Linux hits nearly 4% desktop user share on Statcounter
gamingonlinux.com
gamingonlinux.com
But Windows 8 completely broke me -- this was just an unusable OS, plastered with ads and shortcuts that didn't work and a wildly inconsistent UI; big tiles one second, tiny icons the next, some things you had to double-click that used to be a single click, some things you still had to double-click. Some buttons were just plain text, others were buttons, others were just frames with text. It made you sign in with a Microsoft account for reasons never explained. It was just such a heap of garbage that I couldn't do it any more. Trying to help family members who had trouble with their computers became a horrifying slog.
So I completely unplugged from Windows; switched to Chromebooks for casual stuff and recommended them to my family members, and a variety of Linux distributions for more serious stuff.
But I really know almost nobody who uses Windows; this is the bubble I'm in. Lots of people use MacOS, many people use Linux, and the others use ChromeOS. When I see a survey like this saying that 72% of users still use Windows I'm shocked to my core. I guess my next computer I'll stick with Windows for a bit to see if things are more sane now.
You will find plenty of Windows, and developers for the users of them.
Linux will be around in server rooms, embedded, and those VMs used by everyone that doesn't want to spend time dealing with dual boot issues on laptops as if it was 2000.
Oh, they care. In my experience, Windows users are non-stop complaining about all the bullshit they are submitted to.
They just don't care to fix it.
But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it requires a bunch of configuration work, but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
I've been exactly one of those users, at least until Win10. I'm dreading 11.
Pinning my taskbar to the side of my monitor is the hill I'll die on.
A couple of minutes of customizations and it now feels quite familiar. Only thing that slightly annoys me is the icon-only elements in the Windows Explorer context menu for copy/paste.
Back in the days the saying was to never install Windows until the second service pack was released. I guess the same still applies, just without the service pack name.
I feel your pain.
until the next update rolls out
Hardly anything life changing or that would require a ton more work to set up a new workstation, instead.
"Just ignore the ads, it's fine."
"Just unplug ethernet during setup to get the option to ignore the cloud features, it's fine."
"Just edit the registry to ignore the cloud features, it's fine."
(sound of boiling water increases)
There's a chance I die before the water boils over.
Microsoft has this huge moat with PC gaming + corporations which are really hard markets to crack into as a startup.
Yeah, people like to complain about the amount of time they spend getting Windows to work they want, but they’re willing to spend hours trying to get sleep to work in Linux.
There are plenty of scripts out there to disable as much or as little of the telemetry and everything else as you want, using the Pro or Enterprise editions lets you skip the cloud, and then it just… works.
There’s a certain give and take with all OSes about how much you adapt to it and how much it adapts to you. At work I use a Mac, I have two Linux servers in my closet, and my personal machine runs Windows. They’re each the right tool for their respective jobs, for me.
There is no need to set up the sleep for Linux if you choose a supported hardware and not a Windows-certified one. Complaining that Linux doesn't work on the latter is like complaining that MacOS doesn't work on it.
No it isn’t - MacOS and Macs are a singular product sold together. Windows and Linux are OSes that are downloadable from the web or buyable from stores and Windows consumer hardware support is simply better. And that’s okay, there are people who will seek devices that support it better, but I am not one of them, I will just virtualize it or run it in WSL.
If Linux had 30% desktop market share that would change, but it doesn’t.
FWIW, I agree with most criticisms of Windows. It is clear Microsoft no longer treats Windows the OS as a product, they treat every individual piece of it as a product, and that’s resulting in some weird, ugly, user hostile shit, but I can still get rid of it in no time at all and have a better personal OS. I think of it like adding unlock to a browser.
If it continues down its current path, I may be willing to switch, but it hasn’t passed the value/pain curve point for me yet.
Virtually no (offline) stores sell devices with Linux. Being downloadable doesn't imply compatibility with all hardware in the world.
I did not specify offline, I was mainly catching Windows as an individually purchasable product.
> Being downloadloadable doesn’t imply compatibility with all the hardware in the world.
I did not say that it does, but there are plenty of distros that strive to be a consumer desktop OS, and part of that effort is working with a broad range of hardware, and for me they continually fail. I would rather install an OS where all my hardware works and then I can tweak it to behave the way I want than install an OS where the hardware doesn’t work and I still spend my time tweaking it to behave the way I want.
Even ignoring hardware support and things like sleep and hibernate, every Linux desktop user I know spends more time customizing the OS to get their desired setup than I do getting rid of the things they complain about in Windows.
It is fine to have a preference, there’s no perfect OS for everyone, but I think it is silly when people decide this is a hill they want to die on. There are valid reasons for tech literate users to consciously choose Windows over Linux.
> every Linux desktop user I know spends more time customizing the OS to get their desired setup
You were asking wrong people perhaps. My non-technical relatives are just using Linux for their tasks and don't even know what a console is. People who like tweaking, do it. It's definitely easier on Linux anyway.
> but I think it is silly when people decide this is a hill they want to die on.
Most people are unaware that subjecting all their life and security to a for-profit, huge corporation is a bad idea for many well-known reasons. I am willing to dedicate my time to explaining that and promoting Linux, especilly when there are harmful myths about it like those you're propagating.
While I understand that this isn’t the only way to achieve a great linux experience on a laptop, using an example with a nearly 4.5 year old CPU, a 1080p screen, and no GPU at a substantially higher cost than any other comparable hardware isn’t exactly a strong sales pitch for me.
> People who like tweaking, do it. It’s definitely easier on Linux anyway.
No, it isn’t. They’re both “tweakable” in different ways, but setting some group policy objects or registry setting is not inherently more challenging than tweaking a config file.
> Many people are unaware that subjecting all their life and security to a for-profit, huge corporation is a bad idea for many well-known reasons.
Nothing digital is “all my life.” If Microsoft turned my access off and remotely wiped my hard drives today, and made it impossible for me to recover from backups, I’d be inconvenienced, but absolutely fine. But they won’t, because they like my money. I’m okay with that clear, transactional relationship.
Microsoft is nowhere near the top of the “outside entities that could wreck my life” list.
> especially when there are harmful myths about it like those you are propagating.
Desktop Linux is worse at out of the box hardware support than Windows, especially new hardware and laptops. I don’t even think this is controversial. Even laptops like frame.work that explicitly support Linux have year long threads in their forums with people trying to get the behaviors consistently right.
Probably more controversial in this audience, but I feel strongly is true, is that the computing “upper middle class” - those who do more than surf the web, check email, or edit documents but don’t feel comfortable dropping into a console without explicit directions - are almost always better served by MacOS or Windows for their desktop.
You're mistaken, and this is wrong. You need to choose your hardware explicitly for the OS, just like with Macs. Check recommended hardware on the website of particular Linux distribution.
frame.work do not explicitly support Linux. They default to Windows, and Linux option is only for DIY kits, implying bad support. I'm not considering them for this reason.
Macs are not equivalent. The OS and hardware are inextricably linked and the OS is not developed to support other hardware, except by dedicated hackers.
Linux however supports a huge array of hardware and explicitly tries to cover a wide spectrum of devices. Same as Windows. Windows does it better.
On the Ubuntu page:
> Download Ubuntu desktop and replace your current operating system. It’s easy to install on Windows or macOS, or run Ubuntu alongside it.
The next page has a list of basic recommended requirements (min 2ghz dual core, ram, etc). If they removed this and replaced it with a hardware compatibility checker, or only offered Ubuntu via their hardware, I would cede this point.
