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Disclosure: I'm a developer advocate at Microsoft with a focus on Linux, I am typing this on a laptop running Windows 11 (it also has another SSD that runs Linu

Disclosure: I'm a developer advocate at Microsoft with a focus on Linux, I am typing this on a laptop running Windows 11 (it also has another SSD that runs Linux), and I'm a diehard Mac user. I hate this sort of SEO-driven clickbait that is trying to inflame wars that frankly, were settled two decades ago. Use Linux. Use Windows. Use macOS. Use Chrome OS. Use OpenBSD. Use Haiku. If you're a complete masochist, use GNN Hurd. Use whatever works. It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that. Plus, the article is wrong. There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government) and talking points against TPMs and secure boot are so completely 2010, I had really hoped we had moved past that by now. Again, use whatever you want. But this is such lazy writing, I'm disheartened to see it rank so highly on HN, just because people want to get territorial about what computing platform other people use.

msla 5y ago
> There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government) Trying to "Both Sides" telemetry and spyware fails because you can use Linux without either, whereas macOS and Windows are inherently married to it and you can't use them without submitting to their respective surveillance regimes. Oddities like Deepin barely matter and can't be used to honestly say Linux is just as bad as a closed-source OS.
- walls 5y ago
  That's weird because I ran a tool to disable it in Windows the day I installed it. I'd wager it was even easier than disabling it on those Linux distros.
  - chayleaf 5y ago
    the tools don't disable all telemetry, besides, most linux distros have no telemetry to disable
  - roman-holovin 5y ago
    Just wait for an update that will reenable everything you've disabled.
    - mkipper 5y ago
      Don't forget that it might come bundled with other helpful updates with no way to choose which pieces to pull in. I can't believe people are actually comparing telemetry in Windows to Linux.
      - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        > I can't believe people are actually comparing telemetry in Windows to Linux. I'm not surprised - at least some of these people are Microsoft employees so it's no wonder they try to use the same strategy as always - fear, uncertainty and doubt. After all, if people start believing that "Linux also has telemetry", why even consider switching? Actually I'm happy to hear it from the mouth of Microsoft employees (especially "advocacy" guys, i.e. paid to convince others): it means that Microsoft does care, they do consider Linux a threat, and the war is definitely not over.
        md8z 5y ago
        There's no FUD. Ubuntu actually does have telemetry. KDE does too. It may not be quite the same in implementation as Microsoft's telemetry, but it is there. There is also nothing to be afraid of here either, the effects of it and how to use it are all spelled out clearly in the respective privacy policies. https://ubuntu.com/legal/data-privacy https://ubuntu.com/legal/data-privacy https://community.kde.org/Telemetry_Use https://community.kde.org/Telemetry_Use "Why even consider switching" is the eternal question that Linux companies have not been able to adequately answer for the last few decades. If you know of a good reason, let me know. Otherwise we can agree that the "war" was already over a long time ago and Microsoft won pretty clearly.
        fouric 5y ago
        > Ubuntu actually does have telemetry. KDE does too. Ahh, yes, Ubuntu and KDE = Linux. Very logical. > It may not be quite the same in implementation as Microsoft's telemetry, but it is there. There can be a world of difference between telemetry implementations. Debian's popcount, for instance, is opt-in - Windows' are mostly (if not all) opt-out. Ubuntu and KDE send their data to organizations that I trust - Windows do not. Ubuntu and KDE's telemetry remain off when I turn it off - Windows' does not. I know exactly what data KDE collects, because it's spelled out in that page you linked - I don't know what data Windows or Ubuntu collect. Given the extreme variance in telemetry implementations, trying to falsely equivocate Windows and Linux telemetry is FUD.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  I actually disagree. Ubuntu has a lot of telemetry on by default (unlike Deepin, they disclose this, but I'm pointing this out) and for many years, Canonical really tried to push the whole account login thing (RIP Ubuntu One). Not to mention the time Ubuntu inserted Amazon affiliate links into the search app (which to their credit, they eventually removed -- tho the Amazon app that was just an affiliate launcher didn't go away until LAST YEAR). In fact, I would argue that most distributions with a focus on user interface and usability tend to have a lot more of the things that macOS and Windows have, like user accounts (tied to app stores or whatever), giving back telemetry (which is often really, really important for developers to have), or are part of major enterprise servicing agreements that have a lot of tracking and management by design. Plus, whether you use a Mac, Windows, or Linux, most users are going to be using Chrome as their web browser, almost certainly attached to a Google account, watching Netflix, using a cloud service for storage, and what, playing games using Proton, which is sure giving Steam a whole lot of your data. The web won and the web surveils us. It just does. If it makes you feel better that your chosen distro doesn't have as many options enabled by default and that you can't have a common user account to sync settings across multiple desktops, that's awesome. But I think that ignores a fundamental way humans use computers and the web -- regardless of OS. You're being surveilled. Linux isn't going to save you.