Yeah, a lot of expectations people have around Linux are about a decade old. I think Linux has really improved a lot in the area of gaming over the last few years even.
And as long as Linux keeps being worth supporting I think we’ll see more and more games targeted toward linux.
Unless it was one of those netbook desktop things, holy hell those were bad. I managed to get AntiX running pretty well on one, and tuxracer lagged a LOT. Was pretty useful as a cheap thin client though.
I wish installing linux for non-technical people using windows were as easy as downloading an .exe and walking through an installation wizard. Something that gave very very simple instructions, backed up their stuff, rebooted to install linux with the chosen settings, and restored their backup into linux.
IMO if it were that simple or as simple as double clicking an .exe and hitting Install Linux (with default settings) that did all of the above with a default distro set by the installer, more people would be willing to install linux.
And non of that Gnome shit. Drop them into a distro with a DE configured to look like windows (probably KDE or Cinnamon).
Non tech savvy people don’t install windows or macos either. Everything comes pre-installed with the machine you buy.
If you make it to the point where you kinda know what Rufus and an iso file are, Pop! OS and Mint are easier to install than Windows.
I suppose a program could be made that partitions your OS drive and installs a distro on the second partition with a dual boot selection screen on next boot, but if you’re at the point where you’re curious enough about Linux to try it, you’ve probably learned enough to use Rufus and an iso file.
The answer is system integrators need to pre install and actively support one of the more friendly distros (like Valve with SteamOS on the deck) or it’ll never catch on.
Simple users don’t care what OS you present them with, as long as it’s already there and it’s easy to use.
I think you’re assuming too little and assuming too much of average users at the same time. Either you don’t deal with them or have forgotten what it was like to be one.
normal users install software. OS to a user is just software. let it be installable like MPV, VLC, GIMP, Regex cleaners, games, …
just because you know what linux is doesn’t mean you understand Rufus, the BIOS, partitioning, ISOs vs EXE, etc.
I think the best we can do is “easier to install than Windows.” Which it currently is, barring the fact most devices ship with Windows pre-installed. If you’re a PC or gaming enthusiast and you’ve built your own computer from spare parts, installing Linux is a similar though more streamlined process than Windows.
I think Fedora Media Writer kind of hits those boxes, and the Fedora installation (with the Blivet partitioner) is fairly easy.
My problem, however, and Brodie on YouTube can attest to this, is the language. Open source projects have a problem with communication, messaging and signalling.
It should be the priority of design and the UX to properly communicate actions, events, consequences, etc. It’s also about accessibility, as bad messaging can be confusing and off-putting.
@bigmclargehuge it's pretty impressive how far along Linux has come. I also feel things mostly just working these days. I am facing some issue with a fingerprint reader on my laptop not being supported, but there are definitely fully compatible fp readers out there, even from the same manufacturer. And there's general stability, at least as good as on windows and I do say that while tinkering quite a bit.
And for many things AI related, like running models locally, this is almost a Linux first experience. Just the recently was I impressed how easy it was to get local llms to run using ollama, even on my laptop with an Nvidia GPU. Impressive.
I tried LM Studio since AMD advertised it for their GPUs. Once ROCm was installed my GPU was detected and I could use LLMs on that rather than on the CPU. I struggled to get it to work on Windows even when LM Studio was trying to do everything to get it to work.
As much as I’d like to see Linux gaining traction, I have a hard time believing market share is as high as StatCounter reported in some places. For example in Canada, Linux usage is at 1.99%, which even still seems high to me. That’s 1 in every 50 desktops. Anecdotally I can think of only 3 people, including myself, who primarily run Linux on desktop. In corporate environments, I have only ever seen Windows, or sometimes Macs deployed to employees. Even with the hate on Windows 11, it still works for most people, so they upgrade to it (begrudgingly, if they care at all), or simply buy a new computer for it. I truly wonder who else out there is running desktop Linux here in Canada…
That being said, I am less skeptical of the growth in users in India, but not for the reason the author listed. I think it’s more likely that it is growing in popularity due to its cost (ie, free), as well as the fact that many distros are more lightweight than Windows, which especially benefits older or cheaper hardware. India is still a developing country and I’d imagine many don’t have the resources to buy the latest hardware, and instead will make do with what they have or what they can afford. I think this will continue to be a boon for Linux in the developing world as Windows is not getting cheaper or faster.
