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Comment by incognito124 | Hacker News Reader

Thank you, Microsoft, for accelerating the advent of The Year of The Linux Desktop

I switched my parents onto Linux a couple months ago, after my mom kept getting confused between edge and chrome - not being to uninstall edge was the last straw, but the massive amount of adware slowing down her capable-but-old laptop was a close second.

So far so good! Some smaller hiccups, like chrome won’t use dolphin, but I installed rustdesk so I can help them through whatever.

Over Christmas the in-laws were asking about Linux because of windows issues, which was surprising since they’re technologically literate but in a layman sense. I didn’t try to switch them over since the parent experiment is still ongoing but a couple more months of seamless use and I’ll consider it a success.

All this to say I’m very glad for Microsoft leadership!

Cool. I used to install it on all my family and friends computer when I was a teenager but as I grew older and had less and less time, being the constant tech support guy for everyone I introduced to Linux got very hard so I stopped recommended/installing it. Which distro did you choose for your parents?

My non-technical friend installed linux on her 10yo old laptop by herself after a windows update slowed down her device and rendered it unusable. She said she said she read about it somewhere and that the Ubuntu installation was pretty intuitive.

I was both amazed and proud. She's daily driving Linux now

(to be fair, it's just tv shows and web apps like chatgpt or docs, but still, Linux is now a good-enough alternative, at least anegdotally)

AFAICT the only thing that should be keeping people from Linux nowadays is gaming (especially VR) and systemd doing dumb shit device naming so that changing the physical location of an unrelated GPU renames your NIC and breaks your internet.

ALVR has been working really well for me on my Quest 3.

there are a lot of other things stopping people from migrating besides gaming though. sure, there are alternatives for professional audio/photo/video editing/producing, but they all mean losing some functionality if you migrate.

Would have switched years ago if it wasn't for Adobe. Open source equivalents to Photoshop and Lightroom are NOT viable alternatives

For casual use I use lightroom web and it's good enough for me, if you haven't tried it, I highly recommend.

I'm sure for some workflows it isn't sufficient but for basic edits and raw development it works quite well.

Yeah, i use online LightRoom for checking images in the darkroom actually, but for serious use, the old desktop app is still king. There are alternatives, like the excellent Capture One, but none available on Linux. I could live without Photoshop, but not Lightroom or similar.

Not really equivalent to Lightroom, and not remotely a replacement, but there's Corel AfterShot Pro [1] (source: about 15 years ago, I was one of the (1?) proud Linux users of Bibble 5, its predecessor)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_AfterShot_Pro

Don't use NIC name for networking. This is a none problem.

It is clearly a problem for them. Just because you do something different doesn't invalidate their pain point

A known problem?

This is an ignorant response. It is 2026. The OS shouldn't be storing network configuration by nondeterministic device name when I ask the OS's default network management tool to join a wifi network.

I was under the impression that the systemd device naming schemes were created specifically to solve the problem you describe[1].

Are there cases where the old scheme worked well that none of the systemd schemes properly address?

Is the scheme Windows uses to bind configuration to physical network interfaces even documented?

[1] https://systemd.io/PREDICTABLE_INTERFACE_NAMES/

anecdotally?

Yes, thank you. It's 'c' in English but 'g' in my mother tongue

Interesting, I can see how it would sound the same, with a different accent.

Native English speaker. I tried saying both out loud and it sounds the same. It's just a glottal stop (?) either way in my accent.

"Hard c" is voiced, "g" is unvoiced.

(I think you mean the other way around.)

But the difference is almost meaningless in this case because in practice the c blends to the d, which is voiced.

They should sound different. Not a lot different, but there is normally a noticeable difference between g and c sounds.

It matters what the tongue and voice box are doing in the surrounding sounds. The next letter (t) is voiced, and the prior sound is a vowel, so in practice many English speakers will continue to “voice” the c sound between e and d, the “g” is just a voiced “c”, which makes them homonyms in most speakers.

