Great, but I don’t think that graph is showing any particular spike, just a nice and gentle upward trend in share. The article also overlooks that there is a certain element of Windows and MacOS computers being replaced by tablets and phones, while Linux is already an enthusiast choice on the desktop, meaning it will be insulated somewhat and gain market share through attrition.
On the plus side, Steam and Proton and maturing DEs/distros and enshittification of Windows certainly make Linux a much more viable “normie” option than it’s ever been. We’re a far cry from the CD-ROM of Red Hat that came with my “Intro to Linux” book in 1999 but couldn’t use my Winmodem or printer and really preferred to run XWindows in grayscale.
Knoppix or bust
I preferred Mepis. 😊
You can check the graph for all OSes from all devices combined in statcounter, and linux is also showing a growth, so it’s a real increase in usage.
OS reveal party and it’s a penguin.
If it was simple and easy to install and play games on Linux as is on Windows, I would have switched over a decade ago.
I have Linux on my “gaming” pc and I just stopped gaming, I have like four hours of uninterrupted leisure a month and they’re spent in terminals trying to troubleshoot games
You’re not doing it right, friend.
I installed Bazzite last month, installed my games on Steam and I just played all my games. Cyberpunk, RDR2, Cities Skylines, Divinity Original Sin 2, no additional setup involved, no turning off the wi-fi just to create a local account. I was ready to reinstall Windows if it got too difficult. I got rid of Mint too. I thought I’d need it as people say it’s easier.
It has been very easy with Steam and GoG for a few yeara now. DXVK kicks ass.
The biggest weakness is multiplayer games with aggressive anti-cheat. So those are the types of games you play, continue to stay away from Linux.
But for most games on Linux, it is just install and play now through a platform like Steam. I haven’t run into a game that I want to play that doesn’t basically “just work”.
Pretty much this. If you have bought games from GOG or Epic, you can use Heroic Launcher to install and play them.
There has been some talking that Microsoft might remove third-party applications, like anti-cheats, away from the kernel. If that happens some day, it would probably help Linux gamers with some of those multiplayer games. But, there are already many multiplayer games that work just fine on Linux.
Yup. Lack of game support is a big roadblock – having just one or two friends on linux makes finding games your group can play together a real headache.
Another weird-ish hiccup, is the lack of good/cheap/trustworthy tax software. Installing windows once a year to do taxes is bonkers. Some solve it by having a VM that runs windows that they only use for taxes, but that isn’t really a fix. You’d still be a microbitch.
I doubt this is the case. Number is likely biased by SteanDecks and AI crawlers/Agents. It would be nice however.
Steamdecks are still linux, I dont think they should be discounted.
Sure, but not a desktop.
You know they’re dockable, like a laptop, right?
Sure.
How is it not a desktop? My steamdeck is as much of a desktop as my laptop.
I use mine as a general purpose computer about as often as a gaming machine. I also use my desktop as a gaming machine about as frequently.
I think the fastest way for Linux to spread is for there to be a cheap gross dirty disgusting commercial version pushed at bestbuy/walmart…etc where people can become familiar enough with it to switch to other distros and out still feel familiar.
Im a long time Mac user but recently got a steamdeck. Desktop mode uses a version of kde and I really like it, if I had to switch from Mac I would definitely go with linux instead of windows. I think the steam deck will introduce a lot of people to linux.
I remember when Walmart sold boxed releases of RedHat and Mandrake. My first installs were fueled by $20 boxed releases at Walmart. I was so bummed when they stopped. But I could send away for Ubuntu releases on a CD for free.
Do you think ChromeOS could fit that role? At least it shows that an alternative to Windows exists.
Google will merge Android and ChromeOS.
I think the fastest way for linux to spread are a) a state-sponsored (totally open source) product that sees a free and open OS as part of a commitment to a free and open society. or 2) one of these fuckhead billionaires drops $200M or so into a trust, rather like the Poetry Foundation, which has the singular commitment to create an OS for people and to support it indefinitely.
