There’s never been a bad year for the Linux desktop. The share size doesn’t matter. So, yes, it is the year of the Linux desktop in my book and it has been that way for decades.
The share size doesn’t matter.
Gotta disagree with you there. Market adoption should be a primary concern of those who care about the Linux ecosystem.
Steam deck BAYBEE. None of the other pocket computers have my attention now if they arent built for Valves version of Linux
The more it’s adopted the more it will turn into windows.
No it won’t. The beauty of Linux is that it can transform completely to fit your needs.
Making Linux more noob friendly isn’t going to take away my custom terminal-centric tiling wm arch install.
More users = more developers = more options. Linux is already awesome, but growing will only bring more good.
Growing will also bring an increased attack surface and justification for writing malware for Linux due to market adoption.
It’s not all good, there is going to be an increased security vulnerability along with it.
And so will there be more people to look into and fix the vulnerabilities, specially if we can foster a bigger community of open source developers by being a healthier community overall.
That is less likely though. Nerds who like developing FOSS for hobbyist and ideological needs are already doing so and more users will likely only increase normal users into linux, not developers usually
This is exactly the “popular => bad” mentality that needs to die. Good products are good—and perhaps more importantly, bad products are bad—irrespective of their popularity. Linux is a masterpiece as a result of millions of hours of thoughtful and rigorous engineering, not the absence of its wide adoption on desktop. Windows is a dumpster fire as a result of millions of hours of reckless code vomit, not its ubiquity on desktop. See also: the Android operating system you know and (if I had to guess) love.
I use windows and it runs prefectly fine for me so I never said it would get bad… just become more like windows.
Like Windows, how? An operating system has dozens of properties that could be “like Windows”, please specify.
Windows used to be alright/tolerable like 3 operating systems ago, each new version takes features away and brings new bugs that are more and more annoying in their attempt to get a slice of Apple’s closed garden pie. Their auto sign in feature has caused me SO MANY headaches when trying to sign in with a different user
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It already is. It’s becoming increasingly GUI-centric and technologies like Flatpak are blurring the differences between distros. (FWIW I think this is a good thing)
Agreed. It’s just the joke, as always.
Market share will matter just for more support from manufacturers, software, and devices
Nah, an OS is only useful if its commonly used. Linux has never been useful for this reason.
Linux runs people’s cars, phones, routers, sometimes even fridges. And don’t even get me started on servers. Linux is the most useful OS on the planet. The desktop is just another thing for it to conquer.
You’re wrong though. Linux kernel might be running on all of these things, but Linux desktop OSes do not because they’re shit.
And why are they so shit in your opinion?
Lack of standards, compatibility and totalitarian control of a single person. Pretty much everything that’s important for a Linux kernel is lacking in userland.
We have standards like pipewire, xdg portals and wayland in active development that try to cover anything a desktop OS might need. Lately there has been a huge push towards them, as the standards they replaced weren’t future proof at all.
But I take it that you are more concerned about fragmentation of these standards. I can almost guarantee that a lot if it will just whither away with time. Noone wants to maintain ancient protocols like X11 anymore. We might have another turbulent few years in this transition, but the end result will be worth it.
And I don’t get what you mean with compatibility exactly. There are lots of ways to define that, and the Linux desktop is excellent in many of them. We have xwayland for legacy applications, loads of translation layers to bring together older graphics APIs under the main vulkan drivers, WINE to run windows software, etc. You’re gonna have to be more specific there.
Yeah, some things are getting standardized, that’s great. But many are not even on a roadmap. People still argue which init system is the best, lol. And don’t get me started on package managers…
As for compatibility, even if we forget about the apps, let’s just focus on some modern features. Multi monitor DPI settings work in some distros, but don’t work in others. HDR works in some, but not the others. DRM, proprietary tech, etc. Why the fuck things just don’t work everywhere?
Who is this single person controlling all the desktop environments and window managers? Oo
No one yet. That’s the issue.
Imagine being this passionate about being wrong.
Yeah, tell us more about it.
Stupid take.