Overall, I think Linux has nowhere to go but up. Once Windows 10 finally goes EoL, we may see more people looking to make the switch.
That’s 1 in every 50 desktops. Anecdotally I can think of only 3 people, including myself
Can you name 147 people using Windows? If you can, then that’s 1 in every 50. Of course, people you know are probably the technical sort that are more likely to pay attention to their OS, but still you’d need to be able to individually name 147 Windows users just to match the 1 in 50 stat. Point I’m trying to make is that one in 50 really is not very many!
@TheNanaimoBarScene@testeronious its just an average. Those Linux users are probably concentrated into a niche userbase, not evenly spread into the population. They are not your average users, who mostly run windows. But they are definitely there and I'm glad to see that.
That being said, I am less skeptical of the growth in users in India, but not for the reason the author listed. I think it’s more likely that it is growing in popularity due to its cost (ie, free), as well as the fact that many distros are more lightweight than Windows, which especially benefits older or cheaper hardware.
Most Windows in India is pirated. Microsoft doesn’t care unless you’re a big company. The second point is true. Another reason is that schools shifted to Ubuntu 10-15 years ago, and government departments are now shifting to Linux.
Agreed, Linux is quite popular in academia, particularly in any technical field. A lot of scientific software has to run on Linux because of supercomputers, and especially a lot of open source software is Linux only. So a lot of students run Linux for convenience, and a lot of computer labs run Linux as well. Of course, there’s also the fact that lots of people just think Linux is better than the alternatives, and they’re more likely to try new things when they’re at a university student’s age.
So I feel like that would probably be a significant contribution to the 2% that’s being reported
Yes, the arch wiki is very good and useful. The issue is, that you need the wiki in the first place. In a user-friendly distro everything would either work OOTB, or it could be done intuitively via GUI.
how far can you get in arch without opening the terminal?
A major reason that Windows is “popular” is because it’s pre-installed on desktops and laptops. Users don’t have a choice when they go to the store to buy a laptop for doing banking stuff or save pictures from their old camcorder.
It’s the same way with browsers. IE was “popular”, but only because that was the browser that was pre-installed on Windows. The IE browser was complete shit.
What needs to happen is that all the laptop makers, HP, Lenovo Acer etc. start having Linux pre-installed on their laptops in the stores. That probably won’t happen, as I imagine that Microsoft pays these companies to sell their laptops with Windows on them.
Linux actually tends to support more hardware do to ridiculously long term support, stable systems requirements and high flexibility.
Windows on the other hand, tends to support newer hardware very well while forcing millions of older hardware to the junkyard because of EOL and ever increasing system requirements. However it’s also to be noted that Linux support for newer hardware has been getting much much better in recent years thanks to increased interest from Intel, AMD, Nvdia, etc.
software
Depends by what way you mean, but in general sure, Windows can have more “software compatibility”, but it’s also to be noted that it’s a monopoly forcing Linux and other OSs into a chicken egg scenario. Linux software compatibility has been increasing exponentially over last few years, and increasing market share helps massively; that’s why Linux going from 3% to 4% in just 8 months is such a big deal.
Anyone building a new pc, is going to use modern hardware not EOL hardware. Yes it is great that linux can revive old laptops making it perfectly capable for browsing and word processing, but for a new gaming pc with modern hardware that i build to play modern games i will choose windows over linux anyday.
Linux going 3 to 4 is because govt office pc. Also why linux have a 25 percent market share in india according to the same stats. Because all these pcs need is a chrome browser and word processing. If you look at recent steam hardware survey linux only have 2 percent market share in which half of them are steam deck users.
Why should i waste time troubleshooting on linux, when windows have 100 percent game compatibility and i don’t have to worry about any future games and proton incompatibility. Also popular games like valorant, league, eft, warzone and services like gamepass, netflix 4k doesnt outright work on linux.
Actually, modern hardware in general tends to work perfectly fine on Linux with the exception of a few (mostly Nvidia) problem cards, sure, sometimes support isn’t immediately there at launch, but that’s becoming less and less of an issue with growing market and company interest.
Linux going 3 to 4 is because govt office pc.
