I'm in way too much of a bubble. I worked at Microsoft for years and continued to run Windows for some time afterwards, sometimes dual booting with Linux. I've tried but always hated MacOS.
But Windows 8 completely broke me -- this was just an unusable OS, plastered with ads and shortcuts that didn't work and a wildly inconsistent UI; big tiles one second, tiny icons the next, some things you had to double-click that used to be a single click, some things you still had to double-click. Some buttons were just plain text, others were buttons, others were just frames with text. It made you sign in with a Microsoft account for reasons never explained. It was just such a heap of garbage that I couldn't do it any more. Trying to help family members who had trouble with their computers became a horrifying slog.
So I completely unplugged from Windows; switched to Chromebooks for casual stuff and recommended them to my family members, and a variety of Linux distributions for more serious stuff.
But I really know almost nobody who uses Windows; this is the bubble I'm in. Lots of people use MacOS, many people use Linux, and the others use ChromeOS. When I see a survey like this saying that 72% of users still use Windows I'm shocked to my core. I guess my next computer I'll stick with Windows for a bit to see if things are more sane now.
Try to go to a bubble outside US or countries with the same kind of life and salaries.
You will find plenty of Windows, and developers for the users of them.
Linux will be around in server rooms, embedded, and those VMs used by everyone that doesn't want to spend time dealing with dual boot issues on laptops as if it was 2000.
I tried windows a while ago and the things you described were driving me insane. I honestly don't understand how that gets shipped. Doesn't anyone care? I'm assuming most devs and PMs are on Mac anyways so they don't even see the mess
Well, it's a mix. There are a ton of captive Windows users, corporate employees, gamers, people working with Microsoft technologies, etc.
But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it requires a bunch of configuration work, but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
I got a new work laptop just before xmas, and since I'll mostly be using it to RDP to my workstation I figured it was time to give Windows 11 a whirl. I'd been holding off primarily due to the taskbar stuff, and was pleasantly surprised that the grouping options were back, and there was an option to move the start button to the left.
A couple of minutes of customizations and it now feels quite familiar. Only thing that slightly annoys me is the icon-only elements in the Windows Explorer context menu for copy/paste.
Back in the days the saying was to never install Windows until the second service pack was released. I guess the same still applies, just without the service pack name.
It's not 100% reliable but there is a nice script called buttery taskbar. Check it out, it makes taskbar situation manageable. You just need to restart it sometimes.
I've been on a Mac since 2007, with my Dock on the side of my screen since the second I got my first iMac. If they ever prevented me from putting my Dock on the side, I would stop buying their products.
The joke from Windows users used to be "Linux is only free if your time has no value." The irony there is that I've spent more time in the past 12 months fighting to get software working on Windows than on Linux (and it was Xbox Game Pass, which is from Microsoft themselves!).
Yep. Microsoft has forgotten what their value proposition for Windows is. Once they started to see it as a tool that extracts value and not a product that provides value, everything started to go downhill. I think there is a real opening for a startup company that can create a Linux Distro that is Wine centric, letting users migrate over and still use all their current Windows software.
There's no way for a startup to actually compete vs Windows. The valuable market for that are corporations running Windows, those are extremely risk-averse, and even if the OS was almost a drop-in replacement to their Windows machines these corporations would expect a level of customer service that no startup could provide.
Microsoft has this huge moat with PC gaming + corporations which are really hard markets to crack into as a startup.
> But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it requires a bunch of configuration work, but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
Yeah, people like to complain about the amount of time they spend getting Windows to work they want, but they’re willing to spend hours trying to get sleep to work in Linux.
There are plenty of scripts out there to disable as much or as little of the telemetry and everything else as you want, using the Pro or Enterprise editions lets you skip the cloud, and then it just… works.
There’s a certain give and take with all OSes about how much you adapt to it and how much it adapts to you. At work I use a Mac, I have two Linux servers in my closet, and my personal machine runs Windows. They’re each the right tool for their respective jobs, for me.
> but they’re willing to spend hours trying to get sleep to work in Linux.
There is no need to set up the sleep for Linux if you choose a supported hardware and not a Windows-certified one. Complaining that Linux doesn't work on the latter is like complaining that MacOS doesn't work on it.
I wish I had written this into the original comment because I knew someone would say this.
No it isn’t - MacOS and Macs are a singular product sold together. Windows and Linux are OSes that are downloadable from the web or buyable from stores and Windows consumer hardware support is simply better. And that’s okay, there are people who will seek devices that support it better, but I am not one of them, I will just virtualize it or run it in WSL.
If Linux had 30% desktop market share that would change, but it doesn’t.
FWIW, I agree with most criticisms of Windows. It is clear Microsoft no longer treats Windows the OS as a product, they treat every individual piece of it as a product, and that’s resulting in some weird, ugly, user hostile shit, but I can still get rid of it in no time at all and have a better personal OS. I think of it like adding unlock to a browser.
If it continues down its current path, I may be willing to switch, but it hasn’t passed the value/pain curve point for me yet.
> Virtually no (offline) stores sell devices with Linux.
I did not specify offline, I was mainly catching Windows as an individually purchasable product.
> Being downloadloadable doesn’t imply compatibility with all the hardware in the world.
I did not say that it does, but there are plenty of distros that strive to be a consumer desktop OS, and part of that effort is working with a broad range of hardware, and for me they continually fail. I would rather install an OS where all my hardware works and then I can tweak it to behave the way I want than install an OS where the hardware doesn’t work and I still spend my time tweaking it to behave the way I want.
Even ignoring hardware support and things like sleep and hibernate, every Linux desktop user I know spends more time customizing the OS to get their desired setup than I do getting rid of the things they complain about in Windows.
It is fine to have a preference, there’s no perfect OS for everyone, but I think it is silly when people decide this is a hill they want to die on. There are valid reasons for tech literate users to consciously choose Windows over Linux.
First, I never tweaked the suspend or hibernate on my laptops and they always've been working flawlessly (Librem 14 and 15).
> every Linux desktop user I know spends more time customizing the OS to get their desired setup
You were asking wrong people perhaps. My non-technical relatives are just using Linux for their tasks and don't even know what a console is. People who like tweaking, do it. It's definitely easier on Linux anyway.
> but I think it is silly when people decide this is a hill they want to die on.
Most people are unaware that subjecting all their life and security to a for-profit, huge corporation is a bad idea for many well-known reasons. I am willing to dedicate my time to explaining that and promoting Linux, especilly when there are harmful myths about it like those you're propagating.
While I understand that this isn’t the only way to achieve a great linux experience on a laptop, using an example with a nearly 4.5 year old CPU, a 1080p screen, and no GPU at a substantially higher cost than any other comparable hardware isn’t exactly a strong sales pitch for me.
> People who like tweaking, do it. It’s definitely easier on Linux anyway.
No, it isn’t. They’re both “tweakable” in different ways, but setting some group policy objects or registry setting is not inherently more challenging than tweaking a config file.
> Many people are unaware that subjecting all their life and security to a for-profit, huge corporation is a bad idea for many well-known reasons.
Nothing digital is “all my life.” If Microsoft turned my access off and remotely wiped my hard drives today, and made it impossible for me to recover from backups, I’d be inconvenienced, but absolutely fine. But they won’t, because they like my money. I’m okay with that clear, transactional relationship.
Microsoft is nowhere near the top of the “outside entities that could wreck my life” list.
> especially when there are harmful myths about it like those you are propagating.
Desktop Linux is worse at out of the box hardware support than Windows, especially new hardware and laptops. I don’t even think this is controversial. Even laptops like frame.work that explicitly support Linux have year long threads in their forums with people trying to get the behaviors consistently right.
Probably more controversial in this audience, but I feel strongly is true, is that the computing “upper middle class” - those who do more than surf the web, check email, or edit documents but don’t feel comfortable dropping into a console without explicit directions - are almost always better served by MacOS or Windows for their desktop.
> Desktop Linux is worse at out of the box hardware support than Windows, especially new hardware and laptops. I don’t even think this is controversial.
You're mistaken, and this is wrong. You need to choose your hardware explicitly for the OS, just like with Macs. Check recommended hardware on the website of particular Linux distribution.
frame.work do not explicitly support Linux. They default to Windows, and Linux option is only for DIY kits, implying bad support. I'm not considering them for this reason.
> You're mistaken, and this is wrong. You need to choose your hardware explicitly for the OS, just like with Macs. Check recommended hardware on the website of particular Linux distribution.
Macs are not equivalent. The OS and hardware are inextricably linked and the OS is not developed to support other hardware, except by dedicated hackers.
Linux however supports a huge array of hardware and explicitly tries to cover a wide spectrum of devices. Same as Windows. Windows does it better.
On the Ubuntu page:
> Download Ubuntu desktop and replace your current operating system. It’s easy to install on Windows or macOS, or run Ubuntu alongside it.
The next page has a list of basic recommended requirements (min 2ghz dual core, ram, etc). If they removed this and replaced it with a hardware compatibility checker, or only offered Ubuntu via their hardware, I would cede this point.
> frame.work do not explicitly support Linux. They default to Windows, and Linux option is only for DIY kits, implying bad support. I'm not considering them for this reason.
From their website:
> We designed the Framework Laptop from the outset to be a great Linux laptop, and the Framework Laptop DIY Edition comes with no OS loaded to let you bring your favorite Linux distribution. We deliberately selected components and modules that didn’t require new kernel driver development and have been providing distro maintainers with pre-release hardware to test to improve compatibility.
> Official support means we work with the Ubuntu and Fedora teams to do our best to avoid bugs and regressions. We provide official support for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (OEM C kernel) release. We provide official support for Fedora 38 (Intel) and Fedora 39 (Intel, AMD). We provide consistently updated install guides. We provide support ticket assistance. We provide help through the community forums.
They support Ubuntu and Fedora, work with the distro teams to handle bugs, and will respond to support tickets for those distros and versions. That’s pretty explicit.
I you stop trying to play armchair systems integrator and instead buy computers with Linux preinstalled fully supported by the vendor, you'll have a much better time of it.
Modern hardware is complex enough that it supports Windows or Linux. Not both, though.
So I thought when I bought my Asus 1215B netbook (remember those?), and had my share of headaches related to the 3D support (when AMD drivers got rebooted), video acceleration (still doesn't work), and a wlan driver that keeps losing connections to my home router, forcing me to use a LAN cable instead.
Ah, and rebooting occasionally requires taking the battery off as workaround to take it out of an UEFI zombie state.
Did you call their support to get it fixed?
I'm guessing you didn't, since the 1215B didn't ship with Linux, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC
Interestingly, I had a few of the earlier models that did (701, 901 iirc) and their support for Linux was great. Certainly light years ahead of my efforts to put Linux in a Dell a few years prior.
As a software engineer in the UK I'm very much in the same bubble. It's almost unreal to me how much Windows has managed to enshittify. It's hard to know at what point (if ever) they'll turn the ship around and make an OS that's actually pleasant to use. I'm guessing there are basically no economic incentives to do so.
I've personally moved to an entirely MacBook based workflow where I have a dock on my table and plug in either my work or personal MBP depending on what I'm doing.
I was issued a Lenovo Thinkpad at work, recently, for the first time in more than a decade. "Sure, let's see. I used to own a(n IBM) Thinkpad back in the day—sure I ran Gentoo on it, but it was nice enough hardware. I've used Windows since 3.1, and still game on 10, I know my way around it. I can manage. Having a USB-A port is sure nice."
40-50% battery loss overnight while "sleeping". And other irritations galore. I'd forgotten what battery anxiety was like. Good lord.
Got on the MacBook list with IT ASAP. That MacBook lost 40% charge sitting in my backpack—over a week-and-a-half Christmas break. Ahhh, back home. So much more relaxing.
All of the gamers use windows. All of the office workers use windows. All of the medical equipment that need a PC, run on windows. In manufacturing all the pcs run windows.
So 72% is probably an underestimation.
The only market share that Microsoft lost in the last decade was in the school market (by Chromebooks) and the POS (by tablets)
It’s worth noting that I think Microsoft lost a significant share of the personal use market, not just to Linux or Mac, but to the apple ecosystem and mobile/tablet computing as a whole.
> but to the apple ecosystem and mobile/tablet computing as a whole.
For home users I totally see this in my life. I know of several households which end up only having a couple of iPads when several years ago they would have had a desktop or laptop.
as an office worker... i use linux, a bunch in my team use apple's OS. i'd say it's only about half of my team that still uses windows, trending downwards. but in general i'd probably agree that more than 72% of office workers use windows, just definitely not all of them and i'd expect it to keep trending downwards if m$ doesn't change course.
Willing to name some? The only big co I've worked at that wasn't a startup was Red Hat, which made linux a first-class option, but I don't fully count them :-D
If you define "office workers" as people who use Windows then sure. Even if we don't count tech quite a few people still use Macs (of course depends on country area but Apple seems to have very high market share amongst architects (of course not engineers but I think Linux is overrepresented there), designers etc. where I am).
I don't expect to buy another Chromebook after I found out mine had planned obsolescence. After a certain date it would no longer update. I didn't realize this would happen when I bought it so it came as a surprise. Still a perfectly fine machine otherwise I just have to make time to figure out how to install some Linux distro.
Yes, always check when the device was released before buying a Chromebook. They get 10 years of updates after release, 8 years for models released before 2021.
This is a survey from gamers. There are a lot of games that only work on Windows, or work much better on Windows.
It's only been somewhat recently that games that support Linux have exploded in numbers. Somewhat coinciding with the release of the steam deck and the massive community it brought with it. There are now launchers for other stores for Linux and more every day.
Still, a lot of gamers don't really have a choice but to at least dual boot into Windows if they want to play some of the most popular games (Fortnite, for one).
It's because you can run native Windows games on Linux with very few issues nowadays, not because developers started porting their games to Linux more often.
Not supported games are mostly online multiplayer ones, and are using extremely intrusive anticheat rootkits. Fortnite is a great example of that. Anticheat devs refuse to support Linux for obvious reasons (too many ways to escape the rootkit).
Your both right. The answer for how you're both right is Proton. Many more game makers started testing their games on Linux in Proton/Wine/Steam to make sure they run on Steam Deck (and other Linux), but they (mostly) aren't native builds.
I wonder how many gamers now run both Windows and Linux. I bet it's a high percentage of Steam Deck owners. ~100% of Steamdeck owners run Linux (they have a Steam Deck), but some proportion of those, which I'm guessing is fairly large, also has a Windows gaming rig.
I was able to suck it up from 8 till 10, but 11 is starting to piss me off.
I bought a gaming computer a year ago, it was fully pre-built. Somehow a 2 thousand (or whatever) computer comes with Windows Home instead of Pro (wtf Microsoft, you should really make sure OEMs are giving out Pro versions for gaming systems). This is where the fun begins, and I've posted it before on HN. I couldn't install Windows 11 offline in order to avoid making a Microsoft account. I don't like all my personal shit automagically being uploaded to Microsoft's cloud, especially when they default to on, and companies will reset settings on a whim.
So what happened next is I had to literally login, and then when I was finally on Windows, I wanted to add a new account because I don't like that Windows doesn't let me set the *username* local to the OS, if you're going to make me login, please let me set the username, I don't want my Windows path to be C:/Users/gianc/Documents or whatever. I rather set that myself, re-configuring all of that after the fact feels like it will break something, and it is not worth it.
So I go to create a new Windows offline account only to be told by the modern Windows 11 UI that I'm on Home edition of Windows, and cannot add users from that software, go to software XYZ from Windows. So I go there... guess what error I got? The same exact error telling me to go back to the previous program. I wound up installing Linux in frustration.
The only reason I don't use Linux is if the drivers stop being supported OOTB by the installer, which has happened to me before. Linux might have its own issues, but at least it's not completely FUBARd despite one of the largest companies pouring millions into its development.
My point was moreso that its silly paying thousands of dollars for a computer and only getting a basic version of Windows, considering they give OEMs an insane discount on licensing (I really doubt ASUS paid $100+ for my Windows license). By comparison my Surface Book 2 had Windows Pro, granted that was a Microsoft system yes, but it would have been insane if it only came with Windows Home edition after spending over a thousand dollars on a laptop. I buy gaming systems because it meets my hardware requirements for dev work. Visual Studio consumes all available memory. Windows Home has strange limitations which I just don't care for as a literal pro user.
> its silly paying thousands of dollars for a computer and only getting a basic version of Windows
It very well may be but this one is not on Microsoft. Using their power to force decisions onto others is one easy way to land in hot(ter) water. This would probably be an abuse of dominant position which everyone wants less of.
OEMs have more negotiating power than regular users so it's no easy or cheap feat to force them. Arbitrarily defining which licenses can work with what hardware makes everything complicated for everyone, it needs constant updating as the hardware changes, it needs a lot of assumptions on how the user uses the PC, would probably create the garden variety loophole hunt for tricking the system.
The sensible choice here is to go for a product that really fits your needs especially since that market is very well served by competition. You have dozens of competitors and even the DYI option. You're not buying a black box. It can be a gaming PC with Windows Home just as it can be a gaming PC with a 4060 GPU. Nvidia or MS should have no say in what a vendor can sell.
They don't need to force anything, they could just negotiate a favorable license cost, and make sure people aren't getting mediocre versions of Windows after spending over a thousand dollars on a Windows machine. I'm definitely going to be buying System76 for my next desktop.
> and make sure people aren't getting mediocre versions of Windows after spending over a thousand dollars on a Windows machine.
You already had everything you needed to make sure of that, you said you're a pro user. You're running away from your very basic responsibility of looking at the spec sheet, and you're blaming Microsoft or the OEM for this. You chose a Windows Home system probably because it was cheaper than others. This is one way it was cheaper, you probably got the Home license for free".
Many people would go for cheaper or no license in order to get better hardware. MS is already strong arming OEMs to bundle Windows licenses, they should absolutely not use their power to force them even more.
> I'm definitely going to be buying System76 for my next desktop
Perfectly valid (and great) choice. But you could pay a whopping $82.000 for a workstation and it doesn't come with a Windows Pro/Enterprise license or RHEL Workstation Standard (lifetime, not just the one year) subscription. MS and IBM should absolutely make sure one of these licenses is included with any system over $1k. :)
in practice MS will just keep injecting new ones in new ways and you're stuck wasting your time in a never ending battle against a user-hostile OS.
Microsoft has decided to use their OS to collect people's personal information and use it against them as a ad platform and no amount of registry edits or setting changes will make that untrue.
Best feature of Pro is Windows Sandbox, which I use to test/trial app installs in a VM. It's basically a disposable OS that spins up as fast as most apps. Sandbox runs on Hyper-V, which along with domain networking (for business) are the two main differentiators as far as I understand.
My 80 years old grandmother uses Ubuntu to browse web content and play casual games.
When my aunt bought her a new computer with Windows she couldn't use it properly and complained that she wanted a computer "like the old one". She was equally unable to use Macos in my laptop. Nowadays when people complain about Linux's usability I know that they are normally overstating or talking from prejudice because from a practical point of view no way the usability of any modern distro is significantly behind Windows' or Macos' usability, it's even the opposite I would say.
There is a huge blindspot, I've noticed, where people mistake familiarity for ease of use (and other qualities too). Of course familiar things are easy and comfortable, but this thought doesn't seem to occur to most.
Software usability discussions are particularly prone to this bias.
EDIT: another fun one is internet discussions about metric vs imperial systems, with one side or the other swearing that one is inherently more "intuitive" for a particular use. Due to some extraordinary coincidence it's always the one the writer grew up with...
> There is a huge blindspot, I've noticed, where people mistake familiarity for ease of use (and other qualities too).
The "legacy" Windows design isn't just so beloved because of familiarity, but because it actually provides visual cues to users [1], and the backstory on how it was designed is also interesting [2].
I know that there was an even more detailed article floating around here on HN but I can't find it offhand.
Yep. This was on clear display when Linus Tech Tips did their Linux challenge a year or two ago. A lot of their complaints were just like "the wallpaper settings button isn't in the same place as Windows", with the base assumption that there was something inherently correct about Windows' choice
And there's the belief that "tech skills" = "knowing where the Windows buttons are". OK, that is true in a limited sense, that "x competency" = "familiarity with x", but the point is you can be a very skilled sysadmin or programmer who still makes "noob" mistakes trying to configure Windows just because you're more familiar with MacOS or Linux
This also extends beyond UI to platform concepts in general. I'll take Unix-or-DOS-like hierarchical filesystems as an example. Even here I've seen people equate knowledge of a hier FS structure with inherent technical ability, when discussing those "teens can't use computers" articles. It's certainly correlated, since all major operating systems do use them, but it's still a mistake to think that there's something inherently correct about choosing that storage model, over say how a mainframe or Multics did things
> And there's the belief that "tech skills" = "knowing where the Windows buttons are". OK, that is true in a limited sense, that "x competency" = "familiarity with x", but the point is you can be a very skilled sysadmin or programmer who still makes "noob" mistakes trying to configure Windows just because you're more familiar with MacOS or Linux
To be fair, the Linux world makes the same mistake, labeling a user as "not tech competent", "needing hand holding" or "afraid of the command line" just because they do not have the time and patience to put up with the amount of bullshit that (insert whatever distro here) throws at them.
To be fair, it "just works" in 99% of cases, and when it doesn't, it can usually be fixed pretty easily. In the case of Linux Mint, which is exactly what I'd recommend to new users, that's either by selecting to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers in the window that opens after you login, of by running a `sudo apt install linux-firmware -y` and rebooting. If the user can install drivers on Windows, then I they can google for 30 seconds and find the one or two commands to run to install their driver on Linux.
On easy distros like Mint, I have to deal with maybe a tenth of the amount of bullshit that Windows throws at me, the only difference is that most users are used to handling Windows' bullshit. My 12 year old brother, who while fairly competent as a user, isn't particularly tech-inclined, uses Mint exclusively, and he can handle just about everything, except burning the Mint USB and booting off it for the initial installation.
Plus, I often see people arguing against Linux comparing its ease-of-use for users with very low tech literacy, then either acting as though those very same users could solve many problems they might across on Windows, or that they just wouldn't come across any problems. If I installed Mint, I'm sure my grandma could barely use Mint, just like she can barely use Windows, but she would need just as much tech support on Windows, if not more due to Microsoft becoming increasingly user-hostile.
And as for rude Linux users: on the rare occasions that the user actually needs help, rather than just google, in my experience people tend to just mentally facepalm a thousand times over, rather than calling them "afraid of the command line", despite the reputation the Linux world has. It can be a bit frustrating helping noobs, sure, but not any more than helping total noobs on Windows. At worst, people might make some jokes at your expense, but it's pretty rare for me to actually see anything like the stereotypical rude Linux user.
P.S. Saying "to be fair" back at you seems passive-aggressive, and I don't intend it that way; it just seems like the most appropriate phrase to use.
P.P.S. This reply kinda got away from me, it's mostly not directed at you, just general thoughts about people comparing/arguing about Windows and Linux.
IMHO usability on Linux is good for advanced users who can more or less understand how packages work and can use the command line to some extent and also for people on the other side who are fine with a 'static' system, use a very limited number of apps, have fixed workflows and don't need to change/install anything themselves.
In between there is a giant pit with hard/impossible to solve cryptic errors (or no errors and just silent crashed on launch unless you try to open the same app in the terminal). Confusing and half-baked documentation (because there are dozens different way to accomplish the same thing depending on your distro and config, good luck figuring out which is the right one for you) etc. etc.
A lot of these issues are not really "bugs" and just a natural outcome of the decentralized nature of Linux (non-kernel part) development. They can be solved by power users but not by people who are used to much more user friendly workflows on macOS (again IHMO) somewhat less (but still more so than on Linux) on Windows.
I install everywhere Fedora for the same reasons. As long an the users aren’t Windows-Users and believe they know computers they will be happy with a plain Linux. They update itself, they upgrade it self and they’re happy not forced into updates.
GNOME can be criticized for missing options but it features a simple and neat interface and keyboard centric usage makes it a bless.
I myself using Arch which for more than 14 years now and it is a perfect fit for professions and enthusiasts. But in case of an average user, Fedora.