> frame.work do not explicitly support Linux. They default to Windows, and Linux option is only for DIY kits, implying bad support. I'm not considering them for this reason.
From their website:
> We designed the Framework Laptop from the outset to be a great Linux laptop, and the Framework Laptop DIY Edition comes with no OS loaded to let you bring your favorite Linux distribution. We deliberately selected components and modules that didn’t require new kernel driver development and have been providing distro maintainers with pre-release hardware to test to improve compatibility.
> Official support means we work with the Ubuntu and Fedora teams to do our best to avoid bugs and regressions. We provide official support for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (OEM C kernel) release. We provide official support for Fedora 38 (Intel) and Fedora 39 (Intel, AMD). We provide consistently updated install guides. We provide support ticket assistance. We provide help through the community forums.
They support Ubuntu and Fedora, work with the distro teams to handle bugs, and will respond to support tickets for those distros and versions. That’s pretty explicit.
Modern hardware is complex enough that it supports Windows or Linux. Not both, though.
Ah, and rebooting occasionally requires taking the battery off as workaround to take it out of an UEFI zombie state.
Interestingly, I had a few of the earlier models that did (701, 901 iirc) and their support for Linux was great. Certainly light years ahead of my efforts to put Linux in a Dell a few years prior.
Not only it shipped with a custom Asus distribution for media play called Linux Express, it had Ubuntu on it.
What is surprising that you come back with ad-hominem arguments ("typical Linux fan answer," "knows better than me") in lieu of hard evidence.
Typical attitude on Linux forums.
Do you want a hardcopy from the purchase order as well?
> Typical attitude on Linux forums.
> Do you want a hardcopy from the purchase order as well?
More ad hom "arguments." The exact same arguments, no less.
I'm done here.
I've personally moved to an entirely MacBook based workflow where I have a dock on my table and plug in either my work or personal MBP depending on what I'm doing.
40-50% battery loss overnight while "sleeping". And other irritations galore. I'd forgotten what battery anxiety was like. Good lord.
Got on the MacBook list with IT ASAP. That MacBook lost 40% charge sitting in my backpack—over a week-and-a-half Christmas break. Ahhh, back home. So much more relaxing.
So 72% is probably an underestimation.
The only market share that Microsoft lost in the last decade was in the school market (by Chromebooks) and the POS (by tablets)
It’s worth noting that I think Microsoft lost a significant share of the personal use market, not just to Linux or Mac, but to the apple ecosystem and mobile/tablet computing as a whole.
For home users I totally see this in my life. I know of several households which end up only having a couple of iPads when several years ago they would have had a desktop or laptop.
Bringing a different OS to a company is almost impossible.
Even when they co-designed Scientific Linux alongside Fermilab, and all the servers were on Linux, moving away from Solaris.
Speaking as one of the beta testers, back in 2004.
If you define "office workers" as people who use Windows then sure. Even if we don't count tech quite a few people still use Macs (of course depends on country area but Apple seems to have very high market share amongst architects (of course not engineers but I think Linux is overrepresented there), designers etc. where I am).
Nope
It's only been somewhat recently that games that support Linux have exploded in numbers. Somewhat coinciding with the release of the steam deck and the massive community it brought with it. There are now launchers for other stores for Linux and more every day.
Still, a lot of gamers don't really have a choice but to at least dual boot into Windows if they want to play some of the most popular games (Fortnite, for one).
Not supported games are mostly online multiplayer ones, and are using extremely intrusive anticheat rootkits. Fortnite is a great example of that. Anticheat devs refuse to support Linux for obvious reasons (too many ways to escape the rootkit).
I bought a gaming computer a year ago, it was fully pre-built. Somehow a 2 thousand (or whatever) computer comes with Windows Home instead of Pro (wtf Microsoft, you should really make sure OEMs are giving out Pro versions for gaming systems). This is where the fun begins, and I've posted it before on HN. I couldn't install Windows 11 offline in order to avoid making a Microsoft account. I don't like all my personal shit automagically being uploaded to Microsoft's cloud, especially when they default to on, and companies will reset settings on a whim.
So what happened next is I had to literally login, and then when I was finally on Windows, I wanted to add a new account because I don't like that Windows doesn't let me set the *username* local to the OS, if you're going to make me login, please let me set the username, I don't want my Windows path to be C:/Users/gianc/Documents or whatever. I rather set that myself, re-configuring all of that after the fact feels like it will break something, and it is not worth it.
So I go to create a new Windows offline account only to be told by the modern Windows 11 UI that I'm on Home edition of Windows, and cannot add users from that software, go to software XYZ from Windows. So I go there... guess what error I got? The same exact error telling me to go back to the previous program. I wound up installing Linux in frustration.
The only reason I don't use Linux is if the drivers stop being supported OOTB by the installer, which has happened to me before. Linux might have its own issues, but at least it's not completely FUBARd despite one of the largest companies pouring millions into its development.
It very well may be but this one is not on Microsoft. Using their power to force decisions onto others is one easy way to land in hot(ter) water. This would probably be an abuse of dominant position which everyone wants less of.
OEMs have more negotiating power than regular users so it's no easy or cheap feat to force them. Arbitrarily defining which licenses can work with what hardware makes everything complicated for everyone, it needs constant updating as the hardware changes, it needs a lot of assumptions on how the user uses the PC, would probably create the garden variety loophole hunt for tricking the system.
The sensible choice here is to go for a product that really fits your needs especially since that market is very well served by competition. You have dozens of competitors and even the DYI option. You're not buying a black box. It can be a gaming PC with Windows Home just as it can be a gaming PC with a 4060 GPU. Nvidia or MS should have no say in what a vendor can sell.
You already had everything you needed to make sure of that, you said you're a pro user. You're running away from your very basic responsibility of looking at the spec sheet, and you're blaming Microsoft or the OEM for this. You chose a Windows Home system probably because it was cheaper than others. This is one way it was cheaper, you probably got the Home license for free".
Many people would go for cheaper or no license in order to get better hardware. MS is already strong arming OEMs to bundle Windows licenses, they should absolutely not use their power to force them even more.
> I'm definitely going to be buying System76 for my next desktop
Perfectly valid (and great) choice. But you could pay a whopping $82.000 for a workstation and it doesn't come with a Windows Pro/Enterprise license or RHEL Workstation Standard (lifetime, not just the one year) subscription. MS and IBM should absolutely make sure one of these licenses is included with any system over $1k. :)
Microsoft has decided to use their OS to collect people's personal information and use it against them as a ad platform and no amount of registry edits or setting changes will make that untrue.
They lock down executables by default, only allowing web sites and their app store.
Guess what company doesn’t have an app? Zoom. The main thing my MIL uses her laptop for!
So I need to change advanced security settings to install one of the most popular apps in the world.
When my aunt bought her a new computer with Windows she couldn't use it properly and complained that she wanted a computer "like the old one". She was equally unable to use Macos in my laptop. Nowadays when people complain about Linux's usability I know that they are normally overstating or talking from prejudice because from a practical point of view no way the usability of any modern distro is significantly behind Windows' or Macos' usability, it's even the opposite I would say.
Software usability discussions are particularly prone to this bias.
EDIT: another fun one is internet discussions about metric vs imperial systems, with one side or the other swearing that one is inherently more "intuitive" for a particular use. Due to some extraordinary coincidence it's always the one the writer grew up with...
The "legacy" Windows design isn't just so beloved because of familiarity, but because it actually provides visual cues to users [1], and the backstory on how it was designed is also interesting [2].
I know that there was an even more detailed article floating around here on HN but I can't find it offhand.
