We get it, it hit 4%
In all seriousness it's very exciting, I just don't need to see the same information worded 20 different ways from random clickbait sites lol
In all seriousness it's very exciting, I just don't need to see the same information worded 20 different ways from random clickbait sites lol
It did take like 20 years to reach 3 percent and now we're at 4 so I think it's alright to be excited.
Look....I use Linux. I love Linux. But let's be honest. That 4 percent is largely due to the steam deck; a gaming handheld where the vast majority of users don't know (or care) what operating system it uses as long as they can play their steam games on the go.
That's not "year of the Linux desktop", because it's not a desktop. It just has one hidden under the hood if you want to dig past the steam layer (which, as I said...the vast majority of users never will)
The year of the Linux desktop won't arrive until there is sufficient market share that software manufacturers are inclined to support us natively. That won't happen with a gaming handheld because no one would want to use a gaming handheld as a daily driver.
Sorry to be a wet blanket, folks. Downvote away....
Thats like calling MacOS and Playstation rises the "year of the BSD desktop"
Change my mind.
I agree Steam Deck played a role, but they didn't sell enough to make that large of an increase. That'd be insane. However, it did cause the appearance of gaming on Linux to change, which is the thing that was holding back a large number of users.
I had used Linux several times over the past decade or so. It was never my main OS, and I had actually stopped using it completely for probably 5 years, maybe more. This is exclusively because gaming on Linux was an issue and I didn't want to swap OSs just to play a game. Last year I went 100% Linux. I know I'm not the only one, and I'm extremely confident that the increase is mostly this, not the Steam Deck. The number of Steam Decks sold seems to be maybe 6m on the high end of estimates, which is not enough.
The Steam Deck was a catalyst, but it is not the source of the change.
You might statistically be underestimating Steam Deck. Every player on Steam Deck is plus one in Linux and sometimes one in Windows.
Only 1.63% of Steam users were using Linux in 2023. Since pretty much all Steam Deck users are going to be using Steam, we can't attribute Linux's increase in market share to the Steam Deck alone.
That doesnt have any correlation to number of non steamdeck linux users. So 1.63% of steam users could represent a number larger than linux users. And we know steam users is a large number.
I'm pretty sure that this specific statistic leverages internet-user-agents. So a Steamdeck probably wouldn't be counted in as they aren't really used for browsing.
That is not really true as far as I can tell. Linux is growing because it is maturing as a ecosystem. We don't need a bunch of proprietary software to have a good experience
It's the year of the Linux phone! Oh wait that happened like 15 years ago and now they make up like 70% of the global market!
The steam deck doesn't work like a regular gaming console though. Without digging you can switch into desktop mode and it works like any desktop running KDE.
Also, if you're saying that we shouldn't count steamdecks because linux came preinstalled, we might as well disregard 98% of the windows market.
I'm simply stating that the "year of the Linux desktop" hasn't really arrived because most of its increase in market share comes from something that isn't used as a desktop at all by 99.9% of people.
While that has been a nice feature on mine, I've definitely been more frustrated with the KDE interface than I am when using my Windows desktop - even when my Deck is hooked up to monitors. Much of that could be familiarity, but familiarity is a very real, very important thing.
It is actually a good thing because "I need windows for gaming" is the biggest reason why compsci and IT people still have windows.
You're still right that it won't win over non tech people though.
Gaming is why my son has Windows. Minecraft mods and VR games are basically impossible on Linux, although he actually spends most time in Linux playing Stardew Valley (he's tried learning Dwarf Fortress twice, and still not really gotten it, but maybe someday).
I anticipated this question! As far as I can tell many of the mods require using some mod framework that is built up using some Windows program. Certainly documentation in the Minecraft world seems to mostly consist of YouTube videos of someone downloading stuff and clicking through installers, always on Windows.
India, the country with the largest population, has a 15% desktop Linux marketshare.
Additionally, these surveys are highly inaccurate. They are at best a "conservatively low balled figure". Linux installations don't send a ping to a server anywhere to count the install, and there's no other facility to gauge or count through the Linux ecosystem itself. Most computers used for Linux are also sold with Windows pre-installed, which means there's no clean way to use sales figures either.
