Linux desktop market share over 3%
netmarketshare.com
netmarketshare.com
I do have to say, though it took 10 years longer than I thought it would, the combination of hardware standardization in consumer laptops and maturity of Linux kernel has meant that, in the last few years, Linux has "just worked" more often than not (and WAY more often than it used to). I recently upgraded from a Lenovo X220 to a 4th-generation Lenovo X1 Carbon, and installed Ubuntu GNOME 17.04. Didn't need to tweak a single thing about the hardware. Everything just worked.
That said, I did hit a weird GPU bug[1] that reminded me that no matter how good Linux on the desktop has gotten, there's always something. :-/
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video...
In particular virt-manager/virt-viewer/libvirt/KVM have come a long way. I don't need Workstation or Virtualbox any longer. Having Docker and a real X11 server is nice. Everything /generally/ works. A few things I have to run a VM for like Webex.....
Regardless I don't think I experience much more bugginess than my Mac peers now, and most things work out of the box.
Linux on the desktop: Most things work out of the box ;)
I run i3 and just logout before any sort of monitor changing.
these days, for stability it's prefereable to use the modesetting X driver (comes with xorg-server /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/modesetting_drv.so) instead of the xf86-video-intel driver.
For what it's worth, my experience with Linux vendors like System 76 has been good, particularly in recent years.
Alternative software available on Linux is often not fully compatible, so people are effectively locked into Windows/MacOS as long as they want to keep their existing data or work with others (who often use those lock-in products). In addtion, UX of FOSS like GIMP is at the least very different from big commertial counterparts like Photoshop and takes a lot of time to learn, which many people simply don't want to invest.
That said, one sad thing is that VMWare recently laid off and/or outsourced their VMWare Workstation team[1], and it is now in "maintenance mode", so I will be really sad if this product gets sunset somehow. It's still infinitely better a VM option than Virtualbox for running Windows.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/01/vmwar...
As of June, I'm running Win10 "natively" on an ArchLinux hypervisor with GPU and USB passthrough via vfio-pci. It was a marathon to get this configured, but overall it's quite nice. Previously, I had switched to Win10 native and ran Linux out of VBox for "real work", after finally getting sick of waiting 2 min+ for something to churn in DxO via VMWare and/or VBox on the Linux host.
Combined with virtio drivers, the passthrough VM gives me practically-native performance (Geekbench shows ~15-20% loss in single-core performance, and about equivalent multicore performance) and the flexibility of a virtualized environment (qcow2 images, etc).
It also allows my workstation to operate independently from the other services in my house (Plex, work VM, etc.). One of the biggest annoyances of a Win10 host and a Linux guest VM was that Win10 would sometimes force the box offline for updates. Still annoying, and doesn't really happen since I switched to the "business release channel", but at least it doesn't take everything down.
The coolest part of this setup: my son has a Win10 VM with GPU passthrough to the secondary GPU in the hypervisor that he uses via Steam Link to connect to "his computer" from several "thin terminals" in the house. Would love to develop this out as a product some day.
All this said, since it is an experimental setup that depends on some cutting-edge features, there have been some kernel-related struggles and I've been on the kvm mailing list a couple times in the last few weeks. 4.11.x is mostly-stable (one system lock on it), 4.12.x crashes after a few hours, 4.13rc1-7 crash after tens of hours, but 4.13rc7 with the mmu-notifier patchset from Jerome Glisse is stable so far. I'm anticipating a clean 4.14, which will be LTS, and then I'll probably stick to that branch until the next LTS comes along.
There are cases where those programs don't work 100% but they work 99% for everything that I need which is fine for me. It feels much faster than running the same programs under Windows 8.1.
Did you manage to solve the fact that, when plugged to an external monitor, if screen is turned off and back on (or the computer sleeps if you walk away for 20 minutes), upon logging back in all windows are in different workspaces than you had originally set them in? If so I'm very curious, it was the thing that made me switch back to mac (and I irrationally hate mac).
I need to tweak the graphics config for no screen tearing. I needed to install palm detection to be able to type. And I still can't get HDMI with audio to work when connecting my TV.
It still doesn't work out of the boys like Windows.
