this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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I believe I said it in a different post but 2023 was the year of the Linux desktop. Hardware like Bluetooth and webcams just work. Applications and games have gotten so much easier install thanks to Flatpak and Steam.
Now Plasma 6 is upon us. HDR could be supported this year. At this point avoid Linux only if it's missing a specific app you need.
I like Linux, and I don't plan to use anything else, but yesterday my internet broke because swapping the GPU changed the name of the network interface
That is pretty annoying. I'm thinking of buying a new GPU myself. My Internet also runs off PCIE so I could go through the same thing as well? I wish I had another GPU to try this out.
I did look it up, it seems to come from the way BIOS names resources. Im surprised software such as Network Manager does not pick up on stuff like this.
It certainly could happen. You won't have a problem, either NM will figure it out or you can easy change the network manually. It's just that Linux is inaccessible to a typical person until stuff like that doesn't happen:
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only if itβs missing a specific app you need.
Like most video games.
I mean most video games just work and I game on my machine daily. The ones that dont are limited to weird kernel based anticheats and that is very few games out of the millions of games out there.
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This site is really unrealiable. It is based on browser's user agent. It has spikes like this regurally and always Linux community talks about it.
Yeah, there's some heavy hopium in this discussion. "What if Linux has exponential growth forever, 40% every quarter?" type garbage.
LibreWolf fakes user agent to show as Windows 10.
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Desktop linux has become great since I first tried installing it in 2002. I remember being in my barracks and I had to switch back to windows because I had no way to get the modem drivers I needed.
As amazing as the linux desktop experience has become, windows has really done this to itself. The windows experience 10 years ago was 'fine'. Like it wasn't amazing, it could be improved upon, but it did what it needed to do without bothering the user much.
Windows the OS has lost the thread completely. Its a travesty. I no longer recommend for non-power users to build their own PC (I've helped several family members who were going down the "I want a powerful computer, should I buy a mac?" direction and would steer them to build-a-pc+windows) strictly because Windows has become something entirely different than an operating system. Unfortunately, no Linux desktop experience is quite to the point where I could recommend it and not-expect to get a constant barrage of calls from a family member when they need to install a basic piece of software or their blue tooth headphones wont connect. Because of what Windows has decided to become, after decades of being anti-mac because of their 'ecosystem'/ anti-collaborative approach, I've turned a corner and now recommend Macs for non-power users, but linux for every one else.
This increase in popularity has the potential to create a sea-change in that regard, especially if we can get people to support (financially) the teams that are putting these distros together. I really need a linux distro to recommend that won't get me calls where I have to hop in and figure out why an nvidia driver that was working suddenly stopped working, what the hell is blueman doing, issues with audio drivers, issues with software compatibility.
Like I cant reasonably put my MIL on a linux laptop that I put together for her and expect her to have a good experience. So she gets a mac. But my nieces and nephews? No they are starting linux from day 0.
While I get the βwindows badβ point, linux works for your mother in law a lot better than for you because point and click has always worked well for linux from the reports I read. Please do not steer the tech illiterate to apple. It is dumbed down exactly to attract these figures. If you install a stable distro and dont go with need newest everything that linux elitists spew around, youβre golden. System76 and Tuxedo Computers are the way to go as far as I can see atm. They even have their consumer ready builds of linux.
I've had two System76's. Neither was a fricitonless experience. Its MUCH better than it used to be. But its not frictionless. I
If you arent committed to doing your own tech support, and lots of it, don't expect things to go smoothly. They are way better than boutique linux distros, but by no means are they perfect.
We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking something is some way when it isn't, just because we wish it was. The Linux desktop experience is 100x smoother than it was 25 years ago. The Linux desktop experience this year is 10x better than it was 10 years ago. But its still not quite there yet. Its not frictionless. It doesn't 'just work', when people need to use software like MS office or teams. If I put someone on Linux who isn't committed to the work it takes to run Linux (and it takes work; its easier than ever, but it takes work), I've just created an 'anti-linux' user; some one who will never be convinced to convert because they had a negative experience. One bad experience is all it takes to turn someone off for life. If my goal is to convert as many people as possible to Linux, I'm better off stratifying the users into those I can convert now, and those I may have to wait another 2-5 years for Linux to 'get there' in terms of a frictionless experience.
I think desktop linux will get there, but its important to be realistic about where its at.
I get your point and I partially agree.
One thing I stumble over.
βFrictionlessβ
You will never get a frictionless FOSS experience. Not today, not in 100 years.
