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  • This is just based on my personal experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.

    Rather than gaining ground from the wider population, I see the recent rise in Linux usage as coming from a pool of "interested users" who have in one way or the other, had some prior exposure and thus interest in Linux. These people have already been interested in making the jump, but have been held back in one way or the other.

    This shouldn't be taken as discounting the recent advances amongst Linux distributions, however. Personally, the reason why I've made the jump is two-fold: dissatisfaction with Windows, and the advances in Linux itself that have made the jump far less intimidating than ever before. Not being a gamer, however, advances in Proton was only seen as a bonus, though a very welcome one.

    Only one other person in my current friend group daily-drive Linux, and like me, they already have had experience with it beforehand. There are some other people I know of who have used Linux, but still, they all have had prior experience from school or work. For everyone else I‌ know of, if they've even heard of Linux, they think of it as "for advanced users" and as one contact put it "way above my pay grade". Unfortunately, in so far as personal experience goes, I don't have confidence Linux will be shedding that image anytime soon.

    As for the Steam Deck, I am guessing it'd be similar (with a lot of caveats) to how people see Android. It'd be seen as a separate thing, and not occupy the same mental space as "desktop Linux". For one, it being a hand-held system will reinforce that difference, and people aren't as willing to tinker about with their handhelds as people are with their desktop systems. Steam Deck's OS might as well be BSD or even Temple OS as far as the ordinary user is concerned. I am hoping I am wrong here, however, as interoperability might make a difference here: if people can install and use their desktop programs to their Steam Decks in as much the same ease as installing an Android app in their phones, then perhaps the choice of OS here will make an impression on the users and not just the tinkerers.

    Despite saying all that, however, I still think Linux is undergoing a renaissance. There's quite a lot of improvements going on even as we speak. Usability, in a very general sense, like being able to daily-drive Linux without being hampered by a lot of issues, is way better than it was when I first used a Linux machine in a school computer laboratory close to twenty years ago. Advances like this is starting to pull people who are curious, interested, and already leaning towards making the jump—and if this trend continues, will lead more people into using Linux, leading to more people contributing towards advances, and so on.

    • I jumped all in least December just to get away from Windows. I went Arch because I like a challenge and I thought it would fast track learning how to Linux. I work IT so I'm skilled with Windows and software in general. Once I got it setup, which took a while, I haven't had too many issues, or at least not many more than I had with Windows. Most of them have been related to hibernation, which I just disabled, and Wayland with Nvidia. It struggles remembering positions when I disable and re-enable monitors, since I use the same station for work. Other than that, it runs so much better than better, faster, and more efficient than Windows.

      If you want to be a power user, the sky is the limit to what you can do, or go with a stable, user friendlier distro like Ubuntu or Mint, where the out of box experience is fairly intuitive. If Linux shipped stock on laptops, most people would assume Windows got different and be none the wiser. Not having native MS Office apps is also going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people.

      • I've switched to Linux as my daily driver sometime late 2019, and initially went with Manjaro (with XFCE, because I was using an ancient laptop back then) after it was recommended to me. The installation and set-up process was pretty quick and painless.

        When I got my current desktop, I stayed with Manjaro. However, I got some problems with my NVIDIA video card's drivers. Proprietary support for it was dropped shortly after I got my system. Nouveau was decent. I can use my system at the very least, but gaming was a lot iffy. I didn't mind since I don't really do gaming, however. Since then, I've moved on to Arch, btw. Also since then, I've got an AMD‌ card. Neither of them gave me much problems. A lot of my problems with Arch deal with the changes I've made to my configuration.

        This is basically my Linux experience: when it works, which is 90% of the time, it's excellent. When I do have some problems, 90% of the time (9% overall), I can get by with a few internet searches. That remaining 10% of the time (so, 1% overall), I feel that I'm just too smooth-brained to resolve it, and even attempting to resolve it seems to be a foolish errand.

        While lot of help is out there online, I don't appreciate the elitist tone of some of the more Arch-specific fora—they're helpful, but I'll never want to put myself to the position of asking those people for help, not with how newbs are treated. That is basically why I said earlier that I have no confidence that Linux will soon be able to shed its "for advanced users" image. Newbs to Linux don't have the knowledge to "properly ask questions" required by a lot of those online fora. IMO, they only resort to asking questions online when they're knee-deep in shit and are desperate for an answer. Being faced with an "elitist RTFM attitude" when one's already desperate for help doesn't alleviate that "Linux is too hard for me" image.

        So, yeah, there's that.

        90% of the time, Linux works swimmingly fine. 9% of the time, some problems might arise, but an online search (Arch Wiki is very helpful in this regard) and digging around some fora would resolve it. 1% of the time is where you'd find yourself wondering if you're smart enough for Linux. Unfortunately, it only takes a handful of (second-hand) bad interactions (thread closed with no answers, being told to RTFM, being told that the query is too vague without any helpful nudge towards a refinement of the query, etc.) to sour a user's impression of Linux as a whole.