All that leaves is the browser user agent when visiting select websites that track and share the number of unique visitors that identify as Linux.
I did the math a few months ago in a different discussion (not on Lemmy) and my math at the time came up to about 50 million desktop Linux users, and that was using the "official" reported numbers of 3.x% at the time.
That also ignores that the Stack Overflow developer survey puts desktop Linux at over 50% for personal use, and (IIRC) about 47% for professional use.
But let's be honest
You can't be honest if you look at a single boiled down percentage of a very large, very diverse and technical landscape with more variations and caveats than the English language.
Also, in case anyone is wondering, the Stack Overflow numbers didn't include WSL. If you do include that then desktop Linux usage was over 70% for personal use.
Obviusly stack overflow users use linux but they are very specialized minority. India on the other hand is actually very interesting statistic. Unusaly high, i wonder why.
I’m Indian. I’m willing to bet a bunch of kids who just built their first pc didn’t realize windows was paid just googled free OS and installed Linux lol
(This is a sarcastic whit at the frugality of my people. Truth is a lot of Indians my age are extremely tech savvy and care about privacy)
Damn, I was about to reply saying a very polite "no shit, that's the joke" then decided to check the link in case it was funny. I've been had by my own shit. Thanks for that.
Yesterday my school principal decided to install Debian on all the school computers, lol.
You would think schools would be all for it, especially since Microsoft office is a subscription service now.
Doesn't really matter when virtually any business they end up working for will be using Mac or Windows.
bro manually typing sudo apt update into 200 computers before learning he couldve just cloned the drive
Having to learn a programming language to get things working there makes it a distribution only for nerds.
Let me make this simple for everyone. There's only a real metric for "the year of the desktop Linux" and that's whenever Microsoft and Adobe release full featured versions of all their products for Linux. Not slimmed down web versions, no emulation/virtualization/-insert.hack- BS.
Get used it the idea, I know it hurts, but it's true.
It's a vicious circle. Linux has no representation on the desktop because it lacks support from commonly used desktop apps. And lack support from those apps because it has no representation.
Windows have to screw really hard to push common folks to switch AND Linux must come pre-installed on cheap desktops to appease young people that are entering the ecosystem now.
Exactly I agree with you but I also have to add that there's another factor at play. Half of the success of Windows and macOS lies from the fact that they provide solid and stable APIs and development tools that “makes it easy” to develop to those platforms. Linux is very bad at that. If major pieces of an OS are constantly changing and it requires large re-works of the applications then developers are less likely to support it. To be fair the Linux situation might be even harder than that - there are no distribution “sponsored” IDE (like Visual Studio or Xcode) and userland API documentation, frameworks etc. Besides, Linux has the worst track ever of supporting old software, even worse than Apple and I believe this speaks volumes about the situation.
Until we don’t get a single DE with a single solid and well designed theme, UI library, developer friendly frameworks and whatnot Linux won’t be getting any meaningful traction among regular people and professional developers.
The vast majority of people use a web browser, an office suite, an image viewer, a video player, and maybe some games. They'll use whatever OS came free with the machine, or whatever they can get a friend / relative to install for them.
Most people have at least one other app that most people don't use, that they use religiously, and has little UI foibles they don't want to change. For some, it's a native-app E-mail client they're familiar with where they have 20-year-old messages backed up. For others, it's a photo management app.
It often doesn't matter if AltWinMintbuntuXYZ has those capabilities. If it doesn't handle them in the exact same way, it's an anxiety-producing shift.
whatever they can get a friend / relative to install for them.
This is a fairly rare amount of adventurism. Unless the computer won't come up anymore and a friend/relative will fix it for free.
It usually happens when they buy from a respectable company, so the machine doesn't come with a free (pirated) Windows preinstalled.
You're forgetting Autodesk.
They are the real power-holders.