What I mean with Windows-Users? People which believe they need to install “drivers“ themselves. Which argue against Linux anyway because it doesn’t support the weird „Desktop Metapher“ from Windows 95. And usually argue that weird hardware like 3D-Shutterglasses or some kind of HDR-Something (just insert here some hot new stuff) isn’t supported. The broad majority of users don’t want that and don’t need it. What matters is HiDPI-Scaling (good, with exception of the awful thing named Electron) and easy to configure sound-system (Pipewire nailed it). And unification of which we achieved through Linux, LIBC/LIBSTDC++, Coretuils and finally Systemd and Flatpak. The point here is the chain of parts building upon each other.
Recommendations
Stay away from Nvidia. Use old ThinkPads if you have not special requirements. Use printers with AirPrint (IPP-Everywhere).
Teaching
I would be happy if people start teaching the users to read the interface (like a book or an info grahic), think and then act. Input, Process, Output. TUIs foster that and I think that is why users accustomed to them love them - and dislike most GUIs and nearly all websites.
What computer courses do for decades? Not teaching users using the interface. They just drill them to click on a specific icon (once, or twice or with the wrong mouse button).
Just see them happy when the type “Email” and Linux offers Evolution or Thunderbird. And if they don’t find it two months later? Again “Email”.
I want users are able to execute upgrades and don’t have to care about “details” like the bad/missing support of Wayland in the past by Nvidia, modified APIs or restrictions imposed by EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. And a game developer probably wants ensure compatibility only with Mesa.
Basically - Linux won. It is not a perfect victory because a lot of code goes now into firmware which creates another set of issues. And it will require long time to get on par with AMD or Intel. Linux and GNU won because they remained stubborn and the consumers and industry supported that. Nobody wants a PlayStation or SteamDeck with closed source modules. Neither machine industry or car manufacturers. Yes, benchmarks attract customers in short term - but in long term it must be reliable for years and decades. Imagination Technologies and ARM recently also changed their minds. It is sad that this all could have happened 15 years ago. Maybe people learn?
Unless you need to use the GPU for actual work and not gaming then you need CUDA etc.
Nvidia seems fine though as long as you use the installer they provide (as the other comment suggested) for some reason all(?) distro developers can't come up with functional workflows for installing it any other way.
> People which believe they need to install “drivers“ themselves
Do you think that's something people need to do often these days on Windows 10/11?
> support the weird „Desktop Metapher“
What's weird is/was Gnome trying to appeal to mobile users for no reason (at least MS had some justification for the Windows 8). Of course there is KDE if you need a normal desktop.
> with exception of the awful thing named Electron
Perhaps it's awful. But it's something a lot of potential non-power users actually need and care about (unlike LIBC/LIBSTDC++ or Coretuils)
> Use old ThinkPads if you have not special requirements
Like a semi-decent screen? Also why bring up HiDPI-Scaling then?
> teaching the users to read the interface (like a book or an info grahic),
It would be nice if GUI app interfaces were at least semi-consistent on most Linux apps (of course Windows is also terrible at this and Apple are the only ones who managed to get it right).
Honestly, I don't see Linux progressing that much as long as mindsets like this (blaming the users for not using their computers in the right way and telling them what they "actually" need) remain widespread.
I've used Linux primarily since the 90s. I even had a Slackware install back in the day.
When Ubuntu started getting popular I had this same opinion. A lot of my friends would tell me that they gave Linux a try but gave up because of "random things not working" whereas, allegedly, using Windows everything "just works." This didn't sit well with me because I had the opposite experience with Windows.
Until the last couple of years, unfortunately. It's almost always kernel updates, but I had the sound suddenly stop working on a Kubuntu install after a kernel update, and I've had a few cases where the new kernel wouldn't even boot and I had to drop back to the old one.
These types of things are hard to quantify. Maybe there's more random nonsense across all users with Windows than there are with Linux. But kernel updates have started to make me nervous again and that's a step in the wrong direction.
I setup several folks over the years with Linux on their laptops. Usually after they ended up with malware or other oddities on their Windows computers multiple times. I would always ask them what they do on their computers, usually it was 99% web. I would never hear from these people until they wanted to buy a new computer. Prior to that I felt like I was looking at some issue every 6 months or so. All the Linux desktops are pretty nice now, and actually have been for a quite a while if all the person is doing is web stuff. Firefox or Chrome looks the same to the average person no matter what operating system they are using.
The other thing worth mentioning is well, the computers will almost always perform better with a Linux distribution over a bloated Windows install.
> The other thing worth mentioning is well, the computers will almost always perform better with a Linux distribution over a bloated Windows install.
Poor battery life clearly indicates it's the other way around (yes, ram usage might be worse but who cares it's cheap) also removing all the bloatware shipped by the OEM on Windows is not that harder than installing a Linux distro.
I would easily believe it. In fact, I don't think I know anyone who doesn't use Windows - all of my friends and family use it (as far as I am aware), and while I use Linux on my personal laptop, I am stuck with Windows on my work laptop. I think Windows is still quite dominant in the corporate space, and amongst people who are not tech literate at all.
I used to dual boot Windows and Linux, but the most recent version of Windows I tried (11 I think?) really pissed me off during the setup process, mainly by persistently badgering me to get a Microsoft account. Between that and Linux getting a lot better at running the (relatively few) games I play, I decided to get rid of Windows and just use that drive as extra storage.
Windows does that to me every few years when I try it. Something in getting set up (forced Microsoft account, aggressively pushing Edge, forced updates that reboot my machine) that makes me bail. Now that I don't work for a company that uses Zoom, there's nothing for which I need Windows at the moment.
Most of the people I know who run Windows personally (not at/for work) either do it only because gaming's easiest/best there, or because it's easy to get free or extremely-cheap used Windows machines that'll hold up for a year or so (then get another when they break) [EDIT] And actually that last category's a single person I know who's a writer, so wants a laptop with a keyboard but only uses an old word processor on it, and email, nothing else.
Exceptions are my relatives over age 60, who barely do anything with their computers and should probably just have Chromebooks or iPads + keyboard (god, they could really use the accessibility features...), but are used to computer = walk into Costco or Best Buy and buy a desktop tower.
Most non-gamers who also aren't computer nerds, whom I know, "compute" mainly on their phone anyway. Shit, so do I, and I'm both of those—my Windows machine is just for gaming, nothing else whatsoever. 95+% of everything important that needs some kind of computer, happens on my phone. I bought my last house on it, entirely, LOL.
Break? What fantasy is that? I'm running five machines of different ages for years now, every day. Nothing is breaking; certainly not because of the OS. What does that even mean?
Hand-me-down or used Windows laptops that were $300 to begin with [EDIT: when purchased new, I mean] don't tend to last a super long time. Maybe, if you're lucky.
[EDIT] What I've seen break on mine and my wife's, back when I used Windows/"PC" hardware on mobile computers, and these were all lot more than $300, even 15+ years ago:
- Display controller board just... dies, barely outside the very-short warranty period. (I repaired this one)
- Display cable frays at hinge.
- Thermal paste on insufficient-to-begin-with cooling for discrete video chip goes bad after a couple years (discrete video cards in laptops: just a bad idea, they're historically the source of a solid half of the problems on MacBooks, even)
- Something shakes loose inside. Several times. I've self-repaired (open, screw with anything that has a socket or port until it's good) but it's not worth taking it in to a shop on a very, very cheap machine, if you're not comfortable doing this yourself.
Ah. I buy bespoke machines put together by my business partner, who's into these things. Spend enough so it lasts essentially forever. So I'm not a good measure.
If Windows 8 broke you Windows 11 is going to to make you wish you stayed broken.
They got rid of a lot of nice things in the UI like ability to move the toolbar (what Microsoft calls taskbar) to the right (hiding it completely would be nice but of course you can't have that without unreliable 3rd party scripts), shoved MS account through users' throat, introduced "lock screen" mess which you can't disable while breaking on battery behavior. In my case it made my laptop completely unusable on battery as I either need to type my password 30 times an hour and/or deal with screen going dark because of "inactivity". No matter how many settings I disabled the behavior is still there. It's widely reported on the Internet but pleas to Microsoft to just let us use our computer in peace by disabling lock screen and screen dimming are unanswered.
So now Windows forces you to use Microsoft account, shoves ads and crapware into your face (even in "pro" version), makes significant part of your vertical screen real estate unusable because of popping up toolbar like in good old days of internet browsers, makes using laptops on battery a mess. They removed a lot more options to tweak the UI. It's just full on assault on usability. It really does seem like they want to get rid of power users so they can continue shoving more ads and dark patterns on remaining ones. Like those Nigerian Prince scammers who make glaring grammar errors in their emails so people with any kind of critical thinking skills won't bother them responding.
If you wonder why I upgraded - I really didn't want to but at some point they must've sneaked a dialog somewhere where I had a habit of clicking through and to my surprise it was Windows 11 from now on. I resisted for a long time but they have won.
Not trying to negate your experience as all that's pretty awful, but I purchased my Windows 11 legally of course, and then immediately used modified/pirated install media to install it:
- Without a Microsoft account
- With telemetry disabled (as much as is possible anyway)
I haven't seen any ads in the OS... maybe a OneDrive one? I have no idea what you're talking about with a toolbar though, the only thing of size that pops up on mine is the start menu. Unless that's the new search thing I disabled.
I dunno. On balance, I LOVED Windows 7, Windows 8 was a mess, Windows 10 was... more or less just 7 with an uglier and more confusing interface, and if anything, 11 is a step back towards 7 in my mind, both in aesthetics and usability. Though I was also never one for the side taskbar, so if that's your bag, I can absolutely see you not enjoying it being gone. Other positives:
- They're finally reunifying settings into a single interface, hopefully they finish this time before starting a new one
- New display configuration options are much more sanely organized
- I've had just, WAY fewer issues with drivers in general
Some negs:
- Audio settings are now in five places, any of which can and can not apply to whatever you're doing, seemingly on the fly
- They replaced the context menu with a different context menu that's only slightly different and instead of just carrying over old options with some sensible defaults, hid them in a sub-context context menu which just... ugh
MacOS is still bae though. And that's probably why I like 11 okay is because it feels distinctly like Microsoft chasing Apple with regard to OS design. But as someone who would definitely consider myself a power user, I have no issues using 11. It's an improvement on 10, IMO, which was a distinct downgrade from 7 but itself was a massive upgrade from the train-wreck that was 8, so overall the trajectory is acceptable.
Good thing you reminded me of context menus when right clicking on files. Now everything that was easy with one click requires two and you get some useless options instead. I forgot about it because I was able to find a hack to bring the old menu back. Hopefully it survives at least a few updates.
>> the only thing of size that pops up on mine is the start menu. Unless that's the new search thing I disabled.
They call it "taskbar" and I guess that's what you mean by "start menu". I use the word toolbar because it's equally useless for anyone who has a keyboard. Anyway, the obvious behavior of "hide it and keep it hidden unless I press Windows key" is of course not an option. It just needs to be there all the time to randomly mess up whatever you are doing when clicking around bottom of the screen.
>>I haven't seen any ads in the OS... maybe a OneDrive one?
There are at least a few places in the system settings where instead of showing you options there is "One Drive", "Try Office" or Windows Store or Edge on most of the screen.
> Now everything that was easy with one click requires two
Technically it's a click and a mouse movement, but if anything that's more annoying than two clicks, haha.
> They call it "taskbar" and I guess that's what you mean by "start menu".
I genuinely haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. I'll have to look next time I'm using my PC.
> There are at least a few places in the system settings where instead of showing you options there is "One Drive", "Try Office" or Windows Store or Edge on most of the screen.
That might be because I'm signed in on OneDrive and with my Office subscription then. That's shitty though.
I'm a software engineer who chooses to use Windows.
I grew up a windows user. I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta when I was 12 years old (and still think it's the best UI any OS has ever had). When I was in college I used Linux more, but found that the only reason I used it was as glorified desktop customization software. All of my assignments were in Java and my personal projects were in C.
I switched to a chromebook halfway through college and did all my assignments by SSHing into a rented VPS running Ubuntu. After college I finally got some money and bought some used thinkpads, which I ran Windows on.
My first job out of college we had macbook pros, and I hated those frickin things. The UI was so opinionated and slow with all of its animations. There was no way to disable the paneled desktops and there was no built in package manager or tiling window manager. Their bash version (this was pre-zsh) was an ancient build from 2007 and their coreutils lacked all the neat GNU extensions features (I recommend anybody who uses a macbook immediately install coreutils from homebrew and also upgrade bash). I had a million things I hated about macOS and still do.
Other companies let me choose between a mac and a PC, and I went with PC. My current company gave me a Macbook pro and I haven't turned the thing on in a year. I use my desktop PC for everything. I like powershell, Windows Terminal, Winget/Chocolatey, vcpkg, Visual Studio, and MSVC language features like SAL. DirectX11 blows OpenGL out of the water in terms of syntax without getting as complicated as Vulkan. I prefer the Win32 API Convention of initializing things with structs and getting more descriptive return types to Linux's everything-is-an-int. I don't mind the Windows 11 UI as much as I thought I would but still sometimes customize my taskbar to look like Windows 7 (but it's just not the same).
tl;dr: I like windows, and not because I'm a captive user
I grew up on Windows as well, starting with Win 3.0. I switched fully to Linux in 2010, but have still usually had at least one Windows machine in my life. Windows is really pretty damn good, and if they would just stop trying to force things on users (MS accounts, Edge browser, etc) and stop trying to further monetize the system (ads), it would be a really compelling option. I spent a total of 24 months on macs, and like you, when your preferred workflow doesn't match Apple's opinion of the correct way, macOS is like cement blocks around your ankles.
I remember looking up how to disable certain features on macOS, and the people on Apple forums usually responded with some version of "Why would you want to do that? You think you know better than Apple?"
I also rather use Windows, even though I have an extensive UNIX experience since getting introduced to it via Xenix in 1993, and using most well known commercial variants since then.
Mac OS occasionally at work, in project assigned laptops.
Linux plenty of distributions since getting Slackware 2.0 on 1995's Summer.
Eventually I gave up on the Linux Desktop dream, around Windows 7 timeframe.
I have been primarily a Mac user, but Windows 7 was pretty good.
Windows 8 was awful and I refused to use it. However, Windows 10 was really good relative to Windows 8 primarily because it continued some of the good underlying tech Windows 8 brought with it, but was an acknowledgement by MS that the UI/UX needed to be user focused. It wasn't completely there...for example, the Candy Crush ads were still there in the start menu, but the direction relative to 8 was good. However, Windows 11 (and moreso Edge) shows that MS never really had that realization and continues to see their software not as tools for the users to use to simplify and improve their lives but as "products" to be used exactly as MS wants us to use it.
My disillusionment with macOS also lies with this attitude.
For me, Linux is the only desktop OS to be used by choice anymore.
Windows is basically everywhere outside of the US and maybe some select european countries. Windows improved a lot in some ways, the default experience is for sure way better than windows 8, though you still have to disable a good amount of annoying features if you don’t want ads.
WSL is great if you have enough RAM, you can now rely on winget to setup your applications, OneDrive is reliable, the Microsoft Store is finally useful with Win32 applications (even SysInternal is now distributed via the store!). The settings panel finally makes sense, though not everything has been migrated yet. Windows updates are way more reliable. Windows PowerToys provides almost everything power users may need. The updated windows management is just awesome, simple to use and provides a good amount of options. Notepad is now a real text editor, the screenshot tool supports recording too, Edge competes with other modern browsers and has some unique features such as windows splitting.
That’s just a subsets of some things that improved, there is way more. But it is fundamentally still Windows, it’s just way more polished.
I desire leaving Windows behind but the job opportunities in my line of work are pretty much reliant on the Microsoft Universe. The changes (no one dare to call those things improvements in front of me, do not dare!) are done to the system makes the usage more and more difficult and unpredictable, destroying essential and reliable features for the sake of never missed decorated obstructions. I hate it and feel disgust every morning when I have to turn it on, disgusted of all the many of the workarounds that I have to carry out daily to get the work done, reluctant and afraid of any and every updates, 'damn, here we go again, what will break now?!' or 'how can I serve its Royal Majestry the Windows System more to keep it operational and its brand new needs satisfied, how much should I adopt to their royal quirks?!'.
Difficult to change line of work after so many years but I am pushed in this direction pretty strongly.
(The OSX mentality was a friendly one to me when we first met and luckily its changes are slower in diminishing usability - they try though, they try persistently! - so my private computer is not a Windows one for about 20 years already. Probably it was Linux now otherwise, quite possibly.)
In Ecuador a new mac is way too expensive for most people. The availability of used ones are low. I imagine this is because people can't afford them new so they don't have any to resell. Computer literacy is such that most people don't know about linux. When I'm down there doing research and have participants using linux no one seems confused by it. I think for most people I meet, it is just a question of having linux already on the computer. Everyone pirates the os so the quetion of paying never comes up. As far as I can tell, this is pretty typical in a number of Latin American countries and probably common in most of the world where macs are luxury items.
Out of curiosity what part of the world do you live in?
I currently work remotely for a company that is head-quartered in California. The company issues MacBooks unless you ask for a Windows laptop. Most of my co-workers in California grew up using Macs and love them. Whereas it seems that, for some reason, the majority of the non-Californian employees grew up using Windows.
My current manager came from Microsoft and was the one that pointed this out to me (because, like you, I also have always hated MacOS ... before our company started issuing Windows laptops to those who request them I tried really hard to get used to it and just couldn't). My manager's claim, though I'm not sure how accurate it is, is that Apple seems to have a cultural hold within California, with lots of businesses using them as well as consumers ... but outside of the state Microsoft has the hold. Again, it's a hypothesis, I don't know if there's any validity to it ... but I'm curious if there could be some truth to it.
IIRC Apple was donating lots of Apple IIs to schools in California in the 80s and then still maintained a disproportionately (compared to other states) high market share in the educational market in the 90s and 2000s. This presumably had a multi-generational effect as people graduating from those schools were more likely to buy Macs and then children growing up in those households were more used to them than Windows PCs etc.
Not sure if it is specifically California because it does seems majority of US Tech sector, especially those doing Web Development uses MacOS.
But your comment does echo the some point many have repeatedly posted on HN, in Europe most of their colleagues are on Windows. ( Although some people mention UK having higher Mac concentration ) And Mac is an absolute minority, even within the tech sector.
But I have been saying for some time, at the current rate things are going I would not be surprised if Microsoft start to open source a portion of Windows. And the pendulum may swing to their favour once they have captured more of the Cloud and Enterprise revenue.
I think that hypothesis is correct, and has spread to tech startups in general (primarily web-based tech startups). I have never lived in California but have many other places around the country, and with many different companies, and that is definitely in-line with what I've seen as well.
The other factor (related somewhat but not completely) I think is that Apple has become a status symbol. People who chose Windows were rare, and got lots of shit for picking Windows. The peer pressure made the majority of people either stick with macOS even if they didn't like it, or switch at the refresh cycle (and make sure to announce that was their intention anytime they got shit for having a windows laptop). Usually I was the only one on Linux, and there'd be one other person on Windows who didn't care about the pressue, but 99% of everybody would go with the flow.
I'm one of the macOS folk. I don't think it's status symbol as much as low hassle. For the most part the thing just works, is fast, doesn't crash, doesn't have issues working with certain hardware and software. If you want an OS you don't have to think about I think it's ahead.
I have to wonder if AI is going to cause more interest in user privacy. It's been an issue with ad business models and AFAICT Microsoft also reserves the right to use your personal info to "improve and develop [their] products."[1]
Doubtful. As a privacy advocate of 15+ years, pretty much nobody cares about privacy. When you describe to them in detail how invasive their Amazon products and twitter/facebook are, they get very uncomfortable and don't like it, but they just continue to buy/use those products so it really doesn't matter. I've had people (not on HN but fairly tech literate) say they use Apple for privacy reasons but then had major misunderstandings about that (i.e. they assumed that an app on the app store must be privacy respecting because Apple reviews them, or that Apple themselves don't collect lots of first-party data, etc). So I doubt AI is going to make a big difference.
What's preventing me from going all in to Linux desktop is software only available in windows and HDR, it seems KDE plasma 6 is going to ship HDR this year, so it might be just enough for me to not care about the rest.
I am in a similar situation. Worked at Microsoft, left, stuck with Windows through 10, now am a mix of MacOS and Linux.
I hated MacOS, and still do mainly because of the Window management, but after using it for work and the hardware being so much better for me than anything I could find PC I finally switched. My desktop is still Linux. Most of the people I know switched to Mac which is how I know I am in a bubble.
> when I see a survey like this saying that 72% of users still use Windows I'm shocked to my core.
Of course, that's a worldwide figure. The regional breakdown will likely show you prevalence more in line with your expectations. Only 62% in the USA, for example.
I'm not really a dev so I've made an art of going through all the minutiae of changing the terrible default GUI back to windows xp or so which makes it a decent consistent experience (mostly open shell + 7+ Taskbar Tweaker + manually recreate quicklaunch + remove all pinned apps)
Then I spend some time disabling ALL of the updates as they generally do more harm than good
Then I make sure to install directory opus...
Then windows isn't too bad especially when I have no choice but to use it for my work (whereas all of my colleagues have constant problems with borked updates and inconsistent interfaces)
to be fair, I bought a laptop with windows 8 ten years ago and I immediately formatted it and manually installed windows 7 on it though it was a tad tough to find drivers as it was a cheapo consumer laptop)
you might be right, but don't give too much credit to how representative the survey correspondants are.
i am from the opposite camp: my first personal computer (not the family one) came with Ubuntu because the SKU was too cheap to come with windows (back when it would've instead shipped with FreeDOS or something).
i've seen the pain in using windows 8 in another computer in the family. but then i also faced much more nightmare scenario with linux (as someone not very technically inclined at the time): from wifi/bt chip not working to zero video out in a hybrid-graphics laptop.
but after toiling through forums (and learning a lot about managing computers), i also managed to get my parents on using ubuntu for their daily tasks. i was not too concerned about edge cases as i had to step in for IT support regardless of the os.
i personally switched back to windows after trying for 5+ years because everything i needed to do "just worked". i cannot say it for an average grandma, but this audience could easily work around the recent privacy bs microsoft has put out. compared to the gymnastics i needed to do in linux, i'd say it is much less of a trivial task, but you sometimes need to keep up with it through subsequent windows updates.
i recently bit the bullet and switched to windows 11. i am unable to use wsl2 or any virtualization because it breaks the ability to undervolt a laptop cpu. combined with recent ml libraries refusing to properly support windows and cater more to people using google colab, i might finally be nudged back to trying out linux, but i am on the fence.
Some industry use Windows only (or near 90% similar to creative people using Mac only). For example facilities, controls and uncle Sam. You are in a bubble. Try joining yoga or church. You will know many still use Windows.
Coincidentally I saw the latest Steam hardware survey results[0] just about an hour ago which says that Windows is dropping and macOS and Linux are both gaining:
> Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
No DirectX 12 support for Win 7. And even games that don't require DirectX 12 now usually support Windows 10 and up. Sometimes because they don't want to test on older OS, but Windows 10 has legitimate API improvements that are worth taking advantage of.
On top of that of course the general security reasons not to use an unmaintained OS release.
Surprised that macOS is gaining more than Linux. For some reason, I imagine there are more Steam Deck sales (Linux) than there are macOS users deciding to download Steam but maybe it's a numbers game.
Games tend to ride the new release schedule more than most other forms of media (except maybe new movie releases in theaters), and there have been a few notable releases in the past few weeks. Apple had a big push with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4 Remake in the past few months; if you already own those games on Steam, you got the Mac versions of those games at no additional charge. Also, Baldur's Gate 3 (which is widely regarded as one of the best games of 2023) got a native Mac release in Q4.
As for it being a numbers game, neither Apple nor Valve release direct hardware sales numbers, so only they will know.
I think it's more about the games people want to play. I certainly wouldn't buy a mac to game on. But if you already have one and it runs the games you want to play (factorio, for example), then why not just use it?
The ARM Macs are actually quite decent for less demanding games, even when running under Intel emulation. FWIW I started to play a couple of strategy games on my Mac over the holidays because I was away from my gaming PC and only had my Mac available.
