9 ms·

Everyone jokes about it finally being "the year of the linux desktop", but a few years ago that actually did happen to my circle. Between a mac for work and lin

Everyone jokes about it finally being "the year of the linux desktop", but a few years ago that actually did happen to my circle. Between a mac for work and linux at home, I actually haven't touched windows in a number of years at this point, and interestingly, neither have a reasonable number of the technical people I interact with. Of the nontechnical people around me, many of them have transitioned to primarily use their phone or sometimes a tablet. The only people I know who still use windows adamantly are PC gamers, and they're all still on windows 7. Is windows still considered the default home computing environment? Since they're totally out of mobile at this point, I wonder by what margin, and how long that will actually last. I suppose there is still the corporate world that isn't all in on on apple, that may not change for some time.

valine 5y ago
I've been running Linux on my personal desktop for years now. Unless you want to play games or require it for work I'm not sure what advantages windows really has anymore. Linux is noticeably faster, has no ads, and is Unix based.
- kgraves 5y ago
  Windows also has Linux now. I can play Windows games and use Linux on Windows (WSL) I don’t see the point of running Linux distros on bare metal anymore.
  - valine 5y ago
    Bare metal Linux is much faster than Linux on windows in my experience. Also does nothing to address all the other windows rot like ads in the start menu and excessive telemetry.
  - distrill 5y ago
    WSL is a nice to have gnu inside of windows, but one of the reasons I switched to linux was because I enjoyed setting up a window manager and configuring my status bar, writing custom scripts for keybindings, general fiddling. There are distros that compete with windows in the UI space, and maybe those don't make much sense anymore. I'm sort of answering my own question here too - people that don't love tinkering for its own sake may not ever be driven away from windows.
  - boardwaalk 5y ago
    The filesystem (NTFS) being god awful slow with large numbers of files is a good reason. It boggles my mind that Microsoft has not gotten around to making this better. Apple even introduced introduced a new FS (APFS) and migrated people silently and successfully.
    - 72deluxe 5y ago
      I thought NTFS was pretty advanced with low-level compression and file streams etc. that I am not sure are available on APFS. Apple had the luxury of doing an upgrade of everyone's filesystem under iOS as a test, then a rollback a few versions ago which is why it took so long to perform the upgrade. Microsoft haven't got such a large userbase to test on (without permission).
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Trust. Windows is a forein OS with backdoors.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Unfortunately linux does not have spying built-in (except some ubuntu - but you get the point) . As MS says in Edge: your privacy is important for us.
CountDrewku 5y ago
I'm guessing the "technical" people are software engineers or designers. Windows is still very much in use at large enterprises which means you have a lot of technical people supporting businesses that use it and I don't see that changing soon. Show me a good alternative to AD, group policy etc. that allows the granular control on the back end like Windows does. I wouldn't look forward to training anyone to use Linux or Apple products that's not familiar with them already. Additionally, I still can't get my camera or mic to work on Ubuntu on my Dell XPS 9700, tried Mint as well and the wifi doesn't work on it. Linux needs to address its multiple driver inconsistencies (or Dell does) before it'll ever become the norm in a business environment. The only other 2 viable computer manufacturers for businesses are really Lenovo and HP which have problems too.
- version_five 5y ago
  I have linux (ubuntu) running on a couple of Dells (XPS and Latitude) and have not had any trouble. And I also have a Lenovo Thinkpad that it works fine on. The Lenovo and one of the Dells specifically claimed to support Ubuntu. As long as you check that, I think you should be able to get a successful setup. (Granted, there may always be some advanced thing you're doing that isn't supported. But I had a windows machine - Thinkpad- for work a few years ago, and IT had disabled sleep when it was closed, so I'd carry it in my backpack and would find it red hot because it was still running full blast in there. When I asked IT, they said they had disabled sleep because it crashes the computers. All that to say, windows has its quirks too)
- dafzor 5y ago
  The sad part is that even when the vendor certifies their product for linux it's still not a sure thing. Have a Lenovo Thinkpad P1 gen2 + Thinkdock thunderbolt 3 dock for Workstations at work that's certified for ubuntu. Windows gives the ocasional issue with dock connected monitors blinking, but on linux one monitor wont work at all and dock USB seams to not work properly half the time. Thunderbolt 3 are just unreliable, but still work better in windows then linux. Not that I blame linux for it but I need to get work done so I'm still sticking with windows+wsl2.
abosley 5y ago
From wikipedia: " Microsoft Windows is the most commonly installed OS, at approximately between 74% (based on web use) and 97.03% (based on use for gaming) globally"
- distrill 5y ago