[1] https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805
[2] https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...
And there's the belief that "tech skills" = "knowing where the Windows buttons are". OK, that is true in a limited sense, that "x competency" = "familiarity with x", but the point is you can be a very skilled sysadmin or programmer who still makes "noob" mistakes trying to configure Windows just because you're more familiar with MacOS or Linux
This also extends beyond UI to platform concepts in general. I'll take Unix-or-DOS-like hierarchical filesystems as an example. Even here I've seen people equate knowledge of a hier FS structure with inherent technical ability, when discussing those "teens can't use computers" articles. It's certainly correlated, since all major operating systems do use them, but it's still a mistake to think that there's something inherently correct about choosing that storage model, over say how a mainframe or Multics did things
To be fair, the Linux world makes the same mistake, labeling a user as "not tech competent", "needing hand holding" or "afraid of the command line" just because they do not have the time and patience to put up with the amount of bullshit that (insert whatever distro here) throws at them.
On easy distros like Mint, I have to deal with maybe a tenth of the amount of bullshit that Windows throws at me, the only difference is that most users are used to handling Windows' bullshit. My 12 year old brother, who while fairly competent as a user, isn't particularly tech-inclined, uses Mint exclusively, and he can handle just about everything, except burning the Mint USB and booting off it for the initial installation.
Plus, I often see people arguing against Linux comparing its ease-of-use for users with very low tech literacy, then either acting as though those very same users could solve many problems they might across on Windows, or that they just wouldn't come across any problems. If I installed Mint, I'm sure my grandma could barely use Mint, just like she can barely use Windows, but she would need just as much tech support on Windows, if not more due to Microsoft becoming increasingly user-hostile.
And as for rude Linux users: on the rare occasions that the user actually needs help, rather than just google, in my experience people tend to just mentally facepalm a thousand times over, rather than calling them "afraid of the command line", despite the reputation the Linux world has. It can be a bit frustrating helping noobs, sure, but not any more than helping total noobs on Windows. At worst, people might make some jokes at your expense, but it's pretty rare for me to actually see anything like the stereotypical rude Linux user.
P.S. Saying "to be fair" back at you seems passive-aggressive, and I don't intend it that way; it just seems like the most appropriate phrase to use.
P.P.S. This reply kinda got away from me, it's mostly not directed at you, just general thoughts about people comparing/arguing about Windows and Linux.
In between there is a giant pit with hard/impossible to solve cryptic errors (or no errors and just silent crashed on launch unless you try to open the same app in the terminal). Confusing and half-baked documentation (because there are dozens different way to accomplish the same thing depending on your distro and config, good luck figuring out which is the right one for you) etc. etc.
A lot of these issues are not really "bugs" and just a natural outcome of the decentralized nature of Linux (non-kernel part) development. They can be solved by power users but not by people who are used to much more user friendly workflows on macOS (again IHMO) somewhat less (but still more so than on Linux) on Windows.
I myself using Arch which for more than 14 years now and it is a perfect fit for professions and enthusiasts. But in case of an average user, Fedora.
What I mean with Windows-Users? People which believe they need to install “drivers“ themselves. Which argue against Linux anyway because it doesn’t support the weird „Desktop Metapher“ from Windows 95. And usually argue that weird hardware like 3D-Shutterglasses or some kind of HDR-Something (just insert here some hot new stuff) isn’t supported. The broad majority of users don’t want that and don’t need it. What matters is HiDPI-Scaling (good, with exception of the awful thing named Electron) and easy to configure sound-system (Pipewire nailed it). And unification of which we achieved through Linux, LIBC/LIBSTDC++, Coretuils and finally Systemd and Flatpak. The point here is the chain of parts building upon each other.
Recommendations Stay away from Nvidia. Use old ThinkPads if you have not special requirements. Use printers with AirPrint (IPP-Everywhere).
Teaching I would be happy if people start teaching the users to read the interface (like a book or an info grahic), think and then act. Input, Process, Output. TUIs foster that and I think that is why users accustomed to them love them - and dislike most GUIs and nearly all websites.
What computer courses do for decades? Not teaching users using the interface. They just drill them to click on a specific icon (once, or twice or with the wrong mouse button). Just see them happy when the type “Email” and Linux offers Evolution or Thunderbird. And if they don’t find it two months later? Again “Email”.
Granted I install dkms and do an autohook to install the modules on kernel updates, which I wager is a bit much for most.
I want users are able to execute upgrades and don’t have to care about “details” like the bad/missing support of Wayland in the past by Nvidia, modified APIs or restrictions imposed by EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. And a game developer probably wants ensure compatibility only with Mesa.
German article about how Nvidia accepted their situation and how the code will be built into Linux: https://www.heise.de/news/Linux-Kernel-Entwickler-druecken-f...
Basically - Linux won. It is not a perfect victory because a lot of code goes now into firmware which creates another set of issues. And it will require long time to get on par with AMD or Intel. Linux and GNU won because they remained stubborn and the consumers and industry supported that. Nobody wants a PlayStation or SteamDeck with closed source modules. Neither machine industry or car manufacturers. Yes, benchmarks attract customers in short term - but in long term it must be reliable for years and decades. Imagination Technologies and ARM recently also changed their minds. It is sad that this all could have happened 15 years ago. Maybe people learn?
Unless you need to use the GPU for actual work and not gaming then you need CUDA etc.
Nvidia seems fine though as long as you use the installer they provide (as the other comment suggested) for some reason all(?) distro developers can't come up with functional workflows for installing it any other way.
> People which believe they need to install “drivers“ themselves
Do you think that's something people need to do often these days on Windows 10/11?
> support the weird „Desktop Metapher“
What's weird is/was Gnome trying to appeal to mobile users for no reason (at least MS had some justification for the Windows 8). Of course there is KDE if you need a normal desktop.
> with exception of the awful thing named Electron
Perhaps it's awful. But it's something a lot of potential non-power users actually need and care about (unlike LIBC/LIBSTDC++ or Coretuils)
> Use old ThinkPads if you have not special requirements
Like a semi-decent screen? Also why bring up HiDPI-Scaling then?
> teaching the users to read the interface (like a book or an info grahic),
It would be nice if GUI app interfaces were at least semi-consistent on most Linux apps (of course Windows is also terrible at this and Apple are the only ones who managed to get it right).
Honestly, I don't see Linux progressing that much as long as mindsets like this (blaming the users for not using their computers in the right way and telling them what they "actually" need) remain widespread.
When Ubuntu started getting popular I had this same opinion. A lot of my friends would tell me that they gave Linux a try but gave up because of "random things not working" whereas, allegedly, using Windows everything "just works." This didn't sit well with me because I had the opposite experience with Windows.
Until the last couple of years, unfortunately. It's almost always kernel updates, but I had the sound suddenly stop working on a Kubuntu install after a kernel update, and I've had a few cases where the new kernel wouldn't even boot and I had to drop back to the old one.
These types of things are hard to quantify. Maybe there's more random nonsense across all users with Windows than there are with Linux. But kernel updates have started to make me nervous again and that's a step in the wrong direction.
The other thing worth mentioning is well, the computers will almost always perform better with a Linux distribution over a bloated Windows install.
Poor battery life clearly indicates it's the other way around (yes, ram usage might be worse but who cares it's cheap) also removing all the bloatware shipped by the OEM on Windows is not that harder than installing a Linux distro.
- They are non IT professionals, who are forced to use Teams and Office and they get it from their Corporate default.
- Users of Windows who must have it due to applications that are not available for other OSs. Professional Audio, Video, Engineering Applications.