Also good luck running most macOS games that were published 5-10 years ago or more and not updated. Apple really doesn't care about backwards compatibility at all which I think is a bigger issues for games than most other software. MS OTH is doing an exceptionally good job at this in comparison.
At the cost of ARM compatibility. Microsoft is doing as atrocious a job at ARM Windows than Apple is at its gaming ordeals. All that being said, I would never want Apple to change its ways. They've given us extraordinary ARM laptops that don't even have fans!
Baulders Gate 3 has quite great Apple Silicon & MacOS support. I know of a few normally-non-gamers who loaded that up on their Mac over the past couple months.
It's very interesting to me that Arch Linux is reportedly the most popular distro among Steam users. I wonder if that's actually accurate, or if people who use other distros are more likely to decline the survey for privacy reasons, and people who use Arch like sharing because of the "I use Arch BTW" meme
It's not really. The most popular distro is actually SteamOS Holo with 40% of the pie. For whatever reason Steam doesn't report SteamOS in the overall Linux stats until you drill down. It's also hard to tell if Arch is really the top non-SteamOS Linux distro because 5% of users are using the Steam Flatpak which could be on virtually on any distro.
Arch being popular among desktop distros is believable. It also aligns well with the existence of ArchWiki and EndeavourOS (easy to install Arch derivative).
I'm not too surprised about gamers aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are.
Arch is in general a quite popular and quite decent distro, and the complexity of using it has decreased quite a lot in my opinion. I still wouldn't recommend it if there's a risk I end up having to handhold the person afterwards though.
> aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are
Is that an issue besides GPU drivers? I assumed (though I haven't really tried it) that Steam is pretty relatively self-contained on Linux and doesn't really rely on system packages that much (most games are running on Proton/Wine anyway).
The "GPU-driver" also includes all the the Vulkan and GL runtimes and user-space machinery for shader compilation and what-not. Being on latest and greatest can make a significant difference there that I'd expect gamers to chase.
Steam also still relies on e.g. your display server.
Does Arch handle Nvidia's drivers properly? I'm using Open SUSE and it's a horrible experience, they provide multiple ways to install them and none work, so ended up just having to use Nvidia's installer directly.
If you're going to be a Linux gamer, you have to be a fan of the game of Linux. Most games are going to need some tweaking or a weird package in order to work. Arch makes a lot of sense for that crowd.
I remember wasteland 2 (from steam/wine) crashing on Linux when you finally entered the rangers headquarters. Luckily a linux kernel developer played the game and figured out what was going on. He told everyone how to fix the game with some arcane commands, increasing max counts, etc. Was pretty wild.
This is honestly one of the things that IMHO gives so much value to SteamOS. The Valve engineers find out about these things and apply them at the base. I've had a pretty good overall experience with gaming on my Fedora machine, but I've had to learn a couple of those things the hard way (mmap settings in the kernel, missing 32-bit libc (even though it's there), etc)
It is still very much true today in my experience. I have tried to be a linux gamer occasionally, and there are almost always things that need to be done for compatibility. Few games live up to Steam's promise, even when Steam is involved, unless you are playing on one of Steam's 2-3 anointed distros.
>unless you are playing on one of Steam's 2-3 anointed distros.
For sure. That is a pretty good state to be in---most games work in a few well known distros. If you use something else, you have to DIY some compatibility steps once in a while.
The most hacking I've done to get a Steam game working on openSUSE Tumbleweed is some copypasta sed magic to bypass the Private Division launcher app for Kerbal Space Program 2. Other than that, setting a command line parameter to ensure my eGPU gets used (which should be a relatively uncommon scenario), and forcing a few games to run through Proton, everything just works.
it was a couple years ago, but when i tried to game on Debian i was shocked by some 4+ year old packages that i wanted to try gaming with, nothing worked.
it's probably better today, but i definitely recommend a very up to date distro for gaming, and arch is literally the most up to date there is. happy with arch myself, except the nvidia issues, if you run an nvidia gpu i don't recommend it just yet (getting better really quickly though)
TL;DR you boot your Linux host kernel with special VFIO params to ensure the entire IOMMU domain of your Nvidia GPU is ignored, and pass that to Windows guest (which sees it as an entirely normal nv GPU).
(My hope is that in the next couple of years the open source Nvidia driver landscape dramatically improves, and modern distros ship with rock solid Vulkan/OGL impl for all Nvidia cards made in the last decade or three)
Arch is weird. I consider myself a Linux power user, including kernel hacking but no way I'm going to manually set up partitions and type gazillions of commands to set my system up.
This is off putting, I have no idea what's wrong with an installer. WTF Arch?
Well, there's some curses wizard called "archinstall", but yeah, I too opted for just the Garuda flavour of Arch when I chose to go non-VoidLinux (ie. when failing to get a new machine with nvidia drivered up swiftly and just-works-ly) rather than any console-driven setup.
That is the Arch way, Arch is not built for convenience but for customizability. If you want a graphical installer, you can install it yourself ;). Also there are several Arch-based distributions that include (opinionated) graphical installers to get you going faster. ArcoLinux is a good one.
Getting games to run on Linux often requires tinkering and the people who like to partake in this stuff and have the skill for likely run one of those “hardcore” distros like Arch.
Those who don’t want to tinker and stick to already supported games would probably just run SteamOS to begin with (or a proprietary OS).
This hasn't been true for a while now. Many games have Linux builds, and for those that don't, Steam Proton works incredibly smoothly, and is integrated with the most popular game launcher, Steam. For the most part all you have to do to play games on linux now is click the checkbox to opt into Proton, and then click play.
The biggest remaining issue is anticheats for some competitive games
* That's a change from 96.56% on Windows to 96.40%. That's a small enough shift to be attributable to noise.
* In the December 2022 survey [0] (one year earlier), Windows had 96.15% share. So to the extent these tiny shifts mean anything at all, the trend for Windows market share was actually up slightly year-on-year.
I realise for casual users Windows is always going to be the OS of choice if for no other reason than it comes pre-installed and most people don't know how to reinstall an operating system.
However, Windows may be in trouble with more tech-literate people who do know how to change it. I can only speak for myself, but I've been a Windows user since 95. All but one of my programming jobs over the last 20 years have also been working on Windows. But I really dislike the direction Microsoft are taking and I find Windows to be terribly slow these days, with each version seemingly worse than the previous one. So I decided to look elsewhere.
A couple of months ago I bought a new laptop with the express intention of running Linux on it and giving it a good college try (I didn't want to mess around with dual-booting and I still need Windows on my main PC for work... for now). I know very little about Linux, but I've decided I'm not going to use Windows past 10 so it's time to find something else.
I went with Debian running dwm (Debian because I value stability over everything else, and dwm because I like the suckless philosophy) and it's honestly surprised me how good it's been. It's SO snappy. Everything is instant. It's really been a breath of fresh air.
I was especially dreading programming since I've solely used Visual Studio since Visual C++ 4.0 and don't really know anything else. Anyway, I went all-in and started learning Vim, GDB, and Make, and boy do I feel like I've been missing out. I'm really enjoying programming again, which for me has just become a job over the years.
Anyway, my point is, if tech-literate people are willing to give Linux a try, I wonder how many of them would be as surprised as I was and may make the switch permanently. With Windows getting worse, and Linux getting better, maybe more than ever.
People occassionally ask me what my best advice is for becoming a great programmer, and they are surprised when I say vim, bash (including for and while loops), and core tools like sed, grep, awk/cut.
When you know enough bash to (without having to look it up every time) write a command that filters (sed) and parses (awk, cut) and then loops (while, for) you will be amazed at what you can do and how quickly you can do it. Then add Vim and you can fly through tasks near the speed of thought.
I wonder how much scraping bots skewer the counters. They create a lot of traffic and majority of them run on "Linux Desktop", even though some modify the user agent.
Would be curious to see stats for e.g. subset of GPU-accelerated devices which can be detected in JS. Not as a true bot-filter of course, but as a uniform and widely-available metric biased towards real users.
Both things that seem to be happening due to the current LLM hype. Everyone locks down their data from scrapers while complaining about increased bot traffic.
I don't and that's why I say it would be curious to see the numbers that could potentially expose the bots-vs-users discrepancy.
Without numbers an educated guess looks like this:
1) Even if say 70% of bots set Windows UA, the remaining 30% of Linux UA will still skew the numbers noticeably because 30% is much more than the "natural" Linux market share.
2) Many bots don't modify the UA just because they don't care and are not being blocked often enough, not on the domains that they scrape.
3) Many bots don't modify the UA because they care a lot and follow the strategy of emulating a real chrome desktop user with high fidelity. In this case it's better to leave the real Linux Chrome UA than to risk being detected by discrepancies between the UA and the browser capabilities detected by JS.
Both, it's both, and they're meeting in the middle. Windows has taken a nosedive with 11, while I can say at least for KDE that it has been improving massively in stability over the past few years, and Proton has made gaming on Linux possible. Adobe being Windows-only is still a big hold for lots of people, but unlike decades ago, today lots of top software like Davinci Resolve is now nativelly compatible. Pinta is no Paint.NET and Okular can't match Adobe Reader, but eventually they just might be good enough.
One day we'll look back at the legacy pile of self contradicting nonsense that Windows is and wonder how we ever used it productively.
For one, how do we define Linux desktop? ChromeOS is a distribution of Linux, unlike say Android even advertising official support for a Debian container to run Linux desktop software, and while it lacks GNU utils, Alpine does too and yet we still include it in this category...
Next is the whole way we're counting the supposed number of Linux computers: user agents. There's zero reason for browsers to provide true and specific user agents, in fact, true user agents often yield broken sites (like YouTube assuming ARM PCs are all a specific Chinese smart TV) or pose a great privacy risk. Certainly a significant percentage of Linux users made the choice against it, either by themselves or as a browser default.
Then there's the fact specific demographics have their own distribution of platforms. For example, StackOverflow developer survey showed 40.23% of developers prefer Linux for personal use, compared to 31.07% who prefer MacOS. The absolute numbers matter little if your users in particular tend to be on a certain platform.
> But I think tech people recognize this as referring to "OS's that aren't Windows or Mac".
Do they? The metric includes "Unknown" and "Other" not referred to in this, representing another 5% of activity.
However, what the OP seems to be saying is that interpreting anything from the metric and trying to communicate that interpretation with others is pointless. Not even the linked article can decide whether Linux desktop penetration is 4% or 6%, and that's just one person. Good luck when you add a second person with their own feelings.
Long time windows user here, developer of cross platform applications for 30+ years.
Started getting very frustrated with the way windows treats its users. It’s simply a non starter for any serious user these days; what with the ridiculous resetting of all bing settings periodically, the non stop abuse of your login mode (live vs local), and man every time that fucking Out Of Box Experience wizard would start and interrupt your login I would nearly shit myself with annoyance.
…
Recently took a position on an all Linux dev project, totally removed windows from my life (and kids). Whole house runs Linux now.
The existence of Linux and the abusive practices of Microsoft are a kind of daily reminder about why competition is so important even for basic, fundamental technologies like operational systems.
If Linux weren't always behind the door threatening Windows, surely we would have today as the only option a hiper restricted OS with a terrible performance, a huge pice tag and horrible terms of use(well... this is already the case).
I'm not sure how much it is Linux vs. just most consumers have expectations of open because that's historically been how it is. I don't doubt that if Apple were starting the macbook as a new product today, it would be locked down just like the iPhone is. MS would copy and go that way too. I don't think Linux is causing either one of them to hesitate, I think it's the fact that consumers already expect those to be general purpose devices, so it's going to be a slow bleed.
Not really. People don't care about libre software, they care about software that works, is supported, and they don't have to think about it. The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
On the flip side, look how much Microsoft is losing to Linux in the server space. Consumers don't care what servers their favorite sites and services are running on: they don't have to manage it.
> Not really. People don't care about libre software, they care about software that works, is supported, and they don't have to think about it. The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
Also, it shows the power of defaults and just showing up. Windows is as big as it is because Microsoft made the deals with OEMs 30+ years ago to ship their software as the default option. Macs would likely be an also-ran if Apple wasn't standing behind their hardware, both in terms of the hardware itself and the sales/support channel, as much as they are (just look at the relative success of their retail stores vs. the relative failure of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc., in the same space).
> so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do
Why would you say that? Take a look at the trend plot shown at the link. The trend started increasing markedly about two years ago. I wouldn't think it would suddenly flatline. At least I hope it doesn't.
> with a particular focus on the "chasm" or adoption gap that lies between early and mainstream markets.
> The author argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists)
Early adopters are a small minority, it's hard to give exact numbers but 5% sounds about right.
It's MUCH harder to get the pragmatists, late adopters, etc to use a new product. It generally requires a revolutionary product or brilliant PR and marketing (Linux doesn't really have PR and marketing and revolutionary would be a strong term for a product that's been in the market 30+ years).
Figuring out where the chasm is can be tricky though. If we're going to see S-curve adoption, we might be at the beginning of a rocket (maybe a small one a la crossing the chasm), but it's hard to say.
I think as market share goes up, there's going to be more polished product providers offering linux (liek Steam OS), and that's going to make it very reachable to the pragmatists.
it's going pretty well right now, but if they keep massively increasing prices, it won't keep up forever.
the company i work at pays almost double now compared to a year ago, for arguably worse service. some of us in IT are looking at options, because being locked into a service that keeps shooting up in price is a huge risk.
yes it'll be hard to get away from the ecosystem. but with the increasing price, demand for alternatives surges too, and i can't see it taking too long until we get some options.
I would add on to the "don't care" to say that (in my experience) your typical computer user doesn't even understand what an OS is. With many people that I've interacted with they just equate the computer and OS as one thing and have no idea what OS they're using, much less that it's actually replaceable.
> The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
Probably not. The body of the article reports 6.24% desktop Linux penetration already.
The 4% reported in the headline refers to browsers which report Linux in the user-agent string. That is more down to browser choice than kernel choice. Specifically, a popular Linux browser has chosen to omit "Linux" from its default user-agent claim, hence the discrepancy.
It may be that developers and hackers are drawn to certain browsers, but that is beyond the subject of Linux.
Sometimes you have to use very broad definition of "works". Often (certainly not always) UX and general aesthetic design for many open source apps is extremely poor compared to their proprietary alternatives.
There are also people that prefer to use free / open-source software because of it giving power & control to the users & community, opposed to proprietary software where a single (typically commercial) company controls the software.
The disadvantage of propietary software is that you are at the mercy of how the company decides to maintain and develop their software. And they might do undesirable things towards their users. Like displaying adds, tracking / profiling their user's personal data. Changing the pricing. This typically happens when they gain enough market share and have enough users vedor-locked into their software.
And the vendor lock-in also makes it harder for users to make the software work with other 3rd party software. So generally propietary software isn't easy to combine with third party software, unless the company has a commercial incentive to support it. But often one of the reasons for the software to be propietary is because of the vendor lock-in. So that you will use all software from 1 company that all works well together, but doesn't work (as well) when trying to combine it with third party software.
They're playing defense vs ... is "linux desktop" even trying?
I don't expect someone out there to just make it work for everyone else, but outside specialized situations like gaming hardware, or phones, I don't see anyone really putting the work into appealing to the mass of windows users, at least not as far as covering all the bases that you would need to cover to really think about getting people to move.
MacOS is probably the most organized effort and there they are, and they don't cover all the windows features exactly.
That's not a knock on anyone here, just that they're maybe playing defense vs no no real organized effort.
No. I've been using Linux since 2007 and spent most of my career so far in the Linux space. My goal has never been to convert Windows users to Linux. I don't care what others use so long as it doesn't impact me. I just want to make Linux better, because I am also a Linux user, and want my own experience to be better. If my work means someone has a pleasant experience and converts, then great, the more the merrier. But it's not my goal. So I think you're right, we're not trying to get people to move from Windows. We're just trying to make something we want to use.
Sure. I don't. Linux works for me, and I improve it in ways I care about, and I continue to not care what others use. Like I said, increasing Linux adoption is not my goal. Improving the OS that I like to use is.
One of my linux systems has a 20 year old sound card, a 15 year old analog video capture card, both PCI, running on a ~10 year old fully upgraded 4th gen hasweel platform with a 1 year old RDNA2 radeon 6700XT card. I can play all the latest games pretty well and its fairly eccentric. I bet windows 10 would have some trouble with the old cards and all my hardware is considered "unsupported trash" by Windows 11
I'm not sure what your activities are, but in the modern age only having a desktop is highly restrictive. I do have a desktop and I don't really have a personal laptop, and sometimes it is annoying to not have a computer on the go, and mobile devices don't cut it.
Yours is kind of an extreme use case post 2010 or so, I'm glad that it's working out for you.
As someone who has used windows for 20 years, and used linux for a combined total of about 3 years (including now since sept. 2022):
Linux desktop plays defense against itself. As long as linux is heavily CLI dependent to get stuff done, it's going to be stuck in sub 10% penetration. I don't see this changing either because the people who maintain linux love linux the way it is.
Don't get me wrong, linux is extremely powerful, but it's gate kept behind a fetishization of archaic and cryptic command line interfaces.
Windows is a consumer OS, which is terrible for engineering, less centered around CLIs but nevertheless having a few even more cryptic ones tacked on like afterthoughts or a legacy hoarding exercise.
CLIs will always be more powerful than GUIs. They tap into what the OS actually is. The GUI is an illusion.
I think Lennox really opens up for windows users when they understand that everything is a Linux terminal command.
When you go into the GUI and change your display resolution, that is a terminal command. Etc.
This is the same for extremely popular things like VS Code, where all the extensions are super cool, most of them are also terminal commands or have some semblance.
However, I can agree with you that this distinction is never clearly explained. And the majority of windows users have no idea, so they come over to Lennox and don’t understand why things might look strange, or require a terminal.
I'm not shocked. They've successfully "played defence" against a host of others, including OS/2, Be, and DR-DOS. And that's just the operating systems. Don't forget Stac, WordPerfect, Lotus, Novell, Sun, and a host of others.
The shocking bit is that Linux is even still alive, given the graveyard of Microsoft competitors.
These are web browsing statistics. Basically nobody does significant amounts of browsing from a Steam Deck.
But even if they did, the install base of the Steam Deck is far too small to move the needle here. The install base of desktop and laptop computers is billions of devices vs. millions for the Steam Deck.
I think you're missing the connecting lines here: with the Steam Deck, Valve made significant investments into WINE emulation and Proton development and all of those dependencies needed for its product that are also applicable to desktop. That convinced a lot of people who were using Windows just for gaming to make the switch, and they all browse the web. I'd argue those types are most of the new users we've seen coming to Linux in the last few years even - and I'd attribute all of it to Valve.
For instance this year I gutted my windows install down to a 20GB partition after moving one game I play over to Linux at a time and testing it works for a while.
Guess what... I did this after I purchased a steam deck and saw how much better proton and wine are.
It depends how far you stretch "because of the Steam Deck". Sure, people aren't doing much web browsing because of the Steam Deck. How many people gave it a try because Valve decided to go with it for the Deck? How many people have been enabled to stick with it because of the technologies Valve developed for the Deck (proton and gamescope come to mind)?
Looking at the Statcounter report, it explicitly excludes mobile devices and separates out ChromeOS. I'm guessing that Statcounter uses UA strings and it is conceivable that HTTP requests are happening outside of explicit web browsing.
Their data source is the analytics JavaScript that webmasters install on their sites. Non-browsing HTTP requests are unlikely to target pages with those scripts installed, and even less likely to download and run them.
Hmm, I am not a Steam Deck user, but I have Valve to thank for being able to switch to Linux.
What kept me from it was the fact that I couldn't reliable play my gaming library on it. Thanks to the efforts they put to improve things with WINE/Proton, I could happily switch to Mint around a year ago, and couldn't be happier with it.
When Valve announced the Steam Deck, I decided to bite the bullet and move from Windows 10 for gaming and MacOS for personal use and development to a unified Arch KDE Plasma desktop. I now also have a steam deck, which makes for a nice, consistent experience when traveling with it and docking in desktop mode. It certainly made me realize that gaming on Linux was viable, which allowed me to discover that the entire OS was not only usable but provided a better experience than I had on Windows or Mac. So you can attribute at least one conversion, and that was before I ever picked up a steam deck. I have been happily using Arch with KDE since the second half of 2021 now.
- I have several rasperry PIs that perform various tasks, so yeah, they could generate Linux traffic (at least 3 of them are running)
- I game on a playstation. After work, I do not want to update steam, windows, uplay, drivers, origin, battlenet. I still use discs. When I want to play I insert disk and play
- I do not want to deal with limitations of Windows. Some programs display too much ads. I prefer fighting with app setup once, compile, etc. After creating scripts I can setup my machine again without any problems in minutes
- If my windows machine becomes slow it is often slow to download fresh ISO, and install it. I do not want to restore it from partition as I am not sure what kind of bloatware was installed by the manufacturer. On Linux I can download ISO and install it in maybe 15-20 minutes
- Most of my apps, self hosting is much easier for me to set up on Linux than on Windows. It may be because I do not know how to set it up properly in Windows
- In Windows I feel as guest, rather than admin of my machine
- I have set up some mini-PCs for my friends, since their Windows became unusable. After using Linux they could still use their machines (they use only browsers, Libbre Office suite, etc.)
I'm not a gamer, in fact I think they are mostly poison for the brain, but I really REALLY appreciate what steam/valve/ proton whoever has done to help bring people over to the FOSS side. Ive converted a lot of kids when before I couldn't convert anyone :-)
Exactly. As someone who plays games but doesn't smoke or drink (which are also leisure activities), those are way more socially accepted and probably closer to "poison".
But it's okay because as you said, everything in moderation.
If OneDrive didn't hijack your filesystem, I would have dealt with auto-open edge links.
I tasted Fedora and... Oh my God Windows sucks. Like its awful in seemingly every way compared to Fedora Cinnamon. The UI/the speed/the experience is breathtaking.
Fedora Cinnamon is so good, I've become outspokenly anti-Debian/Ubuntu for giving Linux a bad name. I'm amazed that an operating system this solid has been existing under my nose.
I'm curious what about Fedora specifically makes the difference for you? I started using Cinnamon with Mint (derived from Ubuntu, Debian) last year and also found it a big improvement from Windows.
I'm willing to bet its more about the "Fedora" than the "Cinnamon". I was an Arch user for about 15 years with a few attempts in between to try other distros (including Fedora), but recently I've been installing Fedora on my machines because the last two versions have been really good. Its very competent, software availability has improved, they take security much more seriously than any other (normal) distro and they are always on top of the latest features and upcoming "tech" on the linux world.
finally switched from Win10 to full time EndeavourOS KDE/Plasma and havent looked back.
got sick of my OS customization getting reset after every unstoppable auto update. oh, and the ads. the constantly changing ui shenanigans.
i kept TPM 2 turned off to prevent Win11 from metastasizing its way onto the machine, but the straw that broke the camel's back is that Win10 totally fucked up my dual boot setup after an OS auto-update.
btw, i used to roll my own winxp isos with sysprep and regedits baked in. all of that is impossible now without the unobtanium that's Windows LTSC.
(my hardware/usage is recent AMD thinkpad, time is spent mostly in browser, vscode, mpv, krita, darktable, terminal)
i do miss the Affinity products tho, they keep making them more Windows/MacOS-only, now relying on the windows store/msix installer, basically guaranteeing they'll never work with Wine/Proton :(
> i do miss the Affinity products tho, they keep making them more Windows/MacOS-only, now relying on the windows store/msix installer, basically guaranteeing they'll never work with Wine/Proton :(
I saw this yesterday, it may be helpful, but there may also be dragons:
wonder why Winetricks exists, shouldnt it be upstreamed?
i guess maybe the same reason Proton exists? maybe Proton has the same fixes and i can just use a compiled version of that without having to recompile Wine? :thinking_face:
I've been playing with Linux desktops since the 90s. Every few years I load up a few distros in a VM to see what's going on, and I just did that again over the holidays with some free time and a recent urge just to tinker with stuff. Some random, recent thoughts:
- Knowing how Linux works (and having the skill to use it) is hugely advantageous for most software developers and IT professionals--I personally wouldn't hire an IT or DevOps admin who didn't have some level of familiarity and comfort around Linux. Reckoning with the modularity and composability of Linux helps to build a deeper understanding of how computers work, and many of the most important IT topics of today (containers, cloud management) are built off Linux/Unix fundamentals such as chroot and cgroups.