Linux has some of the best device compatability because it’s baked into the kernel. Don’t need to download a driver in most cases, just update the kernel.
Plus it’s known to be a great os for a developer. Also the apt repositories or other repos make installing an app on windows store look like a toddlers first steps in comparison.
Oh and if you use an android phone then you’re using a Linux kernel.
The foundation of the Android platform is the Linux kernel. For example, the Android Runtime (ART) relies on the Linux kernel for underlying functionalities such as threading and low-level memory management. 4 May 2023 Platform architecture - Android Developers
I’ve been tinkering with it since the late 90s and running it as my daily driver both at home and at work for nearly 20 years now. It’s extremely useful.
It is only rivaled in its uselessness by templeOS. The only useful distro is tails which is good for drugs.
Your knowledge is as unique as it is correct.
And here in Sweden were I live it’s just 1.41% :(
People are dumb here, they buy apple.
"Hey look at my new iPhone that costs 20000 sek and can’t do anything important better than the last five previous iPhones "
But it’s really fast at idling in people’s pockets.
I admit the MacBook air has a nice cpu, it stays cool. But most people don’t use anywhere near what the cpu is capable of.
And now imagine here in the US where every single person has an iPhone and everything Apple. They are completely brainwashed.
Critical thinking seems to be a thing of the past… Maybe it’s because they feel like we are on the end stretch of society anyway, may as well enjoy the days left.
20000 seks hehe
Better than using windows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your Fedora must be huge!
It’s amazing to me in 2024 we still have fanboys saying this shit ad nauseum since 1995.
Linux is a shitty desktop environment unless you like to tinker. Apple and Windows provide a far better experience to those who want shit to just work and be compatible.
Odd. What distros have you had such poor experiences with? What sort of things do you use Linux for?
Mint has been tinker-free for me for years as my main desktop. I have had Mac and Windows laptops during that time, as well. But I rarely use them for any of my hobbies.
I use it to actually do stuff so the last thing I want is tinkering getting in the way of that. And it hasn’t for years.
Now, to be fair, gaming is another story since not everything works easily.
Anyway, I doubt Mint is the only distro that doesn’t require much fiddling with.
Things have come a long, long way since the 90s (I was using Mandrake at that time).
For example, the install process for Fedora and Mint are slicker than for Windows if you ask me.
I mean, my kid has been using Linux as her desktop since she was like 10 and she doesn’t seem to have any problems (except ok sure, stupid Nvidia …we went AMD with her new system). Granted she mostly just surfs and plays Minecraft.
I wouldn’t hesitate to set up a non-techie with one of the mainstream, stable distros depending on what they want to use.
I don’t think it is the year of the Linux desktop by any stretch but I do think the numbers will trend slightly up over the next five years as steamdeck-alikes get more popular and more progress is made on compatibility and natively written games, and as Windows enshittification continues.
I’ve personally had poor experiences with Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu, Manjaro and one or two others I’ve tried. Every single one required a few hours of tweaking in the terminal to get it even close to being functional, and I constantly found new things it wouldn’t work with (hardware, software, games, etc)
After about a week of being unable to use my computer as I’d like to (online gaming and photo editing) I went back to Windows.
Weird that so many mainstream distros would be unusable out of the box.
Nothing just works.
I run Linux, not because I think it’s great, but because Windows is awful, and keeps getting worse. Furthermore it keeps abusing its majority market share to get away with increasingly scummy behaviour.
My Linux experience has been a lot more tinker free than Windows. There’s a ton of distros to choose from for the uninvested, my 60 year old mum runs Linux at this point and the only difference is she stopped calling all the time for tech support.
Install Linux Mint with the GUI installer a la windows, done.
You are factually wrong unless you specify a distro. But even arch has arch install now.
Does the audio work? Including the microphone?
What about the Nvidia drivers? Wifi drivers? Printer drivers?
Maybe it works when you don’t do anything with your computer, but most people aren’t like that. Linux just really requires you to tinker more than other OSes. Sometimes that is a good thing, but never for a non-techy.
You will just have to come to terms with that.