- They are students with their first laptop who got Windows installed by default.
- They are part of the well know 2.2% of males and 1.3% of females involved in submission and sadomasochism...
I used to dual boot Windows and Linux, but the most recent version of Windows I tried (11 I think?) really pissed me off during the setup process, mainly by persistently badgering me to get a Microsoft account. Between that and Linux getting a lot better at running the (relatively few) games I play, I decided to get rid of Windows and just use that drive as extra storage.
Exceptions are my relatives over age 60, who barely do anything with their computers and should probably just have Chromebooks or iPads + keyboard (god, they could really use the accessibility features...), but are used to computer = walk into Costco or Best Buy and buy a desktop tower.
Most non-gamers who also aren't computer nerds, whom I know, "compute" mainly on their phone anyway. Shit, so do I, and I'm both of those—my Windows machine is just for gaming, nothing else whatsoever. 95+% of everything important that needs some kind of computer, happens on my phone. I bought my last house on it, entirely, LOL.
[EDIT] What I've seen break on mine and my wife's, back when I used Windows/"PC" hardware on mobile computers, and these were all lot more than $300, even 15+ years ago:
- Display controller board just... dies, barely outside the very-short warranty period. (I repaired this one)
- Display cable frays at hinge.
- Thermal paste on insufficient-to-begin-with cooling for discrete video chip goes bad after a couple years (discrete video cards in laptops: just a bad idea, they're historically the source of a solid half of the problems on MacBooks, even)
- Something shakes loose inside. Several times. I've self-repaired (open, screw with anything that has a socket or port until it's good) but it's not worth taking it in to a shop on a very, very cheap machine, if you're not comfortable doing this yourself.
- Battery goes bad.
So now Windows forces you to use Microsoft account, shoves ads and crapware into your face (even in "pro" version), makes significant part of your vertical screen real estate unusable because of popping up toolbar like in good old days of internet browsers, makes using laptops on battery a mess. They removed a lot more options to tweak the UI. It's just full on assault on usability. It really does seem like they want to get rid of power users so they can continue shoving more ads and dark patterns on remaining ones. Like those Nigerian Prince scammers who make glaring grammar errors in their emails so people with any kind of critical thinking skills won't bother them responding.
If you wonder why I upgraded - I really didn't want to but at some point they must've sneaked a dialog somewhere where I had a habit of clicking through and to my surprise it was Windows 11 from now on. I resisted for a long time but they have won.
- Without a Microsoft account
- With telemetry disabled (as much as is possible anyway)
I haven't seen any ads in the OS... maybe a OneDrive one? I have no idea what you're talking about with a toolbar though, the only thing of size that pops up on mine is the start menu. Unless that's the new search thing I disabled.
I dunno. On balance, I LOVED Windows 7, Windows 8 was a mess, Windows 10 was... more or less just 7 with an uglier and more confusing interface, and if anything, 11 is a step back towards 7 in my mind, both in aesthetics and usability. Though I was also never one for the side taskbar, so if that's your bag, I can absolutely see you not enjoying it being gone. Other positives:
- They're finally reunifying settings into a single interface, hopefully they finish this time before starting a new one
- New display configuration options are much more sanely organized
- I've had just, WAY fewer issues with drivers in general
Some negs:
- Audio settings are now in five places, any of which can and can not apply to whatever you're doing, seemingly on the fly
- They replaced the context menu with a different context menu that's only slightly different and instead of just carrying over old options with some sensible defaults, hid them in a sub-context context menu which just... ugh
MacOS is still bae though. And that's probably why I like 11 okay is because it feels distinctly like Microsoft chasing Apple with regard to OS design. But as someone who would definitely consider myself a power user, I have no issues using 11. It's an improvement on 10, IMO, which was a distinct downgrade from 7 but itself was a massive upgrade from the train-wreck that was 8, so overall the trajectory is acceptable.
>> the only thing of size that pops up on mine is the start menu. Unless that's the new search thing I disabled.
They call it "taskbar" and I guess that's what you mean by "start menu". I use the word toolbar because it's equally useless for anyone who has a keyboard. Anyway, the obvious behavior of "hide it and keep it hidden unless I press Windows key" is of course not an option. It just needs to be there all the time to randomly mess up whatever you are doing when clicking around bottom of the screen.
>>I haven't seen any ads in the OS... maybe a OneDrive one?
There are at least a few places in the system settings where instead of showing you options there is "One Drive", "Try Office" or Windows Store or Edge on most of the screen.
Technically it's a click and a mouse movement, but if anything that's more annoying than two clicks, haha.
> They call it "taskbar" and I guess that's what you mean by "start menu".
I genuinely haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. I'll have to look next time I'm using my PC.
> There are at least a few places in the system settings where instead of showing you options there is "One Drive", "Try Office" or Windows Store or Edge on most of the screen.
That might be because I'm signed in on OneDrive and with my Office subscription then. That's shitty though.
I grew up a windows user. I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta when I was 12 years old (and still think it's the best UI any OS has ever had). When I was in college I used Linux more, but found that the only reason I used it was as glorified desktop customization software. All of my assignments were in Java and my personal projects were in C.
I switched to a chromebook halfway through college and did all my assignments by SSHing into a rented VPS running Ubuntu. After college I finally got some money and bought some used thinkpads, which I ran Windows on.
My first job out of college we had macbook pros, and I hated those frickin things. The UI was so opinionated and slow with all of its animations. There was no way to disable the paneled desktops and there was no built in package manager or tiling window manager. Their bash version (this was pre-zsh) was an ancient build from 2007 and their coreutils lacked all the neat GNU extensions features (I recommend anybody who uses a macbook immediately install coreutils from homebrew and also upgrade bash). I had a million things I hated about macOS and still do.
Other companies let me choose between a mac and a PC, and I went with PC. My current company gave me a Macbook pro and I haven't turned the thing on in a year. I use my desktop PC for everything. I like powershell, Windows Terminal, Winget/Chocolatey, vcpkg, Visual Studio, and MSVC language features like SAL. DirectX11 blows OpenGL out of the water in terms of syntax without getting as complicated as Vulkan. I prefer the Win32 API Convention of initializing things with structs and getting more descriptive return types to Linux's everything-is-an-int. I don't mind the Windows 11 UI as much as I thought I would but still sometimes customize my taskbar to look like Windows 7 (but it's just not the same).
tl;dr: I like windows, and not because I'm a captive user
Mac OS occasionally at work, in project assigned laptops.
Linux plenty of distributions since getting Slackware 2.0 on 1995's Summer.
Eventually I gave up on the Linux Desktop dream, around Windows 7 timeframe.
Windows 8 was awful and I refused to use it. However, Windows 10 was really good relative to Windows 8 primarily because it continued some of the good underlying tech Windows 8 brought with it, but was an acknowledgement by MS that the UI/UX needed to be user focused. It wasn't completely there...for example, the Candy Crush ads were still there in the start menu, but the direction relative to 8 was good. However, Windows 11 (and moreso Edge) shows that MS never really had that realization and continues to see their software not as tools for the users to use to simplify and improve their lives but as "products" to be used exactly as MS wants us to use it.
My disillusionment with macOS also lies with this attitude.
For me, Linux is the only desktop OS to be used by choice anymore.