- I tried Arch for the first time and enjoyed it as a nostalgia trip. It reminded me of installing Redhat or Suse or Mandrake back in the 90s. I appreciate it for what it is--a tinkerer's distro. I don't understand the meme around it though, and found nothing esoteric about setting it up... Is manually partitioning a disk drive supposed to be a feat of strength today?
- On the other side of the distro spectrum, I'm mightily impressed by Zorin. Less so these days with Ubuntu. I get folks' distaste for Snaps over Flatpacks.
- I don't get folks aversion to bloat. For me, finding the ideal setup was about installing everything a distro had to offer and then chiseling down. The exploration was always the fun in using Linux. I remember installing Suse back in the 90s with 10 different window managers and I loved fiddling with them all.
I'm not associated with System76 but if you currently use Ubuntu as your desktop check out Pop OS. It does a great job of smoothing some of the rough edges and has great support for Nvidia cards. After years of using Ubuntu exclusively, I switched to Pop OS about 4 years ago and never looked back. Note that my comment comes from using it as a desktop on my custom-built PC, not a laptop.
they are a good company, the only tip I would recommend, if you don't have a beefy system. Is install Pop_OS so it has all the GPU support etc, and then just run some lightweight WM. That switch got me a boast on the speed of an old laptop.
Does Pop OS allow you to install software that Canonical forces through snap, like Firefox or Chromium, using the distribution's package manager (apt or whatever)?
Yes, you can install things manually, though popOS has its own own flatpak based "store" if you prefer that model. There are a few things that are missing from both though because the vendor only releases software in snap form and no one's bundled it otherwise (e.g. lxd). For those, you can either build from source or install snap yourself.
Yes, installing things manually is always an option (even in Ubuntu!), but I wondered if in Pop it was an option to "apt install firefox" and get your package installed the "old way", with no sandboxing, using shared libraries from the system, allowing for upgrading with "apt upgrade" the moment you decide, etc. But if PopOs repo is flatpak based as you say, I guess the answer would be no.
Yes, that is the norm on Pop. They removed snaps in the standard setup and have their own package repository. You can install stuff normally and if you don't find something you can use flatpaks.
Anecdotally, recently I tried to upgrade/update a PC (at my parent's house) running a 5 YO Manjaro build and was not possible. All mirrors dead, GPG keys server dead, broken dependencies, etc... I am far from a Linux expert but tried everything I could, sometimes checking 10 YO threads and ChatGPT. In the end I just installed Windows O o.
if you actually care about bloat, by far the best* thing to do is set up arch linux manually (no archinstall script) and just install the packages you actually need. it's insane how little it actually takes to get a working system.
it's a bunch of effort though, both to learn how everything works and to set up all the things you're usually just used to being there by default. but once it's done you'll be able to fix any issue that pops up, because you actually KNOW what's on your system, as opposed to it being a massive collection of things you have no idea about.
*something like gentoo might be better but... compiling a browser takes ages and i recommend having an up to date browser, so you'll spend tons of time on that.
As far as Nvidia goes, I was impressed with the ubuntu-drivers autoinstall command which just works for me. Not sure how long that has been around but it was a pleasant surprise.
My main gripe with pop_os is how bloated it seems and how slow and sluggish it feels at times compared to KDE while its DE feels being more janky and less stable than vanilla Gnome Ubuntu which I also dislike but that's another story.
1.2GB or more of memory usage at idle when most of the KDE distros I tried, even the Ubuntu based ones like Kubuntu, go around 700MB. Plus it just feels sluggish and slow on not so modern machines.
What exactly is Popos delivering more than the likes of Kubuntu or Nobara for the near double extra resources used?
>1.2GB or more of memory usage at idle when most of the KDE distros I tried, even the Ubuntu based ones like Kubuntu, go around 700MB. Plus it just feels sluggish and slow on not so modern machines.
Isn't this irrelevant nowadays? Don't the OS's consume/free memory dynamically, and idle usage is meaningless?
Sure, PopOS isn't the best choice for your Raspberry Pi, but we are talking about desktop computing, where 1.2GB of RAM is nothing.
Firstly, 1.2 GB RAM or more is not 'nothing' if you have 8GB of RAM or less, which is still a lot of people these days.
At that scale the difference 500MB to 1GB RAM wasted by your DE could mean a few extra apps or browser tabs you can run before you hit the swap meaning a great usability boost.
Secondly, you haven't answered my question on what Popos does extra to justify the extra resource usage, you only justified the resources waste with the argument that 'RAM is cheap'.
I for one absolutely love their hybrid window tiling shell and architecture as Gnome plugins. I don't think KDE has something quite on the same level although there is movement in that space.
It will be interesting to see if W10 EOL end of 2025 will have any effect. That will instantly obsolete hundreds of millions of useable computers (everything before Q4 2017). For non power users that only need some web browsing and basic office functionality a switch to Linux would be perfect. A 10 year old laptop is fine as a web browsing machine.
As Windows continues its enshitification, and as Valve continues investing into its awesome Steam Deck, I do hope the trend continues.
Personally, after using Steam Deck a lot, I bought a desktop and tried a standard distro (OpenSUSE in my case) for gaming. The experience has been not ideal, but doable. My issues:
- My Xbox controller worked, then suddenly stopped working. I've been using a PS controller instead which works great, but would vastly prefer the Xbox one.
- NVidia has been such a pain that I'm thinking of selling my current card and buying an AMD one. NVidia drivers are truly horrible. For example, during boot time, the proprietary drivers randomly fail (like 1 in 7 reboots), which is not catastrophic (the system recovers by itself) but does lengthen the boot process by roughly 1 minute (very noticeable when the whole computer normally boots in ~10s). Note that this is with the latest driver version, and even after modifying kernel parameters as per NVidia devs' advice.
- Some games still don't work great under Proton (anticheat, mostly). This is expected and I'm quite fine with the current state of gaming compatibility on Linux, but might be surprising to some folks that are coming from Windows.
But overall, I can just play whatever is in my Steam library, and I truly love that.
We're in the odd situation where AMD cards are vastly superior for gamers in dollar/performance terms.
I'm on the market for a AI work station and I'm honestly thinking of doing a amd/nvidia split so I can have the graphics just work and the AI also just work.
> My Xbox controller worked, then suddenly stopped working. I've been using PS controller instead which works great, but would vastly prefer the Xbox one.
> As Windows continues its enshitification, and as Valve continues investing into its awesome Steam Deck, I do hope the trend continues.
The Steam Deck isn't without its faults: there's a dedicated "Special offers" carousel on the home screen, and there's been a full-width ad for the winter sale on the home screen for the past few weeks.
In the stats from Wikipedia traffic[0], Linux's share is more stable - ~2.1% for 2023, ~2.1% for 2020-2022, ~1.6% for 2016-2019 (I put the dates in the pie chart filter, and looked at the "Linux" and "Ubuntu" labels). By the way, there are some strange peaks in that data - Linux going up to 7% in single weeks, Ubuntu going from 0.2-1.0% baseline to 1-3% for a couple of months in 2022...
We'll see if those numbers are stable, or on an upward trend. I can see why the numbers would be going up. I've been on macOS for almost 20 years and I'm not sure that my next workstation will be from Apple.
I still think the Mac is great, but as work require more and more Linux specific tools switching starts to make sense. All the tools I don't already run in a terminal or in a VM is also available on Linux, the only Mac only application is Apple Mail and I'm not that attached to it.
Unless you are an iOS dev, it just never made sense to buy one. Worse hardware, worse software options, you are going to be VMing always anyway.
The 'low power' marketing didn't work on me, my 6+ hour battery life on an Asus has never affected my life ever. However having a 3060 has unlocked so many possibilities. It could make me a multimillionaire this year.
Scary to think I might have gotten an iOS dev job, ended up having to run AI on CPU, and never came up with my product.
> Unless you are an iOS dev, it just never made sense to buy one.
Not sure I completely agree, if you're buying a laptop and factor in the fact that you're guaranteed to get a good screen then MacBooks have provide pretty good value, for me at least over the past 15 years.
This is not unexpected at all. 10 years ago I had a dual boot system, occasionally trying out games on Linux. Some of them worked out of the box, some of them worked after configuration, and some of them were totally borked. This year, I built a gaming PC, installed Arch Linux, installed Steam, installed Cyberpunk 2077, hit the green play button and that's it, I can play recent AAA games without any problem. There are still issues around anti-cheat systems though, especially around the kernel-level ones.
>Looking at December it shows Windows rising too, with macOS dropping down.
I posted something similar except for browser. [1] Desktop Browser Market Share Worldwide – December 2023, Safari saw a sharp decline to less than 9%, down from 14% in June.
It seems for whatever reason a lot of people tried Safari but then switched back to Chrome.
I wonder what were the reason the drove this action. And on the Linux 4% sharp increase in December.
I wish more people would use Ubuntu on their home PCs. It's so easy to do. With so many things being web based it's never been easier to switch to Linux.
I think we'll see the end of desktop OSs before we see macOS or Linux overtake Windows. I know a ton of people who don't use a laptop for desktop PC outside of work at all. Their computing is accessed entirely through a smartphone. The desktop OS will become a niche thing for offices and gamers, but I think desktops will eventually be on their way out
I'm one of those long-time programmers who has run Linux on the desktop for decades, and I also use Android out of a sense of obligation for running comprehensible, auditable, open source software in as many places as practical. Also, IMO, there is something important about using the "non-dominant" platform as a techie. I might need to start using Firefox (rather than Chrome/Chromium) for the same reason.
I have no regrets about Linux on the desktop over decades. Using my Linux desktop is a joy, and I always viewed Linux system administration as a worthwhile skill which I have cross-applied professionally in the realm of cloud servers and DevOps.
In the period where Windows had dominant market share, I relegated Windows usage to a VM for a handful of software packages (e.g. Quickbooks), running on my Linux host.
Sometime around 2018, I realized I hadn't booted a VMWare VM in a few years, so I could just delete that VM guest, and the host software, too.
Nowadays, I basically ignore the entire Windows desktop space in my everyday computing. I keep an eye on Windows 11 via a Media PC I use for streaming edge cases to my TV, like old Blu-ray or DVD rips. I use a proprietary desktop via a Mac Mini, which is my dedicated "Zoom call box", but also where a handful of proprietary apps live. I don't need desktop Quickbooks anymore, so instead this is my way of accessing things like MSWord, MSExcel, Acrobat, and ScanSnap software. Basically, those rare situations where web software alternatives won't work.
Here's an interesting question I've been thinking about: in 2023, why are so many developers encountering Linux in their day-to-day lives even if they aren’t running Linux as their main workstation OS?
For Windows developers, it’s the rise of WSL. Windows was always missing a great UNIX shell and now WSL provides it in spades.
For macOS developers, it’s native support for Linux VMs & containers as well as the rise of Apple Silicon & ARM. These two trends make it so that macOS’s BSD heritage and local terminal is a less comparatively useful proxy for local development (vs just running a local VM or container running Linux, which is now easy enough, and fast), whereas perhaps in past years the BSD heritage was good enough to e.g. run Python, Ruby, or Node.
For all developers, Linux is the standard deployment environment in the cloud, whether you are using Amazon EC2 or Google GCE or something else like DigitalOcean. Even developers running Linux workstations find a need to virtualize and containerize Linux environments, but this can now be done in a lightweight way with F/OSS options.
For all developers, IDEs have gotten better at working with remote Linux machines, or local containers. See VSCode “Remote” extension, and private networking tools like Wireguard, Tailscale, ZeroTier.
Finally, Linux has showed up in a lot of “long tail” hardware use cases, such as Raspberry Pi, Android, NAS devices, Steam Deck, etc.
So I wouldn’t really call 2023 (or 2024) the year of the Linux “desktop”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Linux is the “#1 #2 operating system”.
That is, it’s not the OS everyone runs on their workstation, but it is the OS everyone runs in their workstation, from their workstation, or around their workstation. It’s the closest thing developers have to a “standard development & deployment OS” even while their workstations and desktop environments fracture on Windows/Mac/LinuxDistro lines.
And if a developer has a homelab server or a favorite remote development VM, it is almost certainly running Linux and accessed via ssh.
I think a big difference is the way the shell works. That, on Windows today, you can just open up a terminal in your Linux environment (bash/zsh/etc) without thinking about the VM. This becomes a much simpler path than, say, Cygwin, or a hand-managed VMWare guest. And likewise that tools for things like container management can make some reasonable assumptions about the host OS and its Linux capabilities.
You can do similar configuration with VMWare Workstation and SUA (Windows POSIX subsystem).
Windows also has native containers.
They decided to expose them via docker APIs to take advantage of the ecosystem tooling, and nowadays other ones like containerd and runc are also available.
> For macOS developers, it’s native support for Linux VMs & containers as well as the rise of Apple Silicon & ARM.
macOS still doesn’t have official support for containers. There is https://macoscontainers.org/ but you have to disable SIP, which is a no go for most professional/work machines.
Yes, you are technically correct on containers. However, macOS does have native support for Linux VMs (via the Hypervisor / VM frameworks) and then that Linux VM guest has native support for containers. So essentially macOS still provides a gateway to something akin to WSL on Windows, and that’s how tools like podman and docker work, via a Linux VM. (I am over-simplifying, of course.)
Ubuntu is an amazingly mature Desktop without the MS bloatware.
For my AI work, I fully rely on it.
Would I use it if I had to make only Powerpoint slides and Word docs? Likely not.
I think it will continue to grow, as the two major OS's have each become enshitified in their own way; Windows with ads at every turn, and macOS with 'security' restrictions and limitations anytime you deviate from the annointed path.
I take it those laptops have an Nvidia card? I wouldn't try to use Wayland with an nvidia card. I hear it works better with AMD cards from other HN users. Personally, I don't think I'll be changing over anytime soon though, as long as X11 still compiles and works, I'll probably keep using it.
I'm not sure if (1) will fix every Nvidia/Wayland bug that exists right now, but (2) will definitely be able to reach perfect Wayland compatibility faster without sacrificing performance like the original nouveau driver.
Shouldn't your distro know that yours is a Nvidia card, and make the necessary to avoid that you boot into a black screen after upgrading your system using the standard procedure?
I don't think you can fault your distro because Nvidia in general is a mess. Here's how it works:
* Kernel -> Nvidia shim -> nvidia binary driver
* You upgrade, you get a new kernel, the shim needs to be recompiled (ideally automatic using dkms)
* This fails for some reason due to missing kernel headers, some weird compilation bug, etc. You end up with a black screen.
Ideally Nvidia just open sources and upstreams their driver, like AMD and Intel have done. I know they've been making steps, but there's nothing the Linux world can really do to solve this outside of trying to make a good open source driver like nouveau. But nouveau can only be developed using reverse engineering because Nvidia refuses to provide public detailed documentation on their cards.
Of course it's not the distro's fault but they can improve its robustness making that failures during the process (like in the step #3 from your comment) are handled in a way so that the entire update is rolled back. I guess this is what niche distributions like NixOS try to ensure.
Linux can conquer the PC desktop by just sitting still while Microsoft continues to enshittify Windows. Mac also grows this way, but you get way more bang for your buck $/performance wise with commodity hardware vs. Apple hardware.
I wonder if smartphone usage has any influence in this. I would guess a lot more "casual" internet users use their phone to browse the internet. And maybe more .. eh, lets call them "advanced" users are part of the desktop share?
It's going to increase when support for millions of PCs running Windows 10 ends and they can't upgrade to Windows 11.
It's also going to increase as more and more games on Steam work on Linux and people decide running Windows for gaming just isn't worth the bloat and ads.
I'm in way too much of a bubble. I worked at Microsoft for years and continued to run Windows for some time afterwards, sometimes dual booting with Linux. I've tried but always hated MacOS.
But Windows 8 completely broke me -- this was just an unusable OS, plastered with ads and shortcuts that didn't work and a wildly inconsistent UI; big tiles one second, tiny icons the next, some things you had to double-click that used to be a single click, some things you still had to double-click. Some buttons were just plain text, others were buttons, others were just frames with text. It made you sign in with a Microsoft account for reasons never explained. It was just such a heap of garbage that I couldn't do it any more. Trying to help family members who had trouble with their computers became a horrifying slog.
So I completely unplugged from Windows; switched to Chromebooks for casual stuff and recommended them to my family members, and a variety of Linux distributions for more serious stuff.
But I really know almost nobody who uses Windows; this is the bubble I'm in. Lots of people use MacOS, many people use Linux, and the others use ChromeOS. When I see a survey like this saying that 72% of users still use Windows I'm shocked to my core. I guess my next computer I'll stick with Windows for a bit to see if things are more sane now.
Try to go to a bubble outside US or countries with the same kind of life and salaries.
You will find plenty of Windows, and developers for the users of them.
Linux will be around in server rooms, embedded, and those VMs used by everyone that doesn't want to spend time dealing with dual boot issues on laptops as if it was 2000.
I tried windows a while ago and the things you described were driving me insane. I honestly don't understand how that gets shipped. Doesn't anyone care? I'm assuming most devs and PMs are on Mac anyways so they don't even see the mess
> Doesn't anyone care?
Oh, they care. In my experience, Windows users are non-stop complaining about all the bullshit they are submitted to.
They just don't care to fix it.
Well, it's a mix. There are a ton of captive Windows users, corporate employees, gamers, people working with Microsoft technologies, etc.
But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it requires a bunch of configuration work, but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
> But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal.
I've been exactly one of those users, at least until Win10. I'm dreading 11.
Windows 11 broke basic task bar customization - how do you so completely ignore your users?
Pinning my taskbar to the side of my monitor is the hill I'll die on.
They have been putting features back into it each update though. We finally have the ability to ungroup open task bar entries again/etc.
I got a new work laptop just before xmas, and since I'll mostly be using it to RDP to my workstation I figured it was time to give Windows 11 a whirl. I'd been holding off primarily due to the taskbar stuff, and was pleasantly surprised that the grouping options were back, and there was an option to move the start button to the left.
A couple of minutes of customizations and it now feels quite familiar. Only thing that slightly annoys me is the icon-only elements in the Windows Explorer context menu for copy/paste.
Back in the days the saying was to never install Windows until the second service pack was released. I guess the same still applies, just without the service pack name.
It's not 100% reliable but there is a nice script called buttery taskbar. Check it out, it makes taskbar situation manageable. You just need to restart it sometimes.
I've been on a Mac since 2007, with my Dock on the side of my screen since the second I got my first iMac. If they ever prevented me from putting my Dock on the side, I would stop buying their products.
I feel your pain.
> but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
until the next update rolls out
There's a nag screen every 4? 6 months? It takes me about 5 minutes to take care of it. Oh, I'm fairly sure I have the Pro edition.
Hardly anything life changing or that would require a ton more work to set up a new workstation, instead.
"Just ignore the cloud features, it's fine."
"Just ignore the ads, it's fine."
"Just unplug ethernet during setup to get the option to ignore the cloud features, it's fine."
"Just edit the registry to ignore the cloud features, it's fine."
(sound of boiling water increases)
> (sound of boiling water increases)
There's a chance I die before the water boils over.
Famous last words
The joke from Windows users used to be "Linux is only free if your time has no value." The irony there is that I've spent more time in the past 12 months fighting to get software working on Windows than on Linux (and it was Xbox Game Pass, which is from Microsoft themselves!).
Yep. Microsoft has forgotten what their value proposition for Windows is. Once they started to see it as a tool that extracts value and not a product that provides value, everything started to go downhill. I think there is a real opening for a startup company that can create a Linux Distro that is Wine centric, letting users migrate over and still use all their current Windows software.
There's no way for a startup to actually compete vs Windows. The valuable market for that are corporations running Windows, those are extremely risk-averse, and even if the OS was almost a drop-in replacement to their Windows machines these corporations would expect a level of customer service that no startup could provide.
Microsoft has this huge moat with PC gaming + corporations which are really hard markets to crack into as a startup.
> But there are also experienced Windows users and frankly a lot of the garbage added isn't that big of a deal. Yeah, it requires a bunch of configuration work, but after a few hours you can get Windows to more or less work how it's always worked.
Yeah, people like to complain about the amount of time they spend getting Windows to work they want, but they’re willing to spend hours trying to get sleep to work in Linux.
There are plenty of scripts out there to disable as much or as little of the telemetry and everything else as you want, using the Pro or Enterprise editions lets you skip the cloud, and then it just… works.
There’s a certain give and take with all OSes about how much you adapt to it and how much it adapts to you. At work I use a Mac, I have two Linux servers in my closet, and my personal machine runs Windows. They’re each the right tool for their respective jobs, for me.
> but they’re willing to spend hours trying to get sleep to work in Linux.
There is no need to set up the sleep for Linux if you choose a supported hardware and not a Windows-certified one. Complaining that Linux doesn't work on the latter is like complaining that MacOS doesn't work on it.
I wish I had written this into the original comment because I knew someone would say this.
No it isn’t - MacOS and Macs are a singular product sold together. Windows and Linux are OSes that are downloadable from the web or buyable from stores and Windows consumer hardware support is simply better. And that’s okay, there are people who will seek devices that support it better, but I am not one of them, I will just virtualize it or run it in WSL.
If Linux had 30% desktop market share that would change, but it doesn’t.
FWIW, I agree with most criticisms of Windows. It is clear Microsoft no longer treats Windows the OS as a product, they treat every individual piece of it as a product, and that’s resulting in some weird, ugly, user hostile shit, but I can still get rid of it in no time at all and have a better personal OS. I think of it like adding unlock to a browser.
If it continues down its current path, I may be willing to switch, but it hasn’t passed the value/pain curve point for me yet.
> Windows and Linux are OSes that are downloadable from the web or buyable from stores
Virtually no (offline) stores sell devices with Linux. Being downloadable doesn't imply compatibility with all hardware in the world.
> Virtually no (offline) stores sell devices with Linux.
I did not specify offline, I was mainly catching Windows as an individually purchasable product.
> Being downloadloadable doesn’t imply compatibility with all the hardware in the world.
I did not say that it does, but there are plenty of distros that strive to be a consumer desktop OS, and part of that effort is working with a broad range of hardware, and for me they continually fail. I would rather install an OS where all my hardware works and then I can tweak it to behave the way I want than install an OS where the hardware doesn’t work and I still spend my time tweaking it to behave the way I want.
Even ignoring hardware support and things like sleep and hibernate, every Linux desktop user I know spends more time customizing the OS to get their desired setup than I do getting rid of the things they complain about in Windows.
It is fine to have a preference, there’s no perfect OS for everyone, but I think it is silly when people decide this is a hill they want to die on. There are valid reasons for tech literate users to consciously choose Windows over Linux.
First, I never tweaked the suspend or hibernate on my laptops and they always've been working flawlessly (Librem 14 and 15).
> every Linux desktop user I know spends more time customizing the OS to get their desired setup
You were asking wrong people perhaps. My non-technical relatives are just using Linux for their tasks and don't even know what a console is. People who like tweaking, do it. It's definitely easier on Linux anyway.
> but I think it is silly when people decide this is a hill they want to die on.
Most people are unaware that subjecting all their life and security to a for-profit, huge corporation is a bad idea for many well-known reasons. I am willing to dedicate my time to explaining that and promoting Linux, especilly when there are harmful myths about it like those you're propagating.
> Librem 14
While I understand that this isn’t the only way to achieve a great linux experience on a laptop, using an example with a nearly 4.5 year old CPU, a 1080p screen, and no GPU at a substantially higher cost than any other comparable hardware isn’t exactly a strong sales pitch for me.
> People who like tweaking, do it. It’s definitely easier on Linux anyway.
No, it isn’t. They’re both “tweakable” in different ways, but setting some group policy objects or registry setting is not inherently more challenging than tweaking a config file.
> Many people are unaware that subjecting all their life and security to a for-profit, huge corporation is a bad idea for many well-known reasons.
