Linux Market Share on Desktop
netmarketshare.com
netmarketshare.com
(Of course many of us still dual boot into Windows often for testing and for using special purpose applications.)
[1] https://www.google.ca/search?q=nvidia+ubuntu+black+screen
The difference wasn't really the linux desktop itself. There never was a "year of the linux desktop". It seems to be everything else. The webification of everything slew the desktop native app and the ubiquity of a gazillion different smartphones primed people to accept new UI experiences.
The business world is finally coming out of the place where everything it does has to be rammed through the Office/Excel/Powerpoint/Exchange funnel no matter how it distorts the outcome.
Yes, I think the situation has changed now. I'm looking forward to good Linux-friendly ARM boxes being available for $100-$150, preinstalled with Ubuntu or Elementary OS. It won't be long until something like that would be satisfactory for most casual users. There are lots of people currently who are using XP or Vista, or old hardware which has worked fine up to now, but which periodically falls off the wagon. They have screens and keyboards, don't need perfect Office compatibility, mostly use the web, and don't particularly want to spend a lot of money for a replacement.
I am curious about the long term effects of this. We still exist in a world where many people believe the most efficient way to work with numbers is through an excel (no matter the form of the numbers).
One company I worked at 3 or 4 years did payroll for about 35,000 people in an excel spreadsheet. It mail merged and spat out checks in a process that handled about 1,000 an hour. A few times Excel hung and paychecks were late. They simply didn't know or want to accept that any of the plethora of open source databases could be made to do similar but finish payroll in an ten minutes (sans printing) instead of day and half.
And then of course obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1667/
From what I've heard of other Office products, I think the hard part would be keeping my sanity.
I know this because we tried it, and it was complete pain in the ass to continuously adapt our "Excel replacing" applications to rapidly changing business/analytics/reporting requirements.
Configuration management is ubiquitous on Linux servers now, and it seems most of the problems with personal Linux desktops are related to manual tweaking around configs and drivers.
If only a small contingent of experts needs to deal with that manual tweaking, and then they encapsulate it in Puppet modules and automated provisioning processes, end-users could have an OSX-like smooth experience.
In my experience the easiest solution is AMD hardware with open source drivers. They just always work. It is just that if you need more graphic horsepower you might be better off with NVidia hardware and closed source drivers, and then accept the hassle.
If you have one person in your company that can debug / manage a Linux machine then the whole office should be good. Even my wife with no experience can intuitively use everything. Hell, we even game on our home desktop
Nothing wrong with that, but generally that's not a linux newbie distro.
I did want to address setting up the distro so people have a general idea when reading the comments. It is pretty hard the first time around. Having set up Arch 5 or 6 times over the last few years, it takes me 20 minutes. My friend has his up in 5 - 10; it's really easy to deploy once you know how a computer system works. I don't think it's extreme for developers, and honestly it has one of the better documention and like I said, having tried many distros Arch is usually one of the most up-to-date and stable. I run it on my home computer with GNOME and my wife doesn't even know the distro, and she zips around, watches movies, plays music, uses Google Drive or Libre, etc.
Just wanted to point out that Arch does indeed intimidate most linux newbies. Most "regular" folks expect to install an OS and have everything "just work". They get this from Ubuntu, Fedora, etc... but with Arch, they get a terminal screen and a mounds of documentation.
Once setup with a windowing environment, most folks will settle in just fine. It's getting to that point that's the challenge.
The comment in question here is not at all guilty of this sort of "air of superiority" that bugs people, but it may be an oversensitivity caused by that perception.
That said, I'm looking at setting up a desktop machine for my Dad, and seriously considering using Kubuntu 16.04.1 LTS[1]. He just wants to "use the damn thing" and I think that provides a much better ongoing maintenance story for machines that are less "pets" and more "tools".
[1] Yes, I much prefer KDE to GNOME. Can we all just get along?
Didn't you experience any problems with that? Now I'm back again running Windows and terminal sessions to linux machines (for testing/deployment). I wonder if it's just me who can't work with it, but I have the feeling that developing a functional and yet simple GUI is perhaps as hard as the kernel itself. And most linux machines are servers, so there's little incentive, while Microsoft and Apple have spent billions on developing this over the years.
(I actually ended up using XFCE and then AwesomeWM, so maybe I'm not the market for Elementary!)
