe specific distribution
| integrating it well with all kinds of desktop software.
|
| Nothing would change for the existing users of obscure
| software, hackishly stitched together.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Not at all. All Linux distributions essentially run the same
| software with different packages and configuration files.
| There are a few either/or choices they make, but it's mostly
| overlap with very little disro specific software.
|
| If Linux software starts widely adapting more dark patterns
| it will probably impact users across all distributions.
| palata wrote:
| I share that concern, but again: if more people move to
| Linux, maybe (?) more people will become advanced Linux
| user and maybe (?) it will bring more activity into
| advanced distros.
|
| Not that I believe it will necessarily be good, but I'm not
| sure it will necessarily be bad. Could go both ways, IMO.
| ekunazanu wrote:
| > If Linux software starts widely adapting more dark
| patterns it will probably impact users across all
| distributions
|
| What is preventing people from just creating a fork?
| tiborsaas wrote:
| "oh no, the peasants are using MY operating system, this can't
| be good"
| fsflover wrote:
| Just switch to Qubes OS, and you're special again. (Worked
| for me.)
| palata wrote:
| I think it's more "they will give less control in order to
| please the peasants, and as a result I will lose control".
|
| And I agree with that concern, though my hope is that we can
| make it easier for the peasants without sacrificing control
| for the nerds (trying to find a word that would work with
| "peasant" in this context :D).
| Zambyte wrote:
| I disagree with the concern, because obviously making Free
| Software easier for non-technically inclined people to use
| does not make the software harder for technically inclined
| people to use. This is strictly an issue for proprietary
| software.
| HKH2 wrote:
| If they take out options, then you might have to maintain
| a fork or write a plugin to keep them.
| Zambyte wrote:
| And thus, nothing was lost except the superiority complex
| :)
| samrus wrote:
| And the time and effort it takes to maintian a project.
| Zambyte wrote:
| The vast majority of people can just benefit from the
| time and effort that someone felt was worth spending to
| scratch their own itch.
| palata wrote:
| Yeah, I think I agree with you after all. As long as it's
| open source, it's okay.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > This is strictly an issue for proprietary software.
|
| it really isn't, as Google Chrome and Chromium shows
| there's no clear dividing line in the real world. Linux
| isn't developed by Bob the free software enthusiast, take
| a look at the code contributions to the kernel.
|
| Overall I'm also in favour of driving linux adoption
| because it's still a better world but the idea that this
| has no spill over effect on anyone else is wrong. It's a
| fiction to think that Linux, just like a browser is
| anything but a collective project with most development
| driven by very few organizations who also have commercial
| or proprietary interests.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > Google Chrome and Chromium shows there's no clear
| dividing line in the real world.
|
| There are lots of Chromium forks. I don't really see how
| this contradicts my point.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| there's not any genuine forks. They're all dependent on
| Google, see Vivaldi last year announcing they'll drop
| manifest v2 support. They're all pretty much cosmetic
| reskins. Whoever puts up the money for development makes
| the choices, regardless what license you slap on it.
|
| And if there was a drastic mainstream adoption of linux,
| whatever implications that has for development focus, it
| would affect everyone because nobody is going to run a
| sincere kernel fork.
|
| [1]https://social.vivaldi.net/@Vivaldi/112633927397201824
| HKH2 wrote:
| Gnome has sacrificed a lot of control.
| palata wrote:
| i3wm and sway haven't :-).
|
| My point being that it's okay for some projects to
| sacrifice control, as long as others don't. I can't tell
| Ubuntu how they should make their distro; what I can do
| is choose Gentoo (or anything in between).
| HKH2 wrote:
| Gnome can do whatever they like with their own project,
| but fragmentation is the biggest problem with Linux.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| The problem when the masses come in is then we lose the
| whimsy. They will be _offended_ by commands like "kill" and
| "fsck" and there will be stupid campaigns to change things.
|
| It happened with git a few years ago, when people were up in
| arms over its use of the word "master". Stupid, pointless
| changes will be made to appease these people.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The default branch name is still master, this hasn't
| changed.
| komali2 wrote:
| It feels similar to people complaining about their favorite
| tabletop game becoming popular with normies and then normies
| come and don't treat the game with the reverence the og fans
| believe it should.
|
| Same response: just do your own thing then and ignore the
| normies, it's not a big deal.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I know you are making it seem like this is a very cringe
| position, but its in fact a very valid one.
|
| The problem in most any technology sector is that its
| impossible for one person in reasonable amount of time to put
| together systems for use. Maybe in the future when LLMs are
| advanced enough to where I can have it code a full OS for me
| to my liking this will change, but right now, I have to
| depend on other people doing work.
|
| Linux happens to be in a sweet spot where the collaborative
| development is guided by technical decisions instead of
| market forces, but Linux is just an OS. It needs open
| hardware to run. It just so happens that laptop manfuacturers
| who target Windows just don't see Linux as a big enough
| threat to start locking things down.
|
| But historically, along came Apple, made the iPhone, realized
| most people want jewelry more than functionality, realized
| they could monetize this, and now their Macbooks are locked
| down to MacOS pretty hardcore.
|
| If Linux went the same route, you could very well see a
| distinct lack of hardware being made that can run open source
| Linux. Which then limits you to smaller manufacturers that
| don't have capital or bandwidth to compete with bigger ones.
| samrus wrote:
| The users arent the problem. The predatory corporations who
| will try to take advantage of them are the problem.
|
| If you see alot of sheep coming into your glade, the jackels
| are close behind
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| In some ways we are already seeing this. Have you ever opened a
| GitHub repository and the only installation/build instructions
| are for the AUR. I seem to run into this pretty frequently
| while looking at small projects.
| palata wrote:
| What bothers me is when projects have a hard dependency on
| something like systemd or even Ubuntu, because most of the
| time it is not necessary and it means I can't use it.
|
| But other than that, as long as I can compile the project
| from source (and if it's done properly I don't need
| instructions for that), I'm fine.
|
| I would assume that a repo providing instructions for the AUR
| is already better than one assuming that "Linux == Ubuntu",
| because the developer knows at least one distro that is not
| Ubuntu :-).
| palata wrote:
| I understand your point, and I genuinely hate when people try
| to put pressure on distros to essentially look more like
| Windows.
|
| On the other hand, I think it's great when companies or
| government try to move to Linux (if you're not a US company or
| the US government, it makes total sense to try not to depend on
| US software so much).
|
| But I want to believe that there is space for everybody. I
| wouldn't use Mint myself, but I convinced a couple friends to
| use it and it works really well! EU governments moving to
| european distros like Suse and the likes is great. And I will
| stay closer to "more advanced" distros like Gentoo or Alpine.
|
| The beauty of Linux is that there is not one Linux; it's about
| freedom of choice. Because many people move from Windows to
| Mint doesn't have to mean that it's hurting Gentoo, I think?
| Hopefully.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| I wish Windows 11 looked more like Windows.
| chii wrote:
| > the quality of the medium degrades.
|
| not necessarily. There's room to have the mass market make
| breakthroughs in laymen software for linux if there's
| sufficient demand.
|
| And having the mass market lowest common denominator doesnt
| remove the good stuff - they still exist and you could still
| choose to use them. This is esp. true for linux, where as you'd
| have fewer choice/customizability for windows as it's close
| sourced.
| lvass wrote:
| How exactly is Linux becoming popular going to make my EXWM
| setup suck? To be fair, if it does get a large market share,
| some company is probably going to take MS's role and make a
| distro that sucks but many people use. But that shouldn't be an
| issue to existing users unless they take over something like a
| major DE and you insist on using that for some reason. For IT
| people, having the possibility of running a decent shell and
| sshd in most desktops would be terrific.
| palata wrote:
| > some company is probably going to take MS's role and make a
| distro that sucks but many people use
|
| You mean other than Ubuntu and the likes?
| taf2 wrote:
| I play all my video games on linux - heros of the storm, sc2,
| warcraft 2, counter strike... very stable much nicer then what i
| remember from windoze...
| bboygravity wrote:
| Is this because Linux became so good or because Windows 11 is so
| terrible?
|
| I guess a bit of both.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Windows 11 is great if you install the IoT LTSC version. Better
| than Windows 10.
| fsflover wrote:
| Except all those perfectly working devices which aren't
| supported for no reason,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43977038
| IshKebab wrote:
| 9 years of updates it not at all out of line with Mac, iOS,
| Android etc:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/some-macs-are-
| gettin...
|
| Maybe a few more years would have been good but I can't
| really blame Microsoft for requiring modern hardware
| support _eventually_.
| fsflover wrote:
| They don't allow to install their next OS on capable
| hardware. This is not fine.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Pretty sure it's because Windows has gotten worse. I ditched
| windows recently because it was flagging bit torrent software
| as malware and deleting it (utorrent, qbittorrent, deluge, all
| directly from official sources), and when I tried to turn the
| setting off in the control panel it wouldn't allow me to. A few
| minutes later it popped up an advertising notification for a
| F2P windows store game.
|
| Linux hasn't necessarily gotten better, sadly. My install was
| unusable due to video issues, I had to boot a recover console
| to fix it. I also had to fix some issues with X desktop effects
| glitching after waking from suspend, making the desktop
| environment nearly unusable. Otherwise, Linux performs a lot
| better on my system than Windows.
| saintfire wrote:
| Obviously everyone has their own experience but any
| Arch(-based) distro I've used has just worked out of the box
| following a simple Calamares install.
|
| I've had nothing but bad experiences with Debian installs and
| I'm curious if this is where a lot of issues are coming from
| when people switch to Mint or Ubuntu when they hear it's the
| "beginner distro"
| pndy wrote:
| > I ditched windows recently because it was flagging bit
| torrent software as malware and deleting it
|
| W10 once removed CCleaner from my system because it was an
| older version. I kept it that way because it was the last
| version at the time that didn't come with telemetry.
| jarredkenny wrote:
| is _this_ the year of the linux desktop?
| nerdjon wrote:
| I have to wonder how much of this is people switching to Linux vs
| the larger trend of people not having traditional computers to
| begin with.
|
| Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at
| home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least in
| my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing
| being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. So is a
| solid chunk of this the people that would have already had Linux
| desktops continuing to have theirs since they would likely be the
| same people (more technical, needing to do tasks not possible on
| phones and tablets) less likely to be making that switch.
|
| Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall
| instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really
| much to celebrate.
|
| Given these numbers are percents I would be very curious.
|
| Now yes there is a clear uptick thanks to the Steam Deck (however
| with Microsoft pushing their optimized for gaming Windows it will
| be interesting to see if that continues or goes backwards). But I
| would be reluctant to call that Linux Desktop anymore than I
| would call Android an uptick for Linux.
| palata wrote:
| I agree with your points, except this:
|
| > thanks to the Steam Deck [...] but I would be reluctant to
| call that Linux Desktop anymore than I would call Android an
| uptick for Linux.
|
| The Steam Deck very much runs Linux Desktop. Android runs the
| Linux kernel, but _everything else_ is different. SteamOS is a
| Linux distribution based on Arch. If you run your Steam Deck in
| "desktop mode", it is very much a Linux Desktop (with a read-
| only system and A/B updates etc, but still).
| nerdjon wrote:
| Admittedly yeah SteamOS does walk that line, and I guess
| technically given that I think these numbers are based on
| browser data it would only be capturing the people that
| actually go into desktop mode (maybe?).
|
| But, I think there is a conversation around this to ask how
| many of the people using a Steam Deck actually go into
| desktop mode or care that it is Linux (or even understand
| that it is Linux) vs would switch to a Windows version if it
| worked as well.
| palata wrote:
| Even in the "normal mode", I would argue that it is still
| Linux Desktop. A Linux Desktop init system, with a Linux
| Desktop userspace, with a Linux Desktop libc, with the
| Linux Desktop security model, a Linux Desktop package
| manager, a Linux Desktop compositor (it uses something
| based on Wayland, right?), etc.
|
| If you open a terminal (or SSH into it), you're on Linux.
| It's very, very different on Android.
|
| > how many of the people using a Steam Deck [...] care that
| it is Linux
|
| Probably most don't. But that's a goal. If corporate
| employees could use a Linux Desktop without caring that it
| is Linux, it would mean that the corporation can move to
| Linux, and that would be big.
| nerdjon wrote:
| It is an interesting distinction, unlike Android I do
| admit that SteamOS is obviously contributing to Linux
| Desktop market share. I just think it is a complicated
| situation.
|
| From my understanding Xbox is running a version of
| Windows on their consoles (not talking about the new
| handhelds) tailor made for Xbox. But I would not call
| that adding to the Windows marketshare.
|
| iOS and iPadOS were started with versions of OSX and then
| modified (and clearly share some pieces) but we would not
| call either of those as contributing to Mac's
| marketshare.
|
| Obviously yes neither of those let you go into the
| traditional Mac or Windows desktop unlike SteamOS. But
| how the users perceive it is still important.
|
| > Probably most don't. But that's a goal. If corporate
| employees could use a Linux Desktop without caring that
| it is Linux, it would mean that the corporation can move
| to Linux, and that would be big.
|
| The problem is this works the other way also. If most
| users of the Steam Deck don't care or really know that it
| is Linux there is not much getting in the way of
| Microsoft coming in with their new handheld/OS and eating
| up that market if they can get the OS to perform as well.
|
| Put another way, if Valve decided (not saying they would,
| just asking a hypothetical) to either write their own OS
| or switch the underlying OS to Windows but kept the look
| of SteamOS as it behaved now and performance was the
| same. Would most users of the Steam Deck know or care?
|
| Personally I think for claims about the "linux desktop"
| to really matter, there has to be a conscious desire and
| care that it is Linux or it could disappear.
| palata wrote:
| > I do admit that SteamOS is obviously contributing to
| Linux Desktop market share. I just think it is a
| complicated situation.
|
| Agreed. And IMO, the thing is that you can benefit from
| the work made on SteamOS on any Linux Desktop. By making
| most games run on SteamOS, Valve contributed to make
| Gentoo a better platform for gaming.
|
| > If most users of the Steam Deck don't care or really
| know that it is Linux there is not much getting in the
| way of Microsoft coming in with their new handheld/OS and
| eating up that market if they can get the OS to perform
| as well.
|
| Sure. But what I see is really the other side: if SteamOS
| is relevant, then game devs will have an incentive to
| support SteamOS, which gives the opportunity for gamers
| to move to SteamOS. Now they are on Linux, so they can
| start using software that runs on Linux.
| necovek wrote:
| I would agree on most points regarding SteamOS except for
| package manager: there are really two on the system --
| base one and Steam itself.
|
| Users generally only care about the latter.
| palata wrote:
| Linux Desktop routinely has multiple package managers
| (for the better or worse): be it flatpak, pip, npm,
| nix... but it's still Linux Desktop. Just like you don't
| need to have the same libc to be a Linux Desktop.