I have an arch laptop for work. Out of the box, wifi worked because I needed it for the installation. I never print, strongSwan worked as easy as on windows. Arch minimal does require you to tinker for it to look nice. You are right about that. But honestly theres a package for everything and pacman is easy to use. The biggest issue I had was getting geek fonts or whatever to display in my polybar. Audio worked out of the box.
Edit: and I guess I am being a little untruthful. The regular arch install is easier than windows. I chose minimal because in my opinion vanilla kde is an eyesore and I wanted i3 as a window manager and no desktop at all. But it took me 20 minutes maybe to look up some packages to start with, type them in the given line and I was off. I was ricing for a whole week after. But it was entirely functional without looking pretty.
Everything you listed would be solved if Linux was as mainstream as Windows.
For me, I don’t use Nvidia, WiFi works, old HP printer works, just need to install a package, a 1-year old Canon printer works out of the box on Ubuntu, but on Arch I need to extract the stuff from the driver .deb and place into the it into the right directories. Audio and microphone works flawlessly. This is the case on ASUS ZenBook, an underpowered ASUS Vivobook or something and a 2012 iMac, though on that one I need a modification to
/etc/default/grubto be able to control the brightness.I have never had to worry about wifi drivers, and my microphone has always worked out of the box with my computer.
Proprietary nvidia drivers are a bit trickier, but mostly painless.
Printers work flawlessly for me, I have a modern cheap hp printer, so I had low expectations, but my laptop running mint can print and scan with the built in applications.
What???
Given the size of Estonia, I’ll assume that was the work of one single Linux supersoldier who spent the whole month entering homes at night and installing Linux on whatever computer they could find.
It looks a fish giving bass to mouth. See there’s the first fish on the left sucking the other one off on the right
U sicko
1.19% in Switzerland, so we’re even worse
Go India! duck yeah! Woohoo \o/
Let’s go India
It’s certainly the year of the Linux handheld!
I wonder what portion of that is steam decks.
Me too. As one data point, I don’t use mine to access the web. However, it did get me confident with Linux as a viable choice for my desktop today. I went on to install it dual boot on my main and rarely if ever open Windows. It’s probably a couple months behind in updates.
In the end I just uninstalled windows because every time I opened it, it tried installing all updates and I had to wait 20-30 mins to get to the desktop
And don’t forget the ten different single app updaters because there’s no centralized update system. There’s just so much stuff running all the time.
Hey so I know you deleted the Edge shortcut from your desktop the last three times, but this time I think you’ll really like it, so I added it back!
Winget, the M$ Store and the other PM I forgot the name of (not choco) exists. But it should one day completely replace .exe installers, they aren’t even practical nor secure! There is no moderation like in an app store.
Tbh I prefer individual installation control and don’t really like the Linux store page method. I’d much rather install directly from the developer.
Yeah, I just ended up fully disabling windows updates. Still do most stuff on Linux but only boot windows for some specific games
I had no games that wouldn’t run on linux so windows was just dead weight
Ahhh that’s kind of like how it started for me. Now the things I can do on Linux far outstrip the things I can’t, if I switched back to Windows.
Have you messed around with different desktop environments (DEs) yet? That’s my favourite part of Linux. I can’t imagine using a laptop without tiling window manager
I’m back to Windows unfortunately.
I miss gnome with a passion. I loved the win key overview, it was great for dragging windows across monitors.
Haha no worries, you are not your OS XD
I do hope you give it another shot sometime. I think I dual booted for a couple years before switching over completely, anyway.
To be honest, DEs are one of the biggest things I dislike about trying to use Linux. Nothing works with each other, solutions for one don’t work for another and unless you spend weeks configuring them they all look and function the same.
Windows and Mac are simple. There’s one option, it works well and doesn’t need a bunch of tweaking to make it tolerable (at least to me)
Wow damn 4% holy shit.
My reaction too. This is fantastic!
Until you realise it is mostly steam deck and indian govt office pc running linux.
That’s honestly quite a lot, nice
As much as I hate to say it, I wonder how much of these are Chromebooks
Growth is being driven a lot by the Steam Deck.
This is mostly from browser stats though.