EDIT: just checked and their newest release, Loki, is based on Ubuntu's 2016 LTS. I'll be taking another look at it this evening!
I installed the latest version (Loki) for a couple of months ago and except from 1 issue with "wobbling" mouse cursor (resolved by installing some xorg components) it works great.
I had some troubles with the previous version (Freia, I believe), more specifically the desktop manager would frequently hang. Luckily that haven't happened once in Loki.
All of the tools I use on my Windows box are availble for Linux as well: Netbeans, Jetbrains Pycharm, GitKraken, Chrome, Slack, Dropbox etc.
The only thing holding me back from switching primary OS on my desktop computer is gaming.
The Pantheon desktop is beautiful, and it deserves all the praise it gets. I maintain hope that the eOS team will work on disentangling Pantheon from the rest of eOS once they finish stabilizing the core OS so that it can be ported to other distros. Ideally I'd eventually have Fedora running on my laptop with Pantheon strictly as the DE.
What kind of thing do you have trouble with under Linux?
Personally I find Windows very hard to use because there's no central way to update installed software on it.
On the system side I love linux. Updating all software with one command is great, but isn't connected to the GUI. In fact, I find the Ubuntu software center so hard to use that I always revert back to the terminal to install/update software. And that's what I meant with my original post. I love the functionality that Linux offers, but for many day-to-day tasks having a GUI can make life easier. And that's where Linux always disappoints me.
Stock Ubuntu for the most part. Sublime or atom as text editor. Kraken or Git Gui for source control GUI. Chrome/Chromium and Firefox for web browser. Very little else is really needed. Although I use Gimp, Blender, and Skype (which works poorly on Ubuntu unfortunately.)
GNOME has a javascript extension library at http://extensions.gnome.org/ to easily tweak it to your preference. It's also easily themable using CSS, I was using the ARC theme (https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme)
This makes sense, because our software stack is now mostly open source software running on Linux servers (Ubuntu or CentOS). The developers who choose to say on Windows end up using tools like gitbash or SSH'ing to Linux machines anyway. Some use Linux VMs. But like I said, most simply install Linux.
The company used to be Windows-only (.NET), but migrated to Java+Linux some years before I joined. I suppose the main reason was cost, but I also heard from senior tech stuff that Windows was simply too opaque, that they couldn't "see" what was going on in production in the same way they can with open source. And of course, you cannot make your own modifications to closed source. This was before .NET was opened up, by the way.
What kind of hardware are you "simply install[ing] Linux" on? Was it really that simple?
The reason I ask is because every single time I try to install Linux on actual hardware, it's a nightmare.
Meanwhile, everywhere that I install Windows - it just works.
Did your laptops have dual graphics/Optimus (Nvidia+Intel)? Every spare laptop I've had includes Optimus and that's one issue I couldn't overcome and tried with various popular distros.
I have one old IBM desktop workstation that I can install most Linux distros on without problems. It's usually laptops that I have a problem with and I asked because that's what I hear most working devs are using these days.
At home, I've been using Linux exclusively for more than a decade now and I also use it for gaming. I had an HP Envy laptop with a Radeon GPU and it mostly worked, though there were glitches in some games. Recently it broke down so I bought a Lenovo Ideapad with an Nvidia GPU -- I know Nvidia is problematic on Linux, so I'll let you know how it goes ;)
In fact, in most cases it "just works" these days, but the range of hardware I attempt it on isn't great. I've had trouble with a low-end Toshiba of a friend's in the past, and even on the Thinkpad I'll sometimes have issues with rarer configurations - namely a complicated multi-display setup using the Lenovo dock/port replicator.
It certainly isn't the Apple "don't make me think" experience I would love to present people with, but it's been far from a nightmare for years in my experience.
Indeed! Lenovo Thinkpads in my company as well, and everything mostly "just works".
There are also some Samsung Ultrabooks (I heard they have some trouble with the boot partition) and some poor quality local brand clones which break down if you stare at them too hard (but that's independent of the installed OS).
The Thinkpads give no trouble. No idea why they're phasing them out. Cost savings maybe? :(
As I learned years ago with my experience putting OSes on shitty hardware: if you want your OS to run well, buy good hardware. Stayed away from Broadcom, Realtek, Lenovo Ideapads, Dell Inspirons etc. Bought a ThinkPad. Never had a problem with Linux on it.