Libre Office is already better than MS Office acc. to me (thanks to MSO going downhill starting 2013) and I don't see Adobe having anything irreplaceable. People that use Adobe stuff do so because it is more convenient and easy to find; and because their coworkers use similar stuff. Any real +ives it has over others are just differential and a matter of time and money for the competitors.
In case of Autodesk CAD software for CIVIL engineers, no FOSS alternatives even come close to them. (Blender is not yet suitable for Civ Engg., while qcad and similar stuff kinda work for basic work) Other competitors are all closed source and still way behind.
_ Oh, and Solidworks
No need to get them into Linux (Though Autodesk technically can since their main toolkit is Qt)
Just need to give great alternatives. Like Blender, which easily ups 3dsMax and Maya
Just need to give great alternatives.
Alternatives, are, well, alternatives. I'm all for alternatives but they are NOT the actual thing.
If one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow with performance. Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users of a specific industry is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.
You can't expect to waltz in some office and have people tolerate broken documents of some format and/or the subsequent productivity losses - it just takes you making a few slides for your boss while using LibreOffice and once he opens the document you've misaligned items, game over. :)
It also comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’re productive from day zero. Sure, there are annoyances from time to time, but they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive Linux desktop experience.
Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users of a specific industry is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.
You are right. But when I say "alternatives", that's not what I really mean. And there's a reason I gave the example of Blender. That is because, if your company is using blender, they won't be needing 3dsMax and other stuff.
waltz in some office and have people tolerate broken documents of some format
Of course not. I am talking about the whole office switching over to (or even starting off with) LibreOffice. Because it's just that good.
Except that it's about as slow as MS Office, if run on Windows. But from my exp, everything is slow on Windows, so the ppl not complaining about their Windows being slow, won't complain about this and the ones complaining about Windows being slow will still do the same thing, except that they will be using LibreOffice.
how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows
Don't worry, Microsoft is helping us out in this regard, by making Windows as problematic as Linux used to be, while Linux is becoming less so.
In my office exp, the ppl who ask someone to fix their Linux problems are also the ones who ask others to fix their Windows problems. Then the people who tend to fix those Windows problems tend to be doing so, not by understanding the problem, but by following some random tips passed onto them by people who worked there long ago (some of which actually understood what they were doing).
Then there's the IT department having people who do nothing other than follow instructions and turn out to break stuff more often than not when pushing updates. In my last workplace, there had been more loss of productivity from the Windows computers being stuck for hours in a reboot loop, than from any Linux problems and that was when there were 60% Linux machines.
In my current workplace, I do tend to have more Linux problems than Windows, but that is with a Linux to Windows ratio of 10:1.
Another anecdote with advanced Networking options. Doing anything out of the mainstream for networking stuff is way easier on Linux for me (coming from someone who did Windows for >15years before getting to Linux for 3years). In fact, it is after I had to do these kinds of configurations during work, is when I realised, how much better it is to have high quality terminal applications with man pages, rather than the mess of Windows System Settings.
And then comes the time when a multi billion dollar contract needs to be made to port a piece of software from Windows 95 to Windows 10 and make it work with new hardware. All because someone managed to save some money the last time, by not thinking about how stuff would work later on when Voodoo cards are no longer available and signed off on getting the software (which was to be used for over 50 years) as a binary blob, instead of getting the source. Short term gains, is all you have, when saving your stuff in non-open standards.
Nowadays, most Linux "problems" I get on work is from people not understanding how to install new stuff. For example, setting up a new docker image; stuff requiring other dependencies; internet telling them to use apt and then me reminding them to use yum. All the stuff that comes with people predominantly having used Windows and having no idea about Linux.
But when making solutions, it doesn't tend to be much harder to create stuff for Linux than for Windows. If you can't expect someone to deploy stuff by copying files to the correct place, you will be making an installer/shell script either way.
n my last workplace, there had been more loss of productivity from the Windows computers being stuck for hours in a reboot loop, than from any Linux problems and that was when there were 60% Linux machines.