Nothing digital is “all my life.” If Microsoft turned my access off and remotely wiped my hard drives today, and made it impossible for me to recover from backups, I’d be inconvenienced, but absolutely fine. But they won’t, because they like my money. I’m okay with that clear, transactional relationship.
Microsoft is nowhere near the top of the “outside entities that could wreck my life” list.
> especially when there are harmful myths about it like those you are propagating.
Desktop Linux is worse at out of the box hardware support than Windows, especially new hardware and laptops. I don’t even think this is controversial. Even laptops like frame.work that explicitly support Linux have year long threads in their forums with people trying to get the behaviors consistently right.
Probably more controversial in this audience, but I feel strongly is true, is that the computing “upper middle class” - those who do more than surf the web, check email, or edit documents but don’t feel comfortable dropping into a console without explicit directions - are almost always better served by MacOS or Windows for their desktop.
> Desktop Linux is worse at out of the box hardware support than Windows, especially new hardware and laptops. I don’t even think this is controversial.
You're mistaken, and this is wrong. You need to choose your hardware explicitly for the OS, just like with Macs. Check recommended hardware on the website of particular Linux distribution.
frame.work do not explicitly support Linux. They default to Windows, and Linux option is only for DIY kits, implying bad support. I'm not considering them for this reason.
> You're mistaken, and this is wrong. You need to choose your hardware explicitly for the OS, just like with Macs. Check recommended hardware on the website of particular Linux distribution.
Macs are not equivalent. The OS and hardware are inextricably linked and the OS is not developed to support other hardware, except by dedicated hackers.
Linux however supports a huge array of hardware and explicitly tries to cover a wide spectrum of devices. Same as Windows. Windows does it better.
On the Ubuntu page:
> Download Ubuntu desktop and replace your current operating system. It’s easy to install on Windows or macOS, or run Ubuntu alongside it.
The next page has a list of basic recommended requirements (min 2ghz dual core, ram, etc). If they removed this and replaced it with a hardware compatibility checker, or only offered Ubuntu via their hardware, I would cede this point.
> frame.work do not explicitly support Linux. They default to Windows, and Linux option is only for DIY kits, implying bad support. I'm not considering them for this reason.
From their website:
> We designed the Framework Laptop from the outset to be a great Linux laptop, and the Framework Laptop DIY Edition comes with no OS loaded to let you bring your favorite Linux distribution. We deliberately selected components and modules that didn’t require new kernel driver development and have been providing distro maintainers with pre-release hardware to test to improve compatibility.
> Official support means we work with the Ubuntu and Fedora teams to do our best to avoid bugs and regressions. We provide official support for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (OEM C kernel) release. We provide official support for Fedora 38 (Intel) and Fedora 39 (Intel, AMD). We provide consistently updated install guides. We provide support ticket assistance. We provide help through the community forums.
They support Ubuntu and Fedora, work with the distro teams to handle bugs, and will respond to support tickets for those distros and versions. That’s pretty explicit.
I you stop trying to play armchair systems integrator and instead buy computers with Linux preinstalled fully supported by the vendor, you'll have a much better time of it.
Modern hardware is complex enough that it supports Windows or Linux. Not both, though.
So I thought when I bought my Asus 1215B netbook (remember those?), and had my share of headaches related to the 3D support (when AMD drivers got rebooted), video acceleration (still doesn't work), and a wlan driver that keeps losing connections to my home router, forcing me to use a LAN cable instead.
Ah, and rebooting occasionally requires taking the battery off as workaround to take it out of an UEFI zombie state.
Did you call their support to get it fixed? I'm guessing you didn't, since the 1215B didn't ship with Linux, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC
Interestingly, I had a few of the earlier models that did (701, 901 iirc) and their support for Linux was great. Certainly light years ahead of my efforts to put Linux in a Dell a few years prior.
Typical Linux fan answer on the Internet, apparently Wikipedia knows better than me, having bought it.
Not only it shipped with a custom Asus distribution for media play called Linux Express, it had Ubuntu on it.
Not surprising, since I don't know you. I tried to confirm your claims and only found confirmation that it didn't ship with Linux.
What is surprising that you come back with ad-hominem arguments ("typical Linux fan answer," "knows better than me") in lieu of hard evidence.
Yes, because you act like you know better than me.
Typical attitude on Linux forums.
Do you want a hardcopy from the purchase order as well?
> Yes, because you act like you know better than me.
> Typical attitude on Linux forums.
> Do you want a hardcopy from the purchase order as well?
More ad hom "arguments." The exact same arguments, no less.
I'm done here.
Have a nice day, feel free to ignore my comments.
As a software engineer in the UK I'm very much in the same bubble. It's almost unreal to me how much Windows has managed to enshittify. It's hard to know at what point (if ever) they'll turn the ship around and make an OS that's actually pleasant to use. I'm guessing there are basically no economic incentives to do so.
I've personally moved to an entirely MacBook based workflow where I have a dock on my table and plug in either my work or personal MBP depending on what I'm doing.
I was issued a Lenovo Thinkpad at work, recently, for the first time in more than a decade. "Sure, let's see. I used to own a(n IBM) Thinkpad back in the day—sure I ran Gentoo on it, but it was nice enough hardware. I've used Windows since 3.1, and still game on 10, I know my way around it. I can manage. Having a USB-A port is sure nice."
40-50% battery loss overnight while "sleeping". And other irritations galore. I'd forgotten what battery anxiety was like. Good lord.
Got on the MacBook list with IT ASAP. That MacBook lost 40% charge sitting in my backpack—over a week-and-a-half Christmas break. Ahhh, back home. So much more relaxing.
All of the gamers use windows. All of the office workers use windows. All of the medical equipment that need a PC, run on windows. In manufacturing all the pcs run windows.
So 72% is probably an underestimation.
The only market share that Microsoft lost in the last decade was in the school market (by Chromebooks) and the POS (by tablets)
What?
Point of sale.
It’s worth noting that I think Microsoft lost a significant share of the personal use market, not just to Linux or Mac, but to the apple ecosystem and mobile/tablet computing as a whole.
Agreed, after all the biggest OS today by a big margin is Android. Mobile is the new PC.
> but to the apple ecosystem and mobile/tablet computing as a whole.
For home users I totally see this in my life. I know of several households which end up only having a couple of iPads when several years ago they would have had a desktop or laptop.
No, I was just saying what he said was ridiculous.
as an office worker... i use linux, a bunch in my team use apple's OS. i'd say it's only about half of my team that still uses windows, trending downwards. but in general i'd probably agree that more than 72% of office workers use windows, just definitely not all of them and i'd expect it to keep trending downwards if m$ doesn't change course.
Your employer must have the nicest IT on this planet.
Bringing a different OS to a company is almost impossible.
All the cool companies I've worked for have had options. The coolest ones even allow you to use linux.
Willing to name some? The only big co I've worked at that wasn't a startup was Red Hat, which made linux a first-class option, but I don't fully count them :-D
Google lets its devs use their in-house Linux distro.
Even places like CERN used to have an IT policy that you're on your own if not using Windows or Mac.
Even when they co-designed Scientific Linux alongside Fermilab, and all the servers were on Linux, moving away from Solaris.
Speaking as one of the beta testers, back in 2004.
> All of the office workers use windows
If you define "office workers" as people who use Windows then sure. Even if we don't count tech quite a few people still use Macs (of course depends on country area but Apple seems to have very high market share amongst architects (of course not engineers but I think Linux is overrepresented there), designers etc. where I am).
> All of the gamers use windows
Nope
Care to elaborate? Steam for example reports > 96% windows usage.
Chromebooks are quite amazing, sadly not native command line, not native IDEs (afaik) and usually very low on ram.
I don't expect to buy another Chromebook after I found out mine had planned obsolescence. After a certain date it would no longer update. I didn't realize this would happen when I bought it so it came as a surprise. Still a perfectly fine machine otherwise I just have to make time to figure out how to install some Linux distro.
You could try ChromeOS Flex https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11552529 That's from a startup Google bought earlier.
Yes, always check when the device was released before buying a Chromebook. They get 10 years of updates after release, 8 years for models released before 2021.
This is a survey from gamers. There are a lot of games that only work on Windows, or work much better on Windows.
It's only been somewhat recently that games that support Linux have exploded in numbers. Somewhat coinciding with the release of the steam deck and the massive community it brought with it. There are now launchers for other stores for Linux and more every day.
Still, a lot of gamers don't really have a choice but to at least dual boot into Windows if they want to play some of the most popular games (Fortnite, for one).
It's because you can run native Windows games on Linux with very few issues nowadays, not because developers started porting their games to Linux more often.
Not supported games are mostly online multiplayer ones, and are using extremely intrusive anticheat rootkits. Fortnite is a great example of that. Anticheat devs refuse to support Linux for obvious reasons (too many ways to escape the rootkit).
Your both right. The answer for how you're both right is Proton. Many more game makers started testing their games on Linux in Proton/Wine/Steam to make sure they run on Steam Deck (and other Linux), but they (mostly) aren't native builds.
The steam deck effect is growing and I hope it keeps going.
I wonder how many gamers now run both Windows and Linux. I bet it's a high percentage of Steam Deck owners. ~100% of Steamdeck owners run Linux (they have a Steam Deck), but some proportion of those, which I'm guessing is fairly large, also has a Windows gaming rig.
I was able to suck it up from 8 till 10, but 11 is starting to piss me off.
I bought a gaming computer a year ago, it was fully pre-built. Somehow a 2 thousand (or whatever) computer comes with Windows Home instead of Pro (wtf Microsoft, you should really make sure OEMs are giving out Pro versions for gaming systems). This is where the fun begins, and I've posted it before on HN. I couldn't install Windows 11 offline in order to avoid making a Microsoft account. I don't like all my personal shit automagically being uploaded to Microsoft's cloud, especially when they default to on, and companies will reset settings on a whim.
So what happened next is I had to literally login, and then when I was finally on Windows, I wanted to add a new account because I don't like that Windows doesn't let me set the *username* local to the OS, if you're going to make me login, please let me set the username, I don't want my Windows path to be C:/Users/gianc/Documents or whatever. I rather set that myself, re-configuring all of that after the fact feels like it will break something, and it is not worth it.
So I go to create a new Windows offline account only to be told by the modern Windows 11 UI that I'm on Home edition of Windows, and cannot add users from that software, go to software XYZ from Windows. So I go there... guess what error I got? The same exact error telling me to go back to the previous program. I wound up installing Linux in frustration.
The only reason I don't use Linux is if the drivers stop being supported OOTB by the installer, which has happened to me before. Linux might have its own issues, but at least it's not completely FUBARd despite one of the largest companies pouring millions into its development.
What are the benefits of Windows 11 home vs pro for a gaming system?
My point was moreso that its silly paying thousands of dollars for a computer and only getting a basic version of Windows, considering they give OEMs an insane discount on licensing (I really doubt ASUS paid $100+ for my Windows license). By comparison my Surface Book 2 had Windows Pro, granted that was a Microsoft system yes, but it would have been insane if it only came with Windows Home edition after spending over a thousand dollars on a laptop. I buy gaming systems because it meets my hardware requirements for dev work. Visual Studio consumes all available memory. Windows Home has strange limitations which I just don't care for as a literal pro user.
> its silly paying thousands of dollars for a computer and only getting a basic version of Windows
It very well may be but this one is not on Microsoft. Using their power to force decisions onto others is one easy way to land in hot(ter) water. This would probably be an abuse of dominant position which everyone wants less of.
OEMs have more negotiating power than regular users so it's no easy or cheap feat to force them. Arbitrarily defining which licenses can work with what hardware makes everything complicated for everyone, it needs constant updating as the hardware changes, it needs a lot of assumptions on how the user uses the PC, would probably create the garden variety loophole hunt for tricking the system.
The sensible choice here is to go for a product that really fits your needs especially since that market is very well served by competition. You have dozens of competitors and even the DYI option. You're not buying a black box. It can be a gaming PC with Windows Home just as it can be a gaming PC with a 4060 GPU. Nvidia or MS should have no say in what a vendor can sell.
They don't need to force anything, they could just negotiate a favorable license cost, and make sure people aren't getting mediocre versions of Windows after spending over a thousand dollars on a Windows machine. I'm definitely going to be buying System76 for my next desktop.
> and make sure people aren't getting mediocre versions of Windows after spending over a thousand dollars on a Windows machine.
You already had everything you needed to make sure of that, you said you're a pro user. You're running away from your very basic responsibility of looking at the spec sheet, and you're blaming Microsoft or the OEM for this. You chose a Windows Home system probably because it was cheaper than others. This is one way it was cheaper, you probably got the Home license for free".
Many people would go for cheaper or no license in order to get better hardware. MS is already strong arming OEMs to bundle Windows licenses, they should absolutely not use their power to force them even more.
> I'm definitely going to be buying System76 for my next desktop
Perfectly valid (and great) choice. But you could pay a whopping $82.000 for a workstation and it doesn't come with a Windows Pro/Enterprise license or RHEL Workstation Standard (lifetime, not just the one year) subscription. MS and IBM should absolutely make sure one of these licenses is included with any system over $1k. :)
in theory, you can disable all the ads
I didn't even bother trying, but yeah Windows Home edition is severely locked down, they might as well call it the Childlock version of Windows.
in practice MS will just keep injecting new ones in new ways and you're stuck wasting your time in a never ending battle against a user-hostile OS.
Microsoft has decided to use their OS to collect people's personal information and use it against them as a ad platform and no amount of registry edits or setting changes will make that untrue.
Best feature of Pro is Windows Sandbox, which I use to test/trial app installs in a VM. It's basically a disposable OS that spins up as fast as most apps. Sandbox runs on Hyper-V, which along with domain networking (for business) are the two main differentiators as far as I understand.
If you're doing more than exclusively gaming, you get hyper-v, but if all you want is WSL2, you don't need pro... Even though it uses hyper-v ...
My MIL got a Windows 11 laptop for Christmas and it is ridiculous.
They lock down executables by default, only allowing web sites and their app store.
Guess what company doesn’t have an app? Zoom. The main thing my MIL uses her laptop for!
So I need to change advanced security settings to install one of the most popular apps in the world.
Can't she make the zoom calls through Chrome?
Its a 2nd grade experience at best.
She can, but why should she have to? It’s a PC, it supports applications!
My 80 years old grandmother uses Ubuntu to browse web content and play casual games.
When my aunt bought her a new computer with Windows she couldn't use it properly and complained that she wanted a computer "like the old one". She was equally unable to use Macos in my laptop. Nowadays when people complain about Linux's usability I know that they are normally overstating or talking from prejudice because from a practical point of view no way the usability of any modern distro is significantly behind Windows' or Macos' usability, it's even the opposite I would say.
There is a huge blindspot, I've noticed, where people mistake familiarity for ease of use (and other qualities too). Of course familiar things are easy and comfortable, but this thought doesn't seem to occur to most.
Software usability discussions are particularly prone to this bias.
EDIT: another fun one is internet discussions about metric vs imperial systems, with one side or the other swearing that one is inherently more "intuitive" for a particular use. Due to some extraordinary coincidence it's always the one the writer grew up with...
> There is a huge blindspot, I've noticed, where people mistake familiarity for ease of use (and other qualities too).
The "legacy" Windows design isn't just so beloved because of familiarity, but because it actually provides visual cues to users [1], and the backstory on how it was designed is also interesting [2].
I know that there was an even more detailed article floating around here on HN but I can't find it offhand.
[1] https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805
[2] https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...
Yep. This was on clear display when Linus Tech Tips did their Linux challenge a year or two ago. A lot of their complaints were just like "the wallpaper settings button isn't in the same place as Windows", with the base assumption that there was something inherently correct about Windows' choice
And there's the belief that "tech skills" = "knowing where the Windows buttons are". OK, that is true in a limited sense, that "x competency" = "familiarity with x", but the point is you can be a very skilled sysadmin or programmer who still makes "noob" mistakes trying to configure Windows just because you're more familiar with MacOS or Linux
This also extends beyond UI to platform concepts in general. I'll take Unix-or-DOS-like hierarchical filesystems as an example. Even here I've seen people equate knowledge of a hier FS structure with inherent technical ability, when discussing those "teens can't use computers" articles. It's certainly correlated, since all major operating systems do use them, but it's still a mistake to think that there's something inherently correct about choosing that storage model, over say how a mainframe or Multics did things
> And there's the belief that "tech skills" = "knowing where the Windows buttons are". OK, that is true in a limited sense, that "x competency" = "familiarity with x", but the point is you can be a very skilled sysadmin or programmer who still makes "noob" mistakes trying to configure Windows just because you're more familiar with MacOS or Linux
To be fair, the Linux world makes the same mistake, labeling a user as "not tech competent", "needing hand holding" or "afraid of the command line" just because they do not have the time and patience to put up with the amount of bullshit that (insert whatever distro here) throws at them.
To be fair, it "just works" in 99% of cases, and when it doesn't, it can usually be fixed pretty easily. In the case of Linux Mint, which is exactly what I'd recommend to new users, that's either by selecting to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers in the window that opens after you login, of by running a `sudo apt install linux-firmware -y` and rebooting. If the user can install drivers on Windows, then I they can google for 30 seconds and find the one or two commands to run to install their driver on Linux.
On easy distros like Mint, I have to deal with maybe a tenth of the amount of bullshit that Windows throws at me, the only difference is that most users are used to handling Windows' bullshit. My 12 year old brother, who while fairly competent as a user, isn't particularly tech-inclined, uses Mint exclusively, and he can handle just about everything, except burning the Mint USB and booting off it for the initial installation.
Plus, I often see people arguing against Linux comparing its ease-of-use for users with very low tech literacy, then either acting as though those very same users could solve many problems they might across on Windows, or that they just wouldn't come across any problems. If I installed Mint, I'm sure my grandma could barely use Mint, just like she can barely use Windows, but she would need just as much tech support on Windows, if not more due to Microsoft becoming increasingly user-hostile.
And as for rude Linux users: on the rare occasions that the user actually needs help, rather than just google, in my experience people tend to just mentally facepalm a thousand times over, rather than calling them "afraid of the command line", despite the reputation the Linux world has. It can be a bit frustrating helping noobs, sure, but not any more than helping total noobs on Windows. At worst, people might make some jokes at your expense, but it's pretty rare for me to actually see anything like the stereotypical rude Linux user.
P.S. Saying "to be fair" back at you seems passive-aggressive, and I don't intend it that way; it just seems like the most appropriate phrase to use.
P.P.S. This reply kinda got away from me, it's mostly not directed at you, just general thoughts about people comparing/arguing about Windows and Linux.
Yeah but come on, the metric system is obviously superior to the imperial.
IMHO usability on Linux is good for advanced users who can more or less understand how packages work and can use the command line to some extent and also for people on the other side who are fine with a 'static' system, use a very limited number of apps, have fixed workflows and don't need to change/install anything themselves.
In between there is a giant pit with hard/impossible to solve cryptic errors (or no errors and just silent crashed on launch unless you try to open the same app in the terminal). Confusing and half-baked documentation (because there are dozens different way to accomplish the same thing depending on your distro and config, good luck figuring out which is the right one for you) etc. etc.
A lot of these issues are not really "bugs" and just a natural outcome of the decentralized nature of Linux (non-kernel part) development. They can be solved by power users but not by people who are used to much more user friendly workflows on macOS (again IHMO) somewhat less (but still more so than on Linux) on Windows.
I install everywhere Fedora for the same reasons. As long an the users aren’t Windows-Users and believe they know computers they will be happy with a plain Linux. They update itself, they upgrade it self and they’re happy not forced into updates. GNOME can be criticized for missing options but it features a simple and neat interface and keyboard centric usage makes it a bless.
I myself using Arch which for more than 14 years now and it is a perfect fit for professions and enthusiasts. But in case of an average user, Fedora.
What I mean with Windows-Users? People which believe they need to install “drivers“ themselves. Which argue against Linux anyway because it doesn’t support the weird „Desktop Metapher“ from Windows 95. And usually argue that weird hardware like 3D-Shutterglasses or some kind of HDR-Something (just insert here some hot new stuff) isn’t supported. The broad majority of users don’t want that and don’t need it. What matters is HiDPI-Scaling (good, with exception of the awful thing named Electron) and easy to configure sound-system (Pipewire nailed it). And unification of which we achieved through Linux, LIBC/LIBSTDC++, Coretuils and finally Systemd and Flatpak. The point here is the chain of parts building upon each other.
Recommendations Stay away from Nvidia. Use old ThinkPads if you have not special requirements. Use printers with AirPrint (IPP-Everywhere).
Teaching I would be happy if people start teaching the users to read the interface (like a book or an info grahic), think and then act. Input, Process, Output. TUIs foster that and I think that is why users accustomed to them love them - and dislike most GUIs and nearly all websites.
What computer courses do for decades? Not teaching users using the interface. They just drill them to click on a specific icon (once, or twice or with the wrong mouse button). Just see them happy when the type “Email” and Linux offers Evolution or Thunderbird. And if they don’t find it two months later? Again “Email”.
For Nvidia users, just install the drivers via the runfile provided by Nvidia. Never had an issue this way.
Granted I install dkms and do an autohook to install the modules on kernel updates, which I wager is a bit much for most.
This exactly the opposite of my recommendation.
I want users are able to execute upgrades and don’t have to care about “details” like the bad/missing support of Wayland in the past by Nvidia, modified APIs or restrictions imposed by EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL. And a game developer probably wants ensure compatibility only with Mesa.
German article about how Nvidia accepted their situation and how the code will be built into Linux: https://www.heise.de/news/Linux-Kernel-Entwickler-druecken-f...
Basically - Linux won. It is not a perfect victory because a lot of code goes now into firmware which creates another set of issues. And it will require long time to get on par with AMD or Intel. Linux and GNU won because they remained stubborn and the consumers and industry supported that. Nobody wants a PlayStation or SteamDeck with closed source modules. Neither machine industry or car manufacturers. Yes, benchmarks attract customers in short term - but in long term it must be reliable for years and decades. Imagination Technologies and ARM recently also changed their minds. It is sad that this all could have happened 15 years ago. Maybe people learn?
> Recommendations Stay away from Nvidia
Unless you need to use the GPU for actual work and not gaming then you need CUDA etc.
Nvidia seems fine though as long as you use the installer they provide (as the other comment suggested) for some reason all(?) distro developers can't come up with functional workflows for installing it any other way.
> People which believe they need to install “drivers“ themselves
Do you think that's something people need to do often these days on Windows 10/11?
> support the weird „Desktop Metapher“
What's weird is/was Gnome trying to appeal to mobile users for no reason (at least MS had some justification for the Windows 8). Of course there is KDE if you need a normal desktop.
> with exception of the awful thing named Electron
Perhaps it's awful. But it's something a lot of potential non-power users actually need and care about (unlike LIBC/LIBSTDC++ or Coretuils)
> Use old ThinkPads if you have not special requirements
Like a semi-decent screen? Also why bring up HiDPI-Scaling then?
> teaching the users to read the interface (like a book or an info grahic),
It would be nice if GUI app interfaces were at least semi-consistent on most Linux apps (of course Windows is also terrible at this and Apple are the only ones who managed to get it right).
Honestly, I don't see Linux progressing that much as long as mindsets like this (blaming the users for not using their computers in the right way and telling them what they "actually" need) remain widespread.
I've used Linux primarily since the 90s. I even had a Slackware install back in the day.
When Ubuntu started getting popular I had this same opinion. A lot of my friends would tell me that they gave Linux a try but gave up because of "random things not working" whereas, allegedly, using Windows everything "just works." This didn't sit well with me because I had the opposite experience with Windows.
Until the last couple of years, unfortunately. It's almost always kernel updates, but I had the sound suddenly stop working on a Kubuntu install after a kernel update, and I've had a few cases where the new kernel wouldn't even boot and I had to drop back to the old one.
These types of things are hard to quantify. Maybe there's more random nonsense across all users with Windows than there are with Linux. But kernel updates have started to make me nervous again and that's a step in the wrong direction.