Sure, you can browse on it, but I wouldn’t have thought it enough to skew the numbers in any meaningful way.
Time to Sort the Steam Deck out like ChromeOS, then the Linux market goes back to 2%?
Right? RIGHT?
School districts buy Chromebooks by the thousands. Steam Deck is definitely paving the way in terms of demonstrating a consumer use case for Linux, but I would be shocked if there are even 1/100th the number of them in the wild as there are Chromebooks.
ChromeOS is listed in a separate category.
I have a deck, a few old laptops that have all gone Linux now, and a windows desktop for gaming. The deck being so good, and Windows 11 being so bad, has nearly convinced me to try Linux on the actual desktop.
I think there are still a few games and applications (I’m primarily a C# dev for work) that I “need” Windows for but the case for dropping as much MS from my life as possible has never been stronger.
I do C# dev for work also but use Linux. You’ll have to use Rider for Visual Studio and Datagrip for Sql Server Management Studio. Only drawback I have is that Edit and Continue only works on dotnet > 8.0.
You might need to do a tiny bit of extra support for the launchsettings.json since you’ll need to launch with kestrel server instead of IIS Express.
Legacy dotnet will need an old Ubuntu/Whatever so some docker knowledge may be required since MS didn’t release a snap/flatpak of dotnet yet. 🖕
I use Linux for gaming and dev with a highly customized KDE+bash setup and I love it. :)
I can’t speak for everyone but I used to say “I can’t drop windows because I need XYZ programs all the time”.
Well turns out I don’t, and turns out it’s surprisingly easy to tell my employer (well my professor really, I am a PhD student) “Sorry I can’t run that program, I don’t have windows”. If they don’t accept it, they can supply me with a windows PC.
It looks like ChromeOS is reported separately in those stats
Some of it’s India.
It looks like Linux will be mainstream in India in the next decade. I’m excited since a small fraction of the incredible amount of users will become distro developers.
Sadly there aren’t even Indian manufacturers with linux preinstalled. I’ve heard of starlabs, slimbook, tuxedo, system76 etc. only to find out that most doesn’t ship to india and are not availiable in the stores like flipkart, amazon and local stores, where most of people computers. Still, still India is at 15% now and what if market already has linux preinstalled systems!
Schools LOVE chromebooks
I moved to Linux last year, but from a Mac so not sure how much I’m moving needles.
Not much especially if you set up the desktop environment to mimic Mac os. Unless you do pc gaming, then depending on your hardware you get a big boost in available titles.
I use both and have my desktop setup to look like my work Mac. It’s about the same TBH. Gaming is much better on Linux tho. But more biz apps ‘just work’ on OSX.
I switched to Ubuntu 22.04 on 2023-12-31. I had used a bunch of other distros back in 2008-2012, then got tired of manually tweaking things constantly. Things have come a long way and there are way more options to make things work. I don’t have to spend hours on the CLI or reboot frequently.
So yeah, I’m going to stick with Ubuntu for a bit, then switch to something else.
These days, you probably won’t need all that tweaking.
I’d recommend Linux Mint.
Honestly Debian would be a better choice if you want a rock solid stable experience.
True that. However, Linux Mint may have a better out-of-box experience.
Note: Debian is my favorite distro.
Linux Mint Debian Edition looks like a common ground for you two ;)
Unless you’re using nvidia :')
… which is why I’m still on Ubuntu. Debian was my first love with Linux. Still have it on a ton of servers. Also have a weird USB video card (Display Link) for my 4th monitor. So I don’t feel like switching, everything just works RN. If I was to jump, it’d be for Nix and all it’s new hotness.
Fedora with Cinnamon desktop has been gooood to me. Admittedly it’s on a Thinkpad
Isn’t Linux Mint just green Ubuntu?