| nemomarx wrote:
| At least some of the dedicated ones also want to run epic
| games or others through heroic, but that's only a little
| more Linux on top of steam yeah
| cma wrote:
| I think it is fixed now, but for a while you couldn't
| even use the touchpads on the desktop without steam
| running.
| tuna74 wrote:
| There is no "Desktop Linux init system" etc. There are
| init systems built for/on Linux.
| nialv7 wrote:
| I think it might be good to stand back a bit and think
| through what we are actually excited for. Because:
|
| 1. if someone uses Linux Desktop without caring about
| that it is Linux, why is that different from them using
| Windows? 2. why do we say SteamOS count as Linux Desktop
| but Android doesn't? is it really because how much of it
| is "Linux"?
|
| For me, I think what matters to me is who has control
| over it. SteamOS is based on Arch, so the community has a
| say over where it will go, and Valve will have to work
| with the community. Android/Windows are fully controlled
| Google/Microsoft, doesn't matter that Android is Open
| Source.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| As a user, what usually matters to me is what software
| I'm able to run on it. So even if people don't actually
| care about the OS itself, they will care that X runs on
| it but Y doesn't, which, given enough users, may push X
| to support that OS.
|
| I actually daily drive Linux (Arch) because Windows is a
| PITA I'm not willing to put up with. But there are things
| I use which still don't run on Linux (Photoshop and
| Lightroom), so I'm actually thinking of getting a Mac
| again instead of having a second PC / dual boot, even
| though I know that can also be irritating (though less so
| than Windows).
|
| "Who controls the OS" isn't that important to me. What
| matters is that it gets out of my way and lets me do what
| I want to do with as little friction as possible. I know
| Linux being free means I can go and hack on it however I
| like. But I also have to contend with reality: I can't
| reasonably think that I (personnally) am going to hack on
| the kernel or on some desktop environment in any
| meaningful measure, so I still have to put up with
| whatever other people figure is best.
|
| But if there are enough people like me, including those
| who don't actually care about what OS they're running,
| maybe the apps I want to run will adopt Linux. But that
| only matters because, as it turns out, it's the OS which
| I find the less irritating to use. If tomorrow Windows 12
| finally became sane, I'd switch in a heartbeat. I'm not
| married to Linux.
| palata wrote:
| If someone runs Linux Desktop without caring that it is
| Linux, it still means that they use software that runs on
| Linux. Say if governments move to some Linux distro, they
| will need an office suite, and they may pay for its
| development.
|
| If someone runs SteamOS, it means that they play games on
| Linux. So it becomes interesting for game devs to test
| for Linux. And then if someone runs SteamOS, instead of a
| dual boot with Windows maybe they just go to the Desktop
| mode. Which means that instead of Microsoft Office, they
| use something that runs on Linux, etc.
|
| This is good for the Linux ecosystem. And the reason I
| like the Linux ecosystem is because, as you say, it's not
| fully controlled by TooBigTech.
| fragmede wrote:
| The alternative to Microsoft Word isn't LibreOffice
| Writer, it's Google Docs, which is very much controlled
| by a big tech company.
| schmorptron wrote:
| I'd start that conversation from another perspective. If
| someone uses linux, _not caring that it 's not windows_,
| then that's a milestone.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Think about it from a brand perspective. If you were
| microsoft and some flavor of windows were running on
| people's phone and game station, would you claim this
| market share? I'm sure they would.
| acdha wrote:
| One way to think about it is what APIs application
| developers are using. If most of the code running on a
| Steam Deck is Windows code running under a compatibility
| layer, it probably doesn't help the larger Linux community
| in the same way that, say, iOS popularity has helped ensure
| that many libraries have excellent macOS support.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| > But, I think there is a conversation around this to ask
| how many of the people using a Steam Deck actually go into
| desktop mode or care that it is Linux
|
| If Linux adoption is to increase significantly (and I guess
| I'm of the opinion that would be a positive thing), then at
| some point that can only be done by acquiring users who
| don't care particularly deeply or understand much about
| their OS. That is, the vast majority of people. And that's
| probably not going to happen by converting that demographic
| to true believers.
|
| Some of those people might decide they want to dig deeper
| later, and that's great. Most won't and that's fine too.
|
| It would be a bit asymmetrical to restrict the definition
| of "Linux user" to folk who really care what Linux is or
| know their way around coreutils.
| happymellon wrote:
| > how many of the people using a Steam Deck actually go
| into desktop mode or care that it is Linux
|
| How many Windows users care that it is Windows? They just
| want to click on the Internet icon.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Android systems don't even run the linux kernel in any real
| sense, pretty much every downstream kernel has millions of
| lines of patched code that will never make it upstream in
| their current form. Of course, that's no different from
| mostly any other "Linux" embedded device, but it's very
| different indeed from what's standard on desktop systems.
| palata wrote:
| I would still count it as the Linux kernel. They don't
| change the syscall API, it's really mostly at the BSP
| level, right?
|
| Said differently: if manufacturers cared to mainstream
| their changes, they could. And we would all be better for
| it.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I would still count it as the Linux kernel.
|
| This may be technically true, except it has no single
| meaningful implication, like no Linux software works
| there.
| MatthewPhillips wrote:
| I think this really undervalues what Linux provides. The
| Android software is Linux software.
| fsflover wrote:
| It's completely incompatible, so in practice it's a
| different OS. Doesn't mean it's not valuable.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Try Termux and you'll be surprised how much 'Linux'
| software runs fine on Android, this includes things made
| to run under X11 etc.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://github.com/termux-play-store/
| jraph wrote:
| What's your point? This mess is caused by Google
| policies, not technical considerations. You can still
| install Termux from F-Droid.
|
| We can argue about Android being a horrible OS for all
| sorts of reasons but that's a separate discussion.
| fsflover wrote:
| Touche.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| > _Almost every Android version imposes new major
| restrictions when it comes to security requirements, and
| specifically the Android 10 version update was dramatic
| for Termux usage, as it disallowed executing downloaded
| files directly._
|
| > _The Termux app avoided that by using a
| targetSdkVersion of Android 9, declaring that it was not
| compatible with the Android 10 requirements._
|
| Android level 9 is from Android 2 Gingerbread (2010!!).
| https://apilevels.com/
|
| For now it's not a huge barrier to Termux running. We can
| go run Android 2 stuff today, & maybe Android will
| forever be backwards compatible.
|
| It does mean that Termux can't build a top or use any new
| Android features. Termux is glued to a truly ancient
| version of Android, because Android became inhospitable
| to basic Linux userland use cases. Seems its mostly about
| being unable to run downloaded code, which feels
| admittedly like very much "just a technicality", but boy
| oh boy has that technicality kept Android from expanding
| outside of its own bespoke userland.
| jraph wrote:
| > > The Termux app avoided that by using a
| targetSdkVersion of Android 9, declaring that it was not
| compatible with the Android 10 requirements.
|
| > Android level 9 is from Android 2 Gingerbread (2010!!).
| https://apilevels.com/
|
| Wait, no, Termux is not stuck at Gingerbread, it's stuck
| at Android 9 (Pie).
|
| Agree with the rest though. Android is a sinking ship,
| not only the Termux issue, but the increasing number of
| basic apps and features that are proprietary and not part
| of AOSP. I hope we'll be able to be caught by Linux
| Mobile or something like this in time.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Apologies! I originally posted Android 9 Pie (2018), but
| had doubt & switched to the SDK version. My mistake!!
|
| The AI age where the AI needs to be able to peak into all
| the apps will hopefully create a new API / MCP age, new
| machine-to-machine work. I'm not sure how much of what
| Google is doing today is proprietary, adding hooks into
| all their apps and creating some means for Gemini to
| access that all, and how much is paved road & available
| for others. Very curious to know more.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Right, Android target levels are so different in how they
| behave towards applications that they're practically best
| treated as distinct OS's to begin with. There's really no
| such thing as a unified Android or iOS, unlike Windows or
| desktop Linux where even a program from the mid-1990s
| will run unmodified in the latest version of the OS.
| jraph wrote:
| > Android target levels are so different in how they
| behave towards applications that they're practically best
| treated as distinct OS's to begin with
|
| You can run applications running different target levels
| side by side though
|
| > desktop Linux where even a program from the mid-1990s
| will run unmodified in the latest version of the OS
|
| mhm... I wish but that's not so true for Linux. Your old
| program will likely be missing some dynamic library or be
| incompatible with your current libc. Desktop Linux
| userspace is awfully unstable, compatibility is broken
| left and right, basically no one cares except the Linux
| kernel itself. There's a reason people jokingly say that
| win32, through wine, is the most stable Linux API. If you
| still have the source code of your program (and the linux
| ecosystem is full of free software so that's likely), you
| can always recompile but you'll probably need to edit the
| code so it's compatible with the current versions of
| libraries).
|
| I've heard macOS is not great at this neither.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Termux is glued to a truly ancient version of Android,
| because Android became inhospitable to basic Linux
| userland use cases.
|
| No, this only a problem with Termux's approach of trying
| to put all apps into a single app. One Linux app should
| correspond to one Android app. This also makes it so that
| permissions you grant to the app is not to all of termux,
| but to a specific app.
| jraph wrote:
| > trying to put all apps into a single app
|
| That's not exactly what it does, it dynamically downloads
| the programs using apt-get.
|
| I get the security benefits of preventing the execution
| of data stuff, but building one Android app for each
| binary is difficult to work with.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >it dynamically downloads the programs using apt-get.
|
| And then runs them as the Termux app. I didn't mean to
| imply that it put all of the apps into itself at build
| time.
|
| >Android app for each binary is difficult to work with.
|
| You could group multiple binaries that belong to a single
| conceptual app into a single android app. What do you
| think would make it difficult to work with? I think most
| of it could be automated away.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The principled way of doing this (while coping with the
| new post-Pie restrictions) would be to build a new
| "updated" .apk on-device with a new /usr/bin/ equivalent,
| then have the user explicitly "install" it and relaunch
| Termux. It would work no different than any live-CD
| install, or for that matter any other kind of "immutable"
| OS.
| jraph wrote:
| But then, everything runs under the same Termux user app
| again, just with extra cumbersome steps. And I'm not sure
| it's possible to do this safely, you need the APK to be
| signed, and the only way to do this would be to share the
| private key. And likely to have a good chunk of the
| Android SDK bundled with Termux. A version that runs on
| Android anyway.
|
| Not sure it would fly with Google's Play Store policies.
|
| to your parent:
|
| > And then runs them as the Termux app. I didn't mean to
| imply that it put all of the apps into itself at build
| time.
|
| ok, got you
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Yes but you could just have a custom private key that's
| generated by a separate "apk builder" app and stored on-
| device.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| Termux turns my Android phone into a programmable pocket
| computer.
|
| https://termux.dev/en/
|
| Please give it a try and if you find it useful, donate.
| jraph wrote:
| You are talking about the OS while the person you are
| discussing with is speaking about the kernel.
|
| The Linux kernel has its own merits outside standard
| Linux userspace.
|
| I agree, saying that the fact standard Linux distros and
| Android share the same kernel has no single meaningful
| implication really undervalues the Linux kernel.
|
| I also agree that it's important to keep in mind the two
| OSes are mostly incompatible.
|
| The two OSes sharing the kernel have practical
| implications, including (theoretically) seeing
| improvements coming from Android dev in the kernel that
| can benefit standard linux distros, and things like
| Termux or Waydroid.
| fsflover wrote:
| So when somebody says "Linux reaches X market share", are
| they talking about the kernel? Why does it even matter
| how much the kernel is used? Would you count WSL?
| jraph wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are asking me all this, this is
| beside my points.
|
| > So
|
| I reject the link here.
|
| > when somebody says "Linux reaches X market share", are
| they talking about the kernel?
|
| Likely not.
|
| > Why does it even matter how much the kernel is used?
|
| Why not? Depends what's your concern.
|
| > Would you count WSL?
|
| Depends what you want to evaluate.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Depends what you want to evaluate.
|
| This is exactly my question. You said the discussion's
| about the kernel. Why do you want to evaluate its usage?
| Which conclusions are you going to draw?
|
| Because when talking about the OS, you can conclude that
| Windows and MacOS start falling behind the free software.
| jraph wrote:
| > Why do you want to evaluate its usage?
|
| I never implied this. This subthread is about countering
| your affirmation that Android being based on the linux
| kernel has no single meaningful implication. It's not
| anymore about evaluating usage and counting stuff.
|
| This all started with a commenter writing "Android
| systems don't even run the linux kernel in any real
| sense", which is wrong, or at least highly misleading and
| confusing (I do agree with this commenter about the fact
| that we are talking about forks that don't upstream their
| shit, which does have severe implications). You could say
| that Android systems usually don't run _mainline_ Linux
| kernel.
|
| > you can conclude that Windows and MacOS start falling
| behind the free software.
|
| I wish :-) And I wouldn't generally include Android in
| the free software family, few people run Replicant or
| some Android flavor without the Google services, let
| alone without proprietary blobs. (I _would_ count blob-
| free Android)
| ravenstine wrote:
| Compiling the mainline Linux kernel myself really taught
| me that the kernel does _way_ more than people give it
| credit for. Sure, it can be debated as to whether two
| distributions of Linux can really be considered the same
| OS, but acting like the kernel is a relatively minor
| detail comes off to me as ignorant.
| philistine wrote:
| You're keeping a discussion on technical reasoning for
| why Android and _Desktop Linux_ are separated in a list
| like that, but the reason is not technical. It's wholly
| for convenience. We want to know the performance of
| Desktop Linux separate from Android. Whether or not they
| are a different OS or not is irrelevant.
| vkazanov wrote:
| In practice Linux is a family of different OSes.
| Sometimes POSIX-centric, sometimes not.
|
| What do you even count as "an OS"? Linux + gnu userland +
| Gnome? Or is it KDE? Embedded Linux? Does ChromeOS count?
| LG's WebOS?
| oblio wrote:
| Desktop Linux has a clear scope, and we all know. We can
| act like we don't, but we do.
|
| Can I install LibreOffice on Android? Gnome, KDE, Xfce?
| Which percentage of packages in the Debian repos can I
| use on Android?
| vkazanov wrote:
| Linux is a kernel, that's it. There is an organisation
| maintaining it, and also the trademark.
|
| There is also a major family of OSes building on the
| kernel + gnu userspace, which you probably call "desktop
| linux".
|
| In my house there are dozens of devices running linux the
| kernel: routers, a tv set, washing machines, NAS,
| printers, etc. Some have the full gnu posix-like stack,
| others are very barebones.
|
| Then, there's is a bunch of android devices running the
| kernel as well.
|
| What's wrong with all of these? At what point should i
| draw a line?
| palata wrote:
| To me, Desktop Linux is the Linux I run on my work
| computer: the one that has a screen, a keyboard and a
| mouse. It is based on Linux (obviously), the GNU userland
| to some extent, and then it has a graphical environment
| (usually based on Xorg or Wayland).
|
| This is different from embedded Linux or Linux on a
| server. And this is different from Linux-the-kernel
| (which runs on Android).