I wish microsoft maintained a version of windows "professional " without all the 10,11 crap/adware and with win7 ui. Even if it costs more
WSL is great if you have enough RAM, you can now rely on winget to setup your applications, OneDrive is reliable, the Microsoft Store is finally useful with Win32 applications (even SysInternal is now distributed via the store!). The settings panel finally makes sense, though not everything has been migrated yet. Windows updates are way more reliable. Windows PowerToys provides almost everything power users may need. The updated windows management is just awesome, simple to use and provides a good amount of options. Notepad is now a real text editor, the screenshot tool supports recording too, Edge competes with other modern browsers and has some unique features such as windows splitting.
That’s just a subsets of some things that improved, there is way more. But it is fundamentally still Windows, it’s just way more polished.
(The OSX mentality was a friendly one to me when we first met and luckily its changes are slower in diminishing usability - they try though, they try persistently! - so my private computer is not a Windows one for about 20 years already. Probably it was Linux now otherwise, quite possibly.)
I currently work remotely for a company that is head-quartered in California. The company issues MacBooks unless you ask for a Windows laptop. Most of my co-workers in California grew up using Macs and love them. Whereas it seems that, for some reason, the majority of the non-Californian employees grew up using Windows.
My current manager came from Microsoft and was the one that pointed this out to me (because, like you, I also have always hated MacOS ... before our company started issuing Windows laptops to those who request them I tried really hard to get used to it and just couldn't). My manager's claim, though I'm not sure how accurate it is, is that Apple seems to have a cultural hold within California, with lots of businesses using them as well as consumers ... but outside of the state Microsoft has the hold. Again, it's a hypothesis, I don't know if there's any validity to it ... but I'm curious if there could be some truth to it.
But your comment does echo the some point many have repeatedly posted on HN, in Europe most of their colleagues are on Windows. ( Although some people mention UK having higher Mac concentration ) And Mac is an absolute minority, even within the tech sector.
But I have been saying for some time, at the current rate things are going I would not be surprised if Microsoft start to open source a portion of Windows. And the pendulum may swing to their favour once they have captured more of the Cloud and Enterprise revenue.
The other factor (related somewhat but not completely) I think is that Apple has become a status symbol. People who chose Windows were rare, and got lots of shit for picking Windows. The peer pressure made the majority of people either stick with macOS even if they didn't like it, or switch at the refresh cycle (and make sure to announce that was their intention anytime they got shit for having a windows laptop). Usually I was the only one on Linux, and there'd be one other person on Windows who didn't care about the pressue, but 99% of everybody would go with the flow.
I hated MacOS, and still do mainly because of the Window management, but after using it for work and the hardware being so much better for me than anything I could find PC I finally switched. My desktop is still Linux. Most of the people I know switched to Mac which is how I know I am in a bubble.
Of course, that's a worldwide figure. The regional breakdown will likely show you prevalence more in line with your expectations. Only 62% in the USA, for example.
Then I spend some time disabling ALL of the updates as they generally do more harm than good
Then I make sure to install directory opus...
Then windows isn't too bad especially when I have no choice but to use it for my work (whereas all of my colleagues have constant problems with borked updates and inconsistent interfaces)
to be fair, I bought a laptop with windows 8 ten years ago and I immediately formatted it and manually installed windows 7 on it though it was a tad tough to find drivers as it was a cheapo consumer laptop)
i am from the opposite camp: my first personal computer (not the family one) came with Ubuntu because the SKU was too cheap to come with windows (back when it would've instead shipped with FreeDOS or something).
i've seen the pain in using windows 8 in another computer in the family. but then i also faced much more nightmare scenario with linux (as someone not very technically inclined at the time): from wifi/bt chip not working to zero video out in a hybrid-graphics laptop.
but after toiling through forums (and learning a lot about managing computers), i also managed to get my parents on using ubuntu for their daily tasks. i was not too concerned about edge cases as i had to step in for IT support regardless of the os.
i personally switched back to windows after trying for 5+ years because everything i needed to do "just worked". i cannot say it for an average grandma, but this audience could easily work around the recent privacy bs microsoft has put out. compared to the gymnastics i needed to do in linux, i'd say it is much less of a trivial task, but you sometimes need to keep up with it through subsequent windows updates.
i recently bit the bullet and switched to windows 11. i am unable to use wsl2 or any virtualization because it breaks the ability to undervolt a laptop cpu. combined with recent ml libraries refusing to properly support windows and cater more to people using google colab, i might finally be nudged back to trying out linux, but i am on the fence.
Windows -0.16%
macOS +0.10%
Linux +0.06%
But then again the share increase compared to share of Linux users, is quite large.
Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
I think it's interesting that there is that many people still on it.
Mainstream end of life was almost a decade ago, Steam dropped support for it, etc. Is there anything that actually still supports 7?
"Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data", says it on the page.
> Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
Probably because steam for windows 7, 8 and 8.1 are EOL
> As of January 1 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems.
Above it, the survey says that Win 7 64 bit is at 0.68%.
No DirectX 12 support for Win 7. And even games that don't require DirectX 12 now usually support Windows 10 and up. Sometimes because they don't want to test on older OS, but Windows 10 has legitimate API improvements that are worth taking advantage of.
On top of that of course the general security reasons not to use an unmaintained OS release.
As for it being a numbers game, neither Apple nor Valve release direct hardware sales numbers, so only they will know.
Edit: SteamOS != Arch Linux[0]
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
"SteamOS Holo" 64 bit 40.53% -2.46%
"Arch Linux" 64 bit 7.85% +0.04%
Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS 64 bit
VS
"Arch Linux" 64 bit
Other Ubuntu versions appear to be in the "Other" category.
Arch is in general a quite popular and quite decent distro, and the complexity of using it has decreased quite a lot in my opinion. I still wouldn't recommend it if there's a risk I end up having to handhold the person afterwards though.
Is that an issue besides GPU drivers? I assumed (though I haven't really tried it) that Steam is pretty relatively self-contained on Linux and doesn't really rely on system packages that much (most games are running on Proton/Wine anyway).
Steam also still relies on e.g. your display server.
Most games work without extra steps nowadays (as long as steam is involved).
For sure. That is a pretty good state to be in---most games work in a few well known distros. If you use something else, you have to DIY some compatibility steps once in a while.
I’m not surprised that Ubuntu isn’t too well. Interestingly, Debian works well from what I have heard.
Is there any reliable way to compare distros usage?
it's probably better today, but i definitely recommend a very up to date distro for gaming, and arch is literally the most up to date there is. happy with arch myself, except the nvidia issues, if you run an nvidia gpu i don't recommend it just yet (getting better really quickly though)
Arch wiki has a great write-up on it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
TL;DR you boot your Linux host kernel with special VFIO params to ensure the entire IOMMU domain of your Nvidia GPU is ignored, and pass that to Windows guest (which sees it as an entirely normal nv GPU).
(My hope is that in the next couple of years the open source Nvidia driver landscape dramatically improves, and modern distros ship with rock solid Vulkan/OGL impl for all Nvidia cards made in the last decade or three)
Those who don’t want to tinker and stick to already supported games would probably just run SteamOS to begin with (or a proprietary OS).
The biggest remaining issue is anticheats for some competitive games
Hopefully it'll start a trend!
* That's a change from 96.56% on Windows to 96.40%. That's a small enough shift to be attributable to noise.
* In the December 2022 survey [0] (one year earlier), Windows had 96.15% share. So to the extent these tiny shifts mean anything at all, the trend for Windows market share was actually up slightly year-on-year.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230103095707/http://store.stea...
However, Windows may be in trouble with more tech-literate people who do know how to change it. I can only speak for myself, but I've been a Windows user since 95. All but one of my programming jobs over the last 20 years have also been working on Windows. But I really dislike the direction Microsoft are taking and I find Windows to be terribly slow these days, with each version seemingly worse than the previous one. So I decided to look elsewhere.