I setup several folks over the years with Linux on their laptops. Usually after they ended up with malware or other oddities on their Windows computers multiple times. I would always ask them what they do on their computers, usually it was 99% web. I would never hear from these people until they wanted to buy a new computer. Prior to that I felt like I was looking at some issue every 6 months or so. All the Linux desktops are pretty nice now, and actually have been for a quite a while if all the person is doing is web stuff. Firefox or Chrome looks the same to the average person no matter what operating system they are using.
The other thing worth mentioning is well, the computers will almost always perform better with a Linux distribution over a bloated Windows install.
> The other thing worth mentioning is well, the computers will almost always perform better with a Linux distribution over a bloated Windows install.
Poor battery life clearly indicates it's the other way around (yes, ram usage might be worse but who cares it's cheap) also removing all the bloatware shipped by the OEM on Windows is not that harder than installing a Linux distro.
The answer is:
- They are non IT professionals, who are forced to use Teams and Office and they get it from their Corporate default.
- Users of Windows who must have it due to applications that are not available for other OSs. Professional Audio, Video, Engineering Applications.
- They are students with their first laptop who got Windows installed by default.
- They are part of the well know 2.2% of males and 1.3% of females involved in submission and sadomasochism...
I would easily believe it. In fact, I don't think I know anyone who doesn't use Windows - all of my friends and family use it (as far as I am aware), and while I use Linux on my personal laptop, I am stuck with Windows on my work laptop. I think Windows is still quite dominant in the corporate space, and amongst people who are not tech literate at all.
I used to dual boot Windows and Linux, but the most recent version of Windows I tried (11 I think?) really pissed me off during the setup process, mainly by persistently badgering me to get a Microsoft account. Between that and Linux getting a lot better at running the (relatively few) games I play, I decided to get rid of Windows and just use that drive as extra storage.
Windows does that to me every few years when I try it. Something in getting set up (forced Microsoft account, aggressively pushing Edge, forced updates that reboot my machine) that makes me bail. Now that I don't work for a company that uses Zoom, there's nothing for which I need Windows at the moment.
Most of the people I know who run Windows personally (not at/for work) either do it only because gaming's easiest/best there, or because it's easy to get free or extremely-cheap used Windows machines that'll hold up for a year or so (then get another when they break) [EDIT] And actually that last category's a single person I know who's a writer, so wants a laptop with a keyboard but only uses an old word processor on it, and email, nothing else.
Exceptions are my relatives over age 60, who barely do anything with their computers and should probably just have Chromebooks or iPads + keyboard (god, they could really use the accessibility features...), but are used to computer = walk into Costco or Best Buy and buy a desktop tower.
Most non-gamers who also aren't computer nerds, whom I know, "compute" mainly on their phone anyway. Shit, so do I, and I'm both of those—my Windows machine is just for gaming, nothing else whatsoever. 95+% of everything important that needs some kind of computer, happens on my phone. I bought my last house on it, entirely, LOL.
Break? What fantasy is that? I'm running five machines of different ages for years now, every day. Nothing is breaking; certainly not because of the OS. What does that even mean?
Hand-me-down or used Windows laptops that were $300 to begin with [EDIT: when purchased new, I mean] don't tend to last a super long time. Maybe, if you're lucky.
[EDIT] What I've seen break on mine and my wife's, back when I used Windows/"PC" hardware on mobile computers, and these were all lot more than $300, even 15+ years ago:
- Display controller board just... dies, barely outside the very-short warranty period. (I repaired this one)
- Display cable frays at hinge.
- Thermal paste on insufficient-to-begin-with cooling for discrete video chip goes bad after a couple years (discrete video cards in laptops: just a bad idea, they're historically the source of a solid half of the problems on MacBooks, even)
- Something shakes loose inside. Several times. I've self-repaired (open, screw with anything that has a socket or port until it's good) but it's not worth taking it in to a shop on a very, very cheap machine, if you're not comfortable doing this yourself.
- Battery goes bad.
Ah. I buy bespoke machines put together by my business partner, who's into these things. Spend enough so it lasts essentially forever. So I'm not a good measure.
If Windows 8 broke you Windows 11 is going to to make you wish you stayed broken. They got rid of a lot of nice things in the UI like ability to move the toolbar (what Microsoft calls taskbar) to the right (hiding it completely would be nice but of course you can't have that without unreliable 3rd party scripts), shoved MS account through users' throat, introduced "lock screen" mess which you can't disable while breaking on battery behavior. In my case it made my laptop completely unusable on battery as I either need to type my password 30 times an hour and/or deal with screen going dark because of "inactivity". No matter how many settings I disabled the behavior is still there. It's widely reported on the Internet but pleas to Microsoft to just let us use our computer in peace by disabling lock screen and screen dimming are unanswered.
So now Windows forces you to use Microsoft account, shoves ads and crapware into your face (even in "pro" version), makes significant part of your vertical screen real estate unusable because of popping up toolbar like in good old days of internet browsers, makes using laptops on battery a mess. They removed a lot more options to tweak the UI. It's just full on assault on usability. It really does seem like they want to get rid of power users so they can continue shoving more ads and dark patterns on remaining ones. Like those Nigerian Prince scammers who make glaring grammar errors in their emails so people with any kind of critical thinking skills won't bother them responding.
If you wonder why I upgraded - I really didn't want to but at some point they must've sneaked a dialog somewhere where I had a habit of clicking through and to my surprise it was Windows 11 from now on. I resisted for a long time but they have won.
Not trying to negate your experience as all that's pretty awful, but I purchased my Windows 11 legally of course, and then immediately used modified/pirated install media to install it:
- Without a Microsoft account
- With telemetry disabled (as much as is possible anyway)
I haven't seen any ads in the OS... maybe a OneDrive one? I have no idea what you're talking about with a toolbar though, the only thing of size that pops up on mine is the start menu. Unless that's the new search thing I disabled.
I dunno. On balance, I LOVED Windows 7, Windows 8 was a mess, Windows 10 was... more or less just 7 with an uglier and more confusing interface, and if anything, 11 is a step back towards 7 in my mind, both in aesthetics and usability. Though I was also never one for the side taskbar, so if that's your bag, I can absolutely see you not enjoying it being gone. Other positives:
- They're finally reunifying settings into a single interface, hopefully they finish this time before starting a new one
- New display configuration options are much more sanely organized
- I've had just, WAY fewer issues with drivers in general
Some negs:
- Audio settings are now in five places, any of which can and can not apply to whatever you're doing, seemingly on the fly
- They replaced the context menu with a different context menu that's only slightly different and instead of just carrying over old options with some sensible defaults, hid them in a sub-context context menu which just... ugh
MacOS is still bae though. And that's probably why I like 11 okay is because it feels distinctly like Microsoft chasing Apple with regard to OS design. But as someone who would definitely consider myself a power user, I have no issues using 11. It's an improvement on 10, IMO, which was a distinct downgrade from 7 but itself was a massive upgrade from the train-wreck that was 8, so overall the trajectory is acceptable.
Good thing you reminded me of context menus when right clicking on files. Now everything that was easy with one click requires two and you get some useless options instead. I forgot about it because I was able to find a hack to bring the old menu back. Hopefully it survives at least a few updates.
>> the only thing of size that pops up on mine is the start menu. Unless that's the new search thing I disabled.
They call it "taskbar" and I guess that's what you mean by "start menu". I use the word toolbar because it's equally useless for anyone who has a keyboard. Anyway, the obvious behavior of "hide it and keep it hidden unless I press Windows key" is of course not an option. It just needs to be there all the time to randomly mess up whatever you are doing when clicking around bottom of the screen.
>>I haven't seen any ads in the OS... maybe a OneDrive one?
There are at least a few places in the system settings where instead of showing you options there is "One Drive", "Try Office" or Windows Store or Edge on most of the screen.
> Now everything that was easy with one click requires two
Technically it's a click and a mouse movement, but if anything that's more annoying than two clicks, haha.
> They call it "taskbar" and I guess that's what you mean by "start menu".
I genuinely haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. I'll have to look next time I'm using my PC.
> There are at least a few places in the system settings where instead of showing you options there is "One Drive", "Try Office" or Windows Store or Edge on most of the screen.
That might be because I'm signed in on OneDrive and with my Office subscription then. That's shitty though.
I'm a software engineer who chooses to use Windows.
I grew up a windows user. I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta when I was 12 years old (and still think it's the best UI any OS has ever had). When I was in college I used Linux more, but found that the only reason I used it was as glorified desktop customization software. All of my assignments were in Java and my personal projects were in C.
I switched to a chromebook halfway through college and did all my assignments by SSHing into a rented VPS running Ubuntu. After college I finally got some money and bought some used thinkpads, which I ran Windows on.
My first job out of college we had macbook pros, and I hated those frickin things. The UI was so opinionated and slow with all of its animations. There was no way to disable the paneled desktops and there was no built in package manager or tiling window manager. Their bash version (this was pre-zsh) was an ancient build from 2007 and their coreutils lacked all the neat GNU extensions features (I recommend anybody who uses a macbook immediately install coreutils from homebrew and also upgrade bash). I had a million things I hated about macOS and still do.
Other companies let me choose between a mac and a PC, and I went with PC. My current company gave me a Macbook pro and I haven't turned the thing on in a year. I use my desktop PC for everything. I like powershell, Windows Terminal, Winget/Chocolatey, vcpkg, Visual Studio, and MSVC language features like SAL. DirectX11 blows OpenGL out of the water in terms of syntax without getting as complicated as Vulkan. I prefer the Win32 API Convention of initializing things with structs and getting more descriptive return types to Linux's everything-is-an-int. I don't mind the Windows 11 UI as much as I thought I would but still sometimes customize my taskbar to look like Windows 7 (but it's just not the same).
tl;dr: I like windows, and not because I'm a captive user
I grew up on Windows as well, starting with Win 3.0. I switched fully to Linux in 2010, but have still usually had at least one Windows machine in my life. Windows is really pretty damn good, and if they would just stop trying to force things on users (MS accounts, Edge browser, etc) and stop trying to further monetize the system (ads), it would be a really compelling option. I spent a total of 24 months on macs, and like you, when your preferred workflow doesn't match Apple's opinion of the correct way, macOS is like cement blocks around your ankles.
I remember looking up how to disable certain features on macOS, and the people on Apple forums usually responded with some version of "Why would you want to do that? You think you know better than Apple?"
haha, yep, exactly my experience too. And then also the occasional "Go buy this $20 tool that lets you do that by (ab)using accessibility APIs"
I also rather use Windows, even though I have an extensive UNIX experience since getting introduced to it via Xenix in 1993, and using most well known commercial variants since then.
Mac OS occasionally at work, in project assigned laptops.
Linux plenty of distributions since getting Slackware 2.0 on 1995's Summer.
Eventually I gave up on the Linux Desktop dream, around Windows 7 timeframe.
I have been primarily a Mac user, but Windows 7 was pretty good.
Windows 8 was awful and I refused to use it. However, Windows 10 was really good relative to Windows 8 primarily because it continued some of the good underlying tech Windows 8 brought with it, but was an acknowledgement by MS that the UI/UX needed to be user focused. It wasn't completely there...for example, the Candy Crush ads were still there in the start menu, but the direction relative to 8 was good. However, Windows 11 (and moreso Edge) shows that MS never really had that realization and continues to see their software not as tools for the users to use to simplify and improve their lives but as "products" to be used exactly as MS wants us to use it.
My disillusionment with macOS also lies with this attitude.
For me, Linux is the only desktop OS to be used by choice anymore.
MS doesn't think their software is tools for their users to use; they think their users are tools for their software to use.
Windows 7 UI was great. And I'm someone who has used Win since 3.1 days.
I wish microsoft maintained a version of windows "professional " without all the 10,11 crap/adware and with win7 ui. Even if it costs more
Windows is basically everywhere outside of the US and maybe some select european countries. Windows improved a lot in some ways, the default experience is for sure way better than windows 8, though you still have to disable a good amount of annoying features if you don’t want ads.
WSL is great if you have enough RAM, you can now rely on winget to setup your applications, OneDrive is reliable, the Microsoft Store is finally useful with Win32 applications (even SysInternal is now distributed via the store!). The settings panel finally makes sense, though not everything has been migrated yet. Windows updates are way more reliable. Windows PowerToys provides almost everything power users may need. The updated windows management is just awesome, simple to use and provides a good amount of options. Notepad is now a real text editor, the screenshot tool supports recording too, Edge competes with other modern browsers and has some unique features such as windows splitting.
That’s just a subsets of some things that improved, there is way more. But it is fundamentally still Windows, it’s just way more polished.
Windows 10/11 has become far worse that Windows 8. The last really nice Windows was 7 . And Windows 8.1 wasn't bad (if you use it on a tablet pc)
Windows 11 is an improvement in my opinion. But then again I generally like macOS. Agree, the touch focus of Windows 8 was a terrible misstep.
I desire leaving Windows behind but the job opportunities in my line of work are pretty much reliant on the Microsoft Universe. The changes (no one dare to call those things improvements in front of me, do not dare!) are done to the system makes the usage more and more difficult and unpredictable, destroying essential and reliable features for the sake of never missed decorated obstructions. I hate it and feel disgust every morning when I have to turn it on, disgusted of all the many of the workarounds that I have to carry out daily to get the work done, reluctant and afraid of any and every updates, 'damn, here we go again, what will break now?!' or 'how can I serve its Royal Majestry the Windows System more to keep it operational and its brand new needs satisfied, how much should I adopt to their royal quirks?!'. Difficult to change line of work after so many years but I am pushed in this direction pretty strongly.
(The OSX mentality was a friendly one to me when we first met and luckily its changes are slower in diminishing usability - they try though, they try persistently! - so my private computer is not a Windows one for about 20 years already. Probably it was Linux now otherwise, quite possibly.)
In Ecuador a new mac is way too expensive for most people. The availability of used ones are low. I imagine this is because people can't afford them new so they don't have any to resell. Computer literacy is such that most people don't know about linux. When I'm down there doing research and have participants using linux no one seems confused by it. I think for most people I meet, it is just a question of having linux already on the computer. Everyone pirates the os so the quetion of paying never comes up. As far as I can tell, this is pretty typical in a number of Latin American countries and probably common in most of the world where macs are luxury items.
Kids like Windows because it is best for games. If Windows continues to be the best platform for games it will probably be fine.
Kids use whatever parents install for them.
Most kids don't even have a desktop, just a cell phone.
Out of curiosity what part of the world do you live in?
I currently work remotely for a company that is head-quartered in California. The company issues MacBooks unless you ask for a Windows laptop. Most of my co-workers in California grew up using Macs and love them. Whereas it seems that, for some reason, the majority of the non-Californian employees grew up using Windows.
My current manager came from Microsoft and was the one that pointed this out to me (because, like you, I also have always hated MacOS ... before our company started issuing Windows laptops to those who request them I tried really hard to get used to it and just couldn't). My manager's claim, though I'm not sure how accurate it is, is that Apple seems to have a cultural hold within California, with lots of businesses using them as well as consumers ... but outside of the state Microsoft has the hold. Again, it's a hypothesis, I don't know if there's any validity to it ... but I'm curious if there could be some truth to it.
IIRC Apple was donating lots of Apple IIs to schools in California in the 80s and then still maintained a disproportionately (compared to other states) high market share in the educational market in the 90s and 2000s. This presumably had a multi-generational effect as people graduating from those schools were more likely to buy Macs and then children growing up in those households were more used to them than Windows PCs etc.
Not sure if it is specifically California because it does seems majority of US Tech sector, especially those doing Web Development uses MacOS.
But your comment does echo the some point many have repeatedly posted on HN, in Europe most of their colleagues are on Windows. ( Although some people mention UK having higher Mac concentration ) And Mac is an absolute minority, even within the tech sector.
But I have been saying for some time, at the current rate things are going I would not be surprised if Microsoft start to open source a portion of Windows. And the pendulum may swing to their favour once they have captured more of the Cloud and Enterprise revenue.
They haven't even open sourced abandoned EdgeHTML
I think that hypothesis is correct, and has spread to tech startups in general (primarily web-based tech startups). I have never lived in California but have many other places around the country, and with many different companies, and that is definitely in-line with what I've seen as well.
The other factor (related somewhat but not completely) I think is that Apple has become a status symbol. People who chose Windows were rare, and got lots of shit for picking Windows. The peer pressure made the majority of people either stick with macOS even if they didn't like it, or switch at the refresh cycle (and make sure to announce that was their intention anytime they got shit for having a windows laptop). Usually I was the only one on Linux, and there'd be one other person on Windows who didn't care about the pressue, but 99% of everybody would go with the flow.
I'm one of the macOS folk. I don't think it's status symbol as much as low hassle. For the most part the thing just works, is fast, doesn't crash, doesn't have issues working with certain hardware and software. If you want an OS you don't have to think about I think it's ahead.
I have to wonder if AI is going to cause more interest in user privacy. It's been an issue with ad business models and AFAICT Microsoft also reserves the right to use your personal info to "improve and develop [their] products."[1]
[1] https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement
Doubtful. As a privacy advocate of 15+ years, pretty much nobody cares about privacy. When you describe to them in detail how invasive their Amazon products and twitter/facebook are, they get very uncomfortable and don't like it, but they just continue to buy/use those products so it really doesn't matter. I've had people (not on HN but fairly tech literate) say they use Apple for privacy reasons but then had major misunderstandings about that (i.e. they assumed that an app on the app store must be privacy respecting because Apple reviews them, or that Apple themselves don't collect lots of first-party data, etc). So I doubt AI is going to make a big difference.
What's preventing me from going all in to Linux desktop is software only available in windows and HDR, it seems KDE plasma 6 is going to ship HDR this year, so it might be just enough for me to not care about the rest.
I am in a similar situation. Worked at Microsoft, left, stuck with Windows through 10, now am a mix of MacOS and Linux.
I hated MacOS, and still do mainly because of the Window management, but after using it for work and the hardware being so much better for me than anything I could find PC I finally switched. My desktop is still Linux. Most of the people I know switched to Mac which is how I know I am in a bubble.
> when I see a survey like this saying that 72% of users still use Windows I'm shocked to my core.
Of course, that's a worldwide figure. The regional breakdown will likely show you prevalence more in line with your expectations. Only 62% in the USA, for example.
I'm not really a dev so I've made an art of going through all the minutiae of changing the terrible default GUI back to windows xp or so which makes it a decent consistent experience (mostly open shell + 7+ Taskbar Tweaker + manually recreate quicklaunch + remove all pinned apps)
Then I spend some time disabling ALL of the updates as they generally do more harm than good
Then I make sure to install directory opus...
Then windows isn't too bad especially when I have no choice but to use it for my work (whereas all of my colleagues have constant problems with borked updates and inconsistent interfaces)
to be fair, I bought a laptop with windows 8 ten years ago and I immediately formatted it and manually installed windows 7 on it though it was a tad tough to find drivers as it was a cheapo consumer laptop)
you might be right, but don't give too much credit to how representative the survey correspondants are.
i am from the opposite camp: my first personal computer (not the family one) came with Ubuntu because the SKU was too cheap to come with windows (back when it would've instead shipped with FreeDOS or something).
i've seen the pain in using windows 8 in another computer in the family. but then i also faced much more nightmare scenario with linux (as someone not very technically inclined at the time): from wifi/bt chip not working to zero video out in a hybrid-graphics laptop.
but after toiling through forums (and learning a lot about managing computers), i also managed to get my parents on using ubuntu for their daily tasks. i was not too concerned about edge cases as i had to step in for IT support regardless of the os.
i personally switched back to windows after trying for 5+ years because everything i needed to do "just worked". i cannot say it for an average grandma, but this audience could easily work around the recent privacy bs microsoft has put out. compared to the gymnastics i needed to do in linux, i'd say it is much less of a trivial task, but you sometimes need to keep up with it through subsequent windows updates.
i recently bit the bullet and switched to windows 11. i am unable to use wsl2 or any virtualization because it breaks the ability to undervolt a laptop cpu. combined with recent ml libraries refusing to properly support windows and cater more to people using google colab, i might finally be nudged back to trying out linux, but i am on the fence.
Some industry use Windows only (or near 90% similar to creative people using Mac only). For example facilities, controls and uncle Sam. You are in a bubble. Try joining yoga or church. You will know many still use Windows.
Totes agree! Sorry for bumping your comments, but you look like an interesting new one here. WINDOWS FTW!
Coincidentally I saw the latest Steam hardware survey results[0] just about an hour ago which says that Windows is dropping and macOS and Linux are both gaining:
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Is that year to year or month to month? Could not find any note on that?
But then again the share increase compared to share of Linux users, is quite large.
Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
>Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7
I think it's interesting that there is that many people still on it.
Mainstream end of life was almost a decade ago, Steam dropped support for it, etc. Is there anything that actually still supports 7?
> Is that year to year or month to month? Could not find any note on that?
"Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data", says it on the page.
> Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
Probably because steam for windows 7, 8 and 8.1 are EOL
> As of January 1 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems.
>Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
Above it, the survey says that Win 7 64 bit is at 0.68%.
> Interesting that only 0,06% are using Win 7 which I would name MS' last good OS.
No DirectX 12 support for Win 7. And even games that don't require DirectX 12 now usually support Windows 10 and up. Sometimes because they don't want to test on older OS, but Windows 10 has legitimate API improvements that are worth taking advantage of.
On top of that of course the general security reasons not to use an unmaintained OS release.
I've learned to take the Steam hardware results with a grain of salt, sometimes they're stable, but then some months they vary wildly.
Surprised that macOS is gaining more than Linux. For some reason, I imagine there are more Steam Deck sales (Linux) than there are macOS users deciding to download Steam but maybe it's a numbers game.
Games tend to ride the new release schedule more than most other forms of media (except maybe new movie releases in theaters), and there have been a few notable releases in the past few weeks. Apple had a big push with Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4 Remake in the past few months; if you already own those games on Steam, you got the Mac versions of those games at no additional charge. Also, Baldur's Gate 3 (which is widely regarded as one of the best games of 2023) got a native Mac release in Q4.
As for it being a numbers game, neither Apple nor Valve release direct hardware sales numbers, so only they will know.
The Mac versions of Resident Evil 8 (not 7) and RE4 Remake are exclusive to the Mac App Store. They aren't on Steam.
I think it's more about the games people want to play. I certainly wouldn't buy a mac to game on. But if you already have one and it runs the games you want to play (factorio, for example), then why not just use it?
The ARM Macs are actually quite decent for less demanding games, even when running under Intel emulation. FWIW I started to play a couple of strategy games on my Mac over the holidays because I was away from my gaming PC and only had my Mac available.
Good luck finding macOS games in the first place. I've had to pass on quite the few games because they were only made for Windows...
For the niche of realtime strategy games it's actually not too bad ;)
Also good luck running most macOS games that were published 5-10 years ago or more and not updated. Apple really doesn't care about backwards compatibility at all which I think is a bigger issues for games than most other software. MS OTH is doing an exceptionally good job at this in comparison.
At the cost of ARM compatibility. Microsoft is doing as atrocious a job at ARM Windows than Apple is at its gaming ordeals. All that being said, I would never want Apple to change its ways. They've given us extraordinary ARM laptops that don't even have fans!
Baulders Gate 3 has quite great Apple Silicon & MacOS support. I know of a few normally-non-gamers who loaded that up on their Mac over the past couple months.
It's very interesting to me that Arch Linux is reportedly the most popular distro among Steam users. I wonder if that's actually accurate, or if people who use other distros are more likely to decline the survey for privacy reasons, and people who use Arch like sharing because of the "I use Arch BTW" meme
Edit: SteamOS != Arch Linux[0]
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
It's the most convenient to use for gaming, ime. The AUR and being always up to do date really helps.
Same - I use Arch on my desktop and SteamOS (arch) on steam deck, I have had 0 issues with game compatibility in ~ 2 years
Isn't SteamDeck's OS based on Arch? So that probably is large factor.
IIRC Steam OS is Arch based. So most steam decks will be running arch, and I bet those make up a hefty chunk of Linux “desktops” in the survey!
That's tracked separately. Arch is the biggest desktop linux there.
"SteamOS Holo" 64 bit 40.53% -2.46%
"Arch Linux" 64 bit 7.85% +0.04%
No it's not. It's counted differently.