Not sure what else we'll be able to find on HN...
1. GUI git client (a few exist, but nothing close to Tower or Sourcetree)
2. A nice UI/UX designer (Figma is awesome but you need the desktop client to upload .sketch files that require external fonts - which is almost always the case for most kits - and that desktop client is only available on Windows & MacOS)
3. Creator Applications (Tools that you don't really need, until you do - especially if you are a lone/indie dev).
Initially I would have added MS Office to the top of the list, but Libreoffice has gotten a lot better (and people use/are not surprised by Google Docs now)
But that said, as someone who's used Ubuntu almost exclusively for development for the last 5 years, it's been getting better and better.
better than sourcetree and tower by far IMO
That said, it seems to have some issues every now and then (for example, I had to increase an Inotify watch limit).
* You can't seem to re-order the UI - which would have been great! * Auto save working copy as a stash when switching branches (Sourcetree does this)
And finally, I had read an HN thread about it having some vague issues with it's agreement (but I have not read the agreement so I don't know about any specifics).
I need windows for: MS Office (I still can't stand libre office), adobe suite (mostly photoshop, but also AE, Premier), 3ds max, zbrush, all the games. I think that's it though, I think I have solid linux alternatives for everything else. There are occasional one offs with Windows where some application I need works in Windows but not linux. This can just as easily go the other way (cool little app only for linux).
I have no problem with linux on the desktop and use it every day, but I have a windows box right next to it sharing the same mouse and keyboard with synergy. It's been the most practical solution for me.
1. git-gui and gitk do the job just fine. I never felt a need for anything else. I have no idea what Tower or Sourcetree does, but doing stuff with git is less than 1% of my development time, so really fail to see what I could be missing?
2. I developed some cross-platform gui programs using wxWidgets and wxFormBuilder was fine. Not Delphi level of WYSIWYG but did the job quickly.
3. What's that, care to give an example?
The reason I switched to Mac after 12 years on Linux was because I got tired of having to fiddle with the system. It's nice when you have a lot of time or while you are learning a new OS, but these days I just want things to work out of the box.
I was seriously considering Windows at one point, but then I got a Mac Mini to develop some iOS stuff. Initially, I set it up as dual boot, but I spent more and more time in OSX and finally just stayed there all the time. Installed software I was missing and done.
I wish Linux all the best luck and I'm still using it on servers, but I'm not sure it can reach that level of Things Just Working(tm). Windows has a huge number of payed developers to make it happen. Mac has locked themselves down to just a couple of types of hardware and manage to do the same with less people. It seems to me that Linux tries to cover the widest possible hardware range with comparatively smaller team - and many developers don't care about UX that much. I know, because I developed some open source programs, and I'm guilty of that as well.
Ubuntu just works, unless you have some specific hardware that is too obscure or new. Then one day someone starts expecting you use files from some obscure source and you need an application that isn't on Linux.
Windows just works, until you need to re-install because of virus and need to track down drivers. Then you realize the version of office was some weird OEM license and need to figure something else out.
I am sure Mac OS X has problems too but I haven't used it much.
All these things are so advanced that they just work... until they don't for you.
Everything just works until the awful built in media management applications corrupts your media collection/destroys their metadata.
Everything just works till their terrible disk format results in an undetectable error that slowly corrupts your files until even most of your backups have been quietly corrupted.
Everything just works till the UI for resolution becomes permanently scrambled and doesn't allow you to switch away from Fischer Price mode on the retina MacBook you use for development.
Using Apple computers has thoroughly disabused me of the notion that there is anything in the world that "just works" for anything but the most hilariously trivial use cases. It's a flawed platform just like all the others.
In all my years using Macs, I've never had any of these, and I push my machines quite hard. They've always kept up like a pro, always reliable.
Never understood this argument... I use both Linux and OSX, I spend the very same amount of time to get from a fresh install to a friendly dev environment. Install bunch of extra stuff (either with brew on OSX or with dnf on Linux), import my config files (git clone my-dotfiles-repo), done.
The only extra quirk on Linux is that I have to use a network cable until broadcom wifi drivers are installed.
The rest is a matter of personal tastes... I believe GNOME provides an optimal user experience and I like it way more than OSX, but both stay out of my way enough to not care that much.
You need have the original install media for each application because there is no centralized repo. For things you downloaded you need to go running around and re-download things, even basic things like drivers.