  Presumably you're citing percentage of desktop usage, because about half of the web is viewed on mobile. I know many people who primarily use phones or tablets, with very occasional if any laptop access.
CyberRabbi 5y ago
> Is windows still considered the default home computing environment? The answer is a solid and unequivocal yes. Linux is single digits in the market, Mac is roughly 20%, windows is the rest. Ask a normal person what they use on their PC, the question likely wouldn’t make sense because most people aren’t aware a viable alternative to windows even exists.
- meibo 5y ago
  Because there is no viable alternative. Macs are way too expensive for normal people that want to book a trip and read emails once in a while, and Desktop Linux sucks for everyone that's not technical or doesn't have ready access to someone technical.
  - CyberRabbi 5y ago
    That’s a good point
  - hajile 5y ago
    The M1 macbook air at $999 blows away windows laptops that cost twice as much. It’s available for $899 almost any day of the week on Amazon (or with a school discount). The average laptop selling price is somewhere in the $700 range. That’s hardly a huge premium considering the delta in performance and user experience compared to low specced machines. I’d also say without hesitation that cheap Chromebooks are better than their cheap windows competitors. If you just need to do basic things, ChromeOS is much snappier on slow hardware while also being more secure. If you need to do more, you’ll benefit from a faster system at which point the M1 is an easy choice for the money.
    - Toutouxc 5y ago
      The $999 M1 MacBook Air costs around $1400 in Europe (the Czech Republic, Germany, France and Poland), and most people I know get by on old $600 laptops. In my country even the base Air is very much a premium laptop and is not even expensive, but prohibitively expensive for most people.
Silhouette 5y ago
I think there are more people who are happy with (or at least tolerant of) Windows 10 than some of us geeks might like to admit. A lot of non-techie people aren't going to run into the negative aspects of Windows 10 much in practice. They aren't going to be changing enough settings to be frustrated by the multiple UIs. They won't look up each OS update online before deciding whether to install it. Many of them care less about issues like privacy than we tend to and willingly hand over huge amounts of personal information to online services anyway. Some of them will get stung badly, and they'll receive the same half-sympathetic, half-contemptuous look their techie friends would give someone who chose a dictionary word as a password or who didn't back up their precious photo collection. Most of them won't get stung, and probably have no idea about any of these issues, and happily carry on with their lives worrying about things that are much more important to them. That said, the same rise in online services that Microsoft seems to be betting on as a corporate strategy has made Windows increasingly expendable on the desktop. For day-to-day use, most techies I know are now on Linux or Apple desktops. A lot of non-technical users are fine with just their phone and maybe a tablet for everyday stuff now, and Apple laptops are popular with home users who are OK with the premium price. Windows laptops are seen as the cheap (in every sense) option, and I don't remember hearing anyone ever say they specifically wanted one. It's different in enterprise world, but in enterprise world the technical advantages of Windows 10 are more useful and most of the worst disadvantages don't apply. I also think reports of Windows 7's demise are premature. It's obviously only a relatively small part of the desktop market now, but people are still using it for a variety of sensible reasons both at home and at work. I imagine they are more interested in being able to run whatever software or hardware is keeping them there than in lectures about security from people whose proposed alternative would disrupt their work and compromise their privacy by design anyway.
- binbag 5y ago
  I'm a geek and I think Windows 10 is good. Sorry.
  - Silhouette 5y ago
    Objectively, a lot of it is. I think geeks are more likely to be concerned about the parts that aren't, and about the overall "Windows as a service" concept and the emphasis on connecting everything online.
pier25 5y ago
> The only people I know who still use windows adamantly are PC gamers, and they're all still on windows 7. According to Steam, 92.87% of its users are on Windows 10 and only 0.16% are still on Windows 7. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- Goronmon 5y ago
  According to Steam, 92.87% of its users are on Windows 10 and only 0.16% are still on Windows 7. How can that be true, when a Hacker News comment clearly stated otherwise?
- distrill 5y ago
  Interesting. I should have looked this up, I guess it's obvious my sample isn't large enough to be representative.
dafzor 5y ago
It's still the predominant OS for business, so vast majority of people will already be familiar with it and the starting price for a windows machine is half of what you'd pay for an entry mac. On another hand, windows is the main PC gaming platform, linux has come a long way and is a lot more viable then even 5 years back, but you're still pretending your windows most of the time so you'll have to deal with additional problems every now and then. More to the point, I haven't seen any big OEM selling linux boxes outside of dev machines and specialised vendors (system 76). So yeah, windows still dominates.