(This post brought to you by YouTube, who keep putting Dr Geoff Lindsey in my recommendation queue, and now I’ve become a part time linguistics enthusiast. Other interesting facts: “chr” and “tr” are also almost entirely homonyms in most speakers. Try saying “trooper” and “chrooper” and see what I mean. In fact my 4 year old, who is recently learning to write, drew a picture of a truck and wrote “chruck” on the paper.)

Plus all of the differences between native speakers.

Canuck here. Color and colour are pronounced differently(mildly), and ant and aunt wildly different. Suite and suit are different pronunciations too.

Yet to some US speakers, those words are the same.

I thought they were making fun of my new jersey accent.

My Dad, who's well into his 60s, managed to install linux himself on his computer. His kept the windows partition in a dual boot setup just in case, but spends just about all the time in Linux, he loves it.

My late grandfather (passed in 2022 at the age of 104) showed us all how it could be done. In 2014! During one of my infrequent visits to his house; he was complaining about the state of the latest Windows installation on his new laptop, and saw me driving Debian+KDE and asked about switching.

I told him that Ubuntu was probably the best fit for someone changing/doing one's own install. And that was pretty much the extent of the conversation, we went on to talk more about raising beef on land without petrochemical fertilizers, and how he missed the flavor from his youth, circa 1930's vs what he could get in the store today.

A few years later, the next time I was in his living room, his somewhat older - the same - laptop was on his kitchen table with OpenOffice spreadsheets and something he was working on, running the latest Kubuntu flavor. I asked who he had asked to install it; he has a number of technically proficient descendants who live much closer and who visit far more frequently than I did, so I presumed one of my cousins had helped.

He acted a little gruff, told me he had switched to Ubuntu+gnome by reading and following the instructions, and had then decided he tried out the K Desktop and preferred it enough to just make the switch without reinstalling.

Had a bit of fun hearing him explain how he "hadn't been fond of some of the Ubuntu decisions with window managers but liked having both environments installed as somethings were better in K, and other things were better from Gnome."

In thinking about how ready he was, in his 90's, to fully read and follow instructions reminds me that he was from a generation whose automobile user manual came with instructions for adjusting the piston timing as well as how to bleed and adjust brake pressure.

Why does everyone act like switching to Linux from Windows is just too hard for "Kathy and Wayne"? The fact of the matter seems to be we have lost either the _ability_, or the _willingness_, to read-and-follow-directions in the general population. The end result of either is the same.

There's some funky things like drivers etc but on the whole switching to Linux is probably even easier for Kathy and Wayne (sorry, Alice and Bob) because the updates won't randomly break like MS's do

I've coached a few normies through a Linux installation and there are always 3 things that confuse them and it never improves.

1. Understanding they have to back up their current hard drive somehow. What even is a back up? How do they do it? What do they need to back up? How does it get restored? I tell them to put their important files on a flash drive, but it's not obvious.

2. How to boot into the flash drive with the Linux image on it, and what that even means. The instructions for this are usually sparse because every laptop enters BIOS with a different key and has a different way of choosing the boot device from there.

3. The disk configuration in the installer. They have no idea what to do here. There is usually not a simple default with friendly text to click through. It's impossible to write coherent instructions for this if the user doesn't understand what a drive even is, conceptually.

#3 is surprising, I don't remember the last time I saw a distro installer without a "just wipe the disk and set up the recommended partitions" option, and most machines usually just have 1 drive.

After my mom's Chromebook died I switched her to Ubuntu + Firefox on a Thinkpad x201 and it's been her daily driver for years. I keep asking to buy her a newer laptop with a bigger screen (800p is pretty painful these days) but she won't let me.

Sometime around 2012, Windows XP started having issues on my parent's PC, so I installed Xubuntu on it (my preferred distro at the time). I told them that "it works like Windows", showed them how to check email, browse the web, play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer + scanner they had worked great! I went back home 2 states away, and expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was", but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided her on how to change the game type to klondike.)