If you get the wrong network drivers because you misread a model number then you pretty much need a second machine.
This would be a minor thing if I didn't do a ton of windows installs when my friends and families got viruses. I have since given them one re-install and after that if they want me to clean up their virus they get Ubuntu. Dad and Grandma haven't got a virus since their Ubuntu installations and my Brother figured out his shit either he reinstalls and doesn't tell me or stopped getting viruses.
One additional comment. "Windows has a huge number of PAID developers to make it happen" Uhm, is that why they have a turd of an OS that looks somewhat decent aesthetically, but underneath is the biggest turd a great dane couldn't even produce?
I will probably look into various factors (support for the latest hardware out of the box, game libraries, support for Linux by popular games from day 1 etc.) but from the last time I had looked into it (back in 2013), Linux was definitely not "gamer" friendly - (Everything from drivers, random bugs and game libraries).
The reason I added those points to that list is because, in my opinion...those are easily achievable in the next 5 years (but that's definitely not the case for games at the moment).
> Microsoft also claimed
One of these groups is honest and has publicly checkable sources.
I can confirm just by opening steam that there are more than 1,000 games that support Linux. Most of them are indie games released for the the 3 PC platforms, there are a fewer larger titles, but the biggest names are avoiding Linux and sometimes even Mac OS now.
So while Guacamelee, Braid, Dustforce and Kerbal Space program work on all three, Doom and GTA 5 don't.
Furthermore, one of the biggest issues I've had is the fact that it does not have a tree view for it's files - instead it lists files and directories separately.
Laziness creates bad habits and bad habits perpetuate bad decisions, and crappy software and hipsters wearing skinny jeans create security nightmares.
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The fact that the OP said "MS Office" on linux just makes me cringe. Why put bloated closed-source software like that on your linux box? The very fact of entertaining the idea of this as if it is acceptable, screams, "grab the clue stick!"
Since Ubuntu and Mint came along (and other plug & compute distros), they allow users to run linux without understanding their OS/Tools at a basic and fundamental level. I'd like to see all these Ubuntu users take a trip to the mid 90's and even complete an install. Problems weren't solved by Google search or Stack Overflow, they didn't exist. If you had an issue, you either figured it out by reading/patching source, IRC, or mailing lists, what open source project didn't run majordomo? When asking questions on IRC, you were more likely to get help if you had some semblance of a clue as to what your tool did and how it did it. At the very least, it was expected that you read through the man pages, provided pastes of any error and of course articulated your questions in a reasonably intelligent way. The days of OS wars are seemingly over, that is not that point at all here. People use what they want to use, I get that. However, thinking nix would be better if it had support for"MS Office" ..to suggest such is antithetical to the most basic principals of open source. I'm not at all saying that people who use Ubuntu are not intelligent, but I am saying that many newer users are lazy and as a result can be a detriment to their systems, as well as others in the community. Whomever started with this "sudo su" stuff and spread it around just proves my point. They obviously have not read any sudo related documentation. Of course Ubuntu's default configuration for sudo is less than ideal, but a little time spent RTFM (can't remember the last time I heard someone say RTFM) they'd see that there is no need to use "sudo su" whatsoever. There is a much cleaner way to accomplish the same thing using sudo. It's lazy and dumb period. Makes me wonder if these users even know anything at all about their shell, and I net these users use ZSH too. Worse than that is -- and this has been one of my strongest pet peeves -- "using curl/wget to pipe scripts over http(s) to sh" There was an article about this on HN recently and the author said, "Friends don't let friends pipe to sh" so true! Is it laziness or pure stupidity? How many actually read the script first? If this mechanism becomes commonly acceptable, these new nix users are going to create an economic boom for security professionals. I honestly don't know a single SysAdmin who would ever do this. I am glad others actually have a clue and are speaking up about how dumb it is. Sadly, many open source projects and their talented developers are using this approach and perpetuating it. I won't name names.
EDIT: The title was updated to be more accurate, it didn't mention desktops initially.
Although I would've put the ballpark at 5% - and for developers even 10%.
The title is still misleading.
PS4s run heavily modified bsd.
OS X has much BSD code. iOS as well.
Juniper routers.
TVs.
We can continue to do this all day. The point is no one has any solid hard numbers on useage for anything. Only guesses.