SteamOS on Steam Deck is based on Arch Linux.
it's not called Arch Linux in the survey. So not counted together.
Is this because SteamOS is based on Arch? (maybe I did something wrong but it doesn't seem to appear as SteamOS in their stats)
It's not really. The most popular distro is actually SteamOS Holo with 40% of the pie. For whatever reason Steam doesn't report SteamOS in the overall Linux stats until you drill down. It's also hard to tell if Arch is really the top non-SteamOS Linux distro because 5% of users are using the Steam Flatpak which could be on virtually on any distro.
I missed the Flatpak line. That definitely throws a wrench in the stats.
Flatpak does not change much the deal, you can see another data source here showing its real size at least for gaming: https://boilingsteam.com/goodbye-manjaro-update-on-the-evolu...
Arch being popular among desktop distros is believable. It also aligns well with the existence of ArchWiki and EndeavourOS (easy to install Arch derivative).
It's because they break the other distributions by version.
Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS 64 bit
VS
"Arch Linux" 64 bit
Other Ubuntu versions appear to be in the "Other" category.
I'm not too surprised about gamers aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are.
Arch is in general a quite popular and quite decent distro, and the complexity of using it has decreased quite a lot in my opinion. I still wouldn't recommend it if there's a risk I end up having to handhold the person afterwards though.
Same. I would also add that a lot of gamers also seem to be power users and/or tinkerers, and Arch is (IMHO) the best distro for that as well.
> aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are
Is that an issue besides GPU drivers? I assumed (though I haven't really tried it) that Steam is pretty relatively self-contained on Linux and doesn't really rely on system packages that much (most games are running on Proton/Wine anyway).
The "GPU-driver" also includes all the the Vulkan and GL runtimes and user-space machinery for shader compilation and what-not. Being on latest and greatest can make a significant difference there that I'd expect gamers to chase.
Steam also still relies on e.g. your display server.
Does Arch handle Nvidia's drivers properly? I'm using Open SUSE and it's a horrible experience, they provide multiple ways to install them and none work, so ended up just having to use Nvidia's installer directly.
If you're going to be a Linux gamer, you have to be a fan of the game of Linux. Most games are going to need some tweaking or a weird package in order to work. Arch makes a lot of sense for that crowd.
This was the situation 5+ years ago.
Most games work without extra steps nowadays (as long as steam is involved).
I remember wasteland 2 (from steam/wine) crashing on Linux when you finally entered the rangers headquarters. Luckily a linux kernel developer played the game and figured out what was going on. He told everyone how to fix the game with some arcane commands, increasing max counts, etc. Was pretty wild.
This is honestly one of the things that IMHO gives so much value to SteamOS. The Valve engineers find out about these things and apply them at the base. I've had a pretty good overall experience with gaming on my Fedora machine, but I've had to learn a couple of those things the hard way (mmap settings in the kernel, missing 32-bit libc (even though it's there), etc)
It is still very much true today in my experience. I have tried to be a linux gamer occasionally, and there are almost always things that need to be done for compatibility. Few games live up to Steam's promise, even when Steam is involved, unless you are playing on one of Steam's 2-3 anointed distros.
>unless you are playing on one of Steam's 2-3 anointed distros.
For sure. That is a pretty good state to be in---most games work in a few well known distros. If you use something else, you have to DIY some compatibility steps once in a while.
You should know that Ubuntu is not one of those anointed distros. The distros where steam just works are distros specifically set up for linux gaming.
I use Arch, and everything has just worked.
I’m not surprised that Ubuntu isn’t too well. Interestingly, Debian works well from what I have heard.
Nobody should be using Ubuntu in 2024.
The most hacking I've done to get a Steam game working on openSUSE Tumbleweed is some copypasta sed magic to bypass the Private Division launcher app for Kerbal Space Program 2. Other than that, setting a command line parameter to ensure my eGPU gets used (which should be a relatively uncommon scenario), and forcing a few games to run through Proton, everything just works.
It's accurate. See more data here: https://boilingsteam.com/goodbye-manjaro-update-on-the-evolu...
Or maybe the "I use Arch BTW" meme is there because a lot of people using it makes it so that a lot of the loud people uses it.
Is there any reliable way to compare distros usage?
it was a couple years ago, but when i tried to game on Debian i was shocked by some 4+ year old packages that i wanted to try gaming with, nothing worked.
it's probably better today, but i definitely recommend a very up to date distro for gaming, and arch is literally the most up to date there is. happy with arch myself, except the nvidia issues, if you run an nvidia gpu i don't recommend it just yet (getting better really quickly though)
IMO the best approach is to use PCI passthrough to give the Nvidia GPU to a Windows guest, especially if what you're trying to do is game.
Arch wiki has a great write-up on it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
TL;DR you boot your Linux host kernel with special VFIO params to ensure the entire IOMMU domain of your Nvidia GPU is ignored, and pass that to Windows guest (which sees it as an entirely normal nv GPU).
(My hope is that in the next couple of years the open source Nvidia driver landscape dramatically improves, and modern distros ship with rock solid Vulkan/OGL impl for all Nvidia cards made in the last decade or three)
I have using Debian testing, since half year, as my daily driver and to play games without any issues.
been doing the same with pop_os (regular releases not the LTS)
Maybe the factors in someone selecting arch linux are the same for someone likely to game on Linux?
Arch is weird. I consider myself a Linux power user, including kernel hacking but no way I'm going to manually set up partitions and type gazillions of commands to set my system up. This is off putting, I have no idea what's wrong with an installer. WTF Arch?
Well, there's some curses wizard called "archinstall", but yeah, I too opted for just the Garuda flavour of Arch when I chose to go non-VoidLinux (ie. when failing to get a new machine with nvidia drivered up swiftly and just-works-ly) rather than any console-driven setup.
That is the Arch way, Arch is not built for convenience but for customizability. If you want a graphical installer, you can install it yourself ;). Also there are several Arch-based distributions that include (opinionated) graphical installers to get you going faster. ArcoLinux is a good one.
Getting games to run on Linux often requires tinkering and the people who like to partake in this stuff and have the skill for likely run one of those “hardcore” distros like Arch.
Those who don’t want to tinker and stick to already supported games would probably just run SteamOS to begin with (or a proprietary OS).
This hasn't been true for a while now. Many games have Linux builds, and for those that don't, Steam Proton works incredibly smoothly, and is integrated with the most popular game launcher, Steam. For the most part all you have to do to play games on linux now is click the checkbox to opt into Proton, and then click play.
The biggest remaining issue is anticheats for some competitive games
Somewhat recently Apex Legends got Linux support for easy anti-cheat and it works well.
Hopefully it'll start a trend!
A few notes to keep in mind with that data:
* That's a change from 96.56% on Windows to 96.40%. That's a small enough shift to be attributable to noise.
* In the December 2022 survey [0] (one year earlier), Windows had 96.15% share. So to the extent these tiny shifts mean anything at all, the trend for Windows market share was actually up slightly year-on-year.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230103095707/http://store.stea...
I realise for casual users Windows is always going to be the OS of choice if for no other reason than it comes pre-installed and most people don't know how to reinstall an operating system.
However, Windows may be in trouble with more tech-literate people who do know how to change it. I can only speak for myself, but I've been a Windows user since 95. All but one of my programming jobs over the last 20 years have also been working on Windows. But I really dislike the direction Microsoft are taking and I find Windows to be terribly slow these days, with each version seemingly worse than the previous one. So I decided to look elsewhere.
A couple of months ago I bought a new laptop with the express intention of running Linux on it and giving it a good college try (I didn't want to mess around with dual-booting and I still need Windows on my main PC for work... for now). I know very little about Linux, but I've decided I'm not going to use Windows past 10 so it's time to find something else.
I went with Debian running dwm (Debian because I value stability over everything else, and dwm because I like the suckless philosophy) and it's honestly surprised me how good it's been. It's SO snappy. Everything is instant. It's really been a breath of fresh air.
I was especially dreading programming since I've solely used Visual Studio since Visual C++ 4.0 and don't really know anything else. Anyway, I went all-in and started learning Vim, GDB, and Make, and boy do I feel like I've been missing out. I'm really enjoying programming again, which for me has just become a job over the years.
Anyway, my point is, if tech-literate people are willing to give Linux a try, I wonder how many of them would be as surprised as I was and may make the switch permanently. With Windows getting worse, and Linux getting better, maybe more than ever.
People occassionally ask me what my best advice is for becoming a great programmer, and they are surprised when I say vim, bash (including for and while loops), and core tools like sed, grep, awk/cut.
When you know enough bash to (without having to look it up every time) write a command that filters (sed) and parses (awk, cut) and then loops (while, for) you will be amazed at what you can do and how quickly you can do it. Then add Vim and you can fly through tasks near the speed of thought.
In summary, I think you've made a great choice!
Never felt that text replacement is among the tasks I do often.
Oops typo, where I said "filters (sed)" I actually meant "filters (grep)"
Yeah text replacement isn't super common. I do use it every so often, but grep I use probably dozens of time per day
Interesting to know that my Z80, Amiga and PC demoscene skills were worthless until I got to use Xenix.
This is it! The year of the linux desktop is coming!
... again.
I remember some MLM pusher telling me back in 2009 that smartphones were going to take off or something because it hit some magic 2-4% threshold.
I genuinely think Windows got worse, and Linux people started recommending Fedora instead of Ubuntu/Debian-branch.
Microsoft pushes us away, good Linux distros keep us from going back.
I wonder how much scraping bots skewer the counters. They create a lot of traffic and majority of them run on "Linux Desktop", even though some modify the user agent.
Would be curious to see stats for e.g. subset of GPU-accelerated devices which can be detected in JS. Not as a true bot-filter of course, but as a uniform and widely-available metric biased towards real users.
I suppose that would imply that scrapers are scraping more or there are more of them.
I think they meant that the bots would account for a signicant portion of the total measured market share, not necessarily an increasing portion.
Both things that seem to be happening due to the current LLM hype. Everyone locks down their data from scrapers while complaining about increased bot traffic.
Do you have any source of that? I'd guess most of them just use a windows User Agent to avoid being flagged.
I don't and that's why I say it would be curious to see the numbers that could potentially expose the bots-vs-users discrepancy.
Without numbers an educated guess looks like this:
1) Even if say 70% of bots set Windows UA, the remaining 30% of Linux UA will still skew the numbers noticeably because 30% is much more than the "natural" Linux market share.
2) Many bots don't modify the UA just because they don't care and are not being blocked often enough, not on the domains that they scrape.
3) Many bots don't modify the UA because they care a lot and follow the strategy of emulating a real chrome desktop user with high fidelity. In this case it's better to leave the real Linux Chrome UA than to risk being detected by discrepancies between the UA and the browser capabilities detected by JS.
None; the survey is done using the steam client app.
You sure you aren't confusing the Statcounter study with the Steam study?
Yeah, you seem to be right :)
Hope it is the inflexion point ! moved to Linux (Ubuntu on Framework-13) since Nov 2022, not going back into walled gardens !
When the year of linux desktop comes,
it won't be because linux became better than windows,
but because windows became worse than linux.
Both, it's both, and they're meeting in the middle. Windows has taken a nosedive with 11, while I can say at least for KDE that it has been improving massively in stability over the past few years, and Proton has made gaming on Linux possible. Adobe being Windows-only is still a big hold for lots of people, but unlike decades ago, today lots of top software like Davinci Resolve is now nativelly compatible. Pinta is no Paint.NET and Okular can't match Adobe Reader, but eventually they just might be good enough.
One day we'll look back at the legacy pile of self contradicting nonsense that Windows is and wonder how we ever used it productively.
Sometimes I wonder if SteamOS being seamless and having a handy switch to desktop feature is what will bring about the year of the Linux desktop.
Maybe if they defaulted to plasma mobile?
I don't see most casual users plugging a keyboard and mouse into the steam deck.
same thing next year then?
I find this sort of metric rather pointless...
For one, how do we define Linux desktop? ChromeOS is a distribution of Linux, unlike say Android even advertising official support for a Debian container to run Linux desktop software, and while it lacks GNU utils, Alpine does too and yet we still include it in this category...
Next is the whole way we're counting the supposed number of Linux computers: user agents. There's zero reason for browsers to provide true and specific user agents, in fact, true user agents often yield broken sites (like YouTube assuming ARM PCs are all a specific Chinese smart TV) or pose a great privacy risk. Certainly a significant percentage of Linux users made the choice against it, either by themselves or as a browser default.
Then there's the fact specific demographics have their own distribution of platforms. For example, StackOverflow developer survey showed 40.23% of developers prefer Linux for personal use, compared to 31.07% who prefer MacOS. The absolute numbers matter little if your users in particular tend to be on a certain platform.
>I find this sort of metric rather pointless...
As a complete outsider, it might seem odd.
But I think tech people recognize this as referring to "OS's that aren't Windows or Mac".
> But I think tech people recognize this as referring to "OS's that aren't Windows or Mac".
Do they? The metric includes "Unknown" and "Other" not referred to in this, representing another 5% of activity.
However, what the OP seems to be saying is that interpreting anything from the metric and trying to communicate that interpretation with others is pointless. Not even the linked article can decide whether Linux desktop penetration is 4% or 6%, and that's just one person. Good luck when you add a second person with their own feelings.
Long time windows user here, developer of cross platform applications for 30+ years.
Started getting very frustrated with the way windows treats its users. It’s simply a non starter for any serious user these days; what with the ridiculous resetting of all bing settings periodically, the non stop abuse of your login mode (live vs local), and man every time that fucking Out Of Box Experience wizard would start and interrupt your login I would nearly shit myself with annoyance.
…
Recently took a position on an all Linux dev project, totally removed windows from my life (and kids). Whole house runs Linux now.
Very happy not going back.
Removing kids from your life does tend to improve things. Less hassle, and all.
The existence of Linux and the abusive practices of Microsoft are a kind of daily reminder about why competition is so important even for basic, fundamental technologies like operational systems.
If Linux weren't always behind the door threatening Windows, surely we would have today as the only option a hiper restricted OS with a terrible performance, a huge pice tag and horrible terms of use(well... this is already the case).
I'm not sure how much it is Linux vs. just most consumers have expectations of open because that's historically been how it is. I don't doubt that if Apple were starting the macbook as a new product today, it would be locked down just like the iPhone is. MS would copy and go that way too. I don't think Linux is causing either one of them to hesitate, I think it's the fact that consumers already expect those to be general purpose devices, so it's going to be a slow bleed.
What's impressive to me is how long Microsoft has been playing defence against the Linux Desktop successfully - they were doing this back in the 90s.
Not really. People don't care about libre software, they care about software that works, is supported, and they don't have to think about it. The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
On the flip side, look how much Microsoft is losing to Linux in the server space. Consumers don't care what servers their favorite sites and services are running on: they don't have to manage it.
> Not really. People don't care about libre software, they care about software that works, is supported, and they don't have to think about it. The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
Also, it shows the power of defaults and just showing up. Windows is as big as it is because Microsoft made the deals with OEMs 30+ years ago to ship their software as the default option. Macs would likely be an also-ran if Apple wasn't standing behind their hardware, both in terms of the hardware itself and the sales/support channel, as much as they are (just look at the relative success of their retail stores vs. the relative failure of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc., in the same space).
> so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do
Why would you say that? Take a look at the trend plot shown at the link. The trend started increasing markedly about two years ago. I wouldn't think it would suddenly flatline. At least I hope it doesn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
> with a particular focus on the "chasm" or adoption gap that lies between early and mainstream markets.
> The author argues there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product (the technology enthusiasts and visionaries) and the early majority (the pragmatists)
Early adopters are a small minority, it's hard to give exact numbers but 5% sounds about right.
It's MUCH harder to get the pragmatists, late adopters, etc to use a new product. It generally requires a revolutionary product or brilliant PR and marketing (Linux doesn't really have PR and marketing and revolutionary would be a strong term for a product that's been in the market 30+ years).
Figuring out where the chasm is can be tricky though. If we're going to see S-curve adoption, we might be at the beginning of a rocket (maybe a small one a la crossing the chasm), but it's hard to say.
I think as market share goes up, there's going to be more polished product providers offering linux (liek Steam OS), and that's going to make it very reachable to the pragmatists.
I'm almost certain steam deck has at least grabbed some pragmatists.
Microsoft still wins in the end, they don't care if UNIX has won the server room, provided they still get the money for Azure OS, or Azure Sphere OS.
Looking at their earnings, it is going pretty well.
it's going pretty well right now, but if they keep massively increasing prices, it won't keep up forever.
the company i work at pays almost double now compared to a year ago, for arguably worse service. some of us in IT are looking at options, because being locked into a service that keeps shooting up in price is a huge risk.
yes it'll be hard to get away from the ecosystem. but with the increasing price, demand for alternatives surges too, and i can't see it taking too long until we get some options.
It is like running away from the lion, they only need to be better than GCP and cheaper than AWS.
Stuff like Vercel, Cloudflare or Netfly isn't the main market they are after, at least if they keep focusing on being clouds for frontend devs.
I would add on to the "don't care" to say that (in my experience) your typical computer user doesn't even understand what an OS is. With many people that I've interacted with they just equate the computer and OS as one thing and have no idea what OS they're using, much less that it's actually replaceable.
> care about software that works
I'm tech support for my wife's Win11 laptop, and this is rapidly becoming not the case. Microsoft is building bridges across its most.
> The Linux desktop appeals to developers and hackers, so 4% is probably the best they're ever going to do.
Probably not. The body of the article reports 6.24% desktop Linux penetration already.
The 4% reported in the headline refers to browsers which report Linux in the user-agent string. That is more down to browser choice than kernel choice. Specifically, a popular Linux browser has chosen to omit "Linux" from its default user-agent claim, hence the discrepancy.
It may be that developers and hackers are drawn to certain browsers, but that is beyond the subject of Linux.
> People don't care about libre software, they care about software that works, is supported, and they don't have to think about it.
Which long term libre software helps them do. Without it companies just keep stealing the open source features and moving the target of "good".
Sometimes you have to use very broad definition of "works". Often (certainly not always) UX and general aesthetic design for many open source apps is extremely poor compared to their proprietary alternatives.
There are also people that prefer to use free / open-source software because of it giving power & control to the users & community, opposed to proprietary software where a single (typically commercial) company controls the software.
The disadvantage of propietary software is that you are at the mercy of how the company decides to maintain and develop their software. And they might do undesirable things towards their users. Like displaying adds, tracking / profiling their user's personal data. Changing the pricing. This typically happens when they gain enough market share and have enough users vedor-locked into their software.
And the vendor lock-in also makes it harder for users to make the software work with other 3rd party software. So generally propietary software isn't easy to combine with third party software, unless the company has a commercial incentive to support it. But often one of the reasons for the software to be propietary is because of the vendor lock-in. So that you will use all software from 1 company that all works well together, but doesn't work (as well) when trying to combine it with third party software.
They're playing defense vs ... is "linux desktop" even trying?
I don't expect someone out there to just make it work for everyone else, but outside specialized situations like gaming hardware, or phones, I don't see anyone really putting the work into appealing to the mass of windows users, at least not as far as covering all the bases that you would need to cover to really think about getting people to move.
MacOS is probably the most organized effort and there they are, and they don't cover all the windows features exactly.
That's not a knock on anyone here, just that they're maybe playing defense vs no no real organized effort.
> is "linux desktop" even trying
No. I've been using Linux since 2007 and spent most of my career so far in the Linux space. My goal has never been to convert Windows users to Linux. I don't care what others use so long as it doesn't impact me. I just want to make Linux better, because I am also a Linux user, and want my own experience to be better. If my work means someone has a pleasant experience and converts, then great, the more the merrier. But it's not my goal. So I think you're right, we're not trying to get people to move from Windows. We're just trying to make something we want to use.
> I don't care what others use so long as it doesn't impact me.
It does impact you regarding the depth of hardware support, for example.
Not really? I have a pretty boring, standard desktop PC, with a USB mouse, and a USB keyboard. It's always worked fine.
People have non-standard eccentric setups on windows and it works fine.
That's the difference.
Sure. I don't. Linux works for me, and I improve it in ways I care about, and I continue to not care what others use. Like I said, increasing Linux adoption is not my goal. Improving the OS that I like to use is.
One of my linux systems has a 20 year old sound card, a 15 year old analog video capture card, both PCI, running on a ~10 year old fully upgraded 4th gen hasweel platform with a 1 year old RDNA2 radeon 6700XT card. I can play all the latest games pretty well and its fairly eccentric. I bet windows 10 would have some trouble with the old cards and all my hardware is considered "unsupported trash" by Windows 11
I'm not sure what your activities are, but in the modern age only having a desktop is highly restrictive. I do have a desktop and I don't really have a personal laptop, and sometimes it is annoying to not have a computer on the go, and mobile devices don't cut it.
Yours is kind of an extreme use case post 2010 or so, I'm glad that it's working out for you.
No argument here! I was responding to the question "Are linux developers even trying to convert Windows users?" with "Nope, we're not."
As someone who has used windows for 20 years, and used linux for a combined total of about 3 years (including now since sept. 2022):
Linux desktop plays defense against itself. As long as linux is heavily CLI dependent to get stuff done, it's going to be stuck in sub 10% penetration. I don't see this changing either because the people who maintain linux love linux the way it is.
Don't get me wrong, linux is extremely powerful, but it's gate kept behind a fetishization of archaic and cryptic command line interfaces.
It's not fetishization; it's an engineering OS.
Windows is a consumer OS, which is terrible for engineering, less centered around CLIs but nevertheless having a few even more cryptic ones tacked on like afterthoughts or a legacy hoarding exercise.
CLIs will always be more powerful than GUIs. They tap into what the OS actually is. The GUI is an illusion.
...and hence perpetual <5% adoption.
and > 96% in every else in the world
Windows actually has a very powerful CLI and really nice Terminal app. It's great for software engineering, I use it every day!
It’s not a fetish.
I think Lennox really opens up for windows users when they understand that everything is a Linux terminal command.
When you go into the GUI and change your display resolution, that is a terminal command. Etc.
This is the same for extremely popular things like VS Code, where all the extensions are super cool, most of them are also terminal commands or have some semblance.
However, I can agree with you that this distinction is never clearly explained. And the majority of windows users have no idea, so they come over to Lennox and don’t understand why things might look strange, or require a terminal.
I'm not shocked. They've successfully "played defence" against a host of others, including OS/2, Be, and DR-DOS. And that's just the operating systems. Don't forget Stac, WordPerfect, Lotus, Novell, Sun, and a host of others.
The shocking bit is that Linux is even still alive, given the graveyard of Microsoft competitors.
I'm curious how much of this can be attributed to the Steam Deck.
all of it is my guess
None of it.
These are web browsing statistics. Basically nobody does significant amounts of browsing from a Steam Deck.
But even if they did, the install base of the Steam Deck is far too small to move the needle here. The install base of desktop and laptop computers is billions of devices vs. millions for the Steam Deck.
I think you're missing the connecting lines here: with the Steam Deck, Valve made significant investments into WINE emulation and Proton development and all of those dependencies needed for its product that are also applicable to desktop. That convinced a lot of people who were using Windows just for gaming to make the switch, and they all browse the web. I'd argue those types are most of the new users we've seen coming to Linux in the last few years even - and I'd attribute all of it to Valve.
For instance this year I gutted my windows install down to a 20GB partition after moving one game I play over to Linux at a time and testing it works for a while.
Guess what... I did this after I purchased a steam deck and saw how much better proton and wine are.
It depends how far you stretch "because of the Steam Deck". Sure, people aren't doing much web browsing because of the Steam Deck. How many people gave it a try because Valve decided to go with it for the Deck? How many people have been enabled to stick with it because of the technologies Valve developed for the Deck (proton and gamescope come to mind)?
Looking at the Statcounter report, it explicitly excludes mobile devices and separates out ChromeOS. I'm guessing that Statcounter uses UA strings and it is conceivable that HTTP requests are happening outside of explicit web browsing.
Their data source is the analytics JavaScript that webmasters install on their sites. Non-browsing HTTP requests are unlikely to target pages with those scripts installed, and even less likely to download and run them.