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    > I actually disagree. Of course you disagree because it's your job. Satya Nadella himself makes sure you try to sway the opinion here in favor of your company [0]: "In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..." Hint: criticizing Linux in such a heavy-handed way won't work that well. [0 ]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/events/FY-2019/earnings-fy-2019-q1.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/events/FY-2019/earn...
    - md8z 5y ago
      Please don't be so cynical. I don't work for Microsoft, I've been using Linux for about 20 years and I haven't used Windows seriously in about that long, and I agree entirely with her comment. Once you go adding all the things to Linux that Windows users want, it starts to look a lot like Windows in more than one way...
deltree7 5y ago
HN like all other social networks has 5% of really smart, intelligent, objective, well-rounded, nuanced commentators/upvoters. Rest 95% is no different than Woke/Q/Pitchfork/Trump/AOC people
- jlengrand 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle :).
goohle 5y ago
> It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) Android(Linux) is used by majority of users (40%), while Windows holds just 32.3%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share .
- anontrot 5y ago
  Desktop...
  - goohle 5y ago
    x86 Desktop, to be precise. On non-x86 desktops (e.g. Raspberry Pi 4), Linux holds it position very well. Linux+ARM desktop can replace Wintel desktop.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  Obviously, mobile devices far outnumber desktops and laptops now (servers too), but I think conflating Android with both Linux and the Linux desktop is wrong. The whole meme of the Linux desktop wasn't meant to say, "uses a highly modified version of the Linux kernel with a custom userland, proprietary interface, proprietary services, custom drivers, etc. The idea was not to replace one proprietary system with another mostly proprietary system that happens to have a modified version of the Linux kernel and that puts some of the software in a git repo. I do think it is telling that the most successful user-facing implementations of both Unix and Linux have had to create largely proprietary wrappers over them both.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    > but I think conflating Android with both Linux and the Linux desktop is wrong I think when people say that it's more about saying that the use case for computing in general has changed. Linux is everywhere and runs everything so the fixation on desktops is old-fashioned and not really necessary anymore.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Linux kernel is not a public API on Android, app developers don't care where ART + NDK (public APIs) run on.
Zhyl 5y ago
I feel like with the uptick in Linux gaming, Valve's investment in Proton, the Steam Deck, EAC/Battleye compatibility with Proton, modern desktops catching up to Windows look and feel, it's closer to being 'the year of the Linux desktop' than ever before. Sure, 'the year of the Linux desktop' is a loosely defined term that doesn't necessarily have any key metrics that you'd agree with, and it's not like any of the world's governments or corporations are suddenly going to overhaul their entire desktop IT inventory in 12 months, but for the first time ever I have seen people say '2022 is the year of the Linux desktop' and I think that there is actual substance to it rather than just blind naïve optimism.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  "The year of Linux on the desktop" is a meme for a specific reason. It'll take longer than a year. The claim is funny because you imagine the whole world switching to Linux, like, overnight. Which is obviously unrealistic. It's a gradual process. But last year Chromebooks outsold Macs. Chromebooks are Linux. Even if they're not "Linux Linux," there isn't much you can do with one that you can't do with most other distributions. Which demonstrates that the barriers to adoption are falling and a major factor is now the need for better marketing. That still doesn't mean the percentage of desktops running Linux will be at 97% by end of December. But it'll probably be higher than it was last year.
  - Zhyl 5y ago