| vkazanov wrote:
| Well, you came up with a rather vague definition. Xorg OR
| wayland. Gtk or qt? Which set of tools do you expect to
| be available?
|
| All of that is just too nebulous. Linux is something that
| runs the kernel, that's about it.
|
| I mean, I've been using linux for all of my life,
| servers, at home, for work, embedded dev, corporate
| environment, as a manager and as a dev, etc.
|
| What I see is that linux as already everywhere. Desktop
| space is the only OS market where non-linux OSes are in
| the majority, and maybe this is why people are so excited
| about these pointless numbers.
| jraph wrote:
| Desktop Linux is difficult to define exactly, but the
| idea has merits. Something that's not proprietary, and
| that's not incredibly closed / locked / controlled by a
| monopolist like Android or Chrome OS.
|
| > maybe this is why people are so excited about these
| pointless numbers.
|
| I'd be excited by numbers showing an increase free
| software use, including the OS, first and foremost.
|
| For what I personally care, I'd be happy to drop the
| Linux kernel requirement and extend the scope to Desktop
| BSDs and other open source desktop OS as well. People
| being trapped in closed OSes that happen to be based on a
| Linux kernel is of limited comfort anyway, actually.
| sophacles wrote:
| What if I run linux + gnu + gnome over rdp on VM a server
| in a rack somewhere that has no screen keyboard and mouse
| on it? Am i using desktop linux or not?
|
| What if that same VM also is running nginx and serving up
| web content?
|
| What if I have a pc with a keyboard and monitor sitting
| literally on my desktop, and it's running linux + gnu but
| no graphical environment, and I use it for coding (it has
| music playing when I do this, and i sometime check email
| or github issues, etc via cli) - yes I've done this, even
| recently to reduce distractions... some days GUIs are bad
| for my adhd. Is that a desktop linux? If not, why? What's
| different about this than doing basically the same thing,
| but also having a browser open when it's surrounded by a
| GUI?
| palata wrote:
| I feel like you're overthinking it. It's not that one can
| get a badge saying "powered by Desktop Linux". It's a
| rough categorisation based on the use case:
|
| * Embedded Linux is what you expect to see on a "small"
| device that usually doesn't have a graphical environment
| (it may have a small screen showing a temperature).
|
| * A Linux server is what you expect to see in racks,
| serving stuff over the Internet. A homeserver could be
| that, too.
|
| * Linux on mobile is what you would put on your phone.
|
| * Desktop Linux is what you would put on your working
| computer, the one you interact with "physically".
|
| Of course, you can run a server on your personal laptop,
| and you could run a "Desktop" graphical environment on a
| mobile phone. But that's beside the point. And of course,
| you can work on a Linux without a graphical environment.
| palata wrote:
| No software compiled for arm will run on x86. No software
| depending on Qt will run without Qt, even if you have
| GTK.
|
| Doesn't mean they don't run the same kernel, does it?
| fsflover wrote:
| You can recompile software for a different architecture
| relatively easily. You can't easily rewrite GNU/Linux
| software to run on Android.
| palata wrote:
| And you can't easily rewrite Qt software to use GTK.
| Still they both run on Linux.
| msgodel wrote:
| You probably could if Android weren't intentionally
| constrained by Google to prevent it. That's what fsflover
| is trying to point out: Android is more of a television
| firmware than an OS and counting it like a PC OS makes
| very little sense because you can't use it like one.
|
| EDIT: I think you still don't understand. It doesn't
| matter what hardware Android runs on it's written to be
| appliance firmware. Even if you put it on a laptop it
| just turns the laptop into what is essentially a
| television.
| palata wrote:
| So I was saying that Android runs the Linux kernel,
| period.
|
| But now that you say it, Android is very much a full OS.
| It's not a Linux Desktop, but it is a full OS. And
| televisions running Android are called "smart TVs",
| precisely because they run a full OS instead of a minimal
| firmware like they used to.
|
| Google is working on bringing Android to the Desktop, and
| Samsung already does it. As in: you plug your smartphone
| into a docking station and it is suddenly a Desktop
| computer.
| assbuttbuttass wrote:
| You can run Linux software on Android via termux, or the
| amazing UserLAnd app even lets you install an entire
| distro userland with several choices (Debian, Arch, etc)
| MYEUHD wrote:
| Checkout https://postmarketos.org Those vendor provided
| kernel trees let you run a real Linux distribution on
| your phone.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| PostmarketOS doesn't use downstream kernel trees
| _because_ those are useless for anything that 's not
| AOSP-based (unless you use terrible hacks like libhybris)
| and are often not upgradable to newer versions. They rely
| on "close-to-mainline" kernels that are much closer to
| real Linux.
| jchw wrote:
| That's not even true. You can use typical Linux software
| inside of a chroot, like with Termux.
| conradev wrote:
| Yep, and in the reverse, you don't need a separate kernel
| to run Android software on Linux: https://waydro.id
| udev4096 wrote:
| Waydroid is garbage. It's so bad. Better use redroid:
| https://github.com/remote-android/redroid-doc
| fsflover wrote:
| Waydroid actually allows me to run Android software on my
| GNU/Linux phone.
| return_to_monke wrote:
| You failed to provide any reason why waydroid is "so
| bad".
| longfingers wrote:
| Whether your virtual container is lightweight,
| heavyweight or from the cloud doesn't really change
| anything from a regular user's perspective. You aren't
| installing software in the main environment you are
| looking at, running a desktop on, etc.
| jchw wrote:
| Recall the post above mine:
|
| > > I would still count it as the Linux kernel.
|
| > This may be technically true, except it has no single
| meaningful implication, like no Linux software works
| there.
|
| Termux is notable is because you in fact _don 't_ need a
| virtual machine at all, or even a proper container. Even
| the "chroot" aspect is basically just to create a facade
| to make software work with less effort; it's not
| _literally_ needed. And you can indeed run typical
| graphical Linux software as long as you have a compatible
| display server; Termux offers an X server as an add-on.
|
| This doesn't mean that Android is the same as desktop
| Linux, but that's not the point here. The point is that
| Android runs the Linux kernel, and not just in name only.
| You actually can make use of the Linux aspect of Android,
| which many of us do.
|
| It's possible that Google will lock down Android further
| in the future and make the host Linux environment less
| usable for stock Linux apps, but today you can run quite
| a lot of typical CLI and even desktop Linux software
| directly in Android with minimal fuss. Even if it's a
| little cumbersome, it's quite useful in a pinch.
|
| I'd argue whether you can readily install software to the
| Linux host environment is also neither here nor there.
| For an immutable abroot setup like SteamOS, you can't
| really install directly to the host environment, but in
| my mind that does not make it any less "desktop Linux" or
| Linux kernel based.
| udev4096 wrote:
| This is the reason I hate the recent surge in linux
| desktop users. People jumping in without allocating
| enough time to get familiar with the ecosystem
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Android is Linux
|
| Android is not GNU/Linux.
|
| Article talks about GNU/Linux clearly. There is a point to
| the whole "I'd like to interject for a moment..." copypasta
| and Android's situation is the clearest illustration of it.
| jraph wrote:
| > There is a point to the whole "I'd like to interject
| for a moment..." copypasta and Android's situation is the
| clearest illustration of it.
|
| Well... :-)
|
| With you in spirit, but to add to the mess, one could
| argue Alpine (and Postmarket OS) is a standard Linux
| distro, but non GNU.
|
| "GNU/" cannot be used for clarifying things anymore.
| throwaway0665 wrote:
| The article talks about browsers that use Linux in the
| user agent. This includes Alpine Linux - which is not
| GNU/Linux. It also splits out Chrome OS which is pretty
| much GNU/Linux.
| blueflow wrote:
| Alpine and GNU/Linux are Posix, while Android is not.
| TheDong wrote:
| I don't think Posix is very relevant to what is or isn't
| linux.
|
| macOS is more posix than NixOS, but everyone knows NixOS
| is a real linux distro, and macOS is not one.
| blueflow wrote:
| Me neither! I was suggesting to use "Posix" instead of
| "Linux" because it properly separates GNU/Linux or other
| Linuxes from Android. Posix is what Android isn't but
| what MacOS is. What people erroneously try to call
| "Linux" because they don't have a better word.
| palata wrote:
| > Article talks about GNU/Linux clearly.
|
| There are Linux distributions that don't use the GNU
| userland. Should we start being pedantic about that? And
| say Busybox/Linux or MyCustomThingy/Linux etc?
|
| And actually, were you talking about GNU/Linux/Xorg, or
| GNU/Linux/Wayland? Can I also ask people to mention which
| libc they use? Alpine is OpenRC/Busybox/musl/Linux, which
| is not systemd/GNU/glibc/Linux.
|
| So yeah... Desktop Linux is not worse a way to describe
| an OS than GNU/Linux.
| charcircuit wrote:
| This has been repeated for so long that in the meantime
| enough of the changes have been upstreamed such that
| Android has been able to run with the upstream kernel since
| 6 years ago.
| kube-system wrote:
| > The Steam Deck very much runs Linux Desktop. Android runs
| the Linux kernel, but everything else is different.
|
| Linux _is_ a kernel.
| palata wrote:
| Which is exactly why people here talk about "Linux
| Desktop". Linux is a kernel, Linux Desktop is some flavour
| of a full OS made to run on a PC, as opposed to e.g.
| embedded Linux or a Linux server.
|
| Not sure what your point is?
| tuna74 wrote:
| Yeah, but ChromeOS is just as much "Desktop Linux" as
| Fedora Workstation.
| danieldk wrote:
| I think that's pretty pedantic. When most people here say
| 'Linux Desktop', they mean the Linux kernel, GNU(-ish)
| userland, Wayland/X11, and some desktop like GNOME, KDE
| or Mate.
|
| Though, I guess outside tech circles, people will just
| talk about _Linux_ as the whole desktop OS. E.g. our
| municipality was promoting installing a Linux
| distribution to save Windows laptops after the Windows 10
| apocalypse, and they just call it _Linux_.
|
| Even Wikipedia says: Linux (/'lInUks/ LIN-uuks[15]) is a
| family of open source Unix-like operating systems based
| on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first
| released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds.
| 9rx wrote:
| But with respect to "Linux on the Desktop" in the context
| of marketshare, the interest is in seeing how far Linux
| has gone, not how far software running on Linux has gone.
|
| The only reason "ChromeOS" isn't considered Linux in this
| dataset is because Chrome has a flag that removes Linux
| from the user-agent on certain systems. If we were
| talking about Linux on the desktop casually, or were
| compiling a dataset through some other means where the
| kernel is a known quantity, we'd most certainly include
| said systems.
| palata wrote:
| > When most people here say 'Linux Desktop', they mean
| the Linux kernel, GNU(-ish) userland, Wayland/X11, and
| some desktop like GNOME, KDE or Mate.
|
| This. It actually surprises me that it's apparently not
| entirely clear for everybody.
| anthk wrote:
| There are no 'Linux desktops'.
| sneak wrote:
| A distinction without a difference. The point of this
| subthread is that the term Linux is overloaded to mean two
| things: a kernel and also an OS that has certain
| assumptions (usually glibc and some unix userspace stuff).
|
| The point being that "Linux Desktop" means something more
| than "runs the Linux kernel".
| rhabarba wrote:
| There is not even one common "the Linux kernel".
| jraph wrote:
| Seeing how the Linux name is used in practice, it's useful
| to clarify.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| "IT'S GNU/LINUX!" ~ rms
| paulcole wrote:
| If your belief is that Steam Deck is Linux Desktop then you
| need to count Switch/PS5/Xbox as desktops as well and take
| those into account with the OS percentages.
| IsTom wrote:
| Steam Deck has (accessible in menu by default) desktop mode
| that is just KDE with desktop icons and everything.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I don't think his point was that it's not linux but
| rather that it's not a desktop, and if it counts as a
| desktop, then so do the rest of the gaming consoles
| runnining non-linux, which probably didn't get counted so
| the 5% would be lower.
| westpfelia wrote:
| Yea except I cant use my PS5 as a actual desktop. As in
| my steamdeck has a DE. My actual desktop is 4000 km away.
| So I have a monitor and mouse + KB plugged into my
| steamdeck Dock and its no different.
| samrus wrote:
| This is wrong. A steamdeck in desktop mode is exactly a
| desktop. You can write and execute code on it the exact
| same way you do on your laptop
|
| You cant do that on mobile devices or other handhelds
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Yes, you can, and yes, among the group of people
| represented on HN, I have no doubt that a fair number do
| use it this way.....but how typical is that? How often
| does the average steam deck owner _use_ it as a desktop?
| How often does the average user leave the steam launcher?
| How often does the average user think of it as anything
| other than a gaming console?
|
| If all you care about is some very technical sense of
| "how many linux desktop environments are installed in the
| world", then none of these questions matter. But if the
| reason one is interested in the "Linux Desktop market
| share" is some level of interest in how people are using
| desktop computers, and when/if they are choosing them
| over competing OSs like Windows and MacOS, then these
| questions matter a lot. My guess is that 90% of SteamDeck
| owners don't think about the fact that it is Linux,
| barely every leave the steam launcher, and were they to
| be looking at getting a new desktop computer, their
| SteamDeck experience would not make them consider a linux
| distro vs. Windows or MacOS.
|
| In case it matters, I think more people should be running
| Linux than do, I think people over-estimate the
| difficulty of switching. I _want_ the steam deck and
| SteamOS to be a gateway for people to switch in more
| contexts....I 'm just skeptical that it's actually doing
| that more than a trivial amount.
| samrus wrote:
| Great point actually.
|
| And it got me thinking, i already hook up the deck to my
| tv and use bluetooth peripherals with it. Maybw ill try
| using it as my daily driver at home
| IsTom wrote:
| You need to switch to desktop mode to install non-steam
| software like emulators, so I assume some people use it
| at least intermittently. And I've seen some posts about
| people running a DAW (bitwig) on it. It's not going to be
| many people, but the deck is a legit linux PC if you've
| got a dock with peripherials attached. Can't say that
| about other consoles.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Wow, I did not know this. Does anyone know the history
| behind why they chose KDE over GNOME? I promise: I am not
| picking a fight over those two.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| My guess is the same reason as with SteamOS: not relying
| on a single party.
| happymellon wrote:
| By picking a standard menu option I can go to a traditional
| desktop and use Libre Office and Firefox.
|
| Can I so that with a Switch?
|
| I can plug in a USB dock, with a monitor, mouse and
| keyboard and edit images with GIMP.
|
| Can I do that with a PS5?
|
| If I like the Steam Deck UI, I can install a package on my
| desktop and pick it on login, thus gaining basically all of
| this functionality. I in fact _do_ have the SteamOS 3 UI
| installed on a gaming PC, and it works really well.
|
| Can I install the PS5 UI and the ability to play
| PlayStation games on a BSD box?
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| > Can I do that with a Switch?
|
| You can install Ubuntu on a Nintendo switch by using a
| paperclip so yes.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/SwitchHacks/comments/8f0ugz/hard
| war...
| happymellon wrote:
| > by using a paperclip
|
| So, no?