I don’t think the answer to any of society’s ills is to get Wallmart involved. ed: walmart however its spelled WGAS.
Still far too low, considering that the US is now a police state.
Yeah, even from inside the US it seems more and more iffy to trust our tech giants even as a paying customer. I love reading the stories about groups and governments in Europe adopting Linux/FOSS, but I’m also surprised I don’t see it more.
Everything in the news is so insane that I could see journalists ignoring/missing such mundane events as public sector software choices.
Here in Germany, at least something is happening. Recently, for example, the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein decided to switch to Linux (and also LibreOffice), with the change planned for this fall.
Overall, however, far too little is happening in our country. The vast majority of federal states and the national government continue to rely on proprietary software (mainly from US corporations, especially Microsoft).
At the national level, this is hardly surprising, as our Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is more of a US lobbyist than a politician: Until 2020, he was on the supervisory board of Black Rock Germany and was also a long time chairman of the “Atlantik-Brücke”, a German-American lobby organization for economic relations (so on and so forth). Unfortunately, no change of course is to be expected from him — nor from his party, the conservative CDU, that is the most popular party for some strange reason.
In Bavaria, which is also deeply conservative, the federal state government is even considering introducing Palantir.
I don’t understand how all this can happen when it is perfectly obvious how vulnerable all these US products are making us – vulnerable to industrial espionage and worse - especially now that the US is developing into a fascist, unjust state.
But hey, I think we all have to remain somewhat positive despite all this. As I said, there is some movement in terms of FOSS —probably much more in other European countries than in Germany. So, slowly but steady, we’re moving forward! I really hope that’s how it is in the US as well.
Best of luck in these harsh times!
Every year Linux fans:
👐 It’s happening! 👐
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Just switched to Linux for my daily driver laptop!
At some point companies will be forced to accept that they’re losing out on revenue by not releasing a linux version of their software.
And the Windows version through Wine will still run better than the native… As is tradition.
Companies don’t make native software anymore - most things are websites now
Adobe creative suite, most cad software, games (work with Proton already so little need for this), etc.
I still use windows because of Visual Studio. I used to use Mac OSX because of XCode and I honestly don’t understand people today who still use Windows or Mac for anything other than Development.
If there was an alternative to Visual Studio for Linux I wouldn’t think twice.
Without knowing what you are working on in Visual Studio, I would suggest checking out Jetbrains IDEs. I’ve used Rider for .NET quite successfully, and most of their other IDEs. I havent spent nearly as much time with CLion, but its supposed to be good. I haven’t used VS since like 2015, so I really don’t know how they compare these days. But I also haven’t missed it.
The only thing I really miss about visual studio is the automatic profiler. Everything else just felt archaic, bloated, slow, and unintuitive. Adding one line in cmake often does the same thing as clicking through five submenus which never once got updated since 2012.
People who use windows or Mac for anything but development do so for the same reasons as you, they are locked into some features. For example, at home I need a local music library manager with local sync to my phone music app and smart playlists. Mac is still the only platform with this.
At work I need MS exchange integration and all the features of native office. Even the Mac version isn’t good enough for my workflow.
My only hope would be to turn to emulators or something like that, but at that point I’m not really running Linux anyway. I’m just running something else in a container inside Linux.
MPD works pretty well for the music thing, and, I don’t know if this is would be an option for you, but I programmed my own smart-paylist-generator in rust as a hobby project to get control of my 500Gb (around 10,000 100% legally acquired tracks cough, cough) library. The additional control over the algo meant I got something that works waaaay better than pretty much anything else I’ve tried (including Spotify suggestions, etc. — the only thing I still use is Bandcamp for new artist suggestions); if you have the time, I highly recommend a homemade solution like that. It is a lot of work though.
Can you send me the details on your smart playlist generator? What does it do, comb the music and create a static playlist from the library music based on defined parameters?
As far as I can tell from an initial look, MPD doesn’t have local playback and sync which are the main features I’m looking for. Does MPD have a mobile app that I can locally sync the whole library to?