    I agree with this. It's hard to engage with people like GP saying things like 'the year of the Linux desktop will never happen', as they are using the term to essentially dismiss Linux as a platform, however in order to counter it or to highlight the progress that has been made, you are effectively having to sidestep bad-faith framing of the issue. I don't think GP was universally dismissing Linux in the way that it is normally used (there are plenty of better examples in this thread, though), but it is similarly an inflammatory comment to make that detracts from proper discussion.
    - simonh 5y ago
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
It is because of our frustration with Windows. There was a time when it was a private system. Sure, the first couple of versions weren't particularly stable or secure, but for some reason you trusted the vendor of your operating system that they won't spy on you. Unfortunately, things went in the same direction as other greedy companies that pay lip service to valuing their users while exploiting their privacy in all possible ways. Microsoft went a step further, being actively user-hostile, for example changing telemetry settings so that your previous choices wouldn't work and enforcing remote accounts. Name a dark pattern, and Microsoft used it somewhere. So how couldn't we be frustrated? We receive a box full of adware with little control of how it's updated and what is going to run on it tomorrow. Sure, there are nice things like WSL, but they don't somehow cancel your shady doings. Fortunately the future is more and more web-oriented so it's getting easier to switch from Windows now than it was a decade or two ago.
fidesomnes 5y ago
> I'm a... at Microsoft opinion discarded.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fouric 5y ago
> that frankly, were settled two decades ago No, it wasn't. Windows didn't have a camera, TPM, TPM 2.0, and mandatory Microsoft online account requirements two decades ago, nor did it come "bundled" with Cortana, Teams, advertisements in your Start menu, Windows Defender, forced/"highly incentivized" OS updates, loads of dark patterns meant to try to get you to use a Microsoft account or switch to Edge, and telemetry that repeatedly re-enables itself after you disable it. All of that is new in the past two decades, and even before that, Microsoft was pulling anti-competitive shenanigans like the Secure Boot requirements and bundling IE with Windows. This article is extremely timely given the recent release of Windows 11, and gave me new information that I didn't have before (such as the requirement to have a camera). Poorly-written as it is, it's still both useful and relevant. > It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that. Are you able to predict the future? This is such a shallow dismissal, and the logic is both absurd and defeatist. Even if you had good reason to believe that "the year of the Linux desktop" (which is kind of a straw-man to begin with) was never going to happen, it's still useful to encourage people to switch away from a user-hostile operating system, both to preserve their own freedoms, and also to pressure Microsoft to walk back some of their anti-features. > Plus, the article is wrong. One point that you can kind-of contrive to not be universally true out of eleven doesn't seem like a good reason to call the whole article "wrong". > There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware Telemetry? Sure. Telemetry that's mostly opt-in and doesn't magically (re-)enable itself, and sends data to a source that I trust. Telemetry that doesn't fit those requirements, and has actual spyware, is rare both by user count (except for Deepin, which is kind of irrelevant for non-Chinese users) and absolute number of distros - and, you know, you have a choice as to which distro you use, whereas I believe that all versions of Windows 11 share the same set of anti-features... > Again, use whatever you want. Nobody (well, except maybe RMS), including the article, is telling you that you must switch to Windows. The article is a persuasive piece - and there's nothing wrong with that? If anything, I would expect to see persuasive content on HN (although, ideally, better-written than this one), right alongside technical content. From the guidelines: > What to Submit - On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Persuasive pieces generally satisfy my intellectual curiosity. Rants without any good arguments made? Not so much. > just because people want to get territorial about what computing platform other people use Sure, some people might be getting territorial - but many others (most?) are actually talking about the very real issues that Windows 11 has. If your best friend tells you that they're planning on quitting their job to play video games full-time, you might get worried about them, and try to talk them out of it, right? That's exactly what's going on here. > I'm disheartened to see it rank so highly on HN I'm more disappointed to see responses to it that rely on a bunch of emotional manipulation and shallow dismissals that don't stand up to scrutiny.
yepthatsreality 5y ago