Nope, that may play a factor but that’s a significantly tiny factor. The stat is based on global desktop market share, there’s a fuck ton of other factors you’re not taking into account. Govt office PCs doesn’t account for the 12+ million increase in users.
Also why linux have a 25 percent market share in india according to the same stats.
Because it’s localized to the India desktop market in that particular stat, and Linux being extremely popular in India, more so than MacOS and increasingly growing in popularity… Literally just ask Muta(someordinarygamers), lol.
Because all these pcs need is a chrome browser and word processing.
Nope, if that was the case they’d just use a Chromebook.
If you look at recent steam hardware survey linux only have 2 percent market share in which half of them are steam deck users.
Ok and? That’s based on Steams users base and taken at random, I’ve been on steam + Linux for years and never once was I prompted to participate in the survey. And ofc the several million SteamDecks they sold globally would be a significant part of that.
Why should i waste time troubleshooting on linux, when windows have 100 percent game compatibility and i don’t have to worry about any future games and proton incompatibility.
You’re looking at it far too black and white, Linux has a number of pro-consumer advantages. Just because it’s not ready for you’re specific use case doesn’t mean it’s not ready for others.
Also popular games like valorant, league, eft, warzone
That’s on the game devs for not cooperating with Valve and the Linux community.
What’s important is that there are steps you can take to get them working if you happen to play them all thanks to community efforts.
services like gamepass
Microsoft is in direct competition with Linux, common sense…
netflix 4k doesnt outright work on linux.
Netflix 4k does work on Linux out of the box, the hell you on about?
You seem to be experiencing a bug, have you tried reporting it?
You are here agreeing with me on why linux is a inferior experience on software and hardware front. You are softening the blow by blaming developers and capitalism. You dont have to ask muta, I work in the govt health sector in india and here every pc runs ubuntu. This is same for other sectors. Everything is done on the browser. Also gaming here is dominated by Mobile so these numbers are surely overinflated.
You realize that India in itself only counts for a small part of the global % as well, right?
I’m not agreeing with you, you’re perspective is filled with fallacies, over simplifications, and massively unsupported assumptions as well as unsupported claims, in addition to a lack of understanding of how percentages work. Your perspective is extremely narrow and flawed.
Also gaming here is dominated by Mobile so these numbers are surely overinflated.
The global desktop market percentage and Steam user survey do not include the mobile OS market share. First off, Steam is purely desktop, they do not provide mobile apps.
Second off, if the entire OS global market was used then Android would be on top, trumping everything as it’s the #1 OS in the entire world by a huge margin, Windows doesn’t even compare in this regard.
Please use some fucking common sense, GODDAMN.
I am using statcounter for india numbers not steam. Steam numbers are not overinflated by these office pcs. Also india have 1.5billion people so any gain here have a significant impact on stat counter worldwide numbers.
The population of India is irrelevant, the India Desktop PC market only accounts for approximately 13.9 million users total. Linux holds 15.64% in India, therefore 15.64% of 13.9 million is only approximately 2.17 million, which again does not account for the 12+ million increase of users.
The global desktop OS market is estimated to be 1.23 billion users total.
The Linux desktop OS market share is 4.3% of 1.23 billion which is approximately 49.3 million users. 1% of 1.23 billion is 12.3 million, therefore Linux grew 12.3 million in the last 8 months.
India only accounts for 2.17 million of the 49.3 million global total.
If Linux adoption grew to 16% in India that’d only be a 53.24 thousand increase.
Again, you have a complete lack of understanding of how percentages work.
Edit : actually I miss calculated because Linux is apparently 4.05% now, not 4.03%. that grew really fast.
Makes it pretty clear. Whenever someone starts tossing around accusations like that and “fanboy” they are doing so because they don’t have an argument to back their agenda with, so they resort to accusing you of doing the thing that they’re literally doing themselves to deflect and derail the conversation.
Gaming PC means video games, video games have historically been Windows or maybe Mac compatible. Only in the past couple years have game makers started making Linux compatibility a priority, and even then its a small percentage.
Until all systems align, Windows will continue to dominate. But things like HTML5 over Flash are helping those efforts!
That’s not the segment I am talking about. I’m talking about “regular folks”, who know nothing about IT, but need a laptop for whatever reason. Checking their bank, mail… That’s the majority of Windows users. Not the PC builder. They probably don’t even know what “Windows” is, if you asked them.