From your description it seems you had a very inept IT department on that company so, things are expected to fail - most likely a poorly managed AD without any policies running out of the box Windows installations.... Linux can't even be compared because for what's worth the typical Linux user knows how to deal with issues on his own and/or isn't stupid enough to mess the system like the average office using Windows worker is.
Yes, Windows is bad, but one thing I know for sure, a decent admin is capable of using group policy is all it takes to have reliable Windows machines. Picking a specific brands and models may help as well as cheap and diverse machines are less predictable thus a big factor when it comes to failure.
I'm not the Microsoft fan you may think I am, in fact I try to avoid it as much as possible - even when that means using macOS :( - but I've seen about everything from the startup that does no IT management to the large bank that only buys HP/Dell and applies very strict policies on everything. What I can say for that is that once you're dealing with hundreds of the same managed machine with the right policies it is really next to impossible to see Windows failing. And Microsoft actually documents things properly because their big companies demand them to do so. You can read that and disable every piece of garbage that comes along with Windows 10/11 and your system will not fail.
if run on Windows. But from my exp, everything is slow on Windows, so the ppl not complaining about their Windows being slow,
Windows isn't slow, it is just that maybe the garbage that people add to it or their unbranded toaster from 15 years ago is the problem. Although you can argue that Linux is faster in some contexts don't forget that people running Linux usually are more aware of what's a good computer and also tend to pick better hardware than the average joe.
Linux as a desktop is slow as well, GNOME relies on web technologies to render a UI, the lag when launching applications is noticeable... for instance on my i7-8550U laptop GNOME is always slower than Windows because you can't just make a DE that is a half baked browser to perform as fast as something native. Yes, I can opt for KDE or Xfce that are way faster but that's beside the point because then on those "slow" Windows machines you can also install Windows 7 and they'll be fast.
Even with KDE if I pick a i3 1st gen (2010) and load with the latest Debian or Fedora KDE it will be slow, as much as with a debloated Windows 11. Obviously that if I take Windows 7 or Debian 5 (both from 2009) they'll both be very fast.
Another anecdote with advanced Networking options. Doing anything out of the mainstream for networking stuff is way easier on Linux for me (...) how much better it is to have high quality terminal applications with man pages, rather than the mess of Windows System Settings.
I see your point, but this isn't correct. Windows since Powershell and Windows Terminal isn't what you think it is. Let me give you a typical network task, changing a VLAN for testing on Windows:
Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty "Ethernet 2" -DisplayName "VLAN ID"
Set-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty "Ethernet 2" -DisplayName "VLAN ID" -DisplayValue 55 # set the network card to VLAN 55
Reset-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty "Ethernet 2" -DisplayName "VLAN ID" # Reset back to no VLAN tag
Want to set a static IP for some config? Sure:
Get-NetIPInterface -InterfaceAlias "Ethernet 2" -AddressFamily "IPv4" | Set-NetIPInterface -Dhcp Disabled
Get-NetIPInterface -InterfaceAlias "Ethernet 2" -AddressFamily "IPv4" | New-NetIPAddress -AddressFamily "IPv4" -IPAddress "192.168.97.100" -PrefixLength 24 -DefaultGateway 192.168.97.182
Get-NetIPInterface -InterfaceAlias "Ethernet 2" -AddressFamily "IPv4" | Set-NetIPInterface -Dhcp Enable # back to DHCP
Want to automate the installation of a bunch of software? Sure, no need to ever click "next" again:
winget install -e --id VideoLAN.VLC
winget install -e --id eloston.ungoogled-chromium
winget install -e --id Joplin.Joplin
winget install -e --id KeePassXCTeam.KeePassXC
...
See, not that hard.
For example, setting up a new docker image; stuff requiring other dependencies; internet telling them to use apt and then me reminding them to use yum. All the stuff that comes with people predominantly having used Windows and having no idea about Linux.
Yes, because that people that came from Windows expect that the setup of a program to be something reasonable, not the mess of dependencies and different technologies that we've on Linux. Having a GUI setup that is essentially clicking next until you reach the end is way more user friendly than the docker hype. There's GNOME Software and all but again not everyone packages for it (in the same way that not everyone packages to the Microsoft store) and since there isn't a culture of GUI installer for Linux things become way more complex for the end user. Apple even goes further with their typical "drag application to the Applications folder" and done.