If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to point out that normies don't care about how operating system kernels are designed. Normies care about things like a start menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs. The interface is paramount for non-technical users.

A family friend recently called me for advice on her old decrepit laptop. I told her about my work "laptop": a Surface Pro tablet with Linux. I just sold one to her (I work in e-waste recycling), partially on the security and privacy advantages of Linux. Lets see how that works out.

My elderly parents asked me to install Linux on their laptops this Christmas after finally getting sick of the adware on Windows. If Microsoft can make them switch, anyone can.

I switched my mum to Unix(-like).

Her router is running Linux. I can tell because of the speed of the WLAN alone.

Her STB runs Linux, specifically Android TV (Nvidia Shield TV). Thanks for adding the fantastic ads in the newest Android TV, Google! /s

Her vacuum cleaner runs Linux, I know because I slapped Valetudo on it.

Her NAS runs Linux (DSM), Synology.

Her printer runs Linux (Brother).

Her Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant runs Linux (DietPi).

Her tablet runs macOS variant, iPadOS.

Her smartphone runs macOS variant, iOS.

Her smartwatch will run macOS variant, watchOS.

OK, fair enough. Her laptop! Her laptop still runs Win... wait a sec, she hasn't had a laptop for more than a decade. She's been using that super expensive hardware keyboard for iPad. My mum never even used Windows 10 or 11. Her laptop came with Windows Vista back in the days, it was terribly sluggish.

I don't know which year it is, but it isn't the year of the Windows OS.

And yes, I am super happy with Microsoft using thumb screws like these. Squeeze them tight. The more computers will slip through your fingers, grand moff Nadella.

> Her tablet runs macOS variant, iPadOS.

> Her smartphone runs macOS variant, iOS.

> Her smartwatch will run macOS variant, watchOS.

None of these platforms run a variant of macOS, rather a variant of Darwin.

I have no particular insight into whether the wikipedia article is correct, but it says "iOS is based on macOS."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS

They're pulling out all the stops. If you told me that whoever was in charge of the consumer versions of Windows was trying to drive it into the ground, I'd believe you.

To be fair, Microsoft did deliberately drive Nokia into the ground.

Nokia was driving pretty close to the ground before Microsoft ever got involved.

Well, many consider Elop to be a Microsoft asset.

Maybe the Finns got their mole in to extract revenge. Don't forget Linux is Finnish as well ;-)

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

Look at the Nokia sales volume, revenue and the date of Burning Platform memo - and don't repeat this bullshit ever again.

They're working on Xbox too!

At this point probably there's no room for another Playstation-style video game console. My friend who plays only console-style video games, the sort of person who owned Wii-U and an Xbox One as well as that generation of Playstation, bought a gaming PC last year. He will undoubtedly buy a Switch 2 at some point, to play a Zelda or something, but why would you buy another Xbox?

So I think Xbox becomes a brand for video games with Windows and then gradually it loses relevance until one day the question is "Why isn't Minecraft on Steam like a proper video game?"

According to leaks with an excellent track recordWe are getting at least 1 more console, and possibly 2. The first (most likely) is a classic Xbox, the second is a handheld. After that, who knows?

All I know is that I own both an Xbox Series X and a PS5. I use the PS5 more. I also own a PC, and it sees more than 1,000 times the usage of either. I bought the PS5 for exclusives, and Sony began changing that. However there are still alot of older PS4/PS5 titles that are fun to play, and some games are just better with a controller and a TV.

That being said, I'm likely not going to purchase any other consoles.

The desire for controller + TV obviously also affected my console-gaming friend. So, the gaming PC is hooked up to a wireless controller and to his gaming display + audio setup, which was historically a ceiling mounted projector and surround speakers (he moved since I last spent hours playing games with him)

The PC means there's a wireless keyboard and some sort of pointing device, but they're just for launching games & basic admin.