If Linux were pre-installed on PC’s, most people wouldn’t even notice a difference, because all they need is a browser and maybe an office suite, for very simple work.
I’ve said this before, but if there was a basic distro that named programs things like Internet Browser and Letter Writer, a massive amount of normal computer users could be switched fairly easily.
The vast majority of people use their computer to launch a browser and maybe use a word processor every now and then. It’s why the Chromebook type laptops are so popular - they do everything that most people want.
In theory, in the EU, as well as some other places, you have the right to get refunded for Windows if you don’t want it. In practice that’s often hard to pull off in most shops.
Imagine a “Choose your Browser”-style pop-up, but for your OS on first boot. I’d really love to see it, partially mostly for the amount of pure chaos it would cause.
Honestly, it really is. Lots of people prefer a specific browser, for different reasons. And a lot of people use more than 1 browser as well.
It could be similar to the ‘choose your search engine’ was supposed to help against googles monopoly (in eu) i.imgur.com/3wS6Sai.png
however i dont see this coming to windows or macos, because of those companies focus on being the only company in the world. but this could easily be used on linux. (even though most users of linux prefer firefox, i’d guess)
A major reason that Windows is “popular” is because it’s pre-installed on desktops and laptops
I think thats being a bit disingenuous
its also that Windows has always been easy to use because it has an good GUI thats easy to navigate and figure things out with. You can sit anyone in front of a windows machine and they can figure out how to use it and what to do in relatively short order without spending half the time in internet searches or trying to decipher esoteric terminal commands. Its easily one of the best point/click/discover UIs as far as OS’s go.
And its understandable that it easy, considering they’ve probably poured billions of dollars into making the GUI easy to understand and use for any layperson since windows 95 began development and the move away from dos command line.
Sadly their GUI started to decline with Windows 10, and I have not touched 11 with a 10 foot pole, so I dont know how good/bad it is…but I wouldnt be surprised if its worse than 10.
There was a time 10-20 years ago when what you said wasnt a joke, but a promise and a threat, lol.
Linux has come a long way in that time. Not just technically, but usability wise, and even in the mellowing-the-fuck-out of the community that, at a time, were very aggressively against making things more user friendly and letting people into their exclusive technical club.
and I’m glad for it. Its good for the OS, and its good for its future, and its good for the community.
I think you are partially right, but I think the only reason Windows is easier for the user, is because they are pre-exposed to Windows.
If you took someone, who has zero knowledge of any OS or its GUI, I honestly doubt that Windows would be better.
It’s the same if you take a person who has only known MacOS their whole life and ask them to navigate in Windows… or vice versa… You won’t see positive results.
There’s still some stuff I’m tied to Windows for, namely music players (MusicBee and Apple Music but they can be used in a VM) and VR. But it’s nice to see Linux growing.
MusicBee. Tried it on WINE. Not great. Linux players also don’t do a lot of what MusicBee does OOTB, and if they do it’s not as seamless as MusicBee. (tag hierarchies are the main thing, but the playlist functionality is also good.)
AFAIK MusicBee isn’t open source, just Freeware. Which is fair enough if the dev doesn’t want to, but also a bit frustrating personally, as people could’ve improved Linux support considerably if it was.
My music player suggestions for local playback on Linux. Please note that you could pick any of these no matter the desktop environment if you do not care about consistently in look and feel. In that case I suggest to go with Strawberry.
On GTK environments: Rhythmbox, Exaile
On QT environments: Strawberry, Clementine and somewhere next year Amarok should be through its revival that KDE has announced not too long ago.
Quod Libet was one I tried. Doesn’t quite scratch the itch MusicBee gives me, but still solid nonetheless. Tauon Music Box is a gorgeous looking player that’s similar.
Not to mention, Apple Music is so much better than Spotify for my needs and Cider isn’t cutting it for me right now. Once they’re not as reliant on MusicKit, I might give it a go again.
When I’ve used it, gapless playback being non-existent due to it basically being a frontend to the web client/MusicKit for web. I listen to a lot of albums in full nowadays, so that can really hurt the experience. It’s a shame because everything else about it is great. I am aware that the Cider devs are trying to find ways of handling that without reliance on the web client/API, which might enable gapless but also stuff like lossless if you got AM for that.