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| Yes, you can. With a paper clip.
|
| Some installations of linux require a USB drive.
|
| This one requires a paper clip.
| happymellon wrote:
| > > By picking a standard menu option I can go to a
| traditional desktop and use Libre Office and Firefox.
|
| > > Can I so that with a Switch?
|
| > Yes. With a paperclip
|
| A paperclip isn't a standard menu item. It's a hack to
| switch the operating systems. Once you've hacked it you
| can't play Switch games until you revert back. That's
| nothing like what the deck is offering.
|
| > Some installations of linux require a USB drive.
|
| We aren't talking about hacking, we are talking about
| whether the deck comes with desktop Linux, which it does.
| What you are talking about is nothing like what the Deck
| is offering.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| > you can't play Switch games until you revert back
|
| You literally just have to reboot into the normal switch
| OS, it's not different than dual booting.
| happymellon wrote:
| The Deck doesn't need to "dual boot".
|
| Hit the power button and instead on sleep or shutdown
| pick desktop and it switches interfaces.
|
| When in the desktop mode it still has Steam and you can
| still play Steam games.
|
| You're really reaching with the Switch is a desktop OS.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Market share only matters to geeks and commercial software
| vendors when deciding the total addressable market. A "Linux
| desktop" that is connected to a TV used to play games is not
| part of the market they care about.
| jorvi wrote:
| You are being obtuse.
|
| 99% of Steam Deck users won't ever use the desktop mode
| except for maybe setting up emulation or Discord.
|
| In general, that makes Steam Deck users no more Linux users
| than people that use Android.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Android users _are_ Linux users. So are Nintendo Switch
| users, the whole "can Linux game/be used for mobile"
| question is already answered.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Errr, isn't the Switch BSD based? Or am I confusing it
| with the PS5?
| jorvi wrote:
| They aren't. Or not in the sense that it matters for
| traditional Linux desktop users, which is pretty much the
| only reason the metric gets brought up.
|
| Following your logic, people using the old TiVo setop
| boxes were also Linux users.
|
| Active Linux desktop adoption rates matter because it
| means companies will put money into ensuring their
| product works well on it. 1Password or Telegram is not
| going to meaningfully care about Steam Deck users. Or
| Android users vis a vis the Linux desktop client, because
| Android can't readily run Linux GUI applications :)
|
| It's honestly kind of nuts no one here is getting that.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It really doesn't matter, you're again conflating the
| "kernel" and "desktop" distinction that's important here.
| It's like saying that XNU isn't being used by gamers -
| _in practice_ you 're correct, but the kernel is used to
| run millions of iPhone games. It doesn't matter for the
| adoption of macOS as a gaming platform, but the kernel
| _is_ used for it.
|
| What matters, to me as a Linux user on the desktop, is
| that Nintendo and Google simply follow the license. I
| don't _want_ them contributing patches to GNOME or
| Firefox, I want them downstream testing the kernel and
| contributing patches back for me to benefit from. And I
| do! My Switch Pro controller has official Linux support
| _because of_ Nintendo. My day-to-day life on the desktop
| is improved by both company 's contributions.
|
| The idea that Nintendo or Google are neglecting their
| duty because Photoshop doesn't run on Linux is a
| facetious argument. It might be a major issue for you,
| but clearly millions of Linux users are perfectly happy
| without those trappings.
|
| > Or Android users vis a vis the Linux desktop client,
| because Android can't readily run Linux GUI applications
| :)
|
| A _travesty_ for Android 's adoption metrics, one can
| only imagine. Thankfully for Linux users, the inverse is
| not so true: https://waydro.id/
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| You would be correct if steam deck users were in line with
| the average computer user, but they definitely skew more
| towards the tech savvy crowd - the crowd that would be
| interested in desktop/emulation.
|
| Part of this is in order to use a steam deck, unless you
| want to be very limited, you kind of have to be a little
| more tech savvy. I love my deck, but it is definitely not
| plug and play/turn key like a switch is for instance. Hell
| until a year or so ago swapping between gaming and desktop
| mode resulted in a total crash like 30% of the time. It
| still doesn't dock and undock seamlessly, you get all kinds
| of wild behavior with standard TVs still, and if you're off
| your home network and it tries to update it can still lock
| you out. It's not as bad as it used to be, but it's still a
| distinct possibility.
|
| I love it and frankly the machine is a marvel, especially
| at its price point. But I still struggle to recommend it to
| people.
| dartharva wrote:
| What even is "Linux Desktop" and why does Android not qualify
| as one? Many Android tablets (especially those with Samsung
| Dex) can certainly double up as desktops if its users were so
| willing, at least a lot more so than the Steam Deck.
| DanOpcode wrote:
| Linux Desktop is something else. When Adobe considers if
| it's worth to port Photoshop to run on the Linux Desktop
| they don't include the market share of Android devices in
| that calculation. It's two completely different markets:
| desktop Linux apps and Android apps.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > What even is "Linux Desktop" and why does Android not
| qualify as one?
|
| A desktop is a computer that sits on your desk, as opposed
| to being held in your hand. In concrete terms, you can
| install Android Firefox on ChromeOS, and it runs fine. But
| it is near unusable because it turns out how people
| interact with desktops is very different to how people
| interact with phones.
|
| Also, desktop window managers tend to look like a protocol,
| rather than a library. That because every language can
| speak a protocol, but a library is written in one language
| and if you are lucky, someone many have provided bindings
| to that library to the language you are using.
|
| Android's display is effectively a Java library. If you
| want to talk to it from C or Python, you have to FFI to
| Java, which sucks from a number of perspectives. It's not
| how you would implement a general purpose desktop
| environment, and I've never met anyone who considers it to
| be one.
|
| That lack of flexibility shows up in a number of other
| ways. For example it's not difficult to implement an phone
| OS interface using XWindows or Wayland. Neither
| particularly care what window manager is running on top of
| them them. The reverse isn't true. You can't provide a the
| multi-window desktop environment on Android as it stands.
|
| None of this is true for ChromeOS. It uses Wayland under
| the hood, and so you can install and run Debian GUI apps on
| it. In fact I do that, and it mostly works as you would
| expect. Thus I consider ChromeOS to be true Linux Desktop
| environment, and it should be counted as one. It isn't mind
| you - but I think should be.
|
| Google seems to be in the process of replacing ChromeOS
| with Android, and as part of that process ChromeOS's
| ability to run Linux desktop apps is being ported to
| Android. If and when that happens, then I'd consider
| Android to be Linux desktop too.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Totally agree. It's what finally got me to commit to a linux
| machine for my recent desktop build!
| koolala wrote:
| Typing this from my Steam Deck, its the best Linux desktop
| I've ever had. It's awesome to have my PC also be a handheld
| when laying in bed. I hope the Deckard has M+KB support too.
| mcv wrote:
| The Steam Deck is absolutely a full blown Linux. But it's not
| a desktop. It's a handheld.
|
| Well, unless you hook a screen and keyboard to it, I suppose.
| No idea how many people do that. But if you do that, phones
| and tablets also become desktops.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I mean, a keyboard on iPad is way less powerful than a
| keyboard on steam deck. The steam deck can plug into a
| monitor and runs Plasma out of the box, which is a full
| blown desktop environment
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| I attach screen + keyboard to it often. It has an official
| dock to facilitate this. In my mind, it's a device that can
| function as both desktop and hand-held.
| zeroc8 wrote:
| The truth is, it doesn't really matter.
|
| What's important is that we have an alternative to keep
| Microsoft and Apple honest. If they overdo it with their crappy
| ideas - like showing ads in the start menu or recording the
| desktop - then people can easily switch, at least for personal
| computing.
| generic92034 wrote:
| But those "features" exist, and people did not switch (at
| least not in great numbers).
| leereeves wrote:
| How many of the Linux desktops counted here are Steam Decks?
|
| The stats come from website trackers - do people browse the web
| on Steam Decks?
| freehorse wrote:
| People do all kinds of crazy stuff with steam decks. I don't
| own one, but at least I give to steam that they created a
| general computing device that people can use however they
| please instead of yet another walled garden console. It would
| not surprise me if people actually also use them to browse
| the web.
| qwertycrackers wrote:
| I do. It's a device that is often hooked up to my TV so it
| becomes the shared device for watching things like Youtube.
| ryandv wrote:
| > At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their
| general computing being on phones and tablets which is not
| captured here.
|
| > [...] (more technical, needing to do tasks not possible on
| phones and tablets)
|
| Somewhat unrelated but something I never see discussed is how
| the form factor of the computing device changes our
| relationship to, and the types of, media that we produce and
| consume.
|
| One critical task not possible on phones and tablets is the
| production of long-form textual media; hence the concomitant
| rise of picture and video and the smartphone camera, which is
| now the primary medium through which many, many people view the
| world. Editing anything longer than a Tweet is torturous on a
| phone or even a tablet, and I suspect that this lack of
| ergonomics is what leads to the proliferation of reductive,
| simplistic, short-form, and byte-sized thinking.
|
| Computing "interface culture" was once hyper-literate; "in the
| beginning was the command line" [0], and people's primary way
| of seeing the internet was through words, keyboards, and
| terminals. Now we have the "colossal success of GUIs" and a
| Disney-fied [0], touchscreen interface to computing, where the
| control mechanisms used by adults are the exact same as the
| ones used by toddlers.
|
| [0] https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt
| paulcole wrote:
| > One critical task not possible on phones and tablets is the
| production of long-form textual media
|
| The key addition obviously being "for me."
|
| For others tablets (and for some others, phones) are what
| they use for producing long-form textual media.
|
| I, for example, have no issue producing long-form textual
| media on my iPad w/ Magic Keyboard.
|
| I'm sure that you will feel as though I'm not producing Real
| Long-Form Textual Media.
| adamc wrote:
| Must be circles. I just visited relatives, and brought my
| laptop as well as my phone; I barely used the laptop. But my
| brother always uses his, and his kids used laptops, and even
| one of my great nieces used a laptop. Did they have phones?
| Yes.
|
| Games isn't the only driver. It's hard to do things like write
| papers on phones.
| dmd wrote:
| Nearly everyone in our family's (public, Massachusetts) high
| school writes papers exclusively on their phone.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| This is incredible, wow.
| danieldk wrote:
| Wow, isn't that painful without a big screen and keyboard?
| [1] Most primary schools here (NL) use Chromebooks or
| Windows laptops. High schools sometimes have a BYOD, but
| you certainly have to bring a laptop.
|
| [1] Of course, you can hook up most phones to a display,
| keyboard, mouse, but that blurring the lines a bit. A
| Samsung DeX device or future Pixel desktop mode device
| hooked up to peripherals is pretty much a desktop (Pixel
| will even support Linux apps in a VM).
| dmd wrote:
| To you or me, yes. And I would say "oh they just don't
| know what they're missing" but they all have laptops and
| chromebooks but prefer to use their phones.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| How do you write long school papers on the phone's tiny
| screen and keyboard?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| ChatGPT?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Good point. You don't even need to use the screen and
| keyboard for that, just voice prompts. Kids are already
| living in the future.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| With your thumbs
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Interesting. I'm also in MA, and my daughters (like all
| their classmates) mostly use the chromebooks issued by
| their public high school. They strongly prefer their
| macbooks tho. Granted, we live in an affluent town. But I
| thought the chromebooks were a statewide thing.
| dmd wrote:
| We're also in a quite affluent town, and yes everyone
| does have chromebooks. But they're considered uncool to
| use.
| eitally wrote:
| I'm in San Jose and it's school-issued Chromebooks here,
| too, though many students have their own [superior]
| laptop they are able to use. In the case of my household,
| my son has a Thinkpad X1 Carbon and my daughter has a
| Pixelbook Go, I use a MacBook Pro M1 and my wife uses an
| old Pixelbook or an old iPad with a Magic Keyboard.
| Everyone's pretty much chained to their phones but
| recognize a real keyboard and bigger screen are
| beneficial for certain tasks (like writing, or Khan
| Academy, or even consuming media).
| esseph wrote:
| In highschool classes forever ago we had to write 20+ page
| papers. I can't imagine trying to do that on a phone!
| generic92034 wrote:
| These days might be gone, with the availability of LLMs
| now. You only need to prompt a bit, then it is all copy
| and paste. I have no idea if the students are learning a
| whole lot this way, though.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| I'm a millenial and I'm touch typing. The idea of writing
| long texts on a phone or tablet feels ridiculous to me. I
| already get annoyed when I have to write an e-mail on my
| phone. Also, I find the mobile UX for text formatting,
| cut/copy/paste extremely frustrating.
| leptons wrote:
| Have they ever tried to use a real computer for that? Can
| they afford a real computer? Would they prefer a bigger
| screen and a real keyboard over a tiny screen and an even
| smaller keyboard? Maybe they just don't have the experience
| of using a real computer to know how far superior it is to
| a tiny screen/keyboard?
|
| Using a phone to write papers seems like an exercise in
| masochism, if better alternatives are available.
|
| It's also possible that their peer group that does use
| laptops to write papers is doing far better in many ways.
| dmd wrote:
| Yes, this is a very affluent district. Everyone has a
| chromebook from school and most have a macbook from their
| parents. They prefer the phone. ("Big computers are more
| of an old person millennial thing.")
| leptons wrote:
| They sound young and dumb, to the point that their
| opinion on this matter is irrelevant. They will figure it
| out eventually.
| adamc wrote:
| Interesting. My great nieces have Lenovos (Windows) that
| they use for school work and light gaming. They'd _like_
| better gaming laptops, but don 't have them.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _everyone I know has moved to their general computing being
| on phones and tablets_
|
| And of the remaining desktop/laptop users, 90% of their work is
| being done in a browser. Which makes Linux distros like Ubuntu
| suitable for more people.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| If you are doing all of your work in a browser anyway, you
| might as well use a less finicky iPad with longer battery
| life with a regular Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
|
| Why would I recommend a Linux system?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > Why would I recommend a Linux system?
|
| Greater control over what hardware and software you wish to
| run. e.g. you wouldn't have to follow Apple's decisions in
| making things obsolete and effectively keep old hardware
| running for a lot longer if you so wish. There's also a
| possible issue in having a U.S. based company in control of
| your O.S.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| But most people could care less as long as they have the
| apps they need. They don't want to muck around with their
| computers. I've been programming as a hobby since 1986
| and professionally since 1996 and _I_ don't want to muck
| around with my computer.
|
| But the comment is about most people only caring about
| the browser.
| Fokamul wrote:
| > At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their
| general computing being on phones and tablets which is not
| captured here
|
| Interesting, could you tell me which part of US you are from?
|
| ---
|
| My 2 cents, small country, mid-Europe, more or less in the
| middle of list of GDP / AIC per capita in EU.
|
| Nearly everyone has some sort of PC or laptops for personal
| use.
|
| Now it's changing, kids(~5-13yrs old) are using phones and
| tablets for school, Tiktok, Ytube, games. And only minority of
| kids is using PCs.