As phkahler mentioned there are billions of Android devices running Linux, and that's just to start. Chromebooks are also very popular (outselling MacBooks in recent quarters). Linux is very popular on millions upon millions of servers. Many home routers and/or access points are running Linux (although VxWorks is also popular here). Many other embedded devices in millions of homes are running Linux -- every Roku, Chromecast, Kindle, Nest thermostat, and many more things all add up. I've even put Linux on the firmware of network interface cards (NICs) before. If we are willing to count uClinux, I've put into planes as well. Even not counting uClinux, I've still put it into planes as part of a air-to-ground communication system.
I'm not convinced BSD has nearly the installation count and your argument has not convinced me that it has.
I've bought and returned 5 different laptops this year and driver support has been the story every time. (even for hypothetically linux-based hardware like chromebooks -- the post-broadwell chromebooks have iffy linux support -- for new chromebooks, it's the graphics drivers that are most likely to give you trouble).
Interface-wise, the feature stability of standard linux desktops (I use xfce) is probably a secret advantage over apple/msft/chrome. Every new version of windows/osx gets slower, more complicated, less keyboard-friendly and more notification-focused.
A 2005-era windows user would probably be more comfortable on my mint xfce desktop than on a commercial alternative.
Personally I still have issues with sound-cards from time to time (I use debian, while ubuntu is much better about the OOTB experience), but getting rid of PA still fixes that.
About 5 years ago I stopped when I saw that everything I looked up supported my stuff for at least 2 years. Since then every machine's wifi worked with a default Ubuntu install.
It could also be a selection bias. Most of my machines are north of a thousand dollars and if you buy things in the price range of chromebooks then you are probably getting some low end stuff, maybe the drivers for cheap stuff are that much worse. Maybe the cheap stuff isn't up to spec and needs workarounds that are hidden inside the closed source drivers from the vendor which generally aren't used on Linux.
3a:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4350 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 08)
The driver works mostly but once in a while I have to `sudo service network-manager restart`, rmmod/modprobe mwifiex_pcie, or worst-case reboot the system. Obviously this happens at the worst possible times -- meetings and in the middle of important work.
Their 'developer edition' uses intel wifi, I think, but is intermittently sold out and weirdly more expensive. You can buy an intel card and add it.
I think you bought the previous model. It’s possible that the UK gets slightly different specs of course, but seems unlikely?
I couldn't live without command prompt. I love updating everything with one move. Now you can even use Steam on linux. Some apps are lacking, but most people don't edit videos or play with Photoshop. Especially now, since most of the desktop usage is internet and web browser, i see no reason to stick with Windows.
But mostly, i just like being in control. Using some perl i can automate almost any menial task.
It really depends on what you're doing. I'm doing some desktop app deverlopement and a little webdevelopement in my free time, with git, Emacs, QtCreator, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp on Arch. I also record podcasts and master them with Ardour [1] on my Linux machine. I seldom play some game from Steam. I use Skype to call my parents. I also use it to manage my photos with Darktable [2] and RAWTherapee [3]. I listen to my music collection with Gnome Music and synchronize it between my computers with Syncthing.
In my case I basically don't need to use anything which doesn't work on Linux, I bought a computer which was made for Linux [4], so I didn't have any driver problems. I don't do much with graphics.
For me the values with which Linux comes are important, especialle freedom. I am aware that there might be more convinient applications out there but because they don't respect my freedom I don't have the desire to use them. I like that arrangement and it seems to improve a lot with time.
[1] http://ardour.org/ [2] http://www.darktable.org/ [3] http://www.rawtherapee.com/ [4] http://www.tuxedocomputers.com/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebook...
[update] I forgot to write that at work, I work within the automobile industry and we do infotainment systems based on Linux (with yocto), in our company basically everyone uses Linux on the Desktop and we have gotten so far that a big portion of our customers moves over from Windows to Linux while they work together with us because they see how much easier and faster developement is when you develop for Linux and at the same time run Linux on your dev-machine. [http://www.pelagicore.com/]
edit: Maybe ChromeOS is driving this?
The curve (https://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qpaf=&qp...) unfortunately lacks some "hockey stick" characteristics. But if we wait, I don't know, 63 years, this will be the "year of the Linux desktop" at last !
(Of course, It's been "the year of the Linux smartphone" for a few years already, and "the year of the Linux supercomputer" for maybe 10 years).
