Oh ho ho this is getting interesting. What a big fat L for RedHat. Choked CentOS and lost control of the community, cut off source access and spurred migration away from their platform. Now they not only have to contend with Oracle but SUSE too. I wonder if this will culminate in legal proceedings should RedHat try to further restrict source access.
I like your thinking, I have a dual boot on laptop with windows 11 and LMDE installed, and its been a while since I booted to windows for personal use. Unfortunately for me I am still dependant of windows until Autodesk decides they will create the software I use for the linux environment as well. Until then, I’ll rock on with personal “freedom” of linux, while I’m a slave to the corporate / microsoft
I still have a Windows 10 gaming machine that gets fired up occasionally to be honest. Originally it was a VM on my Linux system, but I had some issues with cache latency and anti-cheat, so I’d figured I need a dedicated system. Nowadays I game as much as possible on my Steam Deck, though. But I think in a year or two I will switch that Windows system over to Linux as well. Gaming on Linux has gotten that good.
Decoupling the terminal from the shell also means you can keep your shell open while closing your terminal window. This can be useful on servers, or for long running commands that you want to be able to check on.
The true year of linux is not any specific year or a userbase percentage but when linux is widely preinstalled on consumer hardware without nerds needing to recommend to people to install it themselves
Honestly whatever Linux Distro takes over will almost certainly be an Android or ChormeOS style bastardization where you can certainly see the lineage but it’s so locked down and so far removed from the userland and tooling we expect that the whole point of “year of the Linux desktop” is lost
Yes and no. MacOS is basically the year of the Unix desktop and it’s still powerful and user friendly. Just fire up a terminal and it’s Unix. The benefit they have is hardware control do stuff just works and no driver hardware issues etc…
@const_void
Certainly, let's look for more ways to improve, but I've not had a need to fiddle with hardware configs in a while.
I count 2 personal laptops, a desktop, and a couple RasPis that just worked for me. One laptop had suspend issues in Windows that went away with Linux, which surprised the hell out of me.
My work laptop (Windows 11) needed GPU drivers reinstalled and increasingly acts up with docking and suspend.
Maybe I've lucked into good hardware or something.
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There is something of a blurry line between the two these days.
I get the "Android software isn't desktop software" argument, but then, I can also fire up up emacs in Termux on my Android phone, so that's kind of blurry too.
In my region (India), for a while, there seemed to be plenty of laptops available with Linux installed as an option. Then again in the last few years that seems to have withered down to almost none, sometimes even if the same model is available with Linux in some other regions. I am not sure what changed. Perhaps some deal with Microsoft. The good part is that the fact that they do support Linux elsewhere on the same laptop configuration generally means its easy to get it up and running yourself even if it does not come pre-installed.
In any case, as an old-timer, it’s very impressive to me how much hardware Linux supports nowadays without any drama at all. Not to mention all the progress made in software especially in supporting Windows-only games, which is truly magical work by the Wine / Proton teams. As far as I am concerned the “Year of Linux Desktop” is here already since I can use it daily without missing absolutely anything at all from Windows.
That was the same in Brazil, where I live. This scared the beejesus out of Microsoft, so they created special, cheaper version for developing countries to counter it.
Steam Deck is the first taste I get of Linux. I’ve always had this fear of not being able to fully utilize a Linux OS due to my lack of skills in coding, but I find myself looking into it more ever since I got a Steam Deck. It may just be the right excuse I need to git gud in coding.
Edit: Thanks for the clarification and encouragement guys. I’m going to make it a mission to move to Linux ASAP since it feels like Windows has been really pushing the limits of privacy these days.
I get that SteamOS is an actual desktop distro, and that’s closer to a daily driver than any android or bespoke *nix compatible SOC OS, but I doubt we’ll see this spread from steamdeck to daily drivers, unless…
Unless linux can offer some feature windows/mac/ios do not, or at least market itself as doing so the way that Apple does, and get the overwhelming majority of tech consumers—who want nothing more than to keep up with the joneses and see the hardware specs numbers get bigger—to FOMO into it
Unfortunately that would conflict with the most enticing features it does have that no one else does: a code of ethics that are inherently anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian. And honestly, who wants every Linux community, online or off, flooded with consumers who only care about the newest Feature™ and have no care about maintaining software freedom?