For one simple reason:
Itβs not human for something to be frictionless. The reason we are used to βfrictionlessβ is because us using this software makes them money. Its the crazy perfectionism some of us experience when overly stressed. Its unachievable.
I use apple products and it is everything but frictionless. My sonos app is a buggy mess, the linux version works without fail. It looks worse but it functions 10 times better.
Frictionless is marketing speech, an image we reiterate to ourselves because we were manipulated into believing it. Showing you ads for new apps while you drive is another example why apple is making everything as smooth as they can. 30% of every sale goes to apple, for absolutely nothing. For the service that apt and flatpak provide and which snap tries badly to recreate.
Apple is a kiosk system, you can only change very few things. Replicating that in gnome for example isnt very hard once it is set up. Put debian stable under it and an amd gpu and your MIL has a machine that works pretty much forever.
But yes, linux is definitely not βfrictionlessβ and you absolutely need to throw away the tinker mindset when designing a consumer ready device. Partly because they have been shown how great autocracy works.
I mean, I would argue that today that some Linux experiences are smoother out of the box experience than windows. I did a highend gaming rig with windows set up for a neighbor who wanted to be able to do a racing sims (chair, wheel, pedals, the whole shebang). I couldn't believe how difficult it all ended up being. All on the part of windows and what it has become as an OS. Like jaw dropping difficult.
Windows is actively adding friction to their experience, so Linux just needs to do better than that. And the friction points with Linux remaining are frankly, minor and solvable. The issues for me always seem to be WiFi/ Bluetooth/ and audio drivers. The second big friction point is software instillation. I don't want to jump in on the flatpack drama, but being able to install software and have it 'just work' is the other issue with Linux. Oldschool windows got this completely right. You download an exe, double click, press yes a bunch of times, and now you have software that works.
Those two pain points, which I think will be solved in 2-5 years in some version of desktop Linux (and even more likely to be solved with increased adoption), and Linux could easily replace windows as the dominant desktop operating system. Great progress in all of this has been made. We're very close.
So I'll swap out 'frictionless' for 'less friction than the competitive equivalent'. It just needs to be a bit better. We're very close. A couple more years, a bit more adoption, and it wont even be a question. In some cases, the Linux experience is less friction than windows. In a few years, I hope that most Linux experiences will be less friction than windows. Once that's the case, the whole paradigm shifts.
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My non-tech literate aunt has been running her Ebay business from a laptop running Fedora with unattended upgrades for 3 years now. She manages her expenses in Libreoffice calc and accesses everything else through Chrome and prints labels on an old USB HP printer. I don't think she's even noticed I switched her over from Windows 10 when her machine was getting slow.
My Dad's laptop is also on Fedora (though he mainly just uses an Android tablet these days) and I intend to install it on my Grandma's PC when Windows 10 stops being supported. So for the people who'd be happy with something like a Chromebook, which is a good chunk of older folks, it's perfect and I can easily provide support.
That being said if I had to deal with helping kids who wanted to game and use Bluetooth bits and pieces surrounded by RGB crap then yea outside of a few well supported options it could be a nightmare depending on what they've got.
Like I cant reasonably put my MIL on a linux laptop that I put together for her and expect her to have a good experience
Why not?
Cus I don't want to get woken up at 6 AM to do tech support. I'm just not going to put Linux in front of someone who can't do their own trouble shooting.
You can, no complaints from me, but I'm not going to do that.
Why do you assume you're going to do tech support? Does your MIL have any specific proprietary software or hardware requirements?
Have you ever actually helped someone build a PC or convert from windows to linux?
Give it a shot some time.
I have, actually. I've converted both my elderly parents and aunt and uncle, over a decade ago, to Linux. They were first running Xubuntu, and now they've been running Zorin for the past couple of years. Both of them use an pure-Intel PC/laptops (no nVidia, no proprietary drivers) and they have zero issues. All they need is a browser for Facebook/email/etc, some light document editing, and the occasional prints/scans.
Linux works 100% perfectly for their needs, since all they're doing is basic computing tasks. In fact the whole reason why I switched them over in the first place back then was because I got tired of doing tech support every time their Windows crapped out.
Well good for you. I think you made some good hardware choices to support that.
I'm more than happy to take your number and send people I switch over to linux your way when their bluetooth stops working.