|
| After they reach certain age, they've switched to PC games, at
| least in the past. Let's see what will happen now.
|
| Gamers use primarily PC (Windows, because forced BS
| Anticheats), consoles are minority.
|
| Probably because big tradition of piracy here, for long time it
| was legal to download anything. Even after forced change from
| EU, it's somewhat grey area and you can torrent anything,
| without VPN and nobody will care. But regarding pirating games,
| it changed years ago, with Steam of course. Like everywhere
| else.
|
| Still it's funny that we have same price or sometimes even
| higher than US and our median salary is ~5x lower than US. :-)
| Here we call it "specific market", meaning "everybody buys it
| and everybody's stupid".
|
| Only prosecuted cases I know, it was people uploading movies
| (usually local production) and they've made money from it.
|
| In case of Germany and their automation of spamming letters
| from lawyers with ransom for EUR1k because someone on your
| internet torrented something. That's totally ridiculous from
| our point of view and it would spawn huge public backlash. I
| think that even lawyers torrents here :D
| xaitv wrote:
| Netherlands here. Most people I know (outside of gamers) tend
| to have a laptop only if they have one for work anyway, they
| use their phones for banking, tax, searching the correct
| spelling of words etc. That's in the age groups from like 30
| all the way to 70.
|
| I don't think I know any non-gamer that has an actual
| desktop, just people with laptops.
|
| For the gamers consoles are the vast majority, of the PC
| gamers pretty much all use Windows. When I tell friends I use
| Linux it's mostly "oh yeah I looked into that as well when
| Windows 11 came out but didn't end up switching".
| Fokamul wrote:
| Yes, top of the list, it shows :)
|
| Latops and desktops, it's a mix here. Older people had
| mainly desktops in the past. That's my experience, at
| least.
|
| Banking, yeah mainly phones because of ridiculous forced
| banking apps from corporate masters, like everywhere else?
| (certain bank even lost a lot of customers because of that)
|
| Taxes, if you are just an employee, taxes are done by your
| employer for you, by law. (I presume it's a post-communism
| BS, so people doesn't pay attention how much taxes we pay.)
|
| If you have other types of income, you do it yourself, you
| have app/website to click through it, easy. Not automatic
| though. Self-employed IT pay less taxes than normal
| employees :D and overall lower-income people pay bigger
| taxes by percentage, what a great country :D
|
| We call your country Holland, great country imho, If I
| would thinking about moving, that's top option for me.
|
| Only thing that keeps me here are best gun laws in EU (I
| have Glock, AR15 clone, Bren3 ordered), you can conceal
| carry nearly everywhere, you can even use gun for self-
| defense, sadly very low criminality here :)
|
| Hell, I can even legally carry katana, not kidding.
|
| Linux is used only by IT people, friends cannot switch
| because they play MP games with invasive Anticheat running
| on kernel.
|
| Personally, I'm only switching people to Linux if they
| cannot afford new PC because of Win11 upgrade. Zorin OS
| usually.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Only thing that keeps me here are best gun laws in EU
| (I have Glock, AR15 clone, Bren3 ordered), you can
| conceal carry nearly everywhere, you can even use gun for
| self-defense, sadly very low criminality here :)
|
| Wild. I had no idea you can do this in continental
| Europe. I found this map on Reddit: https://www.reddit.co
| m/r/europe/comments/11qkksb/concealed_c...
| VagabundoP wrote:
| College students will have laptops or a laptop-like device.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| (US minnesota) recently a 23 year old new hire advised me
| that he doesn't have a normal computer or laptop and he buys
| plane tickets, files his taxes, plans projects etc on a phone
| or ipad. Thinking that some tasks are better suited to a desk
| / 2 monitors is apparently a millennial thing now .
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I had my first personal computer in 1986. But I can easily
| do all of those things just as conveniently on my phone.
|
| 90% of tax payers claim the standard deduction. That means
| filing your taxes just means going to Turbo tax and it
| importing your W2's automatically if your employer uses one
| of the major payment providers like ADP or worse case
| taking a picture of your W2, clicking "Next" a few times
| after answering a few questions and it's done.
|
| Why would I need a desktop to buy plane tickets? I launch
| my airline app, get the ticket.
|
| Plans? For my personal projects I use Trello. I have an M2
| MacBook Air that I only bought when I was between jobs for
| around a month to do a side contract.
|
| My wife wanted a new computer to replace her aging x86
| MacBook Air and then her older iPad went out. We bought an
| iPad Air 13 inch and paid $70 for a regular old Bluetooth
| keyboard and mouse and that's her "computer" now.
| Fokamul wrote:
| >That means filing your taxes just means going to Turbo
| tax and it importing your W2's automatically
|
| Whoa interesting, so everyone is using 3rd party company
| service, is it paid service or free, I've checked their
| website and cannot understand if it's free or not for
| this basic level you've mentioned.
|
| In my country, if this was a thing, that you must pay
| some company to file your taxes, it would probably cause
| public meltdown and end of any current government :)
|
| Here, basic level taxes are done by your employer for
| you, by law, for free. Because actually they don't do
| taxes, but they only report amount of tax advances,
| social security, healthcare paid by your employer, to
| state, (all 3 is required by law to be paid and you or
| your employer have big legal problems if not). And also
| variables for tax deduction and then "something like IRS"
| will just send you tax return into your account.
|
| And for any other cases(if you have more sources of
| income, eg.: salary + self-employed / rent) you must do
| taxes yourself, website for helping you to file taxes, is
| managed by state agency, for free.
|
| Or you pay some money to "tax specialist" to file your
| taxes for you and liability to file it right goes after
| them (something like accountant, but hired only for this
| one task)
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| US tax forms and rules are insanely complex compared to
| other highly developed nations. Lots of people use a
| commercial product called Turbo Tax to help them.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If you just have a W2 and are taking the standard
| deduction (applicable to many, if not most taxpayers),
| then there is no insane complexity. Your tax document is
| one and a half pages and can be done with a pen and
| calculator.
|
| If you have stock trades, IRA distributions, rental
| income, things like that, then yea, you probably need
| computer-based help.
| dmix wrote:
| Planning a trip is one of the best usecases for not being
| phone-only. If it was jut "open app and buy ticket" then
| it'd be fine, but most trips involve a lot of moving
| parts that need to be in sync.
|
| Comparing multiple different websites, copying and
| pasting information to share, looking up locations, etc.
| All way easier with a mouse, keyboard, and large tabbed
| browser windows.
|
| Even Airbnb is better on desktop, since it very easily
| resets your search queries on the mobile app, because
| state is managed differently vs browser you can leave 10
| different spots or multiple queries open in different
| tabs, which is common issue in mobile apps. And tab
| switching on mobile browsers is very slow.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I feel exactly the same: Context switching is awful on a
| mobile, but great on _something_ with a mouse and
| keyboard. Even copy and paste on mobile still feels weird
| after 10 years of doing it.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| [Context: this isn't bragging my wife and I got rid of
| everything we physically owned and downsized so we could
| do this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159562]
|
| We travel so much, we keep things as "simple" as possible
| - Hilton and Hyatt brand hotels 95% of the time, Delta
| for domestic flights and preferably Delta or SkyTeam
| (AirFrance, Virgin Airlines, etc) for international
| flights. We have status with Hilton, Hyatt and Delta
| (Platinum Medallion) and Delta lounge access. Of course
| we have TSA Precheck and Clear.
|
| We found a couple that runs a few AirBnbs in Costa Rica
| for our winter stays there starting next year.
|
| In october 2022, my wife and I got rid of everything we
| owned that wouldn't fit in 4 suitcases, sold our cars,
| rented our home [1] out to our adult son (and two of his
| friends that we considered family) and flew one way trips
| to 15 different cities until landing in our then second
| home [2] in Florida. We did all of the planning via a
| shared Google Sheet on our phone, the Delta and American
| airline apps and Hilton and Hyatt hotel apps.
|
| During the past 7 months, we've had trips to Vegas, Costa
| Rica, 4-5 flights back home to ATL, a few flights to see
| my parents in south GA, DC, London and Niagara Falls
| Canada, we still have a few trips back to Atlanta and to
| see my parents this year.
|
| While we are doing all of this traveling together, my
| wife flies to conferences and I did travel semi
| frequently for business as a consultant but that has died
| down.
|
| At the same time, I'm managing the best use of Delta
| Skymiles, when to transfer points from Amex to AirFrance
| to get cheap domestic flights on Delta (check out
| r/awardtravel), Hilton points, Hyatt points either
| directly or by transferring from Chase. These are all
| using the apps.
|
| I have a Google sheet to keep track of various credit
| card perks (Delta stays credits, companion passes, etc)
|
| I have a spreadsheet with tabs for the next couple of
| years plans - next year we are staying in Costa Rica for
| a 45 days in an Airbnb and 3-4 cities domestically during
| the summer and a couple of other random domestic flights
| during the year.
|
| I am also keeping track of my budget, when is the best
| time to "nomad" based on potential rental income from my
| home [2].
|
| While we have one account for hotels and a shared
| calendar, miles flying are based on "butts in seat",
| whoever flies gets the miles. But you can book flights
| for others using your miles. We juggle those together
| too.
|
| This is all from our phones usually at night.
|
| We really have this down to science after 3+ years.
|
| [1] we sold our primary home last year
|
| [2] our current home is a unit in a condotel
| (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/condotel.asp) we
| own. When we leave for months at a time, we just pack
| everything we own in 4 suitcases and store what we can't
| in our one car - like my "desk" which is just a card
| table.
|
| We then put our unit in the rental pool and get income
| whenever someone stays in our unit. That covers our
| mortgage and all inclusive HOA fee. But that really only
| works in March - mid April (spring break), during the
| summer and the last two or three weeks of the year.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Personally if I am going to spend more than $100 I am
| going to comparison shop and I like having multiple
| windows open to do it in.
|
| Opening a specific airline's app and just getting
| whatever they have on offer is completely foreign to me.
| I would think I am getting cheated.
|
| Also, federal taxes may be easy but the only way to free-
| file the state tax is to do it directly with the state
| and that means filling out a form myself.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I just mentioned in another comment, we travel _a lot_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583545
|
| We don't comparison shop. Domestically flights on Delta,
| hotels are either Hyatt or Hilton brand hotels.
| Internationally? Most Delta partners (AirFrance, Virgin
| Airways) or Delta itself.
|
| For Hilton, we get points directly and can transfer from
| Amex (rarely worth it). For Hyatt, points are more
| valuable and it's easy to get points from Chase credit
| cards (r/churning) that can be transferred to Hyatt
| (saves us thousands a dollars a year sometimes).
|
| On Delta, we have lounge access, 2 free checked bags,
| free regional (domestic, north and Central America)
| flight upgrades, priority check in, etc.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > 90% of tax payers claim the standard deduction. That
| means filing your taxes just means going to Turbo tax and
| it importing your W2's automatically
|
| Why even pay TurboTax if you're just taking the standard
| deduction and have only W2 income? Might as well just
| paper file for free. Anything more complex than that, and
| having a desktop monitor and full size keyboard is very
| useful. I can imagine even filling out 5 stock trades in
| TurboTax on a phone would be quite painful.
|
| > Why would I need a desktop to buy plane tickets? I
| launch my airline app, get the ticket.
|
| This one bit me recently as I did some traveling. None of
| the major airline apps even work on my phone anymore.
| Their developers all just up and decided to block use of
| their app on older phones with full-screen modals
| preventing the software from working. My only choice is
| to buy a new phone or do my flight booking on a desktop.
| Mobile apps are an absolute shit show unless you have a
| <= 5 year old phone.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Spending $30 bucks to save time once per year is well
| worth it to me. I live in a state without state taxes so
| I don't have to pay for state filing.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Thinking that some tasks are better suited to a desk / 2
| monitors is apparently a millennial thing now .
|
| Sad, but true. Recent batch of new hires where I work, same
| age range - mid-late 20's, none of them have computers at
| home except their work issued laptop. They are by far the
| biggest source of help desk tickets for us, and same story
| as you, using phone & iPad for everything at home.
|
| Honestly concerns me for talent recruitment in the future,
| if AI isn't doing everything tech when that time comes -
| kids only tech experiences now are fully locked down walled
| gardens, takes away both the ability and incentive to
| tinker, explore, or even troubleshoot. Whole generation of
| new workers coming in without even the most basic of
| troubleshooting/problem solving skills. Have a few at my
| work where even just reading an error message on the screen
| seems overwhelming to them.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at
| home that is not their work laptop if they have one.
|
| Interesting. I don't know anyone who _doesn 't_ have a personal
| computer at home. Mostly laptops. With the exceptions of nerds
| like myself, the signifier that someone is a gamer is that
| their home computer is a tower rather than a laptop.
|
| I wonder how much regional variation there is around this sort
| of thing? It sounds like it might be quite a lot.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| FWIW, this is my experience too. I'm 50yo, live in the Boston
| area.
| api wrote:
| Tablets and phones have replaced PCs for casual use and content
| consumption. If you want to make anything beyond posts and
| videos you usually need a PC.
|
| Mobile OSes are strictly designed for consumption and are too
| restricted for most other use cases. It's an OS limit not a
| hardware issue.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Yeah, are there any big box retailers selling machines with
| Linux installed as an option? Maybe the numbers are small
| enough for hobbyists to make a dent, but until you see Linux
| machines in best buy, etc., this is probably due more to people
| dumping their personal windows machine in favor of a using
| their work laptop or iPad almost exclusively.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| Dell
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| > Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at
| home that is not their work laptop if they have one.
|
| A Linux desktop is far better to run LLM experiments with.
|
| My home, tinker workstation used to be Windows but there was no
| reason to keep it that way, when most of the build and support
| tooling prefer Linux.
| oblio wrote:
| That's a tiny minority of PC users, though.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| It's not 50% territory; but it's enough to push it up from
| 1-2% to 5%.
|
| There's interest in LLM and GenAI beyond regular tinkerers;
| local NSFW image generator models are apparently a thing.
| eqvinox wrote:
| > Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops
| overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not
| really much to celebrate.
|
| Why? If Windows & OSX desktops are in decline, but Linux isn't,
| I'd still celebrate that - apparently Linux is serving the more
| "important" / long-lived use cases?
| nerdjon wrote:
| The article is specifically claiming a shift and growth. But
| if all that really changed was an increase in percentage due
| to less devices overall there really isnt much of a shift or
| growth.
|
| I think there is likely an argument that the people that
| would have previously used Linux are likely using Linux for
| tasks that would not easily work on a phone or a tablet and
| are likely more technical users.
|
| Where as many users who would have previously used Windows or
| Mac for general basic computing can easily accomplish those
| tasks on their phones or tablets. (Not all tasks obviously,
| but there are a lot of tasks that an iPad can do that you
| would have previously done on your traditional computer).
|
| That is why to me just celebrating a percent change really is
| not telling us much of the story. And to be clear here, I am
| asking the question not to say that the number is not
| something to celebrate but to ask why the number is the way
| it is and celebrate accordingly.