I’m traveling right now, but will get back to you on my playlist generator.
I hadn’t thought of syncing music libraries! You are indeed right, MPD does not have that, and it would be a hassle to set up. One point to apple…
Visual Studio is a relic of the past. Does anyone still use it?
This question is a comment to its answer 🤔
If it’s for C#, I’m doing pretty well with VSCode/VSCodium on Linux.
WPF and Forms does not work but I also have a Rider license from work which I use occasionally to maintain one of our old WPF applications, which we converted to Avalonia XPF. It works great and we now also have a Mac and Linux version.
In short, you want a .Net developement platform for Linux? And i assume something like VScode is not enough? The thing with .exe compilers in Linux ususally using Mingw/Msys2 because MS having their own proprietary compiler thing?
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Admit it already, we know you run Arch.
Arch is mainstream now, gotta go with something like NixOS of you wanna be cool and still use Linux.
Woooo! Year of the linux desktop baby!!
- pumps fist in air*
If I could just go one day on Lemmy without hearing about Linux… nothing has turned me off Linux more than you guys not shutting up about it.
Feel free to stay on Windows or MacOS or whatever floats your boat. Won’t bother anyone.
The downvotes say otherwise. Linux bros are toxic, and can’t handle anyone who isn’t one of them
I don’t see anyone being toxic here except you so far. If it bothers you so much, just add “Linux” as a keyword to your block filter on whatever client you use to access Lemmy. Easy fix
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I don’t see mass amount of comments insulting you, but I do see you being unusually hostile from the get go as though wanting confrontation. So not surprising people aren’t receptive to the tone in terms of voting, but all things considered not seeing toxic discourse in response.
So I don’t know. I guess it might help to present things in a more calm manner? Unless that suggestion itself is what is considered toxic.
You’re in a community about technology, clicked on a link about Linux and are now complaining that people are talking about… Linux? And when people got annoyed when you barged into the conversation you called them toxic?
Stop trolling and scroll to the next post. It’s easy.
It has no marketing budget so the only way the userbase can grow is by proselytizing.
If you migrate to it, I promise we’ll shut up.
Liar! Lol
You might be happier elsewhere.
The online equivalent to “go back to your country”
You’re getting angry about people talking about technology in a technology community, leading people to ask why you’re here if you hate technology being spoken about.
That’s obviously not equivalent to racism or xenophobia.
You’re yearning so hard to be a victim. It’s pathetic.
You were never interested in the first place and are just looking for a way to appear above the discourse. Tool.
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You’re in Technology@lemmy.world and we’re talking about… technology. Seems fitting.
It would probably be more if there weren’t so many Linux gatekeepers that tell people to “go back to Windows/Apple” when they ask a questions.
Did this happen to you in particular? Most tech oriented people (and Linux users by extensions) are generally chill
I have not found that to be the case.
Try and tell them that your average user cannot, or will not, use the command line , and you’ll both get called morons.
Who is this mythical average user I keep hearing about?
I’ve never had a problem forcing people at work - even those with very limited IT knowledge - to run things from cli in windows.
For years in one place I worked the IT support first line solution was to tell all users to force a gp update from the windows cli. They’d point to a nice little how to guide with screenshots and everything. I don’t know if any of the thousands of people working there were the all important average user either though, probably not.
Well you both would be making assumptions about people wouldnt you?
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Yep, there it is.
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Haha, Don’t offer people windows 11 , even in jest. It’s clearly the opposite of “being excellent” to them ( rule 3).
Gotta love mods.
The folks who show up looking to genuinely learn something, who have a goal to accomplish, I’ll gladly help them out. I’ll go learn something I don’t know yet so I can teach it to them. Willingness to learn is the most respectable thing I can think of. All that “EAUGH Linux isn’t user friendly enough” shit is unwillingness to learn. “Why doesn’t this perfectly conform to my bad habits?” Because you haven’t died in a fire yet. Common mistake for people like you.