The only thing I see holding people back is software availability. If it could run adobe and games natively I don’t see why anyone would want to pay for windows.
Software is definitely at the top of the list in terms of reasons. But the UX/UI definitely leaves something to be desired. I sigh heavily every time an application asks me to edit a text-based config file instead of giving me a GUI. It's an unnecessary, error-prone process and most importantly I have better things to do than read yet another page of documentation. That doesn't mean I want the config file to go away, it's still very useful for a variety of reasons. But I shouldn't have to mess around with it just to remap keys or other common tasks. Editing a config file should be a last resort for an end user.
You see similar problems when relying on the terminal. I don't like this idea of the end user being allowed to mess around without a safety net or some sort of guidance.
tbh everytime i use a non linux OS im baffled by the lack of software availability… its basically a desert when it comes to good software, but of course if you want proprietary garbage you have all the choices XD
i love how the whole population is apparently a graphic designer XD not a dig on you but i always find hilarious this argument from non-professionals like " i need PHOTOSHOp to edit my grandmas pictures!"
I think it’s more about trying to change particular industries. If all of Adobes software was available for Linux in a supported and stable versions, you could see changes in the OS used in lots of design and creativity industries, which again would change what OS people use at home.
Also I think the force of being open source and spread over so many distros, is also a weakness in terms of getting the mainstream user to use it. My dad will call me or ask his friend about how you do this and that in Windows, but if our OS per default looks different from what others are using, he will not be able to get the same kind of help from his near community, and will have to rely on a more technical kind of support.
And things have to work out of the box. If I hear “You CAN get it to work” - I won’t use it. I need things to just work, I don’t have time to (nor interrest in) spending a night mingeling with config files to have simple things do the things they’re supposed to.
adobe sucks for the same reasons I alluded to in my last paragraph. Money-grubbing corporation company hurts developers by patenting, trademarking, and copyrighting every minor feature in their programs to the point where FOSS alternatives have to bend over backwards to find ways to implement some of the same functionality. The problem isn’t linux, the problem is adobe, the problem is profit-motive, the problem is capitalism.
IDK what distro you use, but I’m using Debian, and it does run games natively–nearly half of the ones I own on steam. Not all of them, but that’s not Linux’s fault, that’s not Gnu’s fault, that’s not Debian’s fault: they already offer compatibility layers and yet that’s not good enough for everyone, and there’s not much they can do beyond that outside of building a windows clone (or at least a partial clone) that would probably get them sued. To run natively, the devs would have to compile it to run on Linux and the ones that don’t are making the choice to not do so–consciously or not, because of profits or not; it’s hard to say why, even indie devs who make free games as a hobby sometimes choose not to, so it’s not as easily dismissed with “because capitalism”
That all being said, the “software availability” criticism can cut both ways. I’ve found so many tools and utilities and apps and FOSS programs that are only made available for linux (unless one is willing to port them oneself), and there isn’t an app or program I use everyday that I haven’t found a linux-compatible alternative for. The glaring exception being games; to me that wasn’t a huge deal, I’ll bite that bullet because I’d rather go without kernel-privileged spyware for an OS–and the same for an anti-cheat engine–than play a triple-A on maximum graphics, play online multiplayers that require microsecond reaction time, or other such use cases where Proton actively hinders UX. Like I said, I’d rather have anti-authoritarian computers than worry about keeping up with the performance spec joneses
True, but Apple has already pivoted to being the “privacy-friendly” OS/devices. Whether or not that’s true–I don’t know for certain (I have a hunch, though)–they have much more visibility and influence and marketing, and therefore will cement themselves in people’s minds that way.