| TuringTest wrote:
| > Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops
| overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not
| really much to celebrate.
|
| So, the true meaning of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" was
| that in the end there would only be a single unit left?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I'm not sure but going on 3 years now after having mostly only
| used it full time at a previous job where everyone's
| workstation was a Linux one.
|
| It helps that I can now do all of my gaming on Linux, so I'm
| not touching Windows again, outside of an employer paying for
| my work devices to use it on.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Both my parents run on Microsoft Excel. Neither of them care
| much for phones or tablets, but if there was an ExcelDeck
| running ExcelOS and it had a web browser and worked like the
| desktop version of Excel does, maybe they would go for it.
|
| As it stands though, that's not the case, so I'll be stuck
| supporting a couple of Windows desktops permanently.
|
| Before you suggest the app versions of Excel or Google Sheets,
| that's already a step too far. My mom told me she's "basically
| done learning new technology" and that's just how it's going to
| be.
| leptons wrote:
| >Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at
| home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least
| in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general
| computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured
| here.
|
| That's very anecdotal of you. Proves absolutely nothing.
|
| Since we're posting anecdotes here, everyone _I know_ has at
| least one computer that is not "their work computer" (which is
| confusing, is it employer-owned, or just personally owned for
| their own purposes?).
|
| Many people do not like typing on tablet or phone keyboards,
| real keyboards are much nicer. Bigger screens are also much
| nicer than tiny phone screens and most tablet screens.
|
| I suspect your anecdotal circle is probably very young and may
| just not be able to afford a real computer, or have never used
| one, so they are fine with their tiny devices, not knowing the
| benefits of having a more traditional laptop or desktop
| computer.
| _verandaguy wrote:
| I'll chime in here; while I'm in one of those niches you
| described at the start of your comment (with multiple laptops,
| a gaming PC, and a homelab made up of what _I 'd_ call a
| reasonable number of physical computers of various
| descriptions), me and a few other friends of mine recently made
| the jump away from Windows and to various Linuxes on our gaming
| PCs.
|
| I went for Ubuntu, while my friends mostly went to some type of
| "gaming-optimized" flavour of Arch.
|
| I'm definitely an edge case as most computing goes, but it
| feels for the first time like the gaming-on-Linux train's
| gaining traction, and there's enough community support out
| there that making the jump feels like a palatable ideal.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops
| overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not
| really much to celebrate.
|
| I've been saying this for a while, in the sense that the "year
| of the Linux desktop" isn't going to come from mass adoption of
| Linux on the desktop, but will come because overall "desktop"
| market share will decrease to the point where if you need a
| desktop, you are probably technical enough and more likely to
| be running Linux.
|
| Desktop (and laptop) computing is becoming niche outside of
| work. Like you said, most folks just use their phones, and
| maybe an iPad. By having a non-day job computer at home, and
| having it be a core device, already puts you in a niche group
| of users.
|
| Gamers, devs, media professionals and enthusiasts are the
| remaining desktop computing users. Linux is well suited to take
| over gamers and devs, media professionals will continue using
| Macs. So yeah, it might appear Linux usage is growing, but I
| think the more likely story is it's relatively stable and
| overall desktop usage is shrinking.
| trod1234 wrote:
| This is largely people who were previously Windows customers
| but who chose to go another way. Microsoft is doing a lot of
| shenanigans with their monopoly power, and anti-trust is
| largely toothless.
|
| I know quite a lot of professionals, who for them the last
| straw was purchasing the professional edition, and then finding
| out later after an update that their company lock screens now
| have ad's posted; and worse, those ads frequently have malware
| that cause even more headaches for them in a unmanageable way.
|
| The bean counters at MS pushed their biggest supporters over
| the knifes edge, and alot more people are getting serious about
| alternatives to MS now.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I think this is probably it. That plus the SteamDeck and maybe
| other random linux running devices.
| pms wrote:
| Why is this is a top comment? Market share is a relative
| measure. Even if there is a drop in the number of personal
| computers, still it's an achievement that the drop didn't
| affect Linux, while it affected other platforms.
|
| > Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops
| overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not
| really much to celebrate.
|
| I disagree. Imagine that Linux became the OS used on 95% of
| personal computers. According to your reasoning there wouldn't
| be much to celebrate. Says who?
| lvl155 wrote:
| I think adoption has to do with the fact that desktop environment
| efforts are divided across so many distros.
| resource_waste wrote:
| I might be a bit contrarian on this.
|
| I think the biggest obstacle in the Linux world is people knee
| jerk recommending Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/outdated linux.
|
| If people rallied around the current SOTA, Fedora, we would've
| hit 5% a few years ago.
|
| The variety of distros cause people to get confused, and go
| with the most heavily marketed distros, Ubuntu flavors. Just
| because Ubuntu gave away free CDs 20 years ago, doesnt make
| them good. It makes them good at marketing.
|
| People confuse Fedora with Arch, which is terrible. People
| confuse Ubuntu with 'stable like a table', instead of 'outdated
| stable'.
|
| We almost need a reduction in favored distros. Out with the
| complexity: Fedora for desktop. It has all the DEs too.
| Gormo wrote:
| Fundamentally, Linux is Linux. Differences between distros
| are vastly overstated, and they mostly amount to different
| default selections and configurations of the same underlying
| components.
|
| Ultimately, anything that will run on one Linux distro will
| run on any other, with the only significant differences being
| on distros that run on unusual architectures or have made
| major changes to the kernel.
| resource_waste wrote:
| This is idealistic not realistic.
|
| With enough effort, this is true... but out of the box, you
| are going to have significantly more bugs and conflicts
| using outdated distros.
|
| I'd love to see a 'time in terminal' by distro. I imagine
| Fedora would be in the mere minutes per year, and Ubuntu in
| the hours per year.
| Gormo wrote:
| What do you find "idealistic" about it? My intention was
| to explain reality as I see it.
|
| I'm also not sure what you mean by "outdated distros". It
| should be implicit that I'm referring to the currently
| maintained versions of available distros, not deprecated
| versions.
|
| And the "time in terminal" metric might not generally
| make sense, given the preference that many Linux users
| have for CLI/TUI tools over GUI ones, given the
| efficiency and consistency advantages of the former --
| many people prefer to work in the terminal even where GUI
| tools for equivalent functionality are readily available.
| Gormo wrote:
| What do you mean by that? DEs development is separate from
| distros. Distros often select a particular DE to be their
| default, but "desktop environment efforts" aren't really
| something the distros do.
| mousethatroared wrote:
| For me, Linux became a viable desktop OS when Steve Jobs killed
| flash and browsers could render any page independently of the OS.
|
| Then Office 365 came around and I could do quick work w/out a
| windows machine.
| umanwizard wrote:
| FWIW you could install Flash on Linux. It was sometimes a pain
| but it did work.
| mousethatroared wrote:
| Massive PIA.
|
| Since flash didnt work I didnt use Linix
|
| Since I didnt use Linux I wasnt very good at it
|
| Since I kept at noob level, I couldnt install Flash, which
| was pretty hard
| schmudde wrote:
| The web browser app paradigm changed everything. The Windows API
| isn't nearly as important as it once was.
| rhabarba wrote:
| Then again, using Linux has no obvious advantage anymore, as
| you don't "own" most software you're running anyway.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love
| Linux are the ones making Linux.
|
| You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal. No faster way to scare
| off users than give them a CLI heavy OS and have the trip over
| the very first copy+paste command they try to run (once they
| figure out the circa ~1982 cursor)
|
| I really cannot say enough about the total fumble of Linux
| distros in an age when people are more desperate than ever to
| leave Windows.
| atemerev wrote:
| Ctrl-C means something different in the terminal. Always has
| been. And if it doesn't make sense to use Ctrl-C, there is no
| sense in Ctrl-V either.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Windows lets you Ctrl-V while still mapping Ctrl-C to break.
| resource_waste wrote:
| I imagine you have only used Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/outdated linux.
|
| Fedora is a different level completely. With Fedora, I remember
| installing nvidia drivers via terminal, and that was
| essentially it.
|
| Sometimes I open up ports for my kid doing minecraft, but that
| was it. Its not like when you use Ubuntu or Mint and you need
| to manually update something just to get Netflix to work on
| Chromium.
|
| Fedora is so good, I won't call it linux. Linux has the
| Debian/Ubuntu baggage. Fedora stands alone. Its easier to use
| than Windows, I don't think I'm exaggerating. Windows 11 has
| ads, unresponsive search, UI/theme issues that make it
| impossible to read text, it has fake paths to files. Fedora
| just works.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Fedora is actually older than Ubuntu. And FWIW you still
| can't paste with C-v in the terminal.
| resource_waste wrote:
| When we say outdated, we mean the version of the kernel and
| other software. Not the first time it came out.
|
| When referring to the terminal, these are 1 time events
| every 12 months. Its not really a huge deal on Fedora
| because you basically don't need the terminal. On Ubuntu,
| its a much bigger deal given how many things are broken and
| need to be repaired.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I'be had some machines with issues on fedora and no
| issues on Ubuntu, and vice versa. It really just depends
| on your hardware and on what you're trying to do.
| cjfd wrote:
| I think it is very unfortunate that Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V works for
| some programs in Linux. This makes the environment
| inconsistent. These programs should be adapted to the
| environment they are in and only support selecting using left
| mouse button highlight followed by middle mouse button press.
| dmantis wrote:
| You can't do ctrl-c and ctrl-v in MacOS too, that's doesn't
| break their marketshare.
| c0balt wrote:
| > You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal
|
| The more poignant issues might be that there's inconsistencies
| around UI here. Some terminals allow that directly (Kitty),
| others require Ctrl+shift+v (Gnome shell, iirc Powershell and
| Konsole).
|
| To be fair, the best non-windows OS likely is MacOS. It has
| software support for a lot of commercial prosumer stuff, e. G.,
| Adobe, and has a convenient and stable 3rd Party offering for
| Windows VMs (Parallels).
|
| As a Linux user it seems like there is a lot to learn in regard
| to UI consistency from both though (maybe less from Windows).
| Gnome and KDE are probably moving in the right direction here
| but it is still a bit off sometimes.
| umanwizard wrote:
| It's not a "fumble", because "Linux" is not a company trying to
| sell as many units as possible.
|
| As you said, it works for the people who make it. Why does it
| need to do anything else? Linux desktop conquering the world is
| just an old Slashdot trope, it's not something anyone is
| actually working to achieve in real life.
| Gormo wrote:
| > Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who
| love Linux are the ones making Linux.
|
| Why is 5% a magic number? Why not 4% or 6% or 10%?
|
| > You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal.
|
| Try Shift+Ins. CLI and GUI conventions have always been
| different, and the sort of users who work in the terminal are
| the ones who know the difference. Overloading Ctrl+V, and
| breaking applications that run _in_ the terminal, just to make
| two completely different paradigms use the same hotkeys seems a
| bit ridiculous to me.
|
| BTW, this applies across OSes, and isn't specific to Linux.
| palata wrote:
| > Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who
| love Linux are the ones making Linux.
|
| This makes no sense. There are so many different ways to use
| Linux, there is not a single profile of "people who love
| Linux".
| mmphosis wrote:
| Coming from decades of using a Mac, I swap left alt and left
| ctrl. I remap the Terminal using AutoKey so that ctrl+c and
| ctrl+v are copy and paste, and alt+c effectively sends a ctrl+c
| to terminate a program.
| palata wrote:
| I think that there are multiple things at play:
|
| 1. The statistics only show Desktop usage relative to each other.
| But I could totally imagine that macOS "loses" users to iPadOS.
| Similarly, Windows could be losing users to smartphones in
| general (I see more and more people who don't actually have a
| personal computer anymore).
|
| 2. Valve (and others, surely) is doing an incredible job with
| video games on Linux. 20 years ago, I needed a dual boot just to
| play games. I dropped Windows when I stopped playing, and I
| started playing again thanks to the Steam Deck. I am convinced
| that many people today "need" an OS on which they can play video
| games, except that today they have a choice (thanks to Valve and
| others).
|
| 3. Privacy. I think it's becoming a lot more important outside
| the US (it's actually now a national security concern there), but
| I'm convinced that people are slowly learning about that.
| TooBigTech pushing to train their AIs with everything the users
| do surely has an impact on that.
| kattagarian wrote:
| > Similarly, Windows could be losing users to smartphones in
| general
|
| But this is desktop only. If someone stop using windows
| completely, it won't show a decrease in windows usage. This
| will basically only show when people switch from desktop OS.
| smcameron wrote:
| You sure about that math? If there are 2 linux users and 8
| windows users, then that's 20% linux, 80% windows. If one
| windows user quits using computers, then that's 2 linux users
| (out of 9 total) and 7 windows users (out of 9 total), or 22%
| linux and 77% windows users.
| oceanhaiyang wrote:
| Thanks to Linux I'm still rocking a surface pro 3. Will never
| look back
| Shorel wrote:
| This is huge =)
|
| I remember the days when we were under 1%.
|
| Congratulations to all involved on making this true.
| rhabarba wrote:
| I genuinely wonder why it is considered "huge". Does it really
| matter how many % desktop usage one of the several dozens
| desktop operating systems has?
| totisjosema wrote:
| I really liked the recent picture of Linus Torvalds and Bill
| gets, hard to believe that after all these years of
| "competition," they had never actually met before.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1lh34ox/linus_torval...
| echelon wrote:
| This is really cool. I had no idea this had happened.
|
| Thirty years ago Bill was writing angry memos about the rise of
| Linux and how Microsoft had to stop free software.
| exiguus wrote:
| My perspective is that the Steam Deck significantly contributes
| to this increase.
|
| Additionally, a smaller factor could be the growing trend of Dev
| and Op professionals moving from Macs to Linux. And the trend
| before, to move from Windows to Mac's because they are cheaper to
| administrate. This shift is supported by manufacturers like Dell
| and Lenovo, who are providing more devices with Linux pre-
| installed, aligning well with the supply chain requirements of IT
| departments.
|
| Also, at least for me, it's hard to envision vendors specialising
| in Linux desktop hardware, such as Tuxedo, Framework, and
| System76, experiencing a surge in their market shares. I am very
| curious to see their numbers and the kind of people and companies
| that buy this products.
| LongjumpingCat wrote:
| Interesting milestone, 5% might not sound huge but for desktop
| Linux in the US it signals a real shift. Part of this comes from
| more polished distros lowering the barrier for non-technical
| users, and part is probably a pushback against aggressive
| telemetry and forced updates in mainstream OSes.
|
| Also worth noting: if you count Chrome OS under the Linux kernel
| umbrella, the footprint is even bigger. It shows that open-source
| roots can quietly gain ground, even if the branding isn't "Linux"
| front and center.
| goob_nl wrote:
| Yay PewDiePie
| rhabarba wrote:
| Role models for computer use in my generation: RMS, Bjarne
| Stroustrup, Doug McIlroy.