Windows 11 is nowhere near as terrible as people here make it out to be.
Try to run it on 4/8 gb RAM (officially supported configuration and many brand new laptops still are sold with 8gb soldered) and experience how worse is compared to w10
Its not terrible, objectively speaking, but as someone who uses it for work - I don’t care to use it at home at all. The only Windows instances at home are VMs running W10 LTSC, and they are strictly for specialty software (vehicle diagnostics stuff) or legal reasons (my lawyer requires Adobe Acrobat for PDFs). I have zero physical Windows machines otherwise.
That did not take long at all
Okay but I’ve been using Linux for several years and I’ve never had to use the command line. I have used it a couple times, but it was by choice, not necessity.
You do not have to use the command line to use most Linux distros. I think it’s a good idea to learn, but it’s no longer a necessity.
No its just a common trend I see when I look for answers to questions I have about aspects of Linux. I work in tech and know lots of tech people. Chill is one of the few terms I would use for them hahaha.
It all depends on the context to be honest. I’ve found that tech people, outside of professional contexts, are generally a lot more helpful. Things are different at work.
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I’ve only ever found the Linux community helpful. I’m not saying there aren’t dicks out there (I saw the one in this thread even) but for the most part people are more than willing to help out.
Oh they’re out there. Usually the neckbeards who treat new users like they’re stupid if they can’t do a bash script right off the bat.
1000% they are out there. Thank fucking Satan they don’t dominate certain spaces the way they used to! I always kept a lot of tech at arm’s length because I wasn’t capable of having a knock down drag out fight every time I formed even the mildest of opinion on a feature or something.
I’m sorry to put this so bluntly, but technical people are some of the dumbest human beings on planet earth.
I chalk it up to idiots that recommend Arch to new users, then they’re so confused they ask questions that most Arch users would think are silly, then everyone gets pissed off.
Yes.
Also: theyrethesamepicture.jpg
God damn I love it :) I’ve been messing with Linux for 20 years now and there are some patterns that never seem to change.
In almost every thread about Linux there will usually be:
1 person bragging about 'Using Arch" btw (before that it was LFS or Slackware)
1 or 2 people saying this will be “The Year of the Linux Desktop”
2 or 3 people joking about it being “The Year of the Linux Desktop”
10 - 15 people explaining why it wont be or shouldn’t ever be “The Year of the Linux Desktop”
3 or 4 people complaining about how rude the Linux community is.
10-20 people saying that isn’t their experience and/or they always try to help people when they can.
1 or 2 people actually being rude (who are usually downvoted).
2 or 3 people saying how Windows/Mac OS is better in certain ways.
4 or 5 people complaining about one specific thing that doesn’t quite work for them in Linux, or one specific Windows/Mac only program they must use for work.
8- 10 people giving them suggestions about how to solve their issue or work around it.
Personally I love the Linux community. The people are mostly great, friendly, able to think outside the box, and willing to help others. I try to emulate that whenever possible. Sure you are going to get rude people in every scene, I just ignore them.
I will fully switch when installing mods are just as easy as windows. So far I haven’t found mod managers that work only for one or two games. I have switched mostly to pop os using plasma.
Which games? I know there are a few projects trying to improving linux modding.
Oblivion remastered, stardew valley, fallout 4, or rimworld.
I cant commend on the first 3 but im a huge rimworld enjoyer and i’ve had 0 issues modding on linux. Steamworkshop works as expected and even RimPy launcher workers natively on linux.
Modding might not be as easy as on Windows, but for example, Mod Organizer 2 works on Linux. Steam Tinker Launch helps with MO2 installation and usage. Wabbajack also works after some tinkering, but you’ll need to search the Internet to figure out how to get it working.
I have recently played Fallout: New Vegas with Viva New Vegas modlist and Skyrim with Nordic Souls modlist under Linux. Took some tinkering to get the modding things working, and to figure out where each of the files are located, but other than those, the games worked fine.
Once you go through the pain of getting one modding tool working, you can then use it with other games without the initial hassle.