        I must admit that newbs not knowing how to ask questions isn't a problem exclusive to Linux alone. However, Windows and even Mac have the luxury of larger user numbers, and more importantly, paid staff to address user queries. With Linux, as a rule, the ones answering user questions are but other users volunteering their time and effort to answer questions. It's understandable that facing the same malformed question again and again is infuriating. However, I think it takes time and effort to be rude. IMO, it's just better to walk away from a possible unpleasant interaction. Of course, this wouldn't help the user at all, but I'd rather see a thread with no replies than someone telling me to shut up and read the fucking manual. Perhaps there'd be someone more helpful who'd step in before the thread inevitably gets locked due to inactivity.

        I don't want to be negative about Linux, but if the "year of the Linux desktop" is to happen, this is one crucial thing that we (and I count myself in being a Linux user myself) must address. Every Linux user is, whether we like it or not, an ambassador, and how we deal with newbs/noobs asking questions will shape their impression of not just us, but Linux as a whole. I think there are a lot of people who are still on the fence, not because of Linux's capabilities, but because of a pre-concieved notion of what a Linux user must be: tech-savvy and above all, willing to devote the time to learning about their machine and OS. A‌ lot of people aren't like that. Moreover, I think there are some people using Linux (even Arch, btw) who aren't like that, but ... yeah.

        At any rate, I agree with you that a lot more people will be able to get by with a pre-installed Linux system. I think Linux is ready for being a mainstream daily driver.

        Oh, yeah, I don't think not having native MS Office apps isn't that much of a deal-breaker. I personally use Libre Office, and despite some hiccups (their documentation do have a lot of problems IMO), it's got a decent amount of feature-parity with MS Office. For almost all of what I want to use an office suite, Libre Office would suffice. For the exceptions, I can usually find a workaround.

        Overall, I'm happy with my Linux system—to the point I barely even touch Windows anymore (my SO installed Win10 on a separate SSD for me so that I can dual-boot), but I've got no reason to log on Windows. I might have had some problems (mostly of my own making), but with that small exception of times that made me wonder if I'm smart enough for Linux (or yeah, basically Arch), I'm more than content a huge majority of the time.

        I'm sorry for the rambling wall of text, and I hope I've put my message across clearly.

      • I just had to go through an absolutely catastrophic rewrite of a bunch of official documentation that needed to be done in Word (with sharepoint stuff) and let me tell you: holy fuck their collaborative editing stuff is fucking atrocious. We lost work on that fucking doc SO MANY TIMES. Particularly, the formatting (which is important, as it’s an official Work Instruction that the FDA might ask to look at at some point) got completely fucked at least a dozen times, and we had to go through and reapply everything… only for someone to come through with a minor change (and we got tired of asking people to stop making edits, changes, or comments - with or without revision tracking (which did not seem to be actually tracking revisions, because at no point were we able to successfully roll back any changes to a known good state) because nobody fucking listens to anything and “it’s only a minor change”) and wrecks everything again. I’ve talked to various people about how flaky and sketchy our whole MSO setup evidently is, and the response was “yeah, our hosted Sharepoint instance is super fucked, but it’s not a priority to fix right now”. I don’t know why this is an acceptable state for things to be in.

        We are still trying to finalize the doc.

        It’s been over a month.

        I’m a software engineer. I deal with complex and nuanced systems on a daily basis as my job. I avoid, and will continue to avoid, MS Office like the plague.

    • Spot on analysis.

  • I think so. Installing Linux was a hurdle for a lot of people but having it by default on the Steam Deck was a bit of a game changer. Installing Windows on it versus figuring out how to use something Lutris probably takes a similar amount of effort for average casual user.

    I feel like it also helps that Windows isn't very controller friendly, in my experience, and an increasing amount of people are looking for that for couch gaming and viewing media.

  • I think it's still a migration of a rather knowledgeable part of the windows users. I did migrate a year ago because of frustrations from windows pop ups showing up like they own the computer.

    I a still reluctant to recommend it to my partner who is comfortable with windows but not really techy. As long as Linux works, it works. But when you need something a bit more involved or something breaks, the terminal will be harder for those users who might not have ever opened CMD in windows.

    • When a problem arises in windows, the same people that never opened a cmd would be equally puzzled about how to solve the issue when something breaks.

      I'm my opinion and experience, great majority of users don't have the skills to solve common issues on windows either. Cue all the jokes and memes from the tech savvy family members that have to fix uncle Lou infested pc.

      Maybe we are talking about tradition. People are used to windows, the hardware companies works with them. The pc stores had been selling pre installed windows on pcs for decades. Software and games are being made for windows. People know it's not a good garbage OS, but you have to fight so many walls that the common user is never going to make the jump by himself.

  • I used to have more faith in people in general and believed this can actually happen. I changed my mind.