|
| Role models for computer use today: "PewDiePie".
|
| This is why we can't have nice things.
| tock wrote:
| PewDiePie is awesome. His linux video has over 6M views. We
| need to make linux cool again for the general audience.
| rhabarba wrote:
| I don't know whether operating systems need to be "cool".
| Is Windows, the market leader, "cool"?
|
| Or rather, I don't know whether those who think PewDiePie
| is "cool" have the same understanding of "cool" as computer
| nerds do.
| osigurdson wrote:
| After installing Arch / Gnome on my laptop last week, I can see
| why. Everything works completely fine and feels 3X faster than
| Windows 11. I have Linux on my desktop machine but always
| hesitated for laptops due to past bad experiences with power
| management (i.e. something always eventually went wrong when
| closing the lid). So far, all of that is working perfectly.
| kovac wrote:
| Windows 11 is exceptionally slow. I installed it on a ThinkPad
| Carbon X1, it was quite unusable. Unresponsive after starting
| up, copilot and O365 trying to run stuff and i had to wait for
| them to comolete. I was very surprised that they think this is
| acceptable. I spent about an hour going through processes and
| installed programs list, and uninstalling many things. At that
| point it was more tolerable.
| PhilippGille wrote:
| There are still issues. Just going with your example, see the
| threads in the Framework forum around lid close issues (almost
| all from Linux users):
| https://community.frame.work/search?q=lid%20close
|
| Reports about high battery drain, suspend issues and similar
| exist as well.
|
| I'm running Fedora on a Framework laptop, but with the
| awareness that it can require some tinkering.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Current battery life is better than it was on Windows. I know
| Windows is very good from this standpoint but things always
| degrade over time. That is my expectation with arch as well -
| good now but let's see how it is 6 months from now. That is
| always the real test. Regardless, my laptop is too small to
| run Windows + WSL so will probably stick with just running
| Linux.
| donatj wrote:
| Windows 11 not working on otherwise perfectly good PCs I imagine
| is at least a small part of it. I've got an 8-core Ryzen system I
| think from 2016 that's still very powerful and more than good
| enough for my needs, but Microsoft is insisting I "throw it away
| and buy a new one", in this economy no less!
|
| I also think a number of influencers like PewDiePie moving to
| Linux has to have moved the needle at least a little as well.
| jwrallie wrote:
| For me it was Windows 11 not supporting hardware. I moved to
| Fedora in the beginning of this year for work (while using it
| at home for quite a while).
|
| After seeing SharePoint.exe using 1GB and 100% of the CPU today
| for over 12 hours I'm seriously considering removing my VM
| (that I only boot for MS Office). Edge even greeted me with a
| message that I have access to Copilot Vision that can now see
| everything I browse when I right clicked the process and
| clicked on search!
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| It's conceivably part of the reason.
|
| Earlier reporting on Windows MAU noted "400 million Windows PCs
| vanished in 3 years"
| (https://www.zdnet.com/article/400-million-windows-pcs-
| vanish... ). As Windows 11 wrecks havoc on older PCs, many may
| just sit unused or get discarded, thereby increasing the
| relative share of the surviving PCs (including Linux PCs).
| jasoneckert wrote:
| This begs the question: At what threshold would we consider it
| 'the year of Linux on the desktop'?
|
| 5% seems too low. Would it be 30%? Or 51%?
|
| Answering that question in the public sphere may quell many of
| the "Is ___ going to the year of the Linux desktop?" posts we get
| each year.
| fh973 wrote:
| I think the year of Linux on the desktop will actually be the
| year of Chromium on Linux on the desktop (instead of Chrome on
| Windows), ie. is it really the Linux on the desktop if the only
| application you run is the browser for SaaS anyway?
| bikamonki wrote:
| Been there since 0.5% :)
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| > install linux
|
| > 1 week later PC stops booting
| gergely wrote:
| Finally! It is the year of the Linux Desktop! :D
| Zigurd wrote:
| The posts on this thread arguing that Android is not a real Linux
| should take a look at the increasingly blurred lines between
| MacOS and iPadOS. Android tablets are on a similar trajectory.
| ChromeOS Flex pretty much is a desktop Linux distro with an
| Android runtime.
|
| Some people will find the idea of elements of a mobile OS on
| their desktop attractive. Other people will find it less
| unattractive than buying a new PC to run Windows 11.
| oblio wrote:
| I've been using Android tablets for a long time. They're way
| behind iPads in terms of apps available for them, and for them
| to be usable as main computers for anyone half technical they'd
| basically needs access to all the Linux desktop software, which
| they don't have access to.
|
| The simple example would be LibreOffice.
| DevKoala wrote:
| I am doing my part.
|
| I wanted a gaming PC forever but I just couldn't stomach Windows.
| I had a great experience with the Steam Deck in the past 2 years
| so I built a Bazzite desktop. I am having a lot of fun.
| mark-r wrote:
| A year ago I decided to upgrade my 10 year old motherboard and
| get something faster. I was hoping my existing Windows 7 SSD
| would boot up, but alas it would get to the coalescing window
| display and crash. I never figured out why.
|
| My choices were to spend $200 on a new version of Windows that
| was worse than the one I lost, or switch to Linux. Guess which I
| did?
| kristianpaul wrote:
| Wasnt this what Mac looked 15y ago?
| wolfi1 wrote:
| And it could get into double digits, now Win 10 is phased out.
| Let's face it, if you are just a regular user of a Personal
| Computer, you don't need Windows anymore
| k_bx wrote:
| I remember when it was absolutely crucial for your desktop/laptop
| to be able to do everything and Linux was a no go for people.
| Today you can live off your phone and be OK, so Linux actually
| makes much more sense. Camera/audio doesn't work well? No
| worries, just call via phone.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Also, 99% of all day to day apps now run in the browser, so
| having MS Word on your machine is not so important.
| k_bx wrote:
| Yeah, the only thing I'd love to see is "open with gdocs" to
| be somehow integrated similar to desktop experience. Having
| to drag and drop every time, creating new file, is really
| stupid.
| sschueller wrote:
| I hope we get to a point where enough "professionals" are using
| it to force companies like Acrobat to offer Linux versions of
| their software (cough Fusion 360). It is the only thing keeping
| me from completely ditching my windows VM. Using CAD in a
| virtulabox VM is torture. FreeCAD is sadly not a viable
| replacement (maybe in the future but a lot of work is needed). I
| was able to switch to other tools for other things like KiCAD for
| PCB work, Blender and DaVinci Resolve also work great.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Oh hey another "I'd fully be on Linux if it wasn't for Fusion
| 360" person. Although in my case I'm too lazy to maintain VMs,
| so I just use windows as my base OS. Microsoft may force the
| issue next year when my perfectly good desktop stops getting
| Windows 10 updates and can't install Windows 11.
|
| What's torturous about using Fusion 360 in a VM?
| globalise83 wrote:
| My suspicion is that many folks are converting their old MacBooks
| etc which no longer have support to keep running Linux. I have
| about 4 such machines of different brands lying about the house,
| some over 10 years old and they run just fine despite their
| antiquated hardware.
| arrty88 wrote:
| Are people just running headless / full chrome on *nix from data
| centers to scrape webpages for AI and data mining? Did the
| article mention anything about checking IP address?
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| I do self hosting at home. Some of my friends are too. I own
| several SBCs. I wonder if the number of computers per tech makes
| a difference.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| 2025: The Year of the Linux Desktop! [0]
|
| 0: https://hackaday.com/2025/06/03/my-winter-of-99-the-year-
| of-...
| rhabarba wrote:
| Still looking forward to the year of the Plan 9 desktop. I'm
| helping!
| intellectronica wrote:
| Very cool! If you extrapolate the current trend by 2073 Linux
| will dominate the desktop market.
| oblio wrote:
| And the desktop market will have 4 users in total.
| danso wrote:
| For another anecdata point, https://analytics.usa.gov tracks user
| device demographics to all visitors of U.S. government websites.
| Which of course might skew in ways different than the general
| U.S. population. But checking out the numbers right now for Linux
| users:
|
| Last 30 days: 6%
|
| 2025 so far: 5.7%
|
| 2024: 4.5%
|
| edit: analytics.usa.gov includes iOS and Android in its operating
| systems breakdown -- e.g. Windows has a 32% share vs OP's 63%.
| Assuming most of Linux users are on desktop, it could be the case
| that Linux share in desktop users is a bit higher than 6%
| api wrote:
| I've said for over a decade that Linux can win a huge chunk of
| the desktop if it just stays as good as it is and waits.
| Meanwhile Microsoft keeps making Windows suck more.
|
| Apple could do the same to some extent if they cut their prices
| some.
| JadoJodo wrote:
| I am in this category, but I'm growing increasingly frustrated
| with the state of the market for OS's:
|
| I've used macOS for work for many years and Arch-based
| derivatives for personal desktop. The challenge with that has
| always been gaming: Gaming on Linux _mostly_ works, but third-
| party launchers (e.g., Battle.net, Origin, etc.) HATE it. I also
| don't love the Proton shuffle (i.e., "Which version of Proton do
| I need to use to get this to work?"), but it's tolerable for me.
| I'll tell you for whom it _isn't_ tolerable: my wife (who mostly
| uses a different system running Windows 10, but sometimes wants
| to use the more powerful gaming PC running Linux). And thus the
| only remaining choice for the home system has been Linux +
| Windows (in some capacity).
|
| Now, I've not used Windows full-time since 7, but I recently
| installed Windows 11 (via QEMU using LookingGlass) and it is
| simply TERRIBLE. There are full-blown ads in the Start Menu, the
| built-in search ignores your default browser/search engine
| settings, and (critically) __you can no longer put the Start Menu
| bar at the top of the screen__ (It's less common, but I've done
| this my entire life).
|
| I think it comes down to the following wishes:
|
| A. I wish Windows 8/10/11 didn't suck so much.
|
| B. I wish Linux was widely-supported by ALL game platforms.
|
| C. I wish macOS gaming wasn't so expensive.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Windows 11 only sucks if you get the Home version. If you get
| the Pro version you can disable all the annoyances. New things
| pop up here and there with each update every few years
| (recently asking to connect my phone so I can see
| notifications), but those can be disabled easily.
|
| It does suck resources so using it on Laptops is not ideal, but
| for desktop its by far the best, mostly because of WSL2
| integration, which is mature enough to not only run graphical
| linux apps, but also supports CUDA.
|
| For Laptops, honestly, Linux Mint with I3wm is the way to go.
| Once you get used to I3, its hard to go back standard display
| managers with icons and menus.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >New things pop up here and there with each update every few
| years
|
| In my experience this is every few weeks.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Then you haven't disabled advertisements or product
| recommendations. You can do that in the Pro version.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I agree with this. Couple years ago I splurged on a nice
| Thinkpad X1 carbon, and decided to give windows a try after
| abstaining for many years. I really liked the WSL but overall
| it was a resource hog. It would blast the fan for seemingly
| no reason, the task manager would slow down, the laptop would
| overheat. And even playing basic games like freecell would
| randomly fail to launch, probably because it couldn't reach
| the ad server.
|
| What really surprised me was how hard it is to switch back to
| Linux. After about a year using windows there was a ton of
| friction to get my mindset back in Linux. But I made the
| switch and I will never use windows willingly again.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| I am still using Windows 10. I use Flow Launcher (
| https://www.flowlauncher.com/ ) and have it bound to ctrl-alt-
| shift-g, but then use an AutoHotkey binding to rebind it to
| Caps lock. Point being I almost never use the Start Menu, I
| just use Flow Launcher. And Flow Launcher has half the latency
| to display with no ads. When I'm forced to update to Windows 11
| I may be forced to investigate alternate taskbars.
|
| Fundamentally the thing that keeps me on Windows is battery
| life. I need to be able to trust that my laptop won't lose more
| than 20% of its charge in a week when not in use and Linux just
| can't reliably do that.
|
| A related thing is stuff like play/pause/mute not working when
| the screen is locked.
| nomel wrote:
| > I wish macOS gaming wasn't so expensive.
|
| The ever increasing number of GPUs of the world are making the
| cloud PC gaming services ridiculously cheap. I only pay $12
| USD/month (boosteroid, gaming only).
|
| If I bought a gaming PC with similar specs, it would take over
| 7 years to pay it off (no use for a PC besides gaming). That
| would be 7 years of fixed hardware, where the cloud hardware
| specs keep improving with time, and I can pause the
| subscription whenever I want.
|
| You definitely pay with some extra input latency, but not
| enough to impact my casual play. Definitely worth trying, if
| you have nice internet.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's enough that we could form a 3rd political party.
| umanwizard wrote:
| That political party would fracture into 30 competing ones
| before the next election.
| schnable wrote:
| Is this the year of Linux on the desktop?
| AstroBen wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is driven by Linux gaming performance:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44560913
|
| I've used all three OS's for many years and I really just.. don't
| care which one I'm on anymore. They all do the same thing.
| Currently on windows 11 after ~5 years of debian gnome and its
| fine. Enjoyable even, especially with WSL. GUI software support
| is much better here
| beebmam wrote:
| I have a great computer, but it isn't compatible with Windows 11,
| so now I'm using Ubuntu on it. It's not ideal, but at least it's
| not a brick. I hate the requirements for Windows 11.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Microsoft is the biggest contributor to the Linux desktop
| market share.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I had a Teams meeting for an outside of work topic this morning.
| Since all my personal machines are Linux based I was kinda happy
| I had my work laptop available with Windows and Teams installed.
|
| Booting it up about half an hour before the meeting... Installing
| updates...
|
| After rebooting twice and only five minutes before the meeting
| started I reverted to my Linux desktop, opened the email with the
| link to the Teams meeting and was a minute early using the web
| version of Teams.
|
| Phew, saved by Linux.
|
| Kudos to Microsoft for making Teams web version operating system
| and browser agnostic. But fuck what they've done with Windows
| updates. Numerous coworkers also saying their computers decided
| to reboot of their own volition the last couple of days in order
| to install updates.
|
| Maybe it's a worthwhile trade off for security, but I'm glad I
| had an alternative option this morning.
|
| I'm the five-odd years since switching to Linux exclusive at
| home, my decision is only ever reconfirmed as correct.
|
| (I'm a reformed gamer from a long while ago, but the very few
| games I do play I have gotten to work on Linux).
| oblio wrote:
| Do you use your Windows laptop daily?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Normally, yes. Due to current circumstances I hadn't used it
| the day before (Tuesday) although I did use it Monday.
| queuebert wrote:
| This is a very common workflow for me, except I was using Teams
| on a Mac. And thanks to some update there are now two non-
| working versions of Teams installed ("Teams" and "Teams new" or
| some equally tacky naming). Luckily I have a Linux laptop next
| to it that can run it in-browser.
|
| I would love to know what Microsoft thinks the purpose of the
| standalone app is, when it is both slower and less reliable.
| meepmorp wrote:
| The "great" part about the Office desktop apps is that
| they're written in electron, so it's already essentially a
| web app but somehow worse.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| When did they transition from native to electron?
