I hope this growth snowballs from now on; larger market share → developers release Linux versions for their software → users have less reasons to keep Windows → larger market share. Basically, a network-like effect.
If Linux reaches ~25% we basically won; the only advantage Windows has at its disposal is that network-like effect - Linux is cheaper (literally free), less encumbered by anti-user restrictions, and you can run it even in a potato.
That isn't Windows only advantage. It is "easier" to use in the sense that it has less choices, especially if you have been using it in business for decades. You know it well enough to get around, with no concerns about different app names/icons/etc. Im not talking about chrome ot adobe either, im talking "what is the folder program called and why does it look like that" problems.
Most people give no shits about computers. They use what they know, if they use it at all. It's why "phones and the occasional tablet" are by far the majority of most people's home computers now.
Linux wont win until it wins offices. That will be where the snowball starts. The greay thing though is linix doesnt need to "win." It can just be excellent and continue to be a much needed check on capitalism's race to constrain our freedoms by enshittifing everything they can for profit.
No one uses phones or tablets for actual work. They're just media consumption and mobile interface devices. When people need to get shit done they sit down with a keyboard and mouse. That's why they call them workstations.
Workstations are used at work, which is the main gist of my comment above.
Linux has picked up the low hanging fruit, i.e nerds and gamers who have actual computers at home. It wont win over some mythical "everyday home computer user" because they dont exist anymore.
For Linux to truly "snowball," it needs a serious, fully seemless office replacement that has to be better than "odt by default" libreoffice. Until it can pick off the office clients, it will not win.
Still, it doesn't need to. Pick up that nerd/gamer/granny dont care how she gets to chrome subset. That's fantastic for linux, and will still drive innovation enough.
It wont win over some mythical "everyday home computer user" because they dont exist anymore.
I don't even know what you're talking about. The vast majority of people are interacting with a workstation on a daily basis. The only mythical users are the ones that exclusively use phones and tablets.
For Linux to truly "snowball," it needs a serious, fully seemless office replacement
No one uses Office applications on their local machines anymore. Everything is done in the browser.
Matter of fact, a large majority of all work is done in the browser. Computers have, for a long time, been glorified Facebook machines. Look at how many people use Chrome OS that doesn't even support any local software at all...
The vast majority of people interact with workstations every day? I don't think the vast majority of people have office jobs on earth, but I won't belabor the point.
Those people that use a computer at work are using windows, or in rare cases, macs. Linux is almost non existent because the work ecosystem isn't there, and likely wont be there because of office suites and other tooling.
No one uses Office applications on their local machines anymore.
Hilarious. Guess I'll let the thousands of people I work with who I know use Office via an app know they dont exist.
Matter of fact, a large majority of all work is done in the browser. Computers have, for a long time, been glorified Facebook machines. Look at how many people use Chrome OS that doesn't even support any local software at all...
Yeah to facebook machines, which is why most people don't have PCs anymore when phones will do. The above doesnt apply to buisnesses, and im honestly baffled that you think it does.
Most businesses have Windows apps that are used all day every day, generally numbering in the hundreds or thousands depending on the scope of the enterprise.
Since they will stick on Windows because of this, and there are no more home pcs out there outside the gamer/nerds/granniss, the rapid Linux gain will drop off again, and that's okay. The Linux eco system is vibrant, accessible and interesting. That's enough.
Well yes, but no. The older generations (millenials) do this but Gen-Z does not really knowhow to use a computer and often enough doesn't want to use one. This problem will probably become even worse with the even younger generations.
I just installed Mint the other day. I was pussy footing around with trying to create a persistent USB drive but the bootloader was fighting me. I finally just hovered over the "wipe drive and install" button for a while before I finally clicked and let it rip. Never again M$.
dual booting would be a pain in the ass, both setting it up and post-setup
Dual booting is dumb easy with most Linux installers. I've been dual booting two different Linux partitions for years.
Do you use different harddrives for your partitions? Because that might be the reason you dont have that much problems. From what I heard windows likes to wipe all boot entries that aren't windows and are located on the same drive.
