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> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Has Linux desktop share b

> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? I'm not sure why a newer Mac with better CPU options is going to result in increasing Linux share. If anything, it's likely to be neutral or favor the Mac with it's newer/ faster CPU. > But frankly I believe Apple have lost ground UI-wise over the intervening decades, while free alternatives have gained it (they are still not at parity, granted). Maybe? I'm not as sold on Linux gaining a ton of ground here. I'm also not sold on the idea that the Mac as a whole is worse off interface wise than it was 10 years ago. While there are some issues, there are also places where it's significantly improved as well. Particularly if you have an iPhone and use Apple's other services.

eitland 6y ago
> Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. The speed advantage over Windows is so huge that it is painful to go back once you've seen it. MS Office isn't seen as a requirement anymore, nobody think it is funny if you use GSuite and besides, last time I used an office file for work is months ago: everything exist inæ Slack, Teams, Confluence or Jira and these are about equally bad on all platforms. The same is true (except the awful part) for C# development: it is probably even better on Linux. People could switch to Mac and I guess many will. For others, like me Mac just doesn't work and for us Linux is an almost obvious choice.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. I see it far more now than I did ~5-10 years ago when it was my daily driver. I'm just not sure if it's gotten a baseline support and flatlined or if it's growing consistently now. Fully agree with almost all of your points, and if MacOS did go off the deep end in terms of functionality, I'd be back on Linux. It's why I'm a big fan of what Marcan is doing and follow it closely. If Linux support was as good now as it was when I switched, I'd likely have never switched to the Mac. But now I just stick around for the hardware.
- panda888888 6y ago
  You have to be clear that you're talking about developers here. For the rest of the company, MS Office may very well be essential. In particular, Excel is king for many business functions.
  - eitland 6y ago
    At the company I work for (400 people in Norway, offices in Sweden, Denmark and Romania as well) I don't know anyone who has a MS Office license. There is a procedure to get one, but so far I don't know anyone who used it. Quite on the contrary I know one of our sales guys used to install and run Linux on his laptop. Yes, I work and an above average technical company but we do have HR, sales etc and they aren't engineers (at least not most of them). (email in my profile ;-)
rurp 6y ago
As much as I would like it to happen, I think it's unlikely Linux will be taking any market share away from Macs. That said, I could imagine it happening a couple ways. The first being an increasingly iPhonified and restricted Mac OS that some devs get fed up with. The second would be Apple pushing all MacBooks to M1 too soon, breaking certain tools and workflows. While I think both of those scenarios could easily happen, most devs will probably decide just put up with the extra trouble rather than switch to Linux.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > The second would be Apple pushing all MacBooks to M1 too soon, breaking certain tools and workflows. I don't think this is an issue. Apple has been fairly straight about timelines and people who want to stick with Intel have plenty of time and options to get their stuff in a row in advance. More important, Apple fixed most of the major irritations with the MacBook Pro. If they hadn't launched the 16" MBP last year, people would have been stuck with a fairly old/ compromised design. I suspect Apple is going to maintain MacOS right where it is now. People have been worried about "iOSification" for nearly a decade now and while there have been some elements, the core functionality is fundamentally the same.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    Big Sur has me more worried about iOS-ification than ever before. The UI is a train wreck. It looks designed for touch and I have no idea why. I guess Sidecar? They changed a ton about the UI in Big Sur, none of it for the better as far as I can tell. They took away even more choice, I can't have a "classic" desktop experience. My biggest frustration is that they were willing to make such drastic changes to the desktop UI at all. I have to re-learn a ton of keyboard navigation now. And there doesn't seem to be a coherent design to the workflows. Such a drastic change seems to be an admission that they thought the previous design language was wrong but they seem to have replaced it with... no vision at all? I am hopeful for the next generation of M1 MacBook Pros and whatever the next MacOS is. Hopefully they get their design philosophy straight and stick with it.
    - 6y ago
alsetmusic 6y ago
> Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? I run on Mac for desktop, Linux for projects. I don’t know that more people have been switching than before, but I thought the author of this[0] piece illustrated well that it’s easier than ever. That said, the author states that they opt not to have a phone. That’s much less lock-in than most of the market. [0]https://orta.io/on/migrating/from/apple https://orta.io/on/migrating/from/apple
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Fully agree, seems like a good chunk of developer focused software is cross platform at this point.