| veber-alex wrote:
| They didn't.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| > Booting it up about half an hour before the meeting...
| Installing updates...
|
| I have that exact workflow with any computer I do not use on a
| regular basis. If I use the thing every day it is ok. But if I
| let something sit for like 6 months it is 'patch city'. I
| usually play that game on my game consoles because i do not use
| it much. My daily used computers 10-15 seconds tops until
| usable desktop.
| deadbabe wrote:
| There's no reliable way to collect this data. Linux "desktops"
| could just be bots.
| gethly wrote:
| Windows 11 and Steam OS are starting to make impact. I am
| sticking to Windows 10 until is stops working but I think Linux
| might be finally in my future.
| ensocode wrote:
| Regarding Steam: Some people used to avoid Linux because of
| gaming, but that's changed quite a bit. With Proton and native
| support for many titles, the barrier to switching is much lower
| now. Great news anyway :)
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| > The Steam Deck has been a game-changer
|
| Then is this really an increase in Linux "desktop" market share?
| I'm aware that it's Arch based and can surely run as a desktop
| but I see it's contribution no different than if they included
| ChromeOS or Android with the 5% of Linux. A targeted platform
| more intended for the purpose of gaming.
|
| Desktop Linux's biggest obstacles have always been
| hardware/software compatibility, and user friendliness for
| average users. If they're going to list "Windows Woes", then how
| much of this increase is actually happening on the REAL forefront
| of Desktop Linux: Ubuntu, Mint and so forth?
| strangescript wrote:
| I feel like this is more about Linux remaining reliable and the
| other platforms getting worse, rather than Linux getting
| substantially better.
|
| I no longer have a windows machine. If I can't get a game to run
| on Linux then I don't bother with it. I played Clair Obscur
| start, to finish, in Mint on a 3090 with zero issues. I just
| forced it to load in steam since linux isn't officially
| supported.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| > Linux remaining reliable and the other platforms getting
| worse, rather than Linux getting substantially better.
|
| But that's a very key point of advantage in by-design open-ness
| and non-commercialisation.
|
| It's taken 30(-odd?) years and the coining of the word
| enshittification, but the advantages of this ideology is now
| having the last of the clay and sand brushed off it, baring its
| beauty to a growing audience.
|
| And Linux has, in fact, gotten steadily better over that time
| too, but it's been a slow consistent grind, so it doesn't
| appear as grand as a sudden red-curtain-unveiling-worthy
| improvement, but it is, in fact, that grand.
|
| (What Valve / Steam / Proton has done may be the closest to a
| rapid increase of usability / marketability, but even that has
| been relatively subtly under the radar unless you're paying
| attention).
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Recently moved to Arch Linux after 25+ years on Windows. It was a
| LOT of work (my whole career is on the computer and I have a lot
| of custom scripts and tools), but I'm so happy with the result.
|
| No more hundreds of background processes sapping my battery life
| and performance.
|
| No more blatantly manipulative ads _every_ time Windows updates,
| about how I won 't be "safe" unless I sign up for OneDrive,
| switch to Edge, and subscribe to Office Live Dynamics Pro Limited
| 365, because now word processing and spreadsheets are a
| subscription for some fucking reason.
|
| No more 3 different generations of UI styles sloppily bolted
| together (though Linux desktop styling can be plenty sloppy).
|
| No more news feeds in my start menu and task bar filled with the
| outrage and statistically improbable evil human acts of the day,
| no doubt with MS ads, alongside prods to install Candy Crush and
| other crap.
|
| No more whack-a-mole MS telemetry I have to read obscure guides
| to find out how to turn off.
|
| No more needing to sign in to a FUCKING CLOUD ACCOUNT to use my
| own computer.
|
| No more stupid crap like copilot, sucking screenshots and
| forwarding them to MS and OpenAI, and other sparkly AI icons on
| every damn thing.
|
| Haven't booted Windows in a month or two. So happy to have
| switched - my computer belongs to me again, for the first time in
| a long while
| wrasee wrote:
| So refreshing isn't it? It's like having an OS that's actually
| designed for you, not them. Imagine!
|
| Occasionally I will boot into a Windows partition because I
| have to do something windows-only. I'm so out of the Windows
| world these days that I mentally have to prepare myself not to
| get too fired up with it all, just calm down do the thing and
| get out. :)
|
| Agree that it's a lot of effort to switch though, so good for
| you on making the switch!
| pndy wrote:
| > No more whack-a-mole MS telemetry I have to read obscure
| guides to find out how to turn off.
|
| My routine at some point after moving to W10 was to
| create/update system partition image, turn off all
| bypasses/tweaks that kept update components tamed. Then do the
| update, reboot and quickly run through all setting that in the
| past tend to reset "itself", apply tweaks again and reboot to
| see if these still work, and finally - look up if some
| processes or services were added.
|
| I was dualbooting, using VM's for years and pandemic gave me
| something to do so I finally escaped from Microsoft grip.
|
| Tho, it wasn't issues-free ride. Mint and Manjaro would
| randomly soft-hang for no reason; some Manjaro updates would
| made me few times reinstall the system (that would be still
| faster than manually correcting everything). I had to freeze
| GPU drivers for older card because newer ones would crash
| games. Keeping unified look across all types of applications is
| indeed a sloppy task - especially with all Gnome shenanigans
| regarding theming but atm is still doable. But overall, I'm
| happy and I see how much changed and improved since Mandrake 8
| times when I tried Linux for the first time.
|
| For majority of people, for doing basic tasks plus playing some
| games Linux should be fine.
| queuebert wrote:
| Anecdotally, I have two gaming desktops for my kids in the same
| place, side by side. They don't know much about computers, but
| they greatly prefer to use the Linux one and only use the Windows
| one when forced to, like because Microsoft bought Minecraft and
| only puts out Education Edition for Windows. They seem to
| navigate Ubuntu much easier than Windows, and that machine gives
| them less trouble and is snappier.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| Perhaps people don't want copilot and other enhancements but just
| an OS. Also Windows forcing certain CPUs for Win 11 could play a
| role.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I will say though, I teach in Computer Science at university, and
| every semester in a class of 100, there's only ever at _max_ just
| 1 student who has a Linux distro of any flavor on their laptop.
| Usually it 's 0. It's pretty sad if you ask me.
| gootz wrote:
| Very cool. My take on the growth...Chat bots make it very easy to
| find commands and troubleshoot issues.
| snarfy wrote:
| Someone pinch me when VisualStudio runs under Wine/Proton with at
| least a silver rating. It is quite literally the only app keeping
| me on Windows.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Out of interest, what do you need visual studio for that you
| cant get on linux?
| snarfy wrote:
| Of course, there are always alternatives, but as a
| professional software engineer there are times I need to use
| genuine Visual Studio for one reason or another.
|
| Why use Photoshop when Gimp is available? Fusion360 when
| there is FreeCAD? etc.
| erikerikson wrote:
| VsCode works fine on Linux
| umanwizard wrote:
| VS Code and Visual Studio have about as much in common as
| JavaScript and Java.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I have to admit it's been a bit but when I first made the
| transition after a couple years using JetBrains, everything
| I actually used in Visual Studio was in VsCode. I should
| also admit that a big part of Microsoft strategy from as
| far back as 2003 was to make things "easy" in a non-
| translatable way which kept people locked into Visual
| Studio. Having traversed this divide, I see it now as
| something akin to different languages for the same
| concepts. Not unlike learning further programming languages
| after your first.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| There are dozens of us. Dozens I say!
| 7e wrote:
| These stats are bogus: OS X market share drops by 50% in a few
| months, macOS market share at zero for most of last twelve
| months. Windows market share goes up 8% in a few months? Total
| garbage.
| webprofusion wrote:
| How much of this is AI tools pretending to be users? If they use
| a real browser instead of identifying as a crawler then it's
| going to skew the stats.
| buyucu wrote:
| I don't get the anti-Linux hate that some people have. I get
| apathy, it's normal not to care. But I don't understand why
| anyone would actively root against a free and open alternative.
|
| This is great news btw, and consistent with what is coming out of
| the Steam survey.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Microsoft is killing it's platform. One egregious example is
| their efficiency mode that literally cripples your computer in
| the name of some misguided "green initiatives".
|
| I primarily went back to Linux Mint because of this problem.
| Thankfully Steam allows me to game my library just like on
| Windows. I have no reason to return.
| sirjaz wrote:
| Have people looked at the numbers? Chromeos and Linux have
| swapped, and if you include the unknown OS which are most likely
| Windows behind a corporate proxy it is back up to 70% of the
| market. In addition, the number of sites statcounter pulls from
| us dropped in half in the last three years if that matters.
| itsalotoffun wrote:
| And at this rate, 6% by 2035, come onnnnn!
| IndrekR wrote:
| I would not be too surprised to find out that significant portion
| of Linux on Desktop here is actually headless Chrome web
| scraping.
| dankobgd wrote:
| this is the year of Linux
| Pxtl wrote:
| Personally I'm taking another kick at Linux desktop in advance of
| Win11, I installed Mint with Cinnamon... and I gotta say, I'm
| kinda disappointed how many pain points there still are. Type in
| your admin password every 5 seconds just to install routine
| updates, ugly-ass GRUB screens, confusing UI, and SDL2 games
| being half-broken with resolution-switching and audio. Installing
| software still involves bouncing around figuring out if I want
| the Flatpak or to add a new Apt source or what.
|
| So I'm assuming these "5% desktop market share" aren't using that
| kind of distro.
| akho wrote:
| You installed a distro that aims to preserve suckage for future
| generations, and even developed an entire DE out of pure
| aversion to change. It's often recommended by change-averse
| Linux users...
|
| Successful Linux-based OSes have unattended atomic updates and
| user-friendly app installation. That includes ChromeOs and
| Android, as well as modern atomic desktop distributions. Fedora
| Silverblue, Bluefin, Bazzite.
|
| edit: however, market share is probably coming from legacy
| distributions. That's largely a sign of how bad Windows gets,
| and how desktops/laptops become more niche.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Ah, I had no idea Mint Cinnamon was about "preserving
| suckage". I remember when Mint launched it was all about
| "Ubuntu but easier, like non-free stuff included" and my
| understanding was Cinnamon was their own DE built to follow
| familiar UI patterns and customizability instead of Gnome's
| opinionated stuff.
|
| Didn't realize that it was also for grumps who wanted bug-
| compatibility in their workflow.
| akho wrote:
| Mint, afaik, offers a choice between Cinnamon, MATE, and
| Xfce. These are all DEs built and maintained to preserve a
| particular workflow based around hierarchical "start"
| menus, menu bars in applications, and desktop icons -- the
| Win'95 style. This particular selection is very indicative
| of a preference for a particular era.
|
| Which is fine if that's your preference, too. However, you
| shouldn't expect your experience to be significantly
| different from what it was when that desktop experience was
| fresh when you choose a product made by people with such
| strong preferences.
|
| Again, Bluefin and the like update (atomically, with a
| rollback option) when you turn your computer off, with no
| interruptions or sudoing; app installs are through Gnome
| Software (for GUI stuff; through brew otherwise), without a
| need to enter passwords. You pay for that with some
| customizability, but it's rock solid if it works on your
| hardware.
| billy99k wrote:
| WSL+windows replaced the Linux desktop for me.
| lunaticman wrote:
| My step dad doesn't know how to share links over messenger
| (constantly sends me screenshots of pages), but he runs Thinkpad
| Manjaro for last 3 years without issues. At first, I was afraid
| that I will have to do some sort of support regularly or answer
| questions, but besides "Which music player should I install?" it
| was crickets for the last 3 years.
| Havoc wrote:
| Pretty sure most of the recent gains are coming from gamers
|
| It's becoming a more viable option - assuming you don't need
| multiplayer with anticheat
| kwar13 wrote:
| I installed Ubuntu on my laptop 5 years ago and haven't looked
| back. Windows at this point just feels like crappy spyware. Not a
| single thing I miss about Windows.
|
| Also gaming on Linux works great for the most part with Proton.
| Thanks Steam!
| fuck_AI wrote:
| Microsoft <3 Linux so much, they ruined Windows so people would
| switch to Linux. Thank you Microsoft!
|
| Seriously though, I switched to Linux late last year and haven't
| looked back. It has everything I need for a computer and a lot of
| the "problems" people say is holding them back from switching
| full-time are greatly exaggerated. Like if you're not willing to
| make some small compromises so you can have a computer that
| respects you as a human and not a metric then I don't know what
| to tell you.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| This has been my take. They even made Windows 11 look like a
| linux desktop so they can do a switcheroo later on.
|
| Microsoft could kill off Windows as a desktop operating system
| and it wouldn't dent their financials in a major way. You'll
| know they're truly serious, though, when they start making
| contributions to Wine and also makes bash the default command
| line interpreter in windows.
| jksmith wrote:
| Comment generator: "Concerns about privacy invasions, adware, and
| forced updates in Windows are pushing users away. Many users are
| fed up with Microsoft "urging users to train their AI for free"."
|
| 1) Windows chatting behind your back causes distrust. And for
| good reason. 2) Yes, forced updates, but the consumers don't
| understand that they're just crofters in MSFT's world with all
| MSFT's products. MSFT will update as much as fits their needs to
| protect their property, not yours. 3) Re: adware. Part of your
| relationship with MSFT is that you are the commodity. It's a
| general internet business revenue model.
| tristor wrote:
| Makes sense, I now do the majority of my personal workflows,
| except for photography, on Arch Linux on a Framework 13 laptop. I
| still have a M1 MBP for personal use that I primarily use for
| photography and not much else. There's a very minimal set of
| "normal" use cases that cannot be served on Linux at this point,
| and Linux desktops are more stable in the ways that matter to
| users now than the alternatives.
| roody15 wrote:
| It's surprising to me it's not higher. Gaming is excellent on
| Linux and Windows 11 is simply not good. Just a relative easier
| distro like Ubuntu is outstanding and learning curve is lower
| than ever.
| hoherd wrote:
| I think it's going to keep increasing. I know people who
| resisted linux for decades and after playing with a Steam Deck
| are now considering building a linux gaming PC. This is in
| large part because they are investing into the Steam ecosystem
| for the first time ever and seeing how great it is. Mad props
| to Valve for all their work on Proton and Steam.
| chrsw wrote:
| Impressive because nobody has ever successfully made a Linux
| desktop computer targeted at consumers the way Apple has. I
| wouldn't count Chromebooks or Android devices. I mean a system
| you would use as a workstation or a power user's computer. And I
| don't mean a Windows PC that you have the option of pre-
| installing Linux on like from Dell or HP. I mean a computer
| designed and built around Linux.
| hluska wrote:
| This is anecdata, but with my own very limited (by choice)
| website analytics, I see a strong correlation between Linux users
| and headless browsers. So while my Linux user base seems higher
| than ever before so is my headless traffic. When I remove
| headless traffic, my Linux user base is in that 2-3.x% region.
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