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I've had my computer-illiterate boomer parents buy Macs for over two decades now because I wanted to keep tech support to a minimum (and because I saw the writing on the wall for Microsoft's abusiveness even back then). However, at this point their next computer is going to be running Linux because I genuinely expect it to be no more trouble than Mac OS.
(In fact, their "next computer" is really just likely to be their current Mac but with Linux installed on it, because it's so old that the latest version of OS X it can run is EOL'd. To be clear, that is Apple deliberately making tech support trouble for me, in a way Linux never would.)
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that "unknown" is suspiciously rising with linux, so the number might be higher
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I've had a Linux desktop since 2003, over 20 years now. 20 years of facepalm after facepalm every time I saw people get fucked by a windows machine.
Go Linux!
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And yet still below the "unknown" OS? What the heck is this "unknown" OS that fares better than Linux?
Our tracking code is installed on more than 1.5 million sites globally. These sites cover various activities and geographic locations. Every month, we record billions of page views to these sites.
They uses website trackers to compute the data, which is not a reliable way to count linux market share. A large percentage of linux user are privacy conscious, and tend to mess with tracking scripts.
Here are some potential inaccuracy in tracking:
- Good amount of unknown is probably people with tracker blocker, which blocked part of their tracking scripts. Or send confusing information to the tracker.
- There are probably some Linux Machine shows up as Windows machine, since many browser pretend to run on windows to avoid fingerprinting.
- Finally, the linux number itself might be overblown, as many browser has randomized fingerprint to prevent tracking, making them being tracked as different user.
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Nice!
YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP!!!!
LETS FUCKING GOOO
As a sidenote, I bought a whole new SSD and I plan to switch from windows 10 to ubuntu (yeah I know) when I have more stability in my life. At the moment I don't want more changes in my life because I have a lot going, but it's coming
The haters will tell you Ubuntu sucks. Every distro has pros and cons. Use whatever you feel comfortable with, and if you feel like trying something else, do it!
I recommend pop_os! My life is so much better after abandoning Windows for pop_os.
ignore anybody giving you grief about whatever distro you use - people need to realise that gatekeeping an OS over minor UI experiences is a dumb fight that discourages normal users getting involved. Whether ubuntu is your gateway into other linux, or the system you end up using for 10 years - you do you, whatever is working is fine. In any case, ubuntu today is much better than it was even 5 years ago - like the comments on this thread say, things just work. You'll still probably have to use terminal more than you should, but linux is becoming very usable for everybody.
Ubuntu is great, but please consider linux mint and PoP_OS too. You may find them more appealing than ubuntu.
Both are ubuntu based anyway, so you wont be missing anything good.
try mint, install gnome if you have to
Dumb questions maybe. But I mostly keep Windows for like Battle.net games. Is there any way to play Overwatch II or Diablo IV in Linux? With proton or any other way? Legit would tip me into that realm. Iβm a Debian fan if that matters. But Iβm comfortable in other distros. Except Arch π
Lutris.
It works out of the box with no configuration whatsoever, I'm actually playing StarCraft 2 as I write this and I'll alt-tab now bye
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Battle.net games have been some of the most reliable non-steam games you'll find. You'll have trouble in the Riot Games space (League on Linux, Windows 7, and 8 are all dead in the next month due to Vanguard), and some Epic Games (Fortnite), but if you're a Battle.net/Steam gamer Linux is ready for you.
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Wtf is unknown? What, are they implying that people made their own OS? If the unknown is due to those pc not reporting what OS they have, well that's most definitely Linux because Windows user tend to not care that much about privacy and Apple people tend to kiss Apple ass no matter what so they will not try to ofuscat their OS for privacy as for them having an mac or whatever is something they want to show off!
Unknown is TempleOS
The number of people I know in real life who use temple OS and Linux are the same .... 0. So it definitely could be true!
I was running Bazzite for several months before I switched back to Windows. Unfortunately for me I have a broadcom wifi adapter, it kept disconnecting every 10-15 minutes, and that doesn't bode well for gaming. Outside of that I really enjoyed using it! At least my steamdeck counts towards usage of Linux...
Edit: also steam having to download pre-cached shaders almost every time I started up my computer was kind of annoying. I know you can disable that, but then you're leaving performance on the table iirc.
You know you can buy a USB wifi adapter and still use Linux or at least double boot.
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Awesome news. I plan to make the full switch to Linux next week. League of Legends is the only reason I use Windows. Next week, they are adding Vanguard, and that'll make it impossible to play on Windows.
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It is finally, the year of Linux on the desktop. XD
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