Edited to add: Also WTF for refreshing the Xbox. Who is the audience for this product? What is your lead title? Another Halo? But there's going to be an excellent Halo for the PS5 and for PCs, right? A GTA? But people want the newer GTA which won't fit. Maybe I just don't understand the vision here.

I've been using Linux since the 90s, however I was never super awesome with it. I can do the basic stuff, and with a bit of documentation/guidance, a bit more. I was able to install Arch Linux at least 3X, for example. I also managed to build a kernel like twice...although I didn't do a great job of configuration.

I think my crowning achievement came early on when I managed to follow Linux From Scratch all the way through.

I say all of this to say that I am finally off Windows for good. It has become my daily driver. I've no obstacles. Not in gaming, software dev, personal work, media consumption (beyond streaming services degrading streams for a non-supported OS), or anything else. I've found open source apps to be quite a bit better than their closed source equivalents.

Things have really shifted in the past 5-10 years, and I dig it. KDE + CachyOS is great! Although I hear Bazzite is better for new users (I have some decent experience using Arch so I prefer Cachy)

I don't foresee ever moving back to Windows. The AI and constant push to Microsoft Edge, Second OOB experience, and other nonsense (including Diablo 2: resurrected, a [now] Microsoft owned product that still gets a few updates, hard locking my system), I decided to take my ball and go home...to Linux. A few people I know who aren't even remotely computer literate at all have done the same, and they've been surprised at how much better everything is, particularly on somewhat older hardware.

I suspect that Microsoft doesn't even care anymore.

Windows is not at the core of their strategy anymore. With Azure, they are as much of a Linux company as they are a Windows company now, and most of their software runs in a browser now. Windows is just a gateway to their services.

If it was easy for them to have their users run Linux instead of Windows and sell Office 365 subscriptions, they would prefer that instead of having to maintain a full OS.

The only thing holding millions, possibly in the 100s, from switching to Desktop Linux from Windows is Apple's iPhone support.

As a Mac user I might be missing something obvious - why do they need iPhone support on their computer?

Backups. Copying photos. Sharing files. As a Mac User, you're probably well served with backups integration in Finder, as well as iCloud, AirDrop, iMessage, and friends without realising it.

Do you mean like...iTunes? Huh?

I know approximately zero people who still tether an iPhone to a desktop for any sort of backups.

No.

Even if it was still a thing (and it really isn’t, imo), libimobiledevice does a decent job already, and given a little funding it shouldn’t be super hard to close the gaps and build a nice UI on top of it. But that’s not happening because very few people care about it at all.

Now, AirDrop support is a completely different beast. But it requires hardware support (promiscuous mode, iirc) that many common chipsets simply lack.

Your response and the parent sounds like the comments on DropBox thread. It is detached from reality of consumers and fails to contribute direction that can actually move the needle.

Could you describe the "reality of consumers", because it sounds like you just time travelled from 2011.

If you read my first comment carefully beyond "Backups" and respond, I might bother to explain more, until then.

I read your comment. This doesn't expand on how dated your claim is whatsoever. Acting pissy and mysterious about your claim doesn't help either.

You literally claimed these are exclusive to Windows if not a Mac. Not only do very close to zero Mac users do this on their Mac -- do you understand we can copy and share photos and files right on the iPhone? -- on Windows the dominate way people do this is a web browser. You know, exactly the same web browser that works on basically any computer.

As a longtime iPhone user with Macs and Windows, I was legitimately confused by your weird claim of a dependency on Windows. The more comments you've made, the more certain I am that you actually have no idea what you're talking about.

It is pretty clear that you have no idea about the level of seamless integration between iPhone and Windows via iTunes, from Music to Photos and file sharing.

I have no idea how being able to share something right on the iPhone or via browser on Windows has to do with this.

The only integrations that matter to me are Messages and notifications for phone calls, neither of which are even available on Windows AFAIK, and could just as usefully be implemented as a Web app as a native Windows app if Apple chose to do so.