Besides, I like the idea of Linux existing outside the capitalist paradigm; instead of competing with the big names in the market, it’s on the outskirts playing its own game and absolutely crushing it. It has survived decades based almost entirely on word of mouth between computer nerds instead of vying for attention in the mainstream. As a technology it has achieved the platonic ideal: it is so good at what it does that it doesn’t need marketing, it survives solely on reputation and quality and user upkeep.
True, but Apple has already pivoted to being the “privacy-friendly” OS/devices.
i mean… for idiots… anybody with any knowledge in the fields knows its bullshit. So im not sure how is that a point… people are too stupid for their own good? yeah we knew that already
about the second part i think you just have no idea what you are talking about linux is capitalist as fuck sadly and its corporate as it gets.
To add to all great comments here I have one that I’ve used for ages and not seen mentioned here: lftp
It supports many protocols for ftp like over ssh and allows for shaky connections with resume and back in the days when this was more common I used to just run it in the background to download huge files that took days to download and it would gracefully just reconnect/resume/retry until done.
Not to duplicate some of the entries, I will keep it short LF file manager (seen ranger mentioned but no lf) Ytfzf for finding yt videos and playing them in MPV without the need of web browser
The crazy thing is more and more is purely being done through a web browser as time goes on, so it’s becoming more and more possible to switch at the drop of a dime for people
so true. I use very few native applications and do 90% of everything in a browser. Notable exceptions: Libreoffice, FileZilla, Thunderbird and an image editor
The nasty truth is, most folks don’t have a computer at home anymore. They do everything on their phone. The desktop is reserved for the office worker, which is itself a double-edged sword as the average office worker is so clueless about the computer they’re sitting in front of that it could be replaced with a Linux desktop without them knowing anything other than “IT changed this and I don’t like it” but the flip side of that is that there’s a generation of IT people who learned their craft during the Ballmer era and are now in positions where they run the IT departments (and those who learned before and Linux kinda sucked back then). If they aren’t too jaded to try something new they’re too tired or too scared of the long term ramifications of trying something so radically different
As someone in the initial “hop around and pick up as many skills and resume line items as possible” phase of my IT career, I’ve already heard the exact reasons why Windows is still so prevelent “our company’s client base is largely farmers. Sure you might have the skills to be a Linux admin but who would replace you whenever you move on? Good luck finding a good Linux admin around here at a rate we can pay!” “Windows Server is so much easier to deploy and troubleshoot without having to remember the commands, why would I bother learning Linux which is much harder to learn when employers around here aren’t even looking for Linux experience” and even my friends who appreciate the geekiness and will openly lab out ideas in their free time for fun have to stay realistic about how stable or how janky every part of the given software solution is, plus the value of a support contract where you can answer the “why is this not fixed” questions with “I have a ticket in with the vendor”
Perhaps. But by then it certainly would be the year of the Linux desktop by then. What other operating system can handle years that long, starting from Jan 1, 1970 to Jan 1, 6.460263446E+5814. Linux, that’s what.
Linux market share is not the same as Grub market share. Torvalds is against the GPL v3 because he explicitly does not mind locked bootloaders and signed kernels.
I peddle that to my coworkers for no other reason than because I don’t know how to deal with Windows garbage when they run into a problem. It’s more for my sanity than anything else.
Jkjk it was the old work laptop of someone i knew so i got it from them for the extremely low price of $0, slapped linux onto it, and went about my business
Yeah I’m considering getting one simply bc of the affordability. They also seem to be pretty highly regarded (if the amount of recommendations I’ve gotten says anything)
You could get the education edition. I have a new yoga 11e and it has a great keyboard, and it’s just… way too good for the money (250 bucks). I love that if I break or lose it I can just get an idenical one for super cheap in a couple days. But they’re made for kids so they’re pretty durable anyway.
I agree, I have two Thinkpads, an older T450S that lives out in the shop for me to reference things, and my mainstay which is a T480S. If OP does want to do video editing or gaming or anything that might be more intensive, I also have had a Legion 5 and similarly had absolutely no problems with Linux on it.
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