valine 5y ago

I've been running Linux on my personal desktop for years now. Unless you want to play games or require it for work I'm not sure what advantages windows really has anymore. Linux is noticeably faster, has no ads, and is Unix based.

kgraves 5y ago
Windows also has Linux now. I can play Windows games and use Linux on Windows (WSL) I don’t see the point of running Linux distros on bare metal anymore.
- valine 5y ago
  Bare metal Linux is much faster than Linux on windows in my experience. Also does nothing to address all the other windows rot like ads in the start menu and excessive telemetry.
- distrill 5y ago
  WSL is a nice to have gnu inside of windows, but one of the reasons I switched to linux was because I enjoyed setting up a window manager and configuring my status bar, writing custom scripts for keybindings, general fiddling. There are distros that compete with windows in the UI space, and maybe those don't make much sense anymore. I'm sort of answering my own question here too - people that don't love tinkering for its own sake may not ever be driven away from windows.
- boardwaalk 5y ago
  The filesystem (NTFS) being god awful slow with large numbers of files is a good reason. It boggles my mind that Microsoft has not gotten around to making this better. Apple even introduced introduced a new FS (APFS) and migrated people silently and successfully.
  - 72deluxe 5y ago
    I thought NTFS was pretty advanced with low-level compression and file streams etc. that I am not sure are available on APFS. Apple had the luxury of doing an upgrade of everyone's filesystem under iOS as a test, then a rollback a few versions ago which is why it took so long to perform the upgrade. Microsoft haven't got such a large userbase to test on (without permission).
- hulitu 5y ago
  Trust. Windows is a forein OS with backdoors.
hulitu 5y ago
Unfortunately linux does not have spying built-in (except some ubuntu - but you get the point) . As MS says in Edge: your privacy is important for us.

CountDrewku 5y ago

I'm guessing the "technical" people are software engineers or designers. Windows is still very much in use at large enterprises which means you have a lot of technical people supporting businesses that use it and I don't see that changing soon. Show me a good alternative to AD, group policy etc. that allows the granular control on the back end like Windows does. I wouldn't look forward to training anyone to use Linux or Apple products that's not familiar with them already. Additionally, I still can't get my camera or mic to work on Ubuntu on my Dell XPS 9700, tried Mint as well and the wifi doesn't work on it. Linux needs to address its multiple driver inconsistencies (or Dell does) before it'll ever become the norm in a business environment. The only other 2 viable computer manufacturers for businesses are really Lenovo and HP which have problems too.

version_five 5y ago
I have linux (ubuntu) running on a couple of Dells (XPS and Latitude) and have not had any trouble. And I also have a Lenovo Thinkpad that it works fine on. The Lenovo and one of the Dells specifically claimed to support Ubuntu. As long as you check that, I think you should be able to get a successful setup. (Granted, there may always be some advanced thing you're doing that isn't supported. But I had a windows machine - Thinkpad- for work a few years ago, and IT had disabled sleep when it was closed, so I'd carry it in my backpack and would find it red hot because it was still running full blast in there. When I asked IT, they said they had disabled sleep because it crashes the computers. All that to say, windows has its quirks too)
dafzor 5y ago
The sad part is that even when the vendor certifies their product for linux it's still not a sure thing. Have a Lenovo Thinkpad P1 gen2 + Thinkdock thunderbolt 3 dock for Workstations at work that's certified for ubuntu. Windows gives the ocasional issue with dock connected monitors blinking, but on linux one monitor wont work at all and dock USB seams to not work properly half the time. Thunderbolt 3 are just unreliable, but still work better in windows then linux. Not that I blame linux for it but I need to get work done so I'm still sticking with windows+wsl2.

abosley 5y ago

From wikipedia: " Microsoft Windows is the most commonly installed OS, at approximately between 74% (based on web use) and 97.03% (based on use for gaming) globally"

distrill 5y ago
Presumably you're citing percentage of desktop usage, because about half of the web is viewed on mobile. I know many people who primarily use phones or tablets, with very occasional if any laptop access.