- If I have a PDF with advanced features, then I need to use Windows.
- Chrome, VS Code, and a few select applications flash repeatedly once up to a certain window size. Found out the problem has something to do with AMD graphics chips.
- I think Libre Office is horrible.
- Linux is still a second-class citizen for certain major apps such as Skype. I wouldn't mind ditching Skype altogether but some clients demand it.
I've never used a Mac, but I can't help but think it's the best of both worlds...but Apple keeps making decisions which I feel sidelines developers.
Issue in the past was that it would take too long time to get it to work and configure properly and you constantly have to fiddle with it.
This time, I managed to install good fonts, and as I am using barebones windows manager, there is very little that can be off. Yet, I had Firefox, which for a change was not super slow, get stuck twice, so I had to logout. I think that is the issue when Firefox can get so confused to be stuck.
I wish I had more space on my desk, so I can have a dedicated machine and work on it.
Oh yes, I like playing games, while not all are ported to linux, sufficient number is. So, that part is fine.
June-July 15ths + July-August 15ths + August-September 15ths = 3 months
For the sake of this comment I tried "sudo apt-get install gnome && DISPLAY=:0 gnome". It took 2 gigs and a while. Shame that doesn't work just like that.
There's nothing here to indicate that they make any effort to exclude bots/crawlers/scrapers/etc.
I wonder if that had any measurable effect?
It seems very unlikely that a presentation from any company would cause a measurable change in such a short space of time but anecdotally I did personally try to find possible replacements for my Mac after this year's WWDC. :)
Does seem a bit late though. Perhaps there was a delay from forced update to table flip in frustration.
Will this year be the year of the Linux Desktop ? Nop ...
How about next year ? Nop ...
When will the Year of the Linux Desktop occur ? At our current trajectory I estimate that will occur somewhere around the time* of:
a) The Apocalypse b) The Heat Death of the Universe
*whichever comes first
I'm a Linux guy (Debian/Gentoo mostly), but you will never get average users to switch to Linux, the same way you will never get me to use anything after Windows7 for personal use, I have a rage fit with all the icons and no proper command line and they will have a rage fit (or at least have a feeling of angst) if they have to type 3 lines of commands in the terminal to fix or setup something.
Where I see Linux as powerful, they see it as difficult. Where I see Windows and Apple as limited and inflexible, they see it as simple. So it seems people will go for easy 98% of the times.
Last I looked, Linux (in Android) was leading BSD-alike (iOS) -- and those are probably the two most popular platforms around... :-)
Especially for average users that are cost conscious.
(At a minimum, place one and three of installed world wide base?)
You will never get them to do it by themselves, you have to set it up for them. There is a resistence to switching to Linux, because of the image they have in their mind about it.
Mint and Ubuntu are very user friendly and yes once I dropped them (Ubuntu & Lubuntu) on my familly computers the resistance vanished in a matter of minutes after using them. Biggest problem was "Why is the X on the left top of the window ?"
So I'm saying: without some incentives or guidance, adoption of Linux desktop by average users will remain low because of perceived difficulty, existing familiarity with Windows and Mac OSes and general mental inertia.
Install Linux Mint (the one I find fit - but other distribs could do), with a web browser and WPS Office, explain your basic Windows user how to reply to system update popups (very similar to Windows).
You should not hear from them until the next mandatory system upgrade (in several years).
By now Windows has become unbearably slow, so the rest of my family (wife, 7 year old, 2 year old) all always choose Ubuntu, and they have no complaints.
Of course, everything they do happens in a browser, but that's probably true for a lot of people.
To me, it means people succeeding with it are incentive to others. Of course there is no marketing or TV ads to kick-off a large public (explaining a slow take-off).
In my family, the hacker sons had Linux for 10 years... Then Windows XP retired and the grand-parents had to throw their very clean and working computers. At this point they got Linux Mint, saved money, and (as end-users) did not see any difference with Windows XP (except that green color).
From that time, the aunt and sister have also moved to Linux Mint and are happy with it. By the way, libreOffice was unpleasant for them (habits and broken document layouts) and they smiled back to WPS Office.
Windows is gone in 4 houses, including 3 non-geek houses; IT wastes have a lot decreased and money is saved for better purposes... And it is ages the geek family members were not called for viruses or cryptohacks. They are only called for new installs :-)
They will soon
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/09/linux-kernel-securit...