> It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that. The “year” already happened, I don’t know when specifically. We are years into Linux on the desktop. The idea was to provide a perfectly usable DE on Linux and comparable software for the every day user. Which now has several options and a plethora of software. Lots of people run Linux desktops on the daily. Is it mainstream? No, but no one actually cares about that because to get to that point you need some giant exodus migration from every platform to Linux…it’s impossible. So what’s possible for desktop Linux in a practical sense? That it’s available to install and use and is supported. So it’s here and no one cares that there isn’t a big giant annual release with lots of media attention crooning over how awesome the new OS menu is. Instead it’s people working and developing on Linux. I’m sorry for all those people who can’t live without their niche OS features and software, but it also tells me those people have no real technical skill or understanding anyways. Which is fine that software plane exists too.
danShumway 5y ago
Windows 11 is launching with literal TV commercials. The Surface Pro 7 earlier this year launched with commercials comparing the device to Apple laptops -- again, literal TV ads. So why is it suddenly toxic for a Linux Institute blog to advertise Linux? Why is it toxic to mention in a blog (completely accurately) that the average Linux distro (even commercial distros like Ubuntu) have less telemetry than Windows 11? Windows 11 Home edition does still require a Microsoft account that users need to use airplane mode during setup to circumvent, right? It does genuinely have camera requirements for new manufacturers, right? It's a wild double standard here to argue, from the position of a company that runs TV ads mocking its competitors about touchbars -- that the Linux community is stoking division by publishing a blog post that compares Linux to Windows on the day of a new Windows release. Of course there's a bias to the article, it's an advertisement. But I don't understand why the Linux community is held to this standard that no other OS manufacturer follows. Apple/Microsoft/Android run ads attacking competitors all the time, much more prominently, and nobody accuses them of being "territorial" because they try to distinguish their products.
pxc 5y ago
> Again, use whatever you want. But this is such lazy writing It is, but I also think ‘use whatever you want’ is lazy, or at least resigned, in a different way. There's a pattern that often takes hold with new desktop Linux users involving an intense evangelism phase. Some of the reasons for that phase are cultural artifacts that aren't especially interesting or valuable, like a tendency to ground one's identity in consumer choices. But the evangelistic phase in a new Linux user's journey with desktop Linux is also grounded in experiences of joy, wonder, and a kind of digital ‘pride of place’ that really are special to free software desktops, and is nowhere realized as fully as in the desktop Linux world. Those kinds of experiences are worth sharing, examining, and celebrating, even in naive forms. Some good examples of content creators who've gone through this process in the last few years are Jason Evangelho (Forbes writer and longtime tech/gaming journalist) and Chris Titus (longtime Windows sysadmin and power user gone Linux YouTuber). The ‘right tool for the job’, ‘use whatever works’ nostrum is as uninteresting and useless a meme as ‘Arch Linux is teh best and Ubuntu is for n00bz!!1’, with the additional problem that that its emptiness is obscured by its apparent even-handedness. To be clear, I agree with most of what you've said and overall critique of the specific article in the OP. But I want to point out that ‘why Linux’ as a genre or topic is not just flamebait, and that there are other articles along those lines that I think have a legitimate place on HN or any forum where people are interested in people's experiences with computers.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  > To be clear, I agree with most of what you've said and overall critique of the specific article in the OP. But I want to point out that ‘why Linux’ as a genre or topic is not just flamebait, and that there are other articles along those lines that I think have a legitimate place on HN or any forum where people are interested in people's experiences with computers. This is totally fair and I wouldn’t want to imply otherwise. My issues are with this article and the others of its ilk, but not the general genre of content. And you make good points about “use whatever you want” being an uninteresting meme too. And you make excellent points about the evangelism phase (which I think we both agree, this article isn’t indicative of, tho I imagine the person who shared it might be in that wonderful phase themselves), which is definitely important. As a longtime Mac user, we have that phase too (also, the fact that I still primarily identify as a Mac user even tho I’ve been using Linux since 1998, even if primarily on the server (I still distro hop like a mofo all the damn time tho), speaks to those cultural artifacts you mention that just stick with us), and Mac users are just as obnoxious as Linux users but in a different way. I truly have come to a place where I want people to enjoy what they enjoy and share that. I’m just exhausted by the evangelism and fierce defensiveness by any sect. But I’m definitely guilty of it too (she says as she types away at 100 words a minute on her iPhone that she is slavishly devoted to).