CyberRabbi 5y ago

> Is windows still considered the default home computing environment? The answer is a solid and unequivocal yes. Linux is single digits in the market, Mac is roughly 20%, windows is the rest. Ask a normal person what they use on their PC, the question likely wouldn’t make sense because most people aren’t aware a viable alternative to windows even exists.

meibo 5y ago
Because there is no viable alternative. Macs are way too expensive for normal people that want to book a trip and read emails once in a while, and Desktop Linux sucks for everyone that's not technical or doesn't have ready access to someone technical.
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  That’s a good point
- hajile 5y ago
  The M1 macbook air at $999 blows away windows laptops that cost twice as much. It’s available for $899 almost any day of the week on Amazon (or with a school discount). The average laptop selling price is somewhere in the $700 range. That’s hardly a huge premium considering the delta in performance and user experience compared to low specced machines. I’d also say without hesitation that cheap Chromebooks are better than their cheap windows competitors. If you just need to do basic things, ChromeOS is much snappier on slow hardware while also being more secure. If you need to do more, you’ll benefit from a faster system at which point the M1 is an easy choice for the money.
  - Toutouxc 5y ago
    The $999 M1 MacBook Air costs around $1400 in Europe (the Czech Republic, Germany, France and Poland), and most people I know get by on old $600 laptops. In my country even the base Air is very much a premium laptop and is not even expensive, but prohibitively expensive for most people.

Silhouette 5y ago

I think there are more people who are happy with (or at least tolerant of) Windows 10 than some of us geeks might like to admit. A lot of non-techie people aren't going to run into the negative aspects of Windows 10 much in practice. They aren't going to be changing enough settings to be frustrated by the multiple UIs. They won't look up each OS update online before deciding whether to install it. Many of them care less about issues like privacy than we tend to and willingly hand over huge amounts of personal information to online services anyway. Some of them will get stung badly, and they'll receive the same half-sympathetic, half-contemptuous look their techie friends would give someone who chose a dictionary word as a password or who didn't back up their precious photo collection. Most of them won't get stung, and probably have no idea about any of these issues, and happily carry on with their lives worrying about things that are much more important to them. That said, the same rise in online services that Microsoft seems to be betting on as a corporate strategy has made Windows increasingly expendable on the desktop. For day-to-day use, most techies I know are now on Linux or Apple desktops. A lot of non-technical users are fine with just their phone and maybe a tablet for everyday stuff now, and Apple laptops are popular with home users who are OK with the premium price. Windows laptops are seen as the cheap (in every sense) option, and I don't remember hearing anyone ever say they specifically wanted one. It's different in enterprise world, but in enterprise world the technical advantages of Windows 10 are more useful and most of the worst disadvantages don't apply. I also think reports of Windows 7's demise are premature. It's obviously only a relatively small part of the desktop market now, but people are still using it for a variety of sensible reasons both at home and at work. I imagine they are more interested in being able to run whatever software or hardware is keeping them there than in lectures about security from people whose proposed alternative would disrupt their work and compromise their privacy by design anyway.

binbag 5y ago
I'm a geek and I think Windows 10 is good. Sorry.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  Objectively, a lot of it is. I think geeks are more likely to be concerned about the parts that aren't, and about the overall "Windows as a service" concept and the emphasis on connecting everything online.

pier25 5y ago

> The only people I know who still use windows adamantly are PC gamers, and they're all still on windows 7. According to Steam, 92.87% of its users are on Windows 10 and only 0.16% are still on Windows 7. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Goronmon 5y ago
According to Steam, 92.87% of its users are on Windows 10 and only 0.16% are still on Windows 7. How can that be true, when a Hacker News comment clearly stated otherwise?
distrill 5y ago
Interesting. I should have looked this up, I guess it's obvious my sample isn't large enough to be representative.

dafzor 5y ago

It's still the predominant OS for business, so vast majority of people will already be familiar with it and the starting price for a windows machine is half of what you'd pay for an entry mac. On another hand, windows is the main PC gaming platform, linux has come a long way and is a lot more viable then even 5 years back, but you're still pretending your windows most of the time so you'll have to deal with additional problems every now and then. More to the point, I haven't seen any big OEM selling linux boxes outside of dev machines and specialised vendors (system 76). So yeah, windows still dominates.