The larger number of options and alternatives on Linux while great actually work against the end user, because as you said, people get confused.
We have the same point.
Next or Y or Enter will mess up stuff.In fact, I was starting to learn PowerShell back when I decided to jump to Linux.
There are a few things I have to differ about:
Coming back to the original topic:
My main point is that the main thing that is going for Windows, is not any sort of Objectively Higher Quality design, but it's current popularity.
Similar points for Adobe software and MS Office.
On the other hand, Autodesk software for Engineering CAD does have a Objective upper hand, which cannot be trumped by just people one day deciding to shift to FOSS.
For me, the year of the Linux desktop was nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell - er, no, I mean 2017 is when I switched all my computers to Linux.
Unironically, yes. That'll be a huge milestone. It'll probably happen pretty soon, too, with the way Linux adoption seems to be accelerating.
this may happen because of chromebook's increasing marketshare
obviously not 10% but 6-7% seems possible
I read that chromeos now runs actual Linux underneath
not like android tho android sucks
We finally hopped ship this year. Some small bs antifeature finally pissed us off enough to (gasp) learn something new and now I can't find my way out of Vim.
Did you try to alt+F4 ? I want to jump ship too, next computer will have an AMD graphic card. I only have Nvidia ones and it crash games on Linux.
I'm just waiting for windows 12. If reports are to be believed, it's going to be a subscription cloud OS, probably with a thin client. If they really go through with that, then I can imagine linux gaining some ground in 2026 when windows 11 hits EOL.
Quite possibly.
Windows 8 reached end of support in only 4 years.
Particularly if Microsoft thinks they can get away with "Operating System as a subscription" as part of "Windows 12", then they may well be very aggressive about retiring Windows 11. The software companies are falling all over themselves to force people to pay monthly in perpetuity.
However, I'm thinking that Microsoft sees Windows as their gateway drug, so I don't think they'd risk making the base platform subscription. They want people to still get "free" OS that nags them with "hey, give us money for backup storage, and you want office, right, and oh you are a powershell user I see? Then you'll just love renting an Azure instance so we'll advertise that as part of launching a powershell prompt?" They'll of course continue the milk the OEMs for license fees offset by bloated "sampleware", and still ostensibly charge for it to drive the perception of value, but broadly Windows is more a launching board for steering people toward Microsoft subscription services.
If they did throw the switch on "subscription for OS", then they'd risk people just getting ChromeBooks which will steer the users instead toward Google Docs and Google Drive and all the other services Microsoft expressly doesn't want users to get into.
Don't think of it like that. Think of it like, "next quarter's profits".
It takes a lot of effort for non-technical people to switch to a new OS. Microsoft can capitalize on that to rake in egregious profits for probably five years or more before businesses finish sincere efforts at supporting Linux.
Yeah, probably they aren't, but who knows. Unity thought they were infallible and went for their "pay the installation fee or else" that gave power to engines like Godot.
No one realizes that the equation to calculate both of them have a limit where a value is devided by x where x is approaching 0
To forestall the year 2038 problem maybe we could just start reckoning time based on years of the linux desktop.
Today is 06 March 33 YLD
Contrary to the idea that most of these new users come from steam decks, I've had 3 of my friends switch to or at least partially use linux. We are certainly growing.
Microsoft has made their os so annoying and I loath when their updates revert settings that took me an hour to find in the first place. Or worse, remove the settings and features I liked to shove some more bs ads and data harvesting down my throat.
So yeah, I'm planning on downloading Linux mint to a flash drive and giving it a try on one of my laptops this month.
A windows update broke my computer. My system image I made using Windows couldn't restore. I have zero faith in windows. The culprit was something like an update that fucked driver signatures.
The year of the Linux desktop is long ago, but this year definitely will be the year of Linux mobile
The combined number of years of my marriage and the ages of all of my children is a number that when subtracted from 2024 would not equal the first time I heard this.