There's never been a bad year for the Linux desktop. The share size doesn't matter. So, yes, it is the year of the Linux desktop in my book and it has been that way for decades.
Linux runs people's cars, phones, routers, sometimes even fridges. And don't even get me started on servers. Linux is the most useful OS on the planet. The desktop is just another thing for it to conquer.
Linux has some of the best device compatability because it's baked into the kernel. Don't need to download a driver in most cases, just update the kernel.
Plus it's known to be a great os for a developer. Also the apt repositories or other repos make installing an app on windows store look like a toddlers first steps in comparison.
Oh and if you use an android phone then you're using a Linux kernel.
The foundation of the Android platform is the Linux kernel. For example, the Android Runtime (ART) relies on the Linux kernel for underlying functionalities such as threading and low-level memory management.
4 May 2023
Platform architecture - Android Developers
I've been tinkering with it since the late 90s and running it as my daily driver both at home and at work for nearly 20 years now. It's extremely useful.
Me too. As one data point, I don't use mine to access the web. However, it did get me confident with Linux as a viable choice for my desktop today. I went on to install it dual boot on my main and rarely if ever open Windows. It's probably a couple months behind in updates.
In the end I just uninstalled windows because every time I opened it, it tried installing all updates and I had to wait 20-30 mins to get to the desktop
Ahhh that's kind of like how it started for me. Now the things I can do on Linux far outstrip the things I can't, if I switched back to Windows.
Have you messed around with different desktop environments (DEs) yet? That's my favourite part of Linux. I can't imagine using a laptop without tiling window manager
School districts buy Chromebooks by the thousands. Steam Deck is definitely paving the way in terms of demonstrating a consumer use case for Linux, but I would be shocked if there are even 1/100th the number of them in the wild as there are Chromebooks.
I have a deck, a few old laptops that have all gone Linux now, and a windows desktop for gaming. The deck being so good, and Windows 11 being so bad, has nearly convinced me to try Linux on the actual desktop.
I think there are still a few games and applications (I'm primarily a C# dev for work) that I "need" Windows for but the case for dropping as much MS from my life as possible has never been stronger.
It looks like Linux will be mainstream in India in the next decade. I'm excited since a small fraction of the incredible amount of users will become distro developers.
Sadly there aren't even Indian manufacturers with linux preinstalled. I've heard of starlabs, slimbook, tuxedo, system76 etc. only to find out that most doesn't ship to india and are not availiable in the stores like flipkart, amazon and local stores, where most of people computers. Still, still India is at 15% now and what if market already has linux preinstalled systems!
Not much especially if you set up the desktop environment to mimic Mac os. Unless you do pc gaming, then depending on your hardware you get a big boost in available titles.
I use both and have my desktop setup to look like my work Mac. It's about the same TBH. Gaming is much better on Linux tho. But more biz apps 'just work' on OSX.
I switched to Ubuntu 22.04 on 2023-12-31. I had used a bunch of other distros back in 2008-2012, then got tired of manually tweaking things constantly. Things have come a long way and there are way more options to make things work. I don't have to spend hours on the CLI or reboot frequently.
So yeah, I'm going to stick with Ubuntu for a bit, then switch to something else.
Man I still suck at NixOS and it has it's kinks/learning curve, but if you're tired of tweaking things constantly the nice thing about NixOS is all your little tweaks get recorded into a single file which builds your base OS into your particular configuration. So after you tweak it and get it right, you'll never have to tweak it again even if you change computers
That doesn't sound too different from the regular Unix paradigm where all your config is stored in your home directory. I've wiped my root partition many times over the last decade but usually everything in my desktop environment is just the same as it was. Aside from migration of dotfiles into .config which was honestly overdue.
Unless NixOS is kind of like Ansible and is a build script for the whole system, package management and all? Haven't tried it myself.
My concern would be slow buildup of unused packages if that's the case. It's nice to wipe out that junk on an upgrade.
Which has Linux at just under 4% for Jan 2024, and if you include Chrome OS then it's over 5%. link
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I'm trying my very best to love Linux but I'm having so much trouble with Mint.
I'm running a Mint vm on a proxmox to try it out and for some reason my back button and forward button on my mouse maps to the scroll wheel. The scroll wheel is mapped correctly. I installed Spice to improve performance and so far it's amazing, but the mouse is annoying.
If I run RDP, it works perfectly, but the lag is too annoying.
If I were you I would install Mint on a second drive.
Pretty sure your issues aren't with Mint they're with the virtualization platform.
You can get a cheap $40 SSD and install the OS on that.
Be sure to unplug the windows drive before installing Mint to the other drive. Then plug the Win drive back in. Now you can use the bios boot menu to boot into either.
Be sure to unplug the windows drive before installing Mint to the other drive.
Why would you do that? Totally unnecessary. When Windows is already installed any Linux installation respects it without issues. The problem is the other way around, if you install Linux first and then install Windows afterwards on a second partition/drive it nukes your Linux bootloader.
Especially in times of M.2 drives (which are often behind the GPU) you only annoy people by telling them to unplug their Windows drive first. And they might want to use a second partition on that drive if it's bigger.
I'm pretty sure it's the proxmox that is making it weird.
My work revolves around using Win11. I have a 3rd screen dedicated to Mint so I can easily switch between systems without much effort.
I think the issue is Spice. It runs the quickest with almost zero lag, but my mouse isn't perfect. RDP works but there is input lag. I guess I can try another VNC to see if things improve.
Its a logitech G502SE. It doesn't look like it has drivers. I also had problems with a logitech steering wheel when I was running Mint on bare metal. Just not a very linux friendly company.
After Windows 11 came out, I said HELL NO! The whole UI and look of everything is just so awful. I feel bad for my fellow lads who are stuck on Windows still. The only people I get annoyed with are the ones who glorify Windows. Look I'm not forcing people to switch their OS, but god please don't glorify Windows spying features and say 'I don't have anything to hide'. Just say fuck it and make the switch, take back control of your life! RISE THE FUCK UP!
I would bet it's a mix of win/Linux with people don't spoofing their system. Mac users don't hide using a Mac, well, they are doing more like the opposite.
No shade. I respect my Linux brethren. I'm on MacOS, but CLI junkies should unite and drink beers. Or smoke trees. Or whatever. The point is that I love you all. But no Windows peeps.
If profit and growth continue to be above all else, I don't see why it wouldn't gain a decent market share in the next couple of decades.
On the other hand, the Unix model of selling hardware to help pay for software development might breed a more competitive hardware space if there is a big enough user base.
Was able to even switch Bluetooth profile through GUI
Essentially any game that didn't use a kernel level spyware works
Chromebook hardware in the $500 range is pretty good
Must software is web based.
I recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Install once, update weekly or biweekly. (It's a rolling release, so it doesn't have major upgrades like Windows 10 to 11 does.) About a month ago I did an upgrade on my old laptop. Handled 2 years of updates flawlessly.
I left tumbleweed for alpine and artix because even if you always use --no-recommends for package installation it seems to ship just too much bloat and I left it after it shipped some broken software I didn't need anyway but must've affected system stability too severely, iSCSI iirc
Wow, are you able to use the new s6 supervisor or service manager yet, or is it too early yet? I saw an initial post once but didn't follow it's development.
Sorry you had problems with Tumbleweed. The forums and subreddit are very supportive, no matter how you installed the distro. It's actually why I moved to Tumbleweed from Arch.
I feel this is now being driven by the decline of desktops in general.
Every now and again I meet someone who somehow gets through life without a desktop.
I can understand someone who owns a Mac/Windows PC just binning it out of frustration and not buying another one. They are just life-sucking levels of horror at this point.