Nope same hard drive, but windows hasn't touched my PC in nearly a decade, so that's probably why I never have issues.
Setup is piss easy, just hit install. The real pain is the random Windows update that will wipe all boot entries that aren’t Microsoft’s
That was the conclusion that pushed me over.
I think the best solution is to just have Windows on other drive, that way it shouldn't touch Linux drive's bootloader.
I first tried Ubuntu then switched to pop os and haven't looked back. Feels great to be free of MS.
I wanted to visualize this, so:
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└────────────────────────────────────────┘
2010 2030
It's not precise; I took the text
After getting to 1% in approximately 2011, it took about a decade to double that to 2%. The jump from 2% to 3% took just over two years, and 3% to 4% took less than a year
and converted it to:
2011,1
2021,2
2023,3
2024,4
2025,6
Since my mobile client renders the terminal output poorly,
Proof that Linux use is rising asymptotically, and there will be infinity Linux users by 2030.
Every child born is a new Linux user
I'm eagerly waiting this rise. We run a proprietary CAD that always had a Unix \ Linux version in parallel with Windows, it was the better option once W10 took over W7 because W10 made it run slow and Linux version was peppy...Fast forward a few years and CAD vendor kills Linux GUI version citing only 1% usage globally. So here's me hoping they start reversing that decision.
With recent articles claiming some games run better on Linux, I could see this sort of jump actually being possible
6% now that’s what I like to hear! It’s time for developers to make Linux first native apps!
Omg there are so many of them out there already, even I just released one a couple of weeks ago: https://jeena.github.io/recoder/
Check out GNOME Circle for high profile apps: https://circle.gnome.org/ Or KDE Applications: https://apps.kde.org/ and so on.
Let's all set our user-agent to 2001 WinXP running IE
My first operating system was AmigaOS 1.3, then I didn't have a computer through my teenage years and only in 2001 I bought a PC and a magacine with a Suse Linux CD in it which I installed on that PC. But I couldn't get the 56k modem to work with it because some drivers were missing. So I had to switch for a year to Windows 2000 (or 98, I don't remember). But then I had a girlfriend who had a PC which was connected to the internet via ADSL, so I could do the research on that her computer while installing Debian on my computer from a 3.5 inch floppy disk (I found a network installer which fit on the disk). So I only had to use Windows for about a year.
There was another exception where I had a MacBook from 2008 to 2012 but other than that I've been on Linux for most of my life. Oh and I use Arch btw.
I've switched both my laptop and desktop over to Linux (Bazzite and Fedora respectively) in the last 6 months.
The last time I tried to daily Linux (over a decade ago) I ended up switching back eventually, but this time I really don't think I'll need to. All of the games I play most often work perfectly, the dev tooling is even better than it is on Windows, and the hardware compatibility side has been completely flawless.
Gone are the days of having to hunt down obscure Linux drivers for your touchpad or webcam. Everything just works out of the box.
Yeah but we also NEED & I emphasize NEED to teach the newcomers the way of the Libre/FOSS/LinuxJutsu in the most welcoming way as possible.
Not like those ArchLinux clowns
idk man I jumped straight in with cachy(arch based), and its great, I went back and tried other distros this month, back to cachyos its solid, (def had some weird issues with freezes reinstalling tho, had to redo it a few times, no idea what screwed it up, but ive had similar issues with windows where reinstalling took 4 hours not like 10 minutes.
I really like their defaults and post install gaming packages speeds things up. I thought endeavor wasn't bad either, just would have to manually seek the few things I need for gaming.
I think what was most confusing was des and distros and the difference between them bit ebing clear to me. Like I thought you needed certain distros for des (obv it does help to pick the right version and install with that in mind, but most popular ones allow you to use most des) Des and customization was what I cared about and the options confused me once I finally picked cachyos thinking it and plasma were one in the same lol. I mean its pretty obvious once you look it up but from the outside perspective the de seems like a part of each and it seems like you pick the os for the look/de when its just partially that, more like their theming and app selection pertaining to the look.
