I can list the biggest one without having to look: Because the most popular alternative has progressively gotten worse for the past 12 years, and what was once a quality OS (sure,it had its faults and flaws, but I'll concede that Win7 was objectively a good OS) has now morphed into a combination of spyware and adware.
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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Microsoft being uninterested in Windows Desktop and focusing on Saas and the cloud is indeed the first bullet point.
- Microsoft isn't that interested in Windows
- Linux gaming, thanks to Steam, is also growing
- Users are finally figuring out that some Linux distros are easy to use
- Finding and installing Linux desktop software is easier than ever
- The Linux desktop is growing in popularity in India
I get the sense that Microsoft doesn’t care about their desktop users and as much as views desktop as another small side market.
MacOS only runs on their particular hardware, so Linux is free to gobble up market share limited mainly by user technical know how and the general shift to most web traffic coming from mobile.
Users aren't finding it out. The distros just actually got usable and stopped being super elitists.
Also the updates situation has caused many to dislike Windows.
Linux is a perfectly viable OS at this point, it's not just for tech geeks. I did have a problem with my USB Wi-Fi adapter during the install but other than that everything was just as smooth and less creepy than Microsoft.
what was once a quality OS (sure,it had its faults and flaws, but I’ll concede that Win7 was objectively a good OS) has now morphed into a combination of spyware and adware.
The last objectively good Microsoft OS that didn't have any significant user-hostile features was Windows 2000, IMO. Windows 7 -- specifically, before invasive "telemetry[sic]" started getting backported to it from 10 -- was just the last version before the hostility got bad enough to get me to switch.
The last objectively good Microsoft OS that didn't have any significant user-hostile features was Windows 2000, IMO
Hard agree. Windows 2000 was rock solid, reasonably lightweight and had no shenanigans going on in the background. It's EOL (edit: actually I think it might have been a specific version of directx only being supported on XP maybe) was one of the things that pushed me to Linux.
That and the native Linux Unreal Tournament 2004.
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10 was bad. 11 is... awful.
I'm running it on my daily driver / gaming rig to learn its flaws and how to work around them, because work may be moving that direction. My hardware, my license, not like they can stop me.
I've never had more problems with any OS than 11 on day to day stability issues. Vista? At least it had direct X 10. 8? Yeah, a total design fuck up, but even supporting it professionally I never had this many problems.
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That's 1. point in the article
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- Users are finally figuring out that some Linux distros are easy to use
so recommending arch linux to newbies was counter productive all along?
suprised_pikachu.bmp
I refuse to accept that. The ArchWiki is super well documented, so there should be no issues for newbies!
Yes, the arch wiki is very good and useful. The issue is, that you need the wiki in the first place. In a user-friendly distro everything would either work OOTB, or it could be done intuitively via GUI.
how far can you get in arch without opening the terminal?
Uhhh, how long was the first boot time?
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What do you mean, arch is one of the easy to use ones
I was hesitant on recommending this to my cousin who isn't as tech savvy as I am. I recommended LMDE instead. I hope nothing goes wrong.
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A major reason that Windows is “popular” is because it’s pre-installed on desktops and laptops. Users don’t have a choice when they go to the store to buy a laptop for doing banking stuff or save pictures from their old camcorder.
It’s the same way with browsers. IE was “popular”, but only because that was the browser that was pre-installed on Windows. The IE browser was complete shit.
Imagine a "Choose your Browser"-style pop-up, but for your OS on first boot. I'd really love to see it, partially mostly for the amount of pure chaos it would cause.
This is a good idea.
Honestly, it really is. Lots of people prefer a specific browser, for different reasons. And a lot of people use more than 1 browser as well.
It could be similar to the 'choose your search engine' was supposed to help against googles monopoly (in eu) https://i.imgur.com/3wS6Sai.png
however i dont see this coming to windows or macos, because of those companies focus on being the only company in the world. but this could easily be used on linux. (even though most users of linux prefer firefox, i'd guess)
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When people build new gaming pc they still choose to install windows, because everything just works.
That's not the segment I am talking about. I'm talking about "regular folks", who know nothing about IT, but need a laptop for whatever reason. Checking their bank, mail... That's the majority of Windows users. Not the PC builder. They probably don't even know what "Windows" is, if you asked them.