Oh, and USB tethering, but in my recent experience that's harder to get working on Windows 11 than on Linux (had to find the correct driver manually on catalog.update.microsoft.com as neither Windows Update nor any of the Apple Windows apps installed it, only to have some update or other remove it without my knowledge or consent a few weeks later).

Losing Music, Photos, and File sharing, along with reliable backups, is a downgrade enough.

Eh? I don't have an iPhone, but my mum does and she uses it fine without a Mac. Everything just syncs to iCloud, if there is some benefit to connecting it to a Mac then I'm genuinely unaware of it.

Nadella is The Linux Hitman

every discussion like this has at least one of these comments. The year of the Linux Desktop must be nearly here. They've been predicting it for years already!

Linux on desktop = the fusion energy of computing.

Yeah, except there has been a steady increase in Linux (~5% "confirmed") and a steady decline of Windows. I bet a large percentage of those "unknown" are also linux machines.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

URLCheck flags that host as adware/malware for some reason. Anyway, I assume you mean 5 percentage points? 5% increase probably wouldn't keep pace with desktop users growth.

i wondered why it is they can't tell which os is being used. i guess most browsers return some text in the user agent

As the old saying goes, it happens slowly and then all at once. The things tethering people to Windows have largely disappeared for many/most people.

One of my sons has a desktop that is quite powerful and overwhelmingly adequate for what he does. As Windows 10 hit the end of support we were considering how to move forward as Windows 11 refuses to work on his device. We realized there is absolutely nothing keeping him on Windows, and perhaps we just replace his PC with a Mac Mini. But in the meantime he's rolling with Ubuntu and has lost absolutely nothing and gained plenty.

For me, after 35 years of Windows, 2025 was the year of the Linux desktop. Finally. Linux has become a lot better, and my skills with Linux have too. And Microsoft screwed me over a few times too many. I had bought a "lifetime license" for Outlook, which cost me over $100 a couple of years ago. So then I wanted to upgrade the CPU on the machine running the VM where I had Outlook running, and suddenly that "lifetime license" ended due to the CPU being different. That was really the last straw for me. I moved to Linux Mint and Firebird for email, and it's been great. Now all of my VMs are running Linux, all the locally hosted services I had running have Linux binaries. The switch was a lot easier than I anticipated.

If Microsoft is alienating people like me, using Windows for 35 years, they can alienate anyone.

The forced buying of new hardware just to run Windows 11 is going to be the last straw for a lot of people. And Apple is really no better, their existing x86 machines have the same problem. We could no longer update a MBP, and other software stopped working due to the inability to update (and sorry, no we're not going to use hacky solutions to force it to update).

Is it The Year of the Linux Desktop again?

Haha. Been seeing this comment for at least 20 years now. Some things never change...

Being repeated since Windows XP days, and yet without Proton there is no Linux gaming.

And yet, without the software for Linux gaming, there is no Linux gaming.

Very hard to falsify such a statement.

Software written for Windows, running with a translation layer on GNU/Linux.

is there a point somewhere in this statement?

A reality slap.

So no point to make then, cool, I can get back to playing games then

Make sure to use MAME as well, those arcade games are also Linux, apparently.

1. Nobody said anything about Windows games being Linux games. We were talking about Linux gaming, which is gaming on Linux. Which - yeah - emulators also contribute to

2. Above being said, translation is not emulation and has much less overhead So many pointless semantics to dismiss something genuinely good and useful

Translation is one form of emulation, because GNU/Linux still isn't Windows, at the end of the day.

No, it is not. Right there in the name of WINE.

Not the parent or grandparent poster and not a gamer.

The echo in my mind from the statement was along the following lines:

I can do everything at work remotely from my Linux laptop as they use Microsoft365/Sharepoint/Teams/Outlook and all. I can just log in via Chromium and noone knows any different with one exception: the finance portal. I have to be on an employer owned Windows PC to do that one thing as it is the last 'native program' needed. Moral: enterprise-ish stuff is happening via the Web browser.