A couple of months ago I bought a new laptop with the express intention of running Linux on it and giving it a good college try (I didn't want to mess around with dual-booting and I still need Windows on my main PC for work... for now). I know very little about Linux, but I've decided I'm not going to use Windows past 10 so it's time to find something else.
I went with Debian running dwm (Debian because I value stability over everything else, and dwm because I like the suckless philosophy) and it's honestly surprised me how good it's been. It's SO snappy. Everything is instant. It's really been a breath of fresh air.
I was especially dreading programming since I've solely used Visual Studio since Visual C++ 4.0 and don't really know anything else. Anyway, I went all-in and started learning Vim, GDB, and Make, and boy do I feel like I've been missing out. I'm really enjoying programming again, which for me has just become a job over the years.
Anyway, my point is, if tech-literate people are willing to give Linux a try, I wonder how many of them would be as surprised as I was and may make the switch permanently. With Windows getting worse, and Linux getting better, maybe more than ever.
When you know enough bash to (without having to look it up every time) write a command that filters (sed) and parses (awk, cut) and then loops (while, for) you will be amazed at what you can do and how quickly you can do it. Then add Vim and you can fly through tasks near the speed of thought.
In summary, I think you've made a great choice!
Yeah text replacement isn't super common. I do use it every so often, but grep I use probably dozens of time per day
I genuinely think Windows got worse, and Linux people started recommending Fedora instead of Ubuntu/Debian-branch.
Microsoft pushes us away, good Linux distros keep us from going back.
Would be curious to see stats for e.g. subset of GPU-accelerated devices which can be detected in JS. Not as a true bot-filter of course, but as a uniform and widely-available metric biased towards real users.
Without numbers an educated guess looks like this:
1) Even if say 70% of bots set Windows UA, the remaining 30% of Linux UA will still skew the numbers noticeably because 30% is much more than the "natural" Linux market share.
2) Many bots don't modify the UA just because they don't care and are not being blocked often enough, not on the domains that they scrape.
3) Many bots don't modify the UA because they care a lot and follow the strategy of emulating a real chrome desktop user with high fidelity. In this case it's better to leave the real Linux Chrome UA than to risk being detected by discrepancies between the UA and the browser capabilities detected by JS.
it won't be because linux became better than windows,
but because windows became worse than linux.
One day we'll look back at the legacy pile of self contradicting nonsense that Windows is and wonder how we ever used it productively.
Maybe if they defaulted to plasma mobile?
I don't see most casual users plugging a keyboard and mouse into the steam deck.
For one, how do we define Linux desktop? ChromeOS is a distribution of Linux, unlike say Android even advertising official support for a Debian container to run Linux desktop software, and while it lacks GNU utils, Alpine does too and yet we still include it in this category...
Next is the whole way we're counting the supposed number of Linux computers: user agents. There's zero reason for browsers to provide true and specific user agents, in fact, true user agents often yield broken sites (like YouTube assuming ARM PCs are all a specific Chinese smart TV) or pose a great privacy risk. Certainly a significant percentage of Linux users made the choice against it, either by themselves or as a browser default.
Then there's the fact specific demographics have their own distribution of platforms. For example, StackOverflow developer survey showed 40.23% of developers prefer Linux for personal use, compared to 31.07% who prefer MacOS. The absolute numbers matter little if your users in particular tend to be on a certain platform.
As a complete outsider, it might seem odd.
But I think tech people recognize this as referring to "OS's that aren't Windows or Mac".
Do they? The metric includes "Unknown" and "Other" not referred to in this, representing another 5% of activity.
However, what the OP seems to be saying is that interpreting anything from the metric and trying to communicate that interpretation with others is pointless. Not even the linked article can decide whether Linux desktop penetration is 4% or 6%, and that's just one person. Good luck when you add a second person with their own feelings.
Started getting very frustrated with the way windows treats its users. It’s simply a non starter for any serious user these days; what with the ridiculous resetting of all bing settings periodically, the non stop abuse of your login mode (live vs local), and man every time that fucking Out Of Box Experience wizard would start and interrupt your login I would nearly shit myself with annoyance.
…
Recently took a position on an all Linux dev project, totally removed windows from my life (and kids). Whole house runs Linux now.
Very happy not going back.
If Linux weren't always behind the door threatening Windows, surely we would have today as the only option a hiper restricted OS with a terrible performance, a huge pice tag and horrible terms of use(well... this is already the case).
On the flip side, look how much Microsoft is losing to Linux in the server space. Consumers don't care what servers their favorite sites and services are running on: they don't have to manage it.
Also, it shows the power of defaults and just showing up. Windows is as big as it is because Microsoft made the deals with OEMs 30+ years ago to ship their software as the default option. Macs would likely be an also-ran if Apple wasn't standing behind their hardware, both in terms of the hardware itself and the sales/support channel, as much as they are (just look at the relative success of their retail stores vs. the relative failure of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc., in the same space).
Why would you say that? Take a look at the trend plot shown at the link. The trend started increasing markedly about two years ago. I wouldn't think it would suddenly flatline. At least I hope it doesn't.
> with a particular focus on the "chasm" or adoption gap that lies between early and mainstream markets.
> The author argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists)
Early adopters are a small minority, it's hard to give exact numbers but 5% sounds about right.
It's MUCH harder to get the pragmatists, late adopters, etc to use a new product. It generally requires a revolutionary product or brilliant PR and marketing (Linux doesn't really have PR and marketing and revolutionary would be a strong term for a product that's been in the market 30+ years).
I think as market share goes up, there's going to be more polished product providers offering linux (liek Steam OS), and that's going to make it very reachable to the pragmatists.
Looking at their earnings, it is going pretty well.
the company i work at pays almost double now compared to a year ago, for arguably worse service. some of us in IT are looking at options, because being locked into a service that keeps shooting up in price is a huge risk.
yes it'll be hard to get away from the ecosystem. but with the increasing price, demand for alternatives surges too, and i can't see it taking too long until we get some options.
Stuff like Vercel, Cloudflare or Netfly isn't the main market they are after, at least if they keep focusing on being clouds for frontend devs.
I'm tech support for my wife's Win11 laptop, and this is rapidly becoming not the case. Microsoft is building bridges across its most.
Probably not. The body of the article reports 6.24% desktop Linux penetration already.
The 4% reported in the headline refers to browsers which report Linux in the user-agent string. That is more down to browser choice than kernel choice. Specifically, a popular Linux browser has chosen to omit "Linux" from its default user-agent claim, hence the discrepancy.
It may be that developers and hackers are drawn to certain browsers, but that is beyond the subject of Linux.
Which long term libre software helps them do. Without it companies just keep stealing the open source features and moving the target of "good".
The disadvantage of propietary software is that you are at the mercy of how the company decides to maintain and develop their software. And they might do undesirable things towards their users. Like displaying adds, tracking / profiling their user's personal data. Changing the pricing. This typically happens when they gain enough market share and have enough users vedor-locked into their software.
And the vendor lock-in also makes it harder for users to make the software work with other 3rd party software. So generally propietary software isn't easy to combine with third party software, unless the company has a commercial incentive to support it. But often one of the reasons for the software to be propietary is because of the vendor lock-in. So that you will use all software from 1 company that all works well together, but doesn't work (as well) when trying to combine it with third party software.
I don't expect someone out there to just make it work for everyone else, but outside specialized situations like gaming hardware, or phones, I don't see anyone really putting the work into appealing to the mass of windows users, at least not as far as covering all the bases that you would need to cover to really think about getting people to move.