If Linux were pre-installed on PC's, most people wouldn't even notice a difference, because all they need is a browser and maybe an office suite, for very simple work.
I've said this before, but if there was a basic distro that named programs things like Internet Browser and Letter Writer, a massive amount of normal computer users could be switched fairly easily.
The vast majority of people use their computer to launch a browser and maybe use a word processor every now and then. It's why the Chromebook type laptops are so popular - they do everything that most people want.
Gaming PC means video games, video games have historically been Windows or maybe Mac compatible. Only in the past couple years have game makers started making Linux compatibility a priority, and even then its a small percentage.
Until all systems align, Windows will continue to dominate. But things like HTML5 over Flash are helping those efforts!
Most things*
Definitely not everything.
In theory, in the EU, as well as some other places, you have the right to get refunded for Windows if you don't want it. In practice that's often hard to pull off in most shops.
A major reason that Windows is “popular” is because it’s pre-installed on desktops and laptops
I think thats being a bit disingenuous
its also that Windows has always been easy to use because it has an good GUI thats easy to navigate and figure things out with. You can sit anyone in front of a windows machine and they can figure out how to use it and what to do in relatively short order without spending half the time in internet searches or trying to decipher esoteric terminal commands. Its easily one of the best point/click/discover UIs as far as OS's go.
And its understandable that it easy, considering they've probably poured billions of dollars into making the GUI easy to understand and use for any layperson since windows 95 began development and the move away from dos command line.
Sadly their GUI started to decline with Windows 10, and I have not touched 11 with a 10 foot pole, so I dont know how good/bad it is..but I wouldnt be surprised if its worse than 10.
I think you are partially right, but I think the only reason Windows is easier for the user, is because they are pre-exposed to Windows.
If you took someone, who has zero knowledge of any OS or its GUI, I honestly doubt that Windows would be better.
It’s the same if you take a person who has only known MacOS their whole life and ask them to navigate in Windows… or vice versa… You won’t see positive results.
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I wish installing linux for non-technical people using windows were as easy as downloading an .exe and walking through an installation wizard. Something that gave very very simple instructions, backed up their stuff, rebooted to install linux with the chosen settings, and restored their backup into linux.
IMO if it were that simple or as simple as double clicking an .exe and hitting Install Linux (with default settings) that did all of the above with a default distro set by the installer, more people would be willing to install linux.
And non of that Gnome shit. Drop them into a distro with a DE configured to look like windows (probably KDE or Cinnamon).
Anti Commercial AI thingy
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0Non tech savvy people don't install windows or macos either. Everything comes pre-installed with the machine you buy.
If you make it to the point where you kinda know what Rufus and an iso file are, Pop! OS and Mint are easier to install than Windows.
I suppose a program could be made that partitions your OS drive and installs a distro on the second partition with a dual boot selection screen on next boot, but if you're at the point where you're curious enough about Linux to try it, you've probably learned enough to use Rufus and an iso file.
The answer is system integrators need to pre install and actively support one of the more friendly distros (like Valve with SteamOS on the deck) or it'll never catch on.
Simple users don't care what OS you present them with, as long as it's already there and it's easy to use.
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I think the best we can do is "easier to install than Windows." Which it currently is, barring the fact most devices ship with Windows pre-installed. If you're a PC or gaming enthusiast and you've built your own computer from spare parts, installing Linux is a similar though more streamlined process than Windows.
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As much as I'd like to see Linux gaining traction, I have a hard time believing market share is as high as StatCounter reported in some places. For example in Canada, Linux usage is at 1.99%, which even still seems high to me. That's 1 in every 50 desktops. Anecdotally I can think of only 3 people, including myself, who primarily run Linux on desktop. In corporate environments, I have only ever seen Windows, or sometimes Macs deployed to employees. Even with the hate on Windows 11, it still works for most people, so they upgrade to it (begrudgingly, if they care at all), or simply buy a new computer for it. I truly wonder who else out there is running desktop Linux here in Canada...
That being said, I am less skeptical of the growth in users in India, but not for the reason the author listed. I think it's more likely that it is growing in popularity due to its cost (ie, free), as well as the fact that many distros are more lightweight than Windows, which especially benefits older or cheaper hardware. India is still a developing country and I'd imagine many don't have the resources to buy the latest hardware, and instead will make do with what they have or what they can afford. I think this will continue to be a boon for Linux in the developing world as Windows is not getting cheaper or faster.