Under this system Android and ChromeOS wouldn't really be counted as Linux because you can't easily run normal Linux programs on them. Although they may use Linux under the hood, that isn't really visible to user-space programs. Android, and especially ChromeOS could easily switch kernel with no visible effect to apps. The kernel is an implementation detail.
Basically any POSIX like kernel with enough support for libc and libc++ would do the job.
Also, I'd be interested to know if chromebooks factor into this stat?
You must live in a special bubble then, because w10 was so horrible we still hear moaning about it in the sysadmin community. For me, it was the straw that broke the camels back I needed to completely remove myself from MS's horrible, user-patronizing ecosystem.
I feel sorry for all the businesses that are trapped in it. I refuse to support it anymore though.
My hope is for people that manage friends and family systems to start putting easy linux distros on instead of Windows. The malware ecosystem alone is a good enough reason to do so.
As for WSL... I'm just amazed at how many people have forgotten the three E's and the MS of the 90's. MS is not to be trusted.
I sit here this morning in a diner, with a Windows 10 tablet hybrid. It's the first Windows machine I've owned in half a decade.
The cheapest mac that solved my bottleneck (ram) was a $900 Mac Mini but that computer had no upgrade room and I recently got a 4k display and I didn't want to find out whether the Iris graphics were up to the task.
I built a badass linux box for $850 - Ryzen 1600, 1050 ti, SSD, 32 gb of ram. It's hard to make an linux to apples comparison because mine is just a desktop and most macs come with displays but the apple premium just wasn't worth it.
I had a few issues out of the gate (not getting it running, but installing Nvidia drivers and getting tensorflow to use GPU acceleration) but it was an excellent learning experience and a few hours of time (which was honestly an enjoyable use of time) saved me considerable money over Apple. My desktop is the performance peer of an $2,400 iMac.
I'd pay a premium for an Apple but not 3x as much. And I'll probably continue to use a Macbook as a secondary device but when my Macbook fails, it's going to be harder and harder to shell out Macbook money when I know that a used Lenovo with Ubuntu will get the job done.
Also, the current Ryzens need dedicated GPUs.
After 10.6 I refused to upgrade because of <rant>!@£$%^</rant> and gradually got comfortable with a transition to a minimal tiling based desktop on Linux.
Now i'm so much happier, dev is simple and using my computer is so much more relaxing without having to fend off a continuous barrage of "upgrades".
I've been using Macs since 1985 and spent the first half of my career developing Mac software exclusively, but I've also been using Linux since... hmm... 1998. Macs always used to come first, but at some point a couple of years ago I noticed that I'd gradually, without really meaning to, started spending virtually all my time in Linux instead. I still have a Mac mini on my desk at home, and it's nice enough, but when it eventually dies I doubt I'll bother to replace it. Everything I want to do works just fine in Linux.
I have exactly the same feeling, I also had some fake nostalgic experience with Mac OS Classic / System6 etc (of which my age gives me no right to be). Everything up to and including 10.6.8 for any quirks they may have had, all felt like an OS that the user was truly in charge of, while still having a friendly, slick and minimal UI...
But now, instead of using an OS it feels like using a website shop or an iPhone, it feels like the OS is in charge of the user, and users are expected to need to be told what to do. I suppose it's inevitable, Apple aren't really a computer company any more.
Edit: One thing that I do wish was on Linux is Microsoft Office. I'm working on a book (which I will need Windows for, so I'll have to run it in a VM until I finish the book) but being able to use the Word on Linux would make things so much easier.
Further I would like to see ChromeOS separated into its own category. Are we going to start counting Android running on a laptop as "Desktop Linux?" Do we care about the kernel or the userland?
It's curious how a "supported" OS like Windows 7 mysteriously only runs on old hardware and cannot be bought anymore. You'd almost think they're trying to force you to upgrade.
These older folks built the very things you used. As for the "definitely not going to understand" bit, there's a not insignificant chance that I understand it better than you.
It's immature word games at best, and insecure egoism at worst, to act this way in the face of overwhelming rhetorical truth. The vast majority of "old" people had zero use for the tech as we know it in their daily lives for most of their lives. As such, most of them have no idea what is going on.