msla 5y ago

> There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government) Trying to "Both Sides" telemetry and spyware fails because you can use Linux without either, whereas macOS and Windows are inherently married to it and you can't use them without submitting to their respective surveillance regimes. Oddities like Deepin barely matter and can't be used to honestly say Linux is just as bad as a closed-source OS.

walls 5y ago
That's weird because I ran a tool to disable it in Windows the day I installed it. I'd wager it was even easier than disabling it on those Linux distros.
- chayleaf 5y ago
  the tools don't disable all telemetry, besides, most linux distros have no telemetry to disable
- roman-holovin 5y ago
  Just wait for an update that will reenable everything you've disabled.
  - mkipper 5y ago
    Don't forget that it might come bundled with other helpful updates with no way to choose which pieces to pull in. I can't believe people are actually comparing telemetry in Windows to Linux.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      > I can't believe people are actually comparing telemetry in Windows to Linux. I'm not surprised - at least some of these people are Microsoft employees so it's no wonder they try to use the same strategy as always - fear, uncertainty and doubt. After all, if people start believing that "Linux also has telemetry", why even consider switching? Actually I'm happy to hear it from the mouth of Microsoft employees (especially "advocacy" guys, i.e. paid to convince others): it means that Microsoft does care, they do consider Linux a threat, and the war is definitely not over.
      - md8z 5y ago
        There's no FUD. Ubuntu actually does have telemetry. KDE does too. It may not be quite the same in implementation as Microsoft's telemetry, but it is there. There is also nothing to be afraid of here either, the effects of it and how to use it are all spelled out clearly in the respective privacy policies. https://ubuntu.com/legal/data-privacy https://ubuntu.com/legal/data-privacy https://community.kde.org/Telemetry_Use https://community.kde.org/Telemetry_Use "Why even consider switching" is the eternal question that Linux companies have not been able to adequately answer for the last few decades. If you know of a good reason, let me know. Otherwise we can agree that the "war" was already over a long time ago and Microsoft won pretty clearly.
        fouric 5y ago
        > Ubuntu actually does have telemetry. KDE does too. Ahh, yes, Ubuntu and KDE = Linux. Very logical. > It may not be quite the same in implementation as Microsoft's telemetry, but it is there. There can be a world of difference between telemetry implementations. Debian's popcount, for instance, is opt-in - Windows' are mostly (if not all) opt-out. Ubuntu and KDE send their data to organizations that I trust - Windows do not. Ubuntu and KDE's telemetry remain off when I turn it off - Windows' does not. I know exactly what data KDE collects, because it's spelled out in that page you linked - I don't know what data Windows or Ubuntu collect. Given the extreme variance in telemetry implementations, trying to falsely equivocate Windows and Linux telemetry is FUD.
filmgirlcw 5y ago
I actually disagree. Ubuntu has a lot of telemetry on by default (unlike Deepin, they disclose this, but I'm pointing this out) and for many years, Canonical really tried to push the whole account login thing (RIP Ubuntu One). Not to mention the time Ubuntu inserted Amazon affiliate links into the search app (which to their credit, they eventually removed -- tho the Amazon app that was just an affiliate launcher didn't go away until LAST YEAR). In fact, I would argue that most distributions with a focus on user interface and usability tend to have a lot more of the things that macOS and Windows have, like user accounts (tied to app stores or whatever), giving back telemetry (which is often really, really important for developers to have), or are part of major enterprise servicing agreements that have a lot of tracking and management by design. Plus, whether you use a Mac, Windows, or Linux, most users are going to be using Chrome as their web browser, almost certainly attached to a Google account, watching Netflix, using a cloud service for storage, and what, playing games using Proton, which is sure giving Steam a whole lot of your data. The web won and the web surveils us. It just does. If it makes you feel better that your chosen distro doesn't have as many options enabled by default and that you can't have a common user account to sync settings across multiple desktops, that's awesome. But I think that ignores a fundamental way humans use computers and the web -- regardless of OS. You're being surveilled. Linux isn't going to save you.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > I actually disagree. Of course you disagree because it's your job. Satya Nadella himself makes sure you try to sway the opinion here in favor of your company [0]: "In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..." Hint: criticizing Linux in such a heavy-handed way won't work that well. [0 ]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/events/FY-2019/earnings-fy-2019-q1.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/events/FY-2019/earn...
  - md8z 5y ago
    Please don't be so cynical. I don't work for Microsoft, I've been using Linux for about 20 years and I haven't used Windows seriously in about that long, and I agree entirely with her comment. Once you go adding all the things to Linux that Windows users want, it starts to look a lot like Windows in more than one way...