Overall, I think Linux has nowhere to go but up. Once Windows 10 finally goes EoL, we may see more people looking to make the switch.
That being said, I am less skeptical of the growth in users in India, but not for the reason the author listed. I think it's more likely that it is growing in popularity due to its cost (ie, free), as well as the fact that many distros are more lightweight than Windows, which especially benefits older or cheaper hardware.
Most Windows in India is pirated. Microsoft doesn't care unless you're a big company. The second point is true. Another reason is that schools shifted to Ubuntu 10-15 years ago, and government departments are now shifting to Linux.
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That’s 1 in every 50 desktops. Anecdotally I can think of only 3 people, including myself
Can you name 147 people using Windows? If you can, then that's 1 in every 50. Of course, people you know are probably the technical sort that are more likely to pay attention to their OS, but still you'd need to be able to individually name 147 Windows users just to match the 1 in 50 stat. Point I'm trying to make is that one in 50 really is not very many!
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There's still some stuff I'm tied to Windows for, namely music players (MusicBee and Apple Music but they can be used in a VM) and VR. But it's nice to see Linux growing.
music players??
What music player is tying you to Windows?
MusicBee. Tried it on WINE. Not great. Linux players also don't do a lot of what MusicBee does OOTB, and if they do it's not as seamless as MusicBee. (tag hierarchies are the main thing, but the playlist functionality is also good.)
Thankfully it runs fine in a virtual machine.
Musicbee was the only thing keeping me from switching for years. Simply put, it's the best music player and even better is that it's open source.
AFAIK MusicBee isn't open source, just Freeware. Which is fair enough if the dev doesn't want to, but also a bit frustrating personally, as people could've improved Linux support considerably if it was.
Bruh, just use Spotify or VLC, XD. But VR, I think I can understand.
vlc sucks for music because it doesn't have gapless playback, and not everyone wants to use a streaming service.
My music player suggestions for local playback on Linux. Please note that you could pick any of these no matter the desktop environment if you do not care about consistently in look and feel. In that case I suggest to go with Strawberry.
- On GTK environments: Rhythmbox, Exaile
- On QT environments: Strawberry, Clementine and somewhere next year Amarok should be through its revival that KDE has announced not too long ago.
I'd add Quod Libet as another solid GTK pick, though I'm happily using it on KDE.
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Not to mention, Apple Music is so much better than Spotify for my needs and Cider isn't cutting it for me right now. Once they're not as reliant on MusicKit, I might give it a go again.
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I wish it was friendlier to Nvidia (though, that's no fault of the Linux community), because that's the one hangup for me. I built my rig just a couple years ago around the 3060ti, and the spotty/shoddy support provided by Nvidia (again, not at all the fault of the Linux community) keeps me where I am in the world of Windows.
Hopefully, NVK can successfully remove that barrier for folks like me, because I run Linux on every other computer I own, and it's looking very promising that it may be the case sooner than later.
i'm using a 3070 currently, my next GPU will 100% be AMD.
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I moved to Linux on my desktop back in 2019. I was sick of my slightly old (4 year old) processor running constantly at 20 to 30 percent utilization.
During COVID, there were times I worked from home and did so successfully on Linux.
Gaming was one of the big for me as well but the transition to Linux was not really that painful. There was only one of two games that I had to leave behind, and even then, I was able to set up Looking Glass to play them occasionally (definitely not a task for a regular end user).
I think some people are too comfortable with MS Office to migrate, if anything, I think Office isa bigger barrier to Linux adoption than Windows is. After all, the are plenty of comments saying "Windows 10... Bad. Windows 11... Worse!" There are no comments focusing on the Office suite being bad.
Because honestly, Office is pretty great for what it does.
I know a lot of folks here can't get over it being proprietary or all the other anticompetitive stuff Microsoft has done with Office, but once we got M365 at work, a lot of my work life got a lot easier.
Any time I have tried to use LibreOffice or other alternatives, I feel like I'm giving up ten years' worth of quality of life improvements. That's generally my experience with 99% of FOSS stuff - fully functional but dogshit to navigate and use.