This is common sense, well understood fact.
I'm glad you're capable, but please be realistic.
I suspect you're colored by your biases but I'm not an expert in the soft sciences. I'm not sure who you consider old people, but many of us have been using computers since we actually had to make computers do what we needed - often with programming for our own specific needs.
I'm working really hard to be polite. I'm kinda tired of the generic statements about old people and the assumption that we're not technically competent.
Now, I'd like to take a moment to say that we both may have different ideas about what is, and isn't, old. Frankly, I consider anyone over 55 years of age to be old. (I'm well past that, if you're curious.)
We designed your Internet, wrote the programming languages that power your computer, determined the state of individual electrons so that we could make a CPU as you know it, and wrote the very mathematics that you base your works on today.
On top of that, we weren't unique - but stood on the shoulders of giants.
I'm going to reveal a bit about myself - if you don't mind. Do you travel? If so, you're probably doing so (albeit by extension) based on my work. I'm a mathematician and if you've ever dealt with traffic that's modeled (be it pedestrian or vehicular) there's a good chance that it was based on, or advanced by, my work.
That's right... Every day you drive to work, you're relying on my work. Specifically, I hold a Ph.D. because I advanced the art of mathematics in regards to working from the initial state - and assuming imperfect knowledge. If you've heard of chaos theory, I built based on that.
Now... To get back on topic, I hated computers. I hated them because I had to make them do what I wanted - I had to develop a means to use this calculating machine as I wanted. They didn't have stuff like downloads at your nearest URL.
You made a comment about the missus. She's a soft science major who worked for humanitarian goals. She's not even remotely technical, and not even more than a layman. It's not my fault that you've assumed the position where they're appliances and decided everyone who is old is unable to understand them. You're wrong.
That's pretty strong, for me. In short, you're wrong. I don't care who the "vast majority of people" are that you interact with. We call that selection bias, and probably more. I interact with (and I'm VERY much retired) people who used to work for DEC - designing and physically building modems. They are in their late 70s.
If the vast majority of old people you interact with are incapable of a bare minimal level of understanding, pick new people to interact with. I went to university with some of the founders of what you call open source - and my first attempt at BASIC was a fine example of open source programming.
I'm not special. I'm not unique. I pretty much HATED computers and only programmed because I had to. I only learned to understand because I needed to. There are millions of us.
Again, you're WRONG. We "older folk" may actually not only understand the technology, we understand why it is the way it is. To make a generic statement about all older folks, more so with a "certainly," is... Well, I have no way to put this? It's ignorant. You can pick one of two paths. I will leave that to you.
Also, being 35, I must say that I find retired people way more deep into technology, especially internet, than my generation. It's very common I talk with previous school friends and they say they don't have any social profile on the internet. The reverse is true for retired people, it's rare I hear them saying they don't have a least a facebook profile. But here too, I guess it could be "just the people I see".
Regarding how old people are seen, I wonder if there is not something larger at play. When I was a teenager in the 90', I was seeing old people as physically weak and mentally tired, and thought it was just the way it is. This summer, I went to the birthday of a friend's mother, and was shocked when I discovered she turned 70. And then, I realized her husband, their brothers and sisters etc were all about the same age. And here is why I was shocked : they were doing great. Actually, really great compared to what I remembered about that age, to the point it couldn't be just me growing older and having a more nuanced vision (like: most of the 90' 70ers were handicapped in a way or an other, almost none in the ones I saw at that birthday). And then, it stroke me : people in their 70 during the 90' were people who fought WWII.
Could it be that we tend to see older people as less potent just because we were used to old people who had been greatly diminished by a massive and painful conflict?
Obviously, this would not be proof : even if we accept the hypothesis that present day old people are indeed more capable than past ones, and it's not just an interpretation from me, for all we know it can be just healthcare progress or easier lifestyle. It would be interesting to find out how old people were seen before world wars, if they did any better than their children who fought them. The fact that such event could have lifelong impact does not seem far fetched, though, it could be an interesting hypothesis to test. If anything, it could help prevent preconception against old people who did not go through such events.