Without snaps
Entire different desktop environment+no snap+yes flatpak+nice community+light
Man I still suck at NixOS and it has it’s kinks/learning curve, but if you’re tired of tweaking things constantly the nice thing about NixOS is all your little tweaks get recorded into a single file which builds your base OS into your particular configuration. So after you tweak it and get it right, you’ll never have to tweak it again even if you change computers
That doesn’t sound too different from the regular Unix paradigm where all your config is stored in your home directory. I’ve wiped my root partition many times over the last decade but usually everything in my desktop environment is just the same as it was. Aside from migration of dotfiles into .config which was honestly overdue.
Unless NixOS is kind of like Ansible and is a build script for the whole system, package management and all? Haven’t tried it myself.
My concern would be slow buildup of unused packages if that’s the case. It’s nice to wipe out that junk on an upgrade.
I haven’t used Ansible but it sounds pretty much like that, basically you write out all the packages you want in a config and it builds the system from that. Very nice in terms of stability and maintainability. I’m very much an amateur so I can’t say for sure but I think the unused package issue would still exist on nix.
Exactly, like ansible.
Unused packages aren’t typically a problem unless you imperatively change your systems state. Otherwise, If you remove it from your configuration.nix, it’s removed when you switch to your next build. Previous builds/generations keep those versions of those packages, which wastes space, but you can specify garbage collection to remove generations older than a month
My only complaint so far is the best way to properly make a development shell for a python project is either with a still somewhat experimental feature called flakes, or a 3rd party solution poetry2nix. Im probably going to switch to using docker/podman for python projects.
On the other hand, pip is the worst package manager, so being incentivized away from it is kind of a plus
The repo at the link doesn’t really explain where the data is from, does anyone know?
The URL saves ‘statcounterdata’ so maybe from https://gs.statcounter.com?
Which has Linux at just under 4% for Jan 2024, and if you include Chrome OS then it’s over 5%. link
Statcounter provides free analytics by embedding their code in your site. And their stats come from aggregating all the data from all the sites that use their analytics.
Wonder if Linux users block Statcounter at a higher rate than other OS users.
I’d assume uBlock Origin blocks it by default?
I’d think there’s a pretty high chance!
But also I wonder if Linux users are more likely to stray off Instagram and TikTok onto smaller sites that might use Statcounter?
Great point! :)
I’m trying my very best to love Linux but I’m having so much trouble with Mint.
I’m running a Mint vm on a proxmox to try it out and for some reason my back button and forward button on my mouse maps to the scroll wheel. The scroll wheel is mapped correctly. I installed Spice to improve performance and so far it’s amazing, but the mouse is annoying.
If I run RDP, it works perfectly, but the lag is too annoying.
Does anyone here have suggestions? Thanks.
If I were you I would install Mint on a second drive.
Pretty sure your issues aren’t with Mint they’re with the virtualization platform.
You can get a cheap $40 SSD and install the OS on that.
Be sure to unplug the windows drive before installing Mint to the other drive. Then plug the Win drive back in. Now you can use the bios boot menu to boot into either.
Be sure to unplug the windows drive before installing Mint to the other drive.
Why would you do that? Totally unnecessary. When Windows is already installed any Linux installation respects it without issues. The problem is the other way around, if you install Linux first and then install Windows afterwards on a second partition/drive it nukes your Linux bootloader.
Especially in times of M.2 drives (which are often behind the GPU) you only annoy people by telling them to unplug their Windows drive first. And they might want to use a second partition on that drive if it’s bigger.
always unplug the windows drive I’ve fucked my windows bootloader so many times because if your windows drive shows up in drive order before your Linux drive it’ll fuck with it
All I can read is “I don’t know how to install linux”
I would do that because the last time I tried installing a new distro it fucked my windows bootloader. So your statement isn’t universally true, sorry to say. I have only had this issue once on one distro. I have not spent the time digging into the underlying cause yet. It may well be distro related. I figured I would save a noob a potential gotcha, however.
I’ve run Mint in Virtual Box on Windows with no issues. Really though, the move from Windows to Mint is best done on bare metal.
Any OS is kinda garbage on VM. I tried to run windows in a VM on my linux, the performance is pure garbage, usbs are tricky and so on
Make sure to enable hardware virtualization on your BIOS/UEFI, and install guest additions.
Ya, its a proxmox box. Its sorta required that I do this.