eitland 6y ago

> Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. The speed advantage over Windows is so huge that it is painful to go back once you've seen it. MS Office isn't seen as a requirement anymore, nobody think it is funny if you use GSuite and besides, last time I used an office file for work is months ago: everything exist inæ Slack, Teams, Confluence or Jira and these are about equally bad on all platforms. The same is true (except the awful part) for C# development: it is probably even better on Linux. People could switch to Mac and I guess many will. For others, like me Mac just doesn't work and for us Linux is an almost obvious choice.

ogre_codes 6y ago
> At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. I see it far more now than I did ~5-10 years ago when it was my daily driver. I'm just not sure if it's gotten a baseline support and flatlined or if it's growing consistently now. Fully agree with almost all of your points, and if MacOS did go off the deep end in terms of functionality, I'd be back on Linux. It's why I'm a big fan of what Marcan is doing and follow it closely. If Linux support was as good now as it was when I switched, I'd likely have never switched to the Mac. But now I just stick around for the hardware.
panda888888 6y ago
You have to be clear that you're talking about developers here. For the rest of the company, MS Office may very well be essential. In particular, Excel is king for many business functions.
- eitland 6y ago
  At the company I work for (400 people in Norway, offices in Sweden, Denmark and Romania as well) I don't know anyone who has a MS Office license. There is a procedure to get one, but so far I don't know anyone who used it. Quite on the contrary I know one of our sales guys used to install and run Linux on his laptop. Yes, I work and an above average technical company but we do have HR, sales etc and they aren't engineers (at least not most of them). (email in my profile ;-)

rurp 6y ago

As much as I would like it to happen, I think it's unlikely Linux will be taking any market share away from Macs. That said, I could imagine it happening a couple ways. The first being an increasingly iPhonified and restricted Mac OS that some devs get fed up with. The second would be Apple pushing all MacBooks to M1 too soon, breaking certain tools and workflows. While I think both of those scenarios could easily happen, most devs will probably decide just put up with the extra trouble rather than switch to Linux.

ogre_codes 6y ago
> The second would be Apple pushing all MacBooks to M1 too soon, breaking certain tools and workflows. I don't think this is an issue. Apple has been fairly straight about timelines and people who want to stick with Intel have plenty of time and options to get their stuff in a row in advance. More important, Apple fixed most of the major irritations with the MacBook Pro. If they hadn't launched the 16" MBP last year, people would have been stuck with a fairly old/ compromised design. I suspect Apple is going to maintain MacOS right where it is now. People have been worried about "iOSification" for nearly a decade now and while there have been some elements, the core functionality is fundamentally the same.
- mulmen 6y ago
  Big Sur has me more worried about iOS-ification than ever before. The UI is a train wreck. It looks designed for touch and I have no idea why. I guess Sidecar? They changed a ton about the UI in Big Sur, none of it for the better as far as I can tell. They took away even more choice, I can't have a "classic" desktop experience. My biggest frustration is that they were willing to make such drastic changes to the desktop UI at all. I have to re-learn a ton of keyboard navigation now. And there doesn't seem to be a coherent design to the workflows. Such a drastic change seems to be an admission that they thought the previous design language was wrong but they seem to have replaced it with... no vision at all? I am hopeful for the next generation of M1 MacBook Pros and whatever the next MacOS is. Hopefully they get their design philosophy straight and stick with it.
  - 6y ago

alsetmusic 6y ago

> Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? I run on Mac for desktop, Linux for projects. I don’t know that more people have been switching than before, but I thought the author of this[0] piece illustrated well that it’s easier than ever. That said, the author states that they opt not to have a phone. That’s much less lock-in than most of the market. [0]https://orta.io/on/migrating/from/apple https://orta.io/on/migrating/from/apple

ogre_codes 6y ago
Fully agree, seems like a good chunk of developer focused software is cross platform at this point.