Hmm, I am not a Steam Deck user, but I have Valve to thank for being able to switch to Linux.
What kept me from it was the fact that I couldn't reliable play my gaming library on it. Thanks to the efforts they put to improve things with WINE/Proton, I could happily switch to Mint around a year ago, and couldn't be happier with it.
When Valve announced the Steam Deck, I decided to bite the bullet and move from Windows 10 for gaming and MacOS for personal use and development to a unified Arch KDE Plasma desktop. I now also have a steam deck, which makes for a nice, consistent experience when traveling with it and docking in desktop mode. It certainly made me realize that gaming on Linux was viable, which allowed me to discover that the entire OS was not only usable but provided a better experience than I had on Windows or Mac. So you can attribute at least one conversion, and that was before I ever picked up a steam deck. I have been happily using Arch with KDE since the second half of 2021 now.
My experience:
- I have several rasperry PIs that perform various tasks, so yeah, they could generate Linux traffic (at least 3 of them are running)
- I game on a playstation. After work, I do not want to update steam, windows, uplay, drivers, origin, battlenet. I still use discs. When I want to play I insert disk and play
- I do not want to deal with limitations of Windows. Some programs display too much ads. I prefer fighting with app setup once, compile, etc. After creating scripts I can setup my machine again without any problems in minutes
- If my windows machine becomes slow it is often slow to download fresh ISO, and install it. I do not want to restore it from partition as I am not sure what kind of bloatware was installed by the manufacturer. On Linux I can download ISO and install it in maybe 15-20 minutes
- Most of my apps, self hosting is much easier for me to set up on Linux than on Windows. It may be because I do not know how to set it up properly in Windows
- In Windows I feel as guest, rather than admin of my machine
- I have set up some mini-PCs for my friends, since their Windows became unusable. After using Linux they could still use their machines (they use only browsers, Libbre Office suite, etc.)
I'm not a gamer, in fact I think they are mostly poison for the brain, but I really REALLY appreciate what steam/valve/ proton whoever has done to help bring people over to the FOSS side. Ive converted a lot of kids when before I couldn't convert anyone :-)
Leisure is not poison for the brain. It's required. Like anything else, everything in moderation.
Yes and the vast majority of gaming specifically tries to thwart moderation. Thus the poison aspect.
Exactly. As someone who plays games but doesn't smoke or drink (which are also leisure activities), those are way more socially accepted and probably closer to "poison". But it's okay because as you said, everything in moderation.
Microsoft did this to me.
If OneDrive didn't hijack your filesystem, I would have dealt with auto-open edge links.
I tasted Fedora and... Oh my God Windows sucks. Like its awful in seemingly every way compared to Fedora Cinnamon. The UI/the speed/the experience is breathtaking.
Fedora Cinnamon is so good, I've become outspokenly anti-Debian/Ubuntu for giving Linux a bad name. I'm amazed that an operating system this solid has been existing under my nose.
I'm curious what about Fedora specifically makes the difference for you? I started using Cinnamon with Mint (derived from Ubuntu, Debian) last year and also found it a big improvement from Windows.
I'm willing to bet its more about the "Fedora" than the "Cinnamon". I was an Arch user for about 15 years with a few attempts in between to try other distros (including Fedora), but recently I've been installing Fedora on my machines because the last two versions have been really good. Its very competent, software availability has improved, they take security much more seriously than any other (normal) distro and they are always on top of the latest features and upcoming "tech" on the linux world.
Also curious to know this! I've been using Mint & Cinnamon for about 10 years and haven't bothered looking at an alternative.
Fedora is like 6 months+ ahead of Ubuntu on updates to most packages. Often with Ubuntu you get to deal with bugs that were fixed a year ago upstream.
finally switched from Win10 to full time EndeavourOS KDE/Plasma and havent looked back.
got sick of my OS customization getting reset after every unstoppable auto update. oh, and the ads. the constantly changing ui shenanigans.
i kept TPM 2 turned off to prevent Win11 from metastasizing its way onto the machine, but the straw that broke the camel's back is that Win10 totally fucked up my dual boot setup after an OS auto-update.
btw, i used to roll my own winxp isos with sysprep and regedits baked in. all of that is impossible now without the unobtanium that's Windows LTSC.
(my hardware/usage is recent AMD thinkpad, time is spent mostly in browser, vscode, mpv, krita, darktable, terminal)
i do miss the Affinity products tho, they keep making them more Windows/MacOS-only, now relying on the windows store/msix installer, basically guaranteeing they'll never work with Wine/Proton :(
> i do miss the Affinity products tho, they keep making them more Windows/MacOS-only, now relying on the windows store/msix installer, basically guaranteeing they'll never work with Wine/Proton :(
I saw this yesterday, it may be helpful, but there may also be dragons:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Affinity/comments/18vzjhz/affinity_...
holy moly, thanks for this. gonna try it soon.
wonder why Winetricks exists, shouldnt it be upstreamed?
i guess maybe the same reason Proton exists? maybe Proton has the same fixes and i can just use a compiled version of that without having to recompile Wine? :thinking_face:
EDIT: oh, https://github.com/Matoking/protontricks
I've been playing with Linux desktops since the 90s. Every few years I load up a few distros in a VM to see what's going on, and I just did that again over the holidays with some free time and a recent urge just to tinker with stuff. Some random, recent thoughts:
- Knowing how Linux works (and having the skill to use it) is hugely advantageous for most software developers and IT professionals--I personally wouldn't hire an IT or DevOps admin who didn't have some level of familiarity and comfort around Linux. Reckoning with the modularity and composability of Linux helps to build a deeper understanding of how computers work, and many of the most important IT topics of today (containers, cloud management) are built off Linux/Unix fundamentals such as chroot and cgroups.
- I tried Arch for the first time and enjoyed it as a nostalgia trip. It reminded me of installing Redhat or Suse or Mandrake back in the 90s. I appreciate it for what it is--a tinkerer's distro. I don't understand the meme around it though, and found nothing esoteric about setting it up... Is manually partitioning a disk drive supposed to be a feat of strength today?
- On the other side of the distro spectrum, I'm mightily impressed by Zorin. Less so these days with Ubuntu. I get folks' distaste for Snaps over Flatpacks.
- I don't get folks aversion to bloat. For me, finding the ideal setup was about installing everything a distro had to offer and then chiseling down. The exploration was always the fun in using Linux. I remember installing Suse back in the 90s with 10 different window managers and I loved fiddling with them all.
- Hyprland is really neat.
I'm not associated with System76 but if you currently use Ubuntu as your desktop check out Pop OS. It does a great job of smoothing some of the rough edges and has great support for Nvidia cards. After years of using Ubuntu exclusively, I switched to Pop OS about 4 years ago and never looked back. Note that my comment comes from using it as a desktop on my custom-built PC, not a laptop.
they are a good company, the only tip I would recommend, if you don't have a beefy system. Is install Pop_OS so it has all the GPU support etc, and then just run some lightweight WM. That switch got me a boast on the speed of an old laptop.
Does Pop OS allow you to install software that Canonical forces through snap, like Firefox or Chromium, using the distribution's package manager (apt or whatever)?
Yes, you can install things manually, though popOS has its own own flatpak based "store" if you prefer that model. There are a few things that are missing from both though because the vendor only releases software in snap form and no one's bundled it otherwise (e.g. lxd). For those, you can either build from source or install snap yourself.
Yes, installing things manually is always an option (even in Ubuntu!), but I wondered if in Pop it was an option to "apt install firefox" and get your package installed the "old way", with no sandboxing, using shared libraries from the system, allowing for upgrading with "apt upgrade" the moment you decide, etc. But if PopOs repo is flatpak based as you say, I guess the answer would be no.
Yes, that is the norm on Pop. They removed snaps in the standard setup and have their own package repository. You can install stuff normally and if you don't find something you can use flatpaks.
Yes. I'm using Pop and my Firefox is installed through apt.
You can use Snaps and Flatpak if you want.
Pop OS is very bloated. If you're looking for something on the lean side, check out Manjaro.
>Pop OS is very bloated. If you're looking for something on the lean side, check out Manjaro.
There are 100 distros, each with pros and cons, many far lighter than Manjaro.
Anecdotally, recently I tried to upgrade/update a PC (at my parent's house) running a 5 YO Manjaro build and was not possible. All mirrors dead, GPG keys server dead, broken dependencies, etc... I am far from a Linux expert but tried everything I could, sometimes checking 10 YO threads and ChatGPT. In the end I just installed Windows O o.
if you actually care about bloat, by far the best* thing to do is set up arch linux manually (no archinstall script) and just install the packages you actually need. it's insane how little it actually takes to get a working system.
it's a bunch of effort though, both to learn how everything works and to set up all the things you're usually just used to being there by default. but once it's done you'll be able to fix any issue that pops up, because you actually KNOW what's on your system, as opposed to it being a massive collection of things you have no idea about.
*something like gentoo might be better but... compiling a browser takes ages and i recommend having an up to date browser, so you'll spend tons of time on that.
Maybe keep the distro wars out of a thread where people are barely able to accept that daily driving Linux is an option.
As far as Nvidia goes, I was impressed with the ubuntu-drivers autoinstall command which just works for me. Not sure how long that has been around but it was a pleasant surprise.
My main gripe with pop_os is how bloated it seems and how slow and sluggish it feels at times compared to KDE while its DE feels being more janky and less stable than vanilla Gnome Ubuntu which I also dislike but that's another story.
1.2GB or more of memory usage at idle when most of the KDE distros I tried, even the Ubuntu based ones like Kubuntu, go around 700MB. Plus it just feels sluggish and slow on not so modern machines.
What exactly is Popos delivering more than the likes of Kubuntu or Nobara for the near double extra resources used?
>1.2GB or more of memory usage at idle when most of the KDE distros I tried, even the Ubuntu based ones like Kubuntu, go around 700MB. Plus it just feels sluggish and slow on not so modern machines.
Isn't this irrelevant nowadays? Don't the OS's consume/free memory dynamically, and idle usage is meaningless?
Sure, PopOS isn't the best choice for your Raspberry Pi, but we are talking about desktop computing, where 1.2GB of RAM is nothing.
Being a hog with resources always bites you in the ass sooner or later.
Firstly, 1.2 GB RAM or more is not 'nothing' if you have 8GB of RAM or less, which is still a lot of people these days.
At that scale the difference 500MB to 1GB RAM wasted by your DE could mean a few extra apps or browser tabs you can run before you hit the swap meaning a great usability boost.
Secondly, you haven't answered my question on what Popos does extra to justify the extra resource usage, you only justified the resources waste with the argument that 'RAM is cheap'.
I think I have 200MB idle memory usage with Bodhi.
I for one absolutely love their hybrid window tiling shell and architecture as Gnome plugins. I don't think KDE has something quite on the same level although there is movement in that space.
It will be interesting to see if W10 EOL end of 2025 will have any effect. That will instantly obsolete hundreds of millions of useable computers (everything before Q4 2017). For non power users that only need some web browsing and basic office functionality a switch to Linux would be perfect. A 10 year old laptop is fine as a web browsing machine.
Using the words of a true poet:
> Up, up, up the ziggurat, lickety split
As Windows continues its enshitification, and as Valve continues investing into its awesome Steam Deck, I do hope the trend continues.
Personally, after using Steam Deck a lot, I bought a desktop and tried a standard distro (OpenSUSE in my case) for gaming. The experience has been not ideal, but doable. My issues:
- My Xbox controller worked, then suddenly stopped working. I've been using a PS controller instead which works great, but would vastly prefer the Xbox one.
- NVidia has been such a pain that I'm thinking of selling my current card and buying an AMD one. NVidia drivers are truly horrible. For example, during boot time, the proprietary drivers randomly fail (like 1 in 7 reboots), which is not catastrophic (the system recovers by itself) but does lengthen the boot process by roughly 1 minute (very noticeable when the whole computer normally boots in ~10s). Note that this is with the latest driver version, and even after modifying kernel parameters as per NVidia devs' advice.
- Some games still don't work great under Proton (anticheat, mostly). This is expected and I'm quite fine with the current state of gaming compatibility on Linux, but might be surprising to some folks that are coming from Windows.
But overall, I can just play whatever is in my Steam library, and I truly love that.
We're in the odd situation where AMD cards are vastly superior for gamers in dollar/performance terms.
I'm on the market for a AI work station and I'm honestly thinking of doing a amd/nvidia split so I can have the graphics just work and the AI also just work.
> My Xbox controller worked, then suddenly stopped working. I've been using PS controller instead which works great, but would vastly prefer the Xbox one.
If you mean specifically using Steam on Linux, you may need to add some udev rules for accessing the controller: https://codeberg.org/fabiscafe/game-devices-udev
I have done that, otherwise it wouldn't have worked the first time.
> As Windows continues its enshitification, and as Valve continues investing into its awesome Steam Deck, I do hope the trend continues.
The Steam Deck isn't without its faults: there's a dedicated "Special offers" carousel on the home screen, and there's been a full-width ad for the winter sale on the home screen for the past few weeks.
Steam Deck still runs Windows games for the most part, and now the competition is heating up with Windows based handhelds.
So far Steam Deck has done very little to push for Linux native games.
In the stats from Wikipedia traffic[0], Linux's share is more stable - ~2.1% for 2023, ~2.1% for 2020-2022, ~1.6% for 2016-2019 (I put the dates in the pie chart filter, and looked at the "Linux" and "Ubuntu" labels). By the way, there are some strange peaks in that data - Linux going up to 7% in single weeks, Ubuntu going from 0.2-1.0% baseline to 1-3% for a couple of months in 2022...
[0] https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop...
We'll see if those numbers are stable, or on an upward trend. I can see why the numbers would be going up. I've been on macOS for almost 20 years and I'm not sure that my next workstation will be from Apple.
I still think the Mac is great, but as work require more and more Linux specific tools switching starts to make sense. All the tools I don't already run in a terminal or in a VM is also available on Linux, the only Mac only application is Apple Mail and I'm not that attached to it.
Unless you are an iOS dev, it just never made sense to buy one. Worse hardware, worse software options, you are going to be VMing always anyway.
The 'low power' marketing didn't work on me, my 6+ hour battery life on an Asus has never affected my life ever. However having a 3060 has unlocked so many possibilities. It could make me a multimillionaire this year.
Scary to think I might have gotten an iOS dev job, ended up having to run AI on CPU, and never came up with my product.
> Unless you are an iOS dev, it just never made sense to buy one.
Not sure I completely agree, if you're buying a laptop and factor in the fact that you're guaranteed to get a good screen then MacBooks have provide pretty good value, for me at least over the past 15 years.
The screen is what sold you for 15 years?
Gosh I hate corporations. They are disgusting the mind control they have, and they never get in trouble for it.
probably the share of devs grows as more people are mobile only XD
This is not unexpected at all. 10 years ago I had a dual boot system, occasionally trying out games on Linux. Some of them worked out of the box, some of them worked after configuration, and some of them were totally borked. This year, I built a gaming PC, installed Arch Linux, installed Steam, installed Cyberpunk 2077, hit the green play button and that's it, I can play recent AAA games without any problem. There are still issues around anti-cheat systems though, especially around the kernel-level ones.
>Looking at December it shows Windows rising too, with macOS dropping down.
I posted something similar except for browser. [1] Desktop Browser Market Share Worldwide – December 2023, Safari saw a sharp decline to less than 9%, down from 14% in June.
It seems for whatever reason a lot of people tried Safari but then switched back to Chrome.
I wonder what were the reason the drove this action. And on the Linux 4% sharp increase in December.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38833412
I wish more people would use Ubuntu on their home PCs. It's so easy to do. With so many things being web based it's never been easier to switch to Linux.
Linux already has the largest market share because of Android, ChromeOS, embedded devices. The 4% here actually refers to GNU/Linux.
I think we'll see the end of desktop OSs before we see macOS or Linux overtake Windows. I know a ton of people who don't use a laptop for desktop PC outside of work at all. Their computing is accessed entirely through a smartphone. The desktop OS will become a niche thing for offices and gamers, but I think desktops will eventually be on their way out
I'm one of those long-time programmers who has run Linux on the desktop for decades, and I also use Android out of a sense of obligation for running comprehensible, auditable, open source software in as many places as practical. Also, IMO, there is something important about using the "non-dominant" platform as a techie. I might need to start using Firefox (rather than Chrome/Chromium) for the same reason.
I have no regrets about Linux on the desktop over decades. Using my Linux desktop is a joy, and I always viewed Linux system administration as a worthwhile skill which I have cross-applied professionally in the realm of cloud servers and DevOps.
In the period where Windows had dominant market share, I relegated Windows usage to a VM for a handful of software packages (e.g. Quickbooks), running on my Linux host.
Sometime around 2018, I realized I hadn't booted a VMWare VM in a few years, so I could just delete that VM guest, and the host software, too.
Nowadays, I basically ignore the entire Windows desktop space in my everyday computing. I keep an eye on Windows 11 via a Media PC I use for streaming edge cases to my TV, like old Blu-ray or DVD rips. I use a proprietary desktop via a Mac Mini, which is my dedicated "Zoom call box", but also where a handful of proprietary apps live. I don't need desktop Quickbooks anymore, so instead this is my way of accessing things like MSWord, MSExcel, Acrobat, and ScanSnap software. Basically, those rare situations where web software alternatives won't work.
Here's an interesting question I've been thinking about: in 2023, why are so many developers encountering Linux in their day-to-day lives even if they aren’t running Linux as their main workstation OS?
For Windows developers, it’s the rise of WSL. Windows was always missing a great UNIX shell and now WSL provides it in spades.
For macOS developers, it’s native support for Linux VMs & containers as well as the rise of Apple Silicon & ARM. These two trends make it so that macOS’s BSD heritage and local terminal is a less comparatively useful proxy for local development (vs just running a local VM or container running Linux, which is now easy enough, and fast), whereas perhaps in past years the BSD heritage was good enough to e.g. run Python, Ruby, or Node.
For all developers, Linux is the standard deployment environment in the cloud, whether you are using Amazon EC2 or Google GCE or something else like DigitalOcean. Even developers running Linux workstations find a need to virtualize and containerize Linux environments, but this can now be done in a lightweight way with F/OSS options.
For all developers, IDEs have gotten better at working with remote Linux machines, or local containers. See VSCode “Remote” extension, and private networking tools like Wireguard, Tailscale, ZeroTier.
Finally, Linux has showed up in a lot of “long tail” hardware use cases, such as Raspberry Pi, Android, NAS devices, Steam Deck, etc.
So I wouldn’t really call 2023 (or 2024) the year of the Linux “desktop”, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Linux is the “#1 #2 operating system”.
That is, it’s not the OS everyone runs on their workstation, but it is the OS everyone runs in their workstation, from their workstation, or around their workstation. It’s the closest thing developers have to a “standard development & deployment OS” even while their workstations and desktop environments fracture on Windows/Mac/LinuxDistro lines.
And if a developer has a homelab server or a favorite remote development VM, it is almost certainly running Linux and accessed via ssh.
> For Windows developers, it’s the rise of WSL. Windows was always missing a great UNIX shell and now WSL provides it in spades.
Before WSL, Virtual Box and VMWare Workstation, and SUA to a lesser extent, were already making it.
WSL makes it one less thing to install and configure.
I think a big difference is the way the shell works. That, on Windows today, you can just open up a terminal in your Linux environment (bash/zsh/etc) without thinking about the VM. This becomes a much simpler path than, say, Cygwin, or a hand-managed VMWare guest. And likewise that tools for things like container management can make some reasonable assumptions about the host OS and its Linux capabilities.
You can do similar configuration with VMWare Workstation and SUA (Windows POSIX subsystem).
Windows also has native containers.
They decided to expose them via docker APIs to take advantage of the ecosystem tooling, and nowadays other ones like containerd and runc are also available.
> For macOS developers, it’s native support for Linux VMs & containers as well as the rise of Apple Silicon & ARM.
macOS still doesn’t have official support for containers. There is https://macoscontainers.org/ but you have to disable SIP, which is a no go for most professional/work machines.
Yes, you are technically correct on containers. However, macOS does have native support for Linux VMs (via the Hypervisor / VM frameworks) and then that Linux VM guest has native support for containers. So essentially macOS still provides a gateway to something akin to WSL on Windows, and that’s how tools like podman and docker work, via a Linux VM. (I am over-simplifying, of course.)
Ubuntu is an amazingly mature Desktop without the MS bloatware. For my AI work, I fully rely on it. Would I use it if I had to make only Powerpoint slides and Word docs? Likely not.
Try non-Debian branch if you really want your breath blown away.
I'd use Fedora if I was only going to be using an office suite.
I can't imagine using Windows anymore, so many forced reboots and dealing with autosaves and reopening everything. Ugh
Doesn't surprise me. I've used primarily Linux on a laptop and a little System76 Meerkat desktop since 2015.
There are a few odd edge cases but most things run smoothly.
Finally, the year of Linux on the desktop.
(Meanwhile, my laptop running Ubuntu still won't sleep properly. It just spontaneously wakes up and drains its whole battery).
This data is highly suspect. Just last year they had “unknown” at 12%, and the recent macOS drop strains belief.
Most likely this reflects increased bot activity.
I think it will continue to grow, as the two major OS's have each become enshitified in their own way; Windows with ads at every turn, and macOS with 'security' restrictions and limitations anytime you deviate from the annointed path.
The Steam Deck might have something to do with this.
Surprising, given the Wayland/GNOME sabotage.
(I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on a Dell XPS 17 yesterday. After running apt update && apt upgrade it boots into a black screen)
I take it those laptops have an Nvidia card? I wouldn't try to use Wayland with an nvidia card. I hear it works better with AMD cards from other HN users. Personally, I don't think I'll be changing over anytime soon though, as long as X11 still compiles and works, I'll probably keep using it.
> Personally, I don't think I'll be changing over anytime soon
Maybe, maybe not. There are at least two forces at work on this issue:
1. Nvidia themselves, who are collaborating with the Wayland project to improve compatibility with their driver (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...)
2. The new "NVK" open source Nvidia driver, which (unlike Nvidia's proprietary driver) can work perfectly on Wayland without changing Wayland (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/tree/main/src/nou...)
I'm not sure if (1) will fix every Nvidia/Wayland bug that exists right now, but (2) will definitely be able to reach perfect Wayland compatibility faster without sacrificing performance like the original nouveau driver.
If you're using an Nvidia card, that's the likely culprit.
Shouldn't your distro know that yours is a Nvidia card, and make the necessary to avoid that you boot into a black screen after upgrading your system using the standard procedure?
I don't think you can fault your distro because Nvidia in general is a mess. Here's how it works:
* Kernel -> Nvidia shim -> nvidia binary driver
* You upgrade, you get a new kernel, the shim needs to be recompiled (ideally automatic using dkms)
* This fails for some reason due to missing kernel headers, some weird compilation bug, etc. You end up with a black screen.
Ideally Nvidia just open sources and upstreams their driver, like AMD and Intel have done. I know they've been making steps, but there's nothing the Linux world can really do to solve this outside of trying to make a good open source driver like nouveau. But nouveau can only be developed using reverse engineering because Nvidia refuses to provide public detailed documentation on their cards.
Of course it's not the distro's fault but they can improve its robustness making that failures during the process (like in the step #3 from your comment) are handled in a way so that the entire update is rolled back. I guess this is what niche distributions like NixOS try to ensure.
Linux can conquer the PC desktop by just sitting still while Microsoft continues to enshittify Windows. Mac also grows this way, but you get way more bang for your buck $/performance wise with commodity hardware vs. Apple hardware.
I wonder if smartphone usage has any influence in this. I would guess a lot more "casual" internet users use their phone to browse the internet. And maybe more .. eh, lets call them "advanced" users are part of the desktop share?
It's never going to happen
It has been happening for the past 7+ years.
Nuclear fusion is around corner, too.
Nuclear fusion will power the first useful quantum computer.
Linux has hit 100% desktop user share at my place about 10 years ago. It's definitely happening.
It's going to increase when support for millions of PCs running Windows 10 ends and they can't upgrade to Windows 11.
It's also going to increase as more and more games on Steam work on Linux and people decide running Windows for gaming just isn't worth the bloat and ads.