I just like the aur wiki and repo, most apps have a package on there that is up to date and works well, mixed with flathub it covers 99% of things. Debtap another .5% Big fear coming to Linux was compatibility, so many different app formats, I just wanted to be able to download anything I see thats for linux and have it work by default, mostly covered by aur + flathub.
id prob reccomend bazzite to someone new tho, flathubs just solid, immutable sounds like a good idea, I just dont want to lose the aur and pacman personally so its arch forever now
Is that because Linux run on more desktop computers, or just that there's less desktop computers (and laptops) overall? When everybody switches to smartphones and AR/VR, and there's bunch of geeks running Linux on their old rusty desktop setups, is that really something that should be celebrated?
There aren't less laptops and desktops. Sure, there are more smartphones and tablets, and laptops are being used more than desktops. But desktop, keyboards, laptops, mice, monitors, etc. Manufacturing hasn't slowed down, it keeps accelerating steadily. IT spending has grown year over year steadily for more than a decade. Last year alone there were more than 240 million desktops shipped, a growth from the previous year. The AI bubble caused a spike in PC production that had been previously declining slowly.
Recently made the switch myself. Didn’t want to throw a way a perfectly fine for what I need computer because Microsoft doesn’t like it.
Article doesn’t actually explain what distribution people are downloading and installing. How do we know it isn’t the growth of SteamOS and the Steam Deck driving this?
SteamOS is also linux desktop, so I'd expect it to be included.
Don’t Steam Decks get counted as SteamOS?
SteamOS is Valve's Linux-based operating system. It features a seamless user experience optimized for gaming,
Right and so is Android but we don’t consider people with an Android phone to be “Linux users” even though they’re technically using Linux.
I'd argue that Android is not a desktop OS, but SteamOS is.
That doesn’t really matter to the point I’m making. Some Android users do things like install AOSP after building it themselves from source or install one of many custom open source Android distributions such as LineageOS or YAAP. I would consider this type of person much more of a Linux user than a person who buys a SteamDeck and just plays games on it.
The key difference for me is that a Linux user is aware of the open source movement around Linux and at least engages in some aspect of the open source community. They don’t have to become a software developer or a contributor or even a hacker. They just have to be aware of the fact that they’re using Linux (regardless of the name of the distribution they’re using), that Linux is open source, and that they can (and do, at least in some small way) exercise some of the freedoms of open source that are afforded to them.
A person who buys a SteamDeck and merely plays games on it might be aware that it’s running Linux (they might’ve heard it from someone else) but if they don’t care about that and don’t engage with any of the things that make it Linux then they might as well be using a proprietary OS (or even using a dishwasher with Linux on it for that matter).
We're talking about the 6% market share Linux holds in >desktop< usage. Not about how somebody is aware of what OS they are using.
It doesn't matter if people who buy a steam deck is not aware he's using a linux desktop OS...
A lot of appliances use a linux kernel (I would assume), but that does not make it a desktop OS.
If someone buys a Steam Deck and uses it only to play games then would you say they’re acting as a desktop computer user?
SteamOS is straight up x86 gnu/Linux (immutable arch based)
Android while still Linux based has many differences
Yes but what I’m getting at here is much more cultural than technical. While we all applaud the growth of Linux that doesn’t necessarily translate into more people who are actually “Linux users” like the type of folks who would join this community.
Someone who simply runs SteamOS on a computer or handheld just so they can play games (basically a game console) doesn’t actually care that they’re running Linux and doesn’t actually learn anything about Linux, so I wouldn’t consider them a Linux user anymore than I would for an Android user.
By your logic people who only use Windows to game aren't Windows users.
This is a stupid purity test you're running on.
No, I’m making a distinction between “Linux market share” and growing the Linux community. Nothing to do with purity and everything to do with what’s really important here.
Developers best we can do is exe or dmg
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
Original icon base courtesy of [email protected] and The GIMP