I get it, you know computers, other people know computers. Most people don't. That's the only point I was making. Thank you for your work in traffic modeling. The rest of the humans on Earth(I've traveled most of it for business), generally can only handle checking their email, if it's already been setup for them.
The symptom was always the same : "I can't upgrade anymore". And the reason was always the same : like 20 different kernels in /boot, which has no more free space and was breaking upgrade process for any package.
EDIT : sorry to have to ask that, by the way : I'm on kde neon myself, but I always make my own partition scheme, so I can't answer that question.
It is definitely one of those things where the default case has been made to cover everything and has gotten really complicated.
But the upgrade tool really should be smart enough to clean up the oldest kernels when /boot gets full. That's pretty sad if they haven't fixed that yet.
apt-get autoremove
It's just not enabled by default, you have to put it in /etc/cron.monthly, if you want it to just run for you.
Newer Linux boot loaders have largely eliminated the need, but old compatibility items everywhere tend to stay stuck well beyond the point where they ceased actually being necessary anymore (partially due to the "if it is not broke, don't fix it" mindset).
But the problem you describe is not a failure of having /boot be a small separate partition. It is a failure of the upgrade scripts not cleaning up old, no longer used, kernel files.
If the Mac Mini gets an update and external video card enclosures stop costing as much as an entire mid-tier video card and/or manage to convince me I won't have to replace them every 2-3 years to keep up, I'll probably go that way. Until then, it's Linux.
Give Debian a shot. Given that Ubuntu is based on Debian, plus some decisions of dubious worth, Debian is basically all the good parts of Ubuntu and none of the bad.
Agreed re. Windows 10. I have a Windows 10 laptop for use with software & websites which don't work on Linux (as an aside: websites that don't work on Linux: how is this even a thing in 2017?), and it's just appallingly bad. I have to wonder if the people behind its UI have ever actually used it. This isn't an issue of unfamiliarity with Windows metaphors on my part: although I'm primarily a Linux user, I've been using Windows secondarily since the 90s, and Windows 10 is essentially unusable, at least on a laptop without a mouse.
Debian and Gentoo were my main distros before I went to Ubuntu for its sensible defaults (c'mon early 2000s Debian, obviously I don't want Galleon or whatever, I want Firefox, and so on for basically every other Debian default program) and pretty good just-worksitude, but maybe I do need to give Debian another shot. If Ubuntu 17.10 isn't a big improvement (Wayland is finally a thing now I guess? Mostly-vanilla Gnome as the default DE again which is obviously the right move assuming they're not willing to jump onboard with one of the retro-Gnome DEs, so maybe it'll be good?) I might visit my old friend Debian.
> Agreed re. Windows 10. I have a Windows 10 laptop for use with software & websites which don't work on Linux (as an aside: websites that don't work on Linux: how is this even a thing in 2017?), and it's just appallingly bad. I have to wonder if the people behind its UI have ever actually used it. This isn't an issue of unfamiliarity with Windows metaphors on my part: although I'm primarily a Linux user, I've been using Windows secondarily since the 90s, and Windows 10 is essentially unusable, at least on a laptop without a mouse.
Yep. I ditched Windows on my home desktop, but I have a Surface3 at work I have to use for certain testing. I don't know how people can be productive on it. The Surface3 itself is pretty bad (I was kind of excited to try it because I know the Surface line has a lot of positive buzz, but am now very confused where all that came from) but the hardware plus Win10 is a total disaster. Just, wow. And like you've I've spend a lot of time over a lot of years in Windows, so that's not the problem. Every time I use it any desire to go back to Win10 on my desktop vanishes.
I had forgotten how nice having certain things simply work out of the box was (wifi drivers, bluetooth drivers, etc).
I like Linux a lot, but its hard to see myself using it as a primary computer anymore, especially as a more personal, recreational machine.
If this is what you want, why did you pick Arch Linux out of all distros?
I'm using Linux Mint and it ran flawlessly out of the box on my ThinkPad.
FreeBSD and OpenBSD are pretty great OSs too. I wonder if their share isn't so tiny because BSD enthusiasts have an easy option of running a Mac and still have access to BSD tools under the hood.