MacOS is probably the most organized effort and there they are, and they don't cover all the windows features exactly.
That's not a knock on anyone here, just that they're maybe playing defense vs no no real organized effort.
No. I've been using Linux since 2007 and spent most of my career so far in the Linux space. My goal has never been to convert Windows users to Linux. I don't care what others use so long as it doesn't impact me. I just want to make Linux better, because I am also a Linux user, and want my own experience to be better. If my work means someone has a pleasant experience and converts, then great, the more the merrier. But it's not my goal. So I think you're right, we're not trying to get people to move from Windows. We're just trying to make something we want to use.
It does impact you regarding the depth of hardware support, for example.
That's the difference.
Yours is kind of an extreme use case post 2010 or so, I'm glad that it's working out for you.
Linux desktop plays defense against itself. As long as linux is heavily CLI dependent to get stuff done, it's going to be stuck in sub 10% penetration. I don't see this changing either because the people who maintain linux love linux the way it is.
Don't get me wrong, linux is extremely powerful, but it's gate kept behind a fetishization of archaic and cryptic command line interfaces.
Windows is a consumer OS, which is terrible for engineering, less centered around CLIs but nevertheless having a few even more cryptic ones tacked on like afterthoughts or a legacy hoarding exercise.
CLIs will always be more powerful than GUIs. They tap into what the OS actually is. The GUI is an illusion.
I think Lennox really opens up for windows users when they understand that everything is a Linux terminal command.
When you go into the GUI and change your display resolution, that is a terminal command. Etc.
This is the same for extremely popular things like VS Code, where all the extensions are super cool, most of them are also terminal commands or have some semblance.
However, I can agree with you that this distinction is never clearly explained. And the majority of windows users have no idea, so they come over to Lennox and don’t understand why things might look strange, or require a terminal.
The shocking bit is that Linux is even still alive, given the graveyard of Microsoft competitors.
These are web browsing statistics. Basically nobody does significant amounts of browsing from a Steam Deck.
But even if they did, the install base of the Steam Deck is far too small to move the needle here. The install base of desktop and laptop computers is billions of devices vs. millions for the Steam Deck.
Guess what... I did this after I purchased a steam deck and saw how much better proton and wine are.
What kept me from it was the fact that I couldn't reliable play my gaming library on it. Thanks to the efforts they put to improve things with WINE/Proton, I could happily switch to Mint around a year ago, and couldn't be happier with it.
- I have several rasperry PIs that perform various tasks, so yeah, they could generate Linux traffic (at least 3 of them are running)
- I game on a playstation. After work, I do not want to update steam, windows, uplay, drivers, origin, battlenet. I still use discs. When I want to play I insert disk and play
- I do not want to deal with limitations of Windows. Some programs display too much ads. I prefer fighting with app setup once, compile, etc. After creating scripts I can setup my machine again without any problems in minutes
- If my windows machine becomes slow it is often slow to download fresh ISO, and install it. I do not want to restore it from partition as I am not sure what kind of bloatware was installed by the manufacturer. On Linux I can download ISO and install it in maybe 15-20 minutes
- Most of my apps, self hosting is much easier for me to set up on Linux than on Windows. It may be because I do not know how to set it up properly in Windows
- In Windows I feel as guest, rather than admin of my machine
- I have set up some mini-PCs for my friends, since their Windows became unusable. After using Linux they could still use their machines (they use only browsers, Libbre Office suite, etc.)
If OneDrive didn't hijack your filesystem, I would have dealt with auto-open edge links.
I tasted Fedora and... Oh my God Windows sucks. Like its awful in seemingly every way compared to Fedora Cinnamon. The UI/the speed/the experience is breathtaking.
Fedora Cinnamon is so good, I've become outspokenly anti-Debian/Ubuntu for giving Linux a bad name. I'm amazed that an operating system this solid has been existing under my nose.
got sick of my OS customization getting reset after every unstoppable auto update. oh, and the ads. the constantly changing ui shenanigans.
i kept TPM 2 turned off to prevent Win11 from metastasizing its way onto the machine, but the straw that broke the camel's back is that Win10 totally fucked up my dual boot setup after an OS auto-update.
btw, i used to roll my own winxp isos with sysprep and regedits baked in. all of that is impossible now without the unobtanium that's Windows LTSC.
(my hardware/usage is recent AMD thinkpad, time is spent mostly in browser, vscode, mpv, krita, darktable, terminal)
i do miss the Affinity products tho, they keep making them more Windows/MacOS-only, now relying on the windows store/msix installer, basically guaranteeing they'll never work with Wine/Proton :(
I saw this yesterday, it may be helpful, but there may also be dragons:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Affinity/comments/18vzjhz/affinity_...
wonder why Winetricks exists, shouldnt it be upstreamed?
i guess maybe the same reason Proton exists? maybe Proton has the same fixes and i can just use a compiled version of that without having to recompile Wine? :thinking_face:
EDIT: oh, https://github.com/Matoking/protontricks
- Knowing how Linux works (and having the skill to use it) is hugely advantageous for most software developers and IT professionals--I personally wouldn't hire an IT or DevOps admin who didn't have some level of familiarity and comfort around Linux. Reckoning with the modularity and composability of Linux helps to build a deeper understanding of how computers work, and many of the most important IT topics of today (containers, cloud management) are built off Linux/Unix fundamentals such as chroot and cgroups.
- I tried Arch for the first time and enjoyed it as a nostalgia trip. It reminded me of installing Redhat or Suse or Mandrake back in the 90s. I appreciate it for what it is--a tinkerer's distro. I don't understand the meme around it though, and found nothing esoteric about setting it up... Is manually partitioning a disk drive supposed to be a feat of strength today?
- On the other side of the distro spectrum, I'm mightily impressed by Zorin. Less so these days with Ubuntu. I get folks' distaste for Snaps over Flatpacks.
- I don't get folks aversion to bloat. For me, finding the ideal setup was about installing everything a distro had to offer and then chiseling down. The exploration was always the fun in using Linux. I remember installing Suse back in the 90s with 10 different window managers and I loved fiddling with them all.
- Hyprland is really neat.
You can use Snaps and Flatpak if you want.
There are 100 distros, each with pros and cons, many far lighter than Manjaro.
it's a bunch of effort though, both to learn how everything works and to set up all the things you're usually just used to being there by default. but once it's done you'll be able to fix any issue that pops up, because you actually KNOW what's on your system, as opposed to it being a massive collection of things you have no idea about.
*something like gentoo might be better but... compiling a browser takes ages and i recommend having an up to date browser, so you'll spend tons of time on that.
1.2GB or more of memory usage at idle when most of the KDE distros I tried, even the Ubuntu based ones like Kubuntu, go around 700MB. Plus it just feels sluggish and slow on not so modern machines.
What exactly is Popos delivering more than the likes of Kubuntu or Nobara for the near double extra resources used?
Isn't this irrelevant nowadays? Don't the OS's consume/free memory dynamically, and idle usage is meaningless?
Sure, PopOS isn't the best choice for your Raspberry Pi, but we are talking about desktop computing, where 1.2GB of RAM is nothing.
At that scale the difference 500MB to 1GB RAM wasted by your DE could mean a few extra apps or browser tabs you can run before you hit the swap meaning a great usability boost.
Secondly, you haven't answered my question on what Popos does extra to justify the extra resource usage, you only justified the resources waste with the argument that 'RAM is cheap'.