This is a problem of Spice an not Mint, as the protocol (last time I checked) does not know of these extra buttons.
That actually too bad since Spice is the fastest vnc I have ever used. I guess I’m stuck looking for another VNC.
I used to have a mouse with forward and back buttons and they seemed to work fine.
Have you tried dual booting on bare metal? I’m thinking it could be VM weirdness, since using something else makes it work fine.
I’m pretty sure it’s the proxmox that is making it weird.
My work revolves around using Win11. I have a 3rd screen dedicated to Mint so I can easily switch between systems without much effort.
I think the issue is Spice. It runs the quickest with almost zero lag, but my mouse isn’t perfect. RDP works but there is input lag. I guess I can try another VNC to see if things improve.
I build your solution some time ago and wasn’t impressed, too.
I actually run fedora on work an virtualized my win partition with “p2v” into a cow2 file. Now if I need windows I run it via qemu.
My work is 70% Windows, 20% Mac, 10% Linux. I manage website optimization and use the different systems for testing.
Why do you like Fedora more?
If you get a reasonable amount of downtime off of work, you might be able to set up Mint and run Windows in a VM if you really need to. I feel like that might work better. I’m not sure though as I haven’t virtualised an OS in years.
If the problem is spice it might still be a problem though.
That’s not a bad idea. Would I just run wine for the VM?
Ya I guess I can try using RDP or some other VNC. Might be better than using Spice.
GNU/Linux has VM platforms too. But you can run individual things in WINE and see if they work too. I think GNOME Boxes works fine. I’m not sure if it would suit your needs but you can try it.
Thank you!
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I know you deleted your comment, but running a Linux server is not the same as using Linux as a pure desktop environment. I’m not going to surf a website using proxmox.
Yes, deleted because it didn’t really make sense in the desktop context. But proxmox has a debian derivate unter the hood I think, so everything apart from the DE seems to be fine for you already. That was my point I think. And actually that is what makes the biggest difference with Linux imho, the UIs are pretty standardized these days. Windows, buttons, mouse, unless you specifically want to go fancy. Because you mention web browsing specifically: that is actually the same, isn’t it? Firefox or chromium, not sure how that would complicate things?
Does the mouse need drivers? You could search for the model name and “Linux drivers” to see if the company offers anything
Its a logitech G502SE. It doesn’t look like it has drivers. I also had problems with a logitech steering wheel when I was running Mint on bare metal. Just not a very linux friendly company.
Ah yeah, that’s been my experience too with Logitech. Such a shame because they make some pretty good peripherals.
I guess it makes sense. Why make peripherals for 4% of the population?
you could try installing antimicrox I had to install it for my azeron keypad to even work for some reason I don’t remember why it was a long time ago
I installed something similar to this called “Input Mapper”. The problem is the mouse key is not differentiating from the scroll inputs. So I can’t remap something that isn’t there.
I switched to Linux last year so I’m doing my part
Same, hearing about all the changes that Microsoft tried to push into Win11 was what convinced me that I needed to switch.
After Windows 11 came out, I said HELL NO! The whole UI and look of everything is just so awful. I feel bad for my fellow lads who are stuck on Windows still. The only people I get annoyed with are the ones who glorify Windows. Look I’m not forcing people to switch their OS, but god please don’t glorify Windows spying features and say ‘I don’t have anything to hide’. Just say fuck it and make the switch, take back control of your life! RISE THE FUCK UP!
Wow, I was just going to ask if it was 2% a couple years ago, then checked the link. That is a really fast increase.
“Unknown” goes from 3 to 6% in the same time period, so I think technically it’s the year of the Unknown desktop. Sounds catchier, if you ask me.
That’s true, mystery is exciting!
Really curious about all those “unknown”. Solid piece out of everybody.
Year of the TempleOS Desktop
I would bet it’s a mix of win/Linux with people don’t spoofing their system. Mac users don’t hide using a Mac, well, they are doing more like the opposite.
Where do they get their data?
Web trackers
Can’t you see it’s memes
You can’t just drop this hot take without at least some evidence backing it up, even in memes.