Edit: I should mention that Cider has a new client that’s paid but still supports Linux (specifically with AppImage, .deb and .rpm packages), and my experience was with Cider Classic.
Edit 2: I bought Cider 2 and so far it’s working well. You sacrifice lossless and maybe some gapless playback still, but it’s a mild loss vs. so far a huge gain in usability.
Pretty sure you are talking about audio fading, gapless is different. Gapless playback just means audio playback won’t stop when a new song plays. Without it, the audio sounds like it briefly pauses between tracks.
Number 2 was huge for me, and it hit home when I realised that 99% of my Steam library was supported. Thankfully I don’t need to use any Windows only apps (Adobe suite, etc) so the decision to move over to Linux was trivial personally
Yup, I’m guessing that’s the main contributing factor here. Just like how Chrome grew in popularity because the nerds (e.g. me) shilled for it, Linux is also growing because gamers still for it. It turns out that if you can solve one major pain point for a very passionate subset of the population, you get a lot of free evangelists and people will follow.
I can list the biggest one without having to look: Because the most popular alternative has progressively gotten worse for the past 12 years, and what was once a quality OS (sure,it had its faults and flaws, but I’ll concede that Win7 was objectively a good OS) has now morphed into a combination of spyware and adware.
I get the sense that Microsoft doesn’t care about their desktop users and as much as views desktop as another small side market.
MacOS only runs on their particular hardware, so Linux is free to gobble up market share limited mainly by user technical know how and the general shift to most web traffic coming from mobile.
Also the updates situation has caused many to dislike Windows.
Linux is a perfectly viable OS at this point, it’s not just for tech geeks. I did have a problem with my USB Wi-Fi adapter during the install but other than that everything was just as smooth and less creepy than Microsoft.
what was once a quality OS (sure,it had its faults and flaws, but I’ll concede that Win7 was objectively a good OS) has now morphed into a combination of spyware and adware.
The last objectively good Microsoft OS that didn’t have any significant user-hostile features was Windows 2000, IMO
Hard agree. Windows 2000 was rock solid, reasonably lightweight and had no shenanigans going on in the background. It’s EOL (edit: actually I think it might have been a specific version of directx only being supported on XP maybe) was one of the things that pushed me to Linux.
Okay, let me rephrase for you: in choosing which of Microsoft’s stinking piles of shit was the least stinky, some people chose Windows 2000. However, most people just left the stinky area and didn’t look back.
Windows 2000 was a good operating system by any measure. It was rock solid, capable, well-supported, could scale from desktop to large enterprise deployments and everything in between, reasonably secure compared to their previous operating systems, etc. I never did like Microsoft operating systems, but Windows 2000 was actually good. It was a breath of fresh air at the time. We had NT 4, which was stable and reliable, but was limited by a lack of DirectX and became cumbersome in large deployments. Then we had Windows 95/98/ME, which was the garbage that crashed all the time.
Besides the backported bullshit from windows 10 (which could be removed, admittedly, you’d have to know it was there, and which package to uninstall…so not exactly newbie friendly), what was hostile about windows 7?
I used it from release day until EOL and I found it to be the best version of windows ever and the pinnacle of the platform, before it started taking a hard drive with Windows 8 and fell off the cliff with 10/11.
Windows 10/11 is why I’m on linux now, and on linux to stay.
Besides the backported bullshit… what was hostile about windows 7?
“Activation,” same as XP and Vista. That’s why I said 2000 was the last “good” version with no hostile features at all: it was the last version (except for ME, which wasn’t “good”) that didn’t require activation.
I’m running it on my daily driver / gaming rig to learn its flaws and how to work around them, because work may be moving that direction. My hardware, my license, not like they can stop me.
I’ve never had more problems with any OS than 11 on day to day stability issues. Vista? At least it had direct X 10. 8? Yeah, a total design fuck up, but even supporting it professionally I never had this many problems.
Looking back on it, Vista got a lot of hate but I don’t think my experience was that bad. It was really annoying with user account control permissions but honestly as a proto 7 it did okay. Compared to 11 I kind of miss it.
“How about subscribing to your own computer? Not now? Ok, see you in a bit.” Even the Windows fans are full of resentment that they have to know which magic numbers to type under which registry entries to actually disable the constant ad screens. And then Windows restores the nag on updates.