Yea and the driver situation for laptops on FreeBSD doesn't help. I've never had problems installing FreeBSD on server or desktop hardware, but on laptops either the wifi doesn't work or suspend and resume doesn't work, or of course both. But this reflects the goals FreeBSD so one shouldn't really be that surprised.
edit: Typo.
I tried really really hard to like FreeBSD, and I did like it... It's not just a server OS it's true! but omg the hardware support, that made me truly appreciate that the common denominator of an Desktop OS being useable: is hardware support...
it doesn't matter how amazing the OS is abstractly, you need drivers to appreciate it.
I even started going down the road of submitting driver patches, and I am no OS programmer. That's how dedicated I was to making it work - but there's just too much to do.
I know if you are super careful you can buy hardware for *BSD but even then it's unlikely you will get support for everything in the BSDs, Linux just has support for so much out of popularity, and in a closed hardware world unfortunately that is what makes a Desktop OS usable (without even getting into DE/WM stuff).
until Google's Fuchsia takes off...
> Don't call it a comeback,
> I've been here for years
For many of us, particularly among HN users, it's been the year of the Linux desktop for a long while.
True, "The year of the Linux Desktop" is completely subjective :P For me it was around 2014.
Q: "What was your year of the Linux desktop?"
Not too many Windows CE devices around, and even some SCADA systems are moving to Linux.
Perhaps I'm biased, having used Linux on the desktop since late 1999/early 2000 or so.
Personally worked on SCADA systems for powers stations but never on windows, all DEC-Unix and Linux in fact how I got into linux in '97.
My kids both nearly teenagers have known only Linux and Apple (except Windows at schools*).
I recall also how many of those years were hailed as 'Year of the Linux Desktop'.
Also 'Linux' desktop - please people don't forget all the work by unsung heroes on e.g. KDE and Gnome apps, package managers, Drake installers, Compiz and Beryl, getting winmodems working, nvidia drivers, goddamn pulseaudio,... you get my drift.
My needs are simple - sleek, lightweight ~13 inch laptop with normal computing needs for movie, music etc and little bit of coding in Vim (or some other text editor) and all.
Linux Desktop has indeed come a long way since 2006 (that was when I introduced to them).
No visible bump in data, just slow growth from 1.55% in Q3 2015 through 2.00% in Q3 2016 to 2.40% in Q3 2017. So oversimplifying a bit it means about 4 converts per 1k citizens annualy.
I'm not trying to shill for Lenovo, there are certainly other quality laptops out there. I happen to like the pointing device and keyboard and general build quality, and I try not to spend a lot of time over-optimizing my purchases with a lot of research.
So, yes, I've had great experiences with Linux laptops.
Thinkpad's though seem to give close to perfect results "out of the box".
While my laptops have been strictly for work/hobby. So for me Linux on an IBM (now lenovo) laptop has been flawless for over 12 years now. In the beginning it was actually FreeBSD but I didn't feel like going into specifics.
And on my desktop PC I run Windows.
Does anybody know the methodology here?
I mean it could even be a spike from user now using chrome headless from cloud linux server.
I recognize it's a weak privacy measure, but in my situation it gives me a mostly private browser on a shared user account.
$ curl -v example.com |& grep -i agent
> User-Agent: curl/7.52.1
http://www.pcworld.com/article/181640/linux_will_kill_window...
https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...
Perhaps in another decade Linux desktop will finally overshadow a version of Windows from 2001...
Weirdly an entire generation of developers have managed to convince themselves that by working on proprietary web apps they are somehow fighting the good fight on the side of FOSS.
Linux has virtues that end up conflicting. An occupational hazard of Linux as a tool and OS innovation platform are disruptions, disappointments, instability and dropped balls.
Other people are goofing off without enduring responsibility for a large user base. We confuse design criteria we inherit from the commercial world. Easy to use, easy to remember, easy to diagnose problems and "quick to getting going" are not the same always compatible design targets. The Window Manager wars took up tons of Linux desktop attention. Gaming is naturally an arena for hardware churn and 1-upmanship.
I have great hope for Linux desktop stability with government deployments and thus a global tug for stability against rushing breaking changes. The Linux platform and package manager contents are remarkable achievements.