    People are generally ignorant and even when working in tech where there’s a lot of interaction with Linux machines, most people I meet couldn’t care less about Linux on desktop. With how obvious advantage of free software might look at glance, it’s very rare for me to see somebody actually caring about freedom, privacy and being in full control over the piece of hardware they’re using or even seeing anything bad in blind trust towards big tech. Companies are stupid enough to on one hand not trust their employees and locking down their work machines, on other sucking corporate cock and enforcing intrusive services or straight up sending their data right to multi-billion companies for the sake of convenience.

    I don’t blame home users who can’t or don’t want to switch for whatever reason. They’re just consumers using devices they’ve bought, there’s no reason to force them to the change. It gets really bad with public institutions though, where Windows remains the king on desktop and Microsoft does its best for that to never change. Everything relies on one corporation that is trusted to drive computers to deal with confidential stuff. When there’s security flaw in their software, only MS can fully understand what’s going on (in a timely manner, ofc it can be reverse-engineered) and fix it, which was already an issue numerous times. If I believe there might be some big shift in the desktop space, it’s definitely stuff like military and all sorts of national institutions in many different countries. To some degree it already happens in Germany and France among others.

    As for home users and gamers, I believe the market can grow some more, but Windows won’t go anywhere anytime soon and will stay on dominating position in that area for decades to come. Maybe it will only be replaced eventually when the concept of personal computing will change drastically and traditional PCs that we know will become irrelevant.

    With recent advancements Linux is showing how it can be a viable alternative for some people, but keep in mind it has been around for 30+ years at this point and the kernel was already solid by mid-2000’s. The adoption really boils down to how complete and accessible it is. The first thing is impossible to get 100% as lot of missing features comes from lack of hardware/software vendor support. The community can supplement a lot of it, but a lot remains unsupported. Without that, kinda hard to believe in a super significant shift.

  • There sure is new comers thanks to the enhancement of graphic environment and gaming. But this is still very marginal, and there is some good reasons.

    If we want to promote linux and FOSS we couldn't only rely on use-cases and good-will of people, we need to find structures that make people use mac and windows. FOSS movement make some interesting stuff about the education system, and the institution use of windows, which are a lot more impact on the OS we are using than the qualities of such systems. But the so-called "politically neutral" forbade us to prevent this situation to repeat itself. Microsoft works on daily bases with tremendous resources (not only monetary). People who are making this decisions have some carrer interests that is not align on those of the masses.

    Free-software without anti-capitalism is only open-source, sry

    That not a moral state; some capitalist on corporation help us a lot. The main reason for the linux promotion is the choice of Valve, but because that choice is not profitable (in a capitalist way), we should consider it as the exception.

    I'm not saying that it's helpless. It's quite the opposite : I'm saying that if we want to have a massive action, we have to take the power were it is.

  • For gaming, sure - proton has gone a really long way toward making most Windows games playable on Linux without too much effort.

    For non technical users? Not so much, ChromeOS is putting in more work there.

    Linux implies an IT burden that I don't see most non technical users carrying without someone there to provide IT support. My mom, for example, won't ever touch Linux because I'm damned well not going to provide on call support for that. ChromeOS though? That's set and forget enough for the non technical crowd.

    /2¢

    • I put my mom on Ubuntu with KDE 10 years ago. I had far less problems with her on Linux than I ever did with Vista and 7. It got to the point she was calling me multiple times a week.

      I didn't have to but I did one Ubuntu reinstall in that entire time only because I made /boot the default partition size at installation and years later it filled up constantly. I got sick of going over there to clean it up and it coincided with her getting a new computer.

      My mom installed printer drivers, and Cisco VPN software from run packages instead of apt and set up multi- monitors on her own after I taught her how to use the terminal, so it's possible for the elderly.

      • Unfortunately that's a level of technical aptitude that a lot of non technical people don't have. I'd love it if my mom could manage installing software but she's the sort of person who gets nervous when things like UI button locations change, she's not someone who's going to install their own printer drivers or packages or manage a dist upgrade herself. It would be nice if she would spend the time to learn enough to take care of her own devices but anything more complicated than managing phone updates isn't likely.

      • I 100% salute your mom but raw capability isn't even really the point. Realistically, your average person, let alone older person has absolutely zero interest in needing to touch a terminal. They want to live as close to auto-magic as they possibly can. I hate Apple but the idea that it "just works" is one of their primary selling points, right along side the whole status symbol thing. It's not a right or wrong, just people being people.

  • Linux is amazing. It's hitting peak productivity with support for every driver, and highly optimized systems like Systems, Dbus, Wayland,and Pipewire. It's actually world class rn, both windows and Mac are jealous of what the core Linux is now. Linux now runs every server, most of the world's phones, most of the IoT devices, and some gaming stuff

    But it's still a tiny percentage of desktop/laptop, so yeah idk it's all good

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