I remember playing the original java 8 version of this game back in 2011 when it was freely distributed. I was 17/18 at the time so felt I was slightly too old for it but I do remember the sensation of playing something which felt completely novel.
Kind of crazy how much gaming has changed since then while minecraft remains a java executable.
It wasn’t a little kids game until years later. Also I think it’s old enough that the early versions were actually Java 6… I remember updating my code for Java 7.
After 15 to 20 years of 64bit supporting systems being sold, I don’t think it’s an issue to drop 32bit support. Even if someone wants to use such an old pc for any reason, it should be fine to run an older version of Minecraft. There’s still MC 1.8 servers around, and they’ll likely continue to exist for many years to come.
I remember getting C&C 4 and was playing at my grandma’s place on my own in the campaign then I lost Internet and it threw me into the main menu. I stopped playing that day since that’s bullshit.
It should be law that online only games, when shut down, must release their server software, so the games community can continue to play and use the software they bought.
also make it law that buying software means you’ve BOUGHT IT. not leased access to.
And it shouldn’t be just games, any time it says “buy,” that should be understood to mean complete ownership of that thing. That means:
DRM will be stripped in a reasonable time frame (say, 2-3 years)
for physical goods, no prevention of availability of parts
any server components will be made available for private hosting when the vendor is no longer interested in supporting it (ideally FOSS, but any source-available license should work)
And so on. If the product is intended to be available for a limited time, they should instead say “lease,” because that’s what that means.
and I 100% guarantee they dont want to say lease cause they know people wont be willing to pay 70 fucking dollars for a game that they are renting for a time to be dictated by the developer/publisher, which you have no knowledge of. Is it 3 months? 6 months? 12 years? Who knows!
Yup, that’s why they hide this nonsense in the TOS or whatever. If the intent was clear upfront, they’d have to reduce prices. So that means people don’t really understand what exactly they’re buying.
I’d like to add that anything I own, I should be able to sell. Whether the platform supports it is another story, and I think it’s acceptable for the platform to take a cut since there’s work involved moving licenses, but if I own it, I should be able to lend, sell, or gift my copy to someone else.
Only major problem is when software is reused for future games and releasing server binaries makes attack vectors much easier to find. Apex legends has a major issue with this where a significant amount of code was reused from previous games that have server code available, and hackers have absolutely used it as a testing ground for all kinds of cheats.
Wanna know how to make that irrelevant? Make the server files available from the start. Wanna play with just your friends? Host a server. Wanna play with a dedicated group that actually bans cheaters effectively? Join a clan. Then, when the sequel comes out, who cares if the server tech is already known, because we can just host our own and collectively oust the cheaters ourselves. It’s funny because when multiplayer is handled this way, it stays active for decades. Look at the community for the old Battlefield’s, SW Battlefront’s, Call of Duty’s, Unreal Tournament’s, Quake’s, etc etc etc. They’re small, but they’re all still active and not chock full of hackers because they’re community led and community maintained. That’s a hell of a lot more consistent and reliable than trusting the studio to develop and maintain the server tech, and squash cheating long term. Eventually that system will always fail (look at every old CoD on console, where you can’t run your own servers. It’s basically a coin flip whether you end up in a game with a hacker, and I guarantee the devs will never do anything about it).
That doesn’t make the point irrelevant, it makes it even more likely to happen. Most of us don’t want to play on shitty, self-hosted servers and I’ll gladly remove that option to have a more secure game server.
Hot take, but games don’t need to be active for decades. Everything dies eventually. After 10 years there’s no need to keep running the game servers.
We’re on the exact opposite sides of this argument.
Being able to host your own servers means there is a much higher potential to have servers located close to you, giving you much lower latency. If there aren’t, host your own. This is great for people in, for example, Australia, who often get really poor support in terms of servers in large games. Not an issue when they can host as many as they want.
As for security, what’s more secure than having a server with a password only me and my friends know? On top of that, when a server is my own, I know when it’s going to be down. When the studio is the one controlling all the servers, you are at their whim.
As for games not needing to last decades… why? Do you want to be kicked off of a service you paid for, then expected to buy a new one that’s basically the same thing (which you will also eventually be kicked off)? Especially when the original still (in theory) functions perfectly?
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