> Up, up, up the ziggurat, lickety split
As Windows continues its enshitification, and as Valve continues investing into its awesome Steam Deck, I do hope the trend continues.
Personally, after using Steam Deck a lot, I bought a desktop and tried a standard distro (OpenSUSE in my case) for gaming. The experience has been not ideal, but doable. My issues:
- My Xbox controller worked, then suddenly stopped working. I've been using a PS controller instead which works great, but would vastly prefer the Xbox one.
- NVidia has been such a pain that I'm thinking of selling my current card and buying an AMD one. NVidia drivers are truly horrible. For example, during boot time, the proprietary drivers randomly fail (like 1 in 7 reboots), which is not catastrophic (the system recovers by itself) but does lengthen the boot process by roughly 1 minute (very noticeable when the whole computer normally boots in ~10s). Note that this is with the latest driver version, and even after modifying kernel parameters as per NVidia devs' advice.
- Some games still don't work great under Proton (anticheat, mostly). This is expected and I'm quite fine with the current state of gaming compatibility on Linux, but might be surprising to some folks that are coming from Windows.
But overall, I can just play whatever is in my Steam library, and I truly love that.
I'm on the market for a AI work station and I'm honestly thinking of doing a amd/nvidia split so I can have the graphics just work and the AI also just work.
If you mean specifically using Steam on Linux, you may need to add some udev rules for accessing the controller: https://codeberg.org/fabiscafe/game-devices-udev
The Steam Deck isn't without its faults: there's a dedicated "Special offers" carousel on the home screen, and there's been a full-width ad for the winter sale on the home screen for the past few weeks.
So far Steam Deck has done very little to push for Linux native games.
[0] https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop...
I still think the Mac is great, but as work require more and more Linux specific tools switching starts to make sense. All the tools I don't already run in a terminal or in a VM is also available on Linux, the only Mac only application is Apple Mail and I'm not that attached to it.
The 'low power' marketing didn't work on me, my 6+ hour battery life on an Asus has never affected my life ever. However having a 3060 has unlocked so many possibilities. It could make me a multimillionaire this year.
Scary to think I might have gotten an iOS dev job, ended up having to run AI on CPU, and never came up with my product.
Not sure I completely agree, if you're buying a laptop and factor in the fact that you're guaranteed to get a good screen then MacBooks have provide pretty good value, for me at least over the past 15 years.
Gosh I hate corporations. They are disgusting the mind control they have, and they never get in trouble for it.
I posted something similar except for browser. [1] Desktop Browser Market Share Worldwide – December 2023, Safari saw a sharp decline to less than 9%, down from 14% in June.
It seems for whatever reason a lot of people tried Safari but then switched back to Chrome.
I wonder what were the reason the drove this action. And on the Linux 4% sharp increase in December.
I have no regrets about Linux on the desktop over decades. Using my Linux desktop is a joy, and I always viewed Linux system administration as a worthwhile skill which I have cross-applied professionally in the realm of cloud servers and DevOps.
In the period where Windows had dominant market share, I relegated Windows usage to a VM for a handful of software packages (e.g. Quickbooks), running on my Linux host.
Sometime around 2018, I realized I hadn't booted a VMWare VM in a few years, so I could just delete that VM guest, and the host software, too.
Nowadays, I basically ignore the entire Windows desktop space in my everyday computing. I keep an eye on Windows 11 via a Media PC I use for streaming edge cases to my TV, like old Blu-ray or DVD rips. I use a proprietary desktop via a Mac Mini, which is my dedicated "Zoom call box", but also where a handful of proprietary apps live. I don't need desktop Quickbooks anymore, so instead this is my way of accessing things like MSWord, MSExcel, Acrobat, and ScanSnap software. Basically, those rare situations where web software alternatives won't work.
Here's an interesting question I've been thinking about: in 2023, why are so many developers encountering Linux in their day-to-day lives even if they aren’t running Linux as their main workstation OS?
For Windows developers, it’s the rise of WSL. Windows was always missing a great UNIX shell and now WSL provides it in spades.
For macOS developers, it’s native support for Linux VMs & containers as well as the rise of Apple Silicon & ARM. These two trends make it so that macOS’s BSD heritage and local terminal is a less comparatively useful proxy for local development (vs just running a local VM or container running Linux, which is now easy enough, and fast), whereas perhaps in past years the BSD heritage was good enough to e.g. run Python, Ruby, or Node.
For all developers, Linux is the standard deployment environment in the cloud, whether you are using Amazon EC2 or Google GCE or something else like DigitalOcean. Even developers running Linux workstations find a need to virtualize and containerize Linux environments, but this can now be done in a lightweight way with F/OSS options.
For all developers, IDEs have gotten better at working with remote Linux machines, or local containers. See VSCode “Remote” extension, and private networking tools like Wireguard, Tailscale, ZeroTier.
Finally, Linux has showed up in a lot of “long tail” hardware use cases, such as Raspberry Pi, Android, NAS devices, Steam Deck, etc.
So I wouldn’t really call 2023 (or 2024) the year of the Linux “desktop”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Linux is the “#1 #2 operating system”.
That is, it’s not the OS everyone runs on their workstation, but it is the OS everyone runs in their workstation, from their workstation, or around their workstation. It’s the closest thing developers have to a “standard development & deployment OS” even while their workstations and desktop environments fracture on Windows/Mac/LinuxDistro lines.
And if a developer has a homelab server or a favorite remote development VM, it is almost certainly running Linux and accessed via ssh.
Before WSL, Virtual Box and VMWare Workstation, and SUA to a lesser extent, were already making it.
WSL makes it one less thing to install and configure.
Windows also has native containers.
They decided to expose them via docker APIs to take advantage of the ecosystem tooling, and nowadays other ones like containerd and runc are also available.
macOS still doesn’t have official support for containers. There is https://macoscontainers.org/ but you have to disable SIP, which is a no go for most professional/work machines.
I'd use Fedora if I was only going to be using an office suite.
I can't imagine using Windows anymore, so many forced reboots and dealing with autosaves and reopening everything. Ugh
There are a few odd edge cases but most things run smoothly.
(Meanwhile, my laptop running Ubuntu still won't sleep properly. It just spontaneously wakes up and drains its whole battery).
Most likely this reflects increased bot activity.
(I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on a Dell XPS 17 yesterday. After running apt update && apt upgrade it boots into a black screen)
Maybe, maybe not. There are at least two forces at work on this issue:
1. Nvidia themselves, who are collaborating with the Wayland project to improve compatibility with their driver (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...)
2. The new "NVK" open source Nvidia driver, which (unlike Nvidia's proprietary driver) can work perfectly on Wayland without changing Wayland (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/tree/main/src/nou...)
I'm not sure if (1) will fix every Nvidia/Wayland bug that exists right now, but (2) will definitely be able to reach perfect Wayland compatibility faster without sacrificing performance like the original nouveau driver.
* Kernel -> Nvidia shim -> nvidia binary driver
* You upgrade, you get a new kernel, the shim needs to be recompiled (ideally automatic using dkms)
* This fails for some reason due to missing kernel headers, some weird compilation bug, etc. You end up with a black screen.
Ideally Nvidia just open sources and upstreams their driver, like AMD and Intel have done. I know they've been making steps, but there's nothing the Linux world can really do to solve this outside of trying to make a good open source driver like nouveau. But nouveau can only be developed using reverse engineering because Nvidia refuses to provide public detailed documentation on their cards.
It's also going to increase as more and more games on Steam work on Linux and people decide running Windows for gaming just isn't worth the bloat and ads.