deltree7 5y ago

HN like all other social networks has 5% of really smart, intelligent, objective, well-rounded, nuanced commentators/upvoters. Rest 95% is no different than Woke/Q/Pitchfork/Trump/AOC people

jlengrand 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle :).

goohle 5y ago

> It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) Android(Linux) is used by majority of users (40%), while Windows holds just 32.3%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share .

anontrot 5y ago
Desktop...
- goohle 5y ago
  x86 Desktop, to be precise. On non-x86 desktops (e.g. Raspberry Pi 4), Linux holds it position very well. Linux+ARM desktop can replace Wintel desktop.
filmgirlcw 5y ago
Obviously, mobile devices far outnumber desktops and laptops now (servers too), but I think conflating Android with both Linux and the Linux desktop is wrong. The whole meme of the Linux desktop wasn't meant to say, "uses a highly modified version of the Linux kernel with a custom userland, proprietary interface, proprietary services, custom drivers, etc. The idea was not to replace one proprietary system with another mostly proprietary system that happens to have a modified version of the Linux kernel and that puts some of the software in a git repo. I do think it is telling that the most successful user-facing implementations of both Unix and Linux have had to create largely proprietary wrappers over them both.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  > but I think conflating Android with both Linux and the Linux desktop is wrong I think when people say that it's more about saying that the use case for computing in general has changed. Linux is everywhere and runs everything so the fixation on desktops is old-fashioned and not really necessary anymore.
pjmlp 5y ago
Linux kernel is not a public API on Android, app developers don't care where ART + NDK (public APIs) run on.

Zhyl 5y ago

I feel like with the uptick in Linux gaming, Valve's investment in Proton, the Steam Deck, EAC/Battleye compatibility with Proton, modern desktops catching up to Windows look and feel, it's closer to being 'the year of the Linux desktop' than ever before. Sure, 'the year of the Linux desktop' is a loosely defined term that doesn't necessarily have any key metrics that you'd agree with, and it's not like any of the world's governments or corporations are suddenly going to overhaul their entire desktop IT inventory in