Steam et al financing WINE/Proton and generally hammering all the sharp edges out of the compatibility layer for running Windows software on Linux. Moral: Complex Windows native software can be run under Linux.

So, at some point in the future, does Microsoft just phase out Windows? Replace it with a really well engineered Linux with compatibility environment for legacy software?

Games work just fine through Proton already, except when they require kernel level anticheat. I'm fairly certain OP is just one of the purists who think it's not done "proper" until it's a Linux native port, which I wholeheartedly disagree with.

Why should Microsoft bother, when they have Visual Studio and Windows licenses that game studios gladly pay for?

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish/Exterminate? They already begun the Embrace phase: WSL.

The smartest Extend phase they could do would probably be a "Windows" GUI on top of Linux kernel, possibly with some customized locked-down systemd, to replace the aging X and the mess Wayland created. If it gets to be at least as functional as Win11 is, it will instantly wipe out the other two alternatives - Exterminate.

Check how many Linux contributors are on Microsoft's paycheck, including systemd author and some Rust people also related to Rust on Linux kernel efforts.

Microsoft already has their own distro.

And they don't need to bother with anything else, Valve with Proton, makes Windows, Visual Studio and DirectX the way to go for the large majority of game studios.

WSL on Windows, alongside Virtualization framework on macOS, are the Year of Desktop Linux, regarding the latops I can actually buy on a random shopping mall computer store.

The translation layer doesn’t really matter though, does it? If a user installs a game and it runs the same, the user doesn’t care about the translation layer inbetween. If installing and running a game on Linux is the same as running it on windows, there’s no reason to prefer one over the other for gaming.

It certainly does, because it allows game studios to keep ignoring GNU/Linux, even when they happen to have Android/Linux games written with the NDK, it is a Valve's problem.

With better performance than on Windows

Maybe in rare cases with few compatible games.

In some cases.

So there is Linux gaming, you’re saying.

No there isn't.

What is there are Linux users playing Windows games.

There used to be one, sadly the likes of Loki Entertainment are now gone.

What do you call a game that plays natively on Linux?

Not a windows game.

Except those games don't run on GNU/Linux without Proton, providing an Windows implementation.

Amiga games running on UAE on GNU/Linux are still Amiga games.

And what game would that be? OpenTTD?

I don’t really see what the difference is. If they run well, what does it matter?

a) The vast, overwhelming majority of regular gamers who could potentially be convinced to try gaming on Linux truly do not give a shit about whatever line you're trying to draw here.

b) Driving widespread adoption of gaming on Linux is a chicken and egg problem---without a significant market of Linux gamers, developers and publishers have no reason to publish native versions of their games on Linux, and without games to play, nobody is going to install Linux on their gaming system. Proton directly solves the latter problem, and may indirectly solve the former when Linux sees widespread adoption by gamers.

There is a chicken/egg problem.

We should be happy it has a solution.

I would not call being dependent on Windows games a solution.

The file format and APIs used are irrelevant as long as the games work. The games work and that is all that matter.

Not when it is a castle on Microsoft's kingdom.

Sorry but that makes no sense, there is nothing in "Microsoft's kingdom" here, Wine -as you certainly know- is independent. The most Microsoft can do is change the API in backwards incompatible ways - but that'd affect Windows too, so there is little incentive to do that (and attempts such as Metro/UWP/etc to change the core ways of working with Windows didn't prove popular with most gamedevs).

And even if Microsoft does that, it isn't any different than the 2394923th time a library breaks its API on Linux - Linux as an operating system isn't some monolithic project, it is a combination of hundreds of separate projects that for the most part work together like -sometimes misshapen- bricks on a wall. Wine/Proton is just another of those bricks (and history has shown that it tends to be among the more stable ones).

Sure but not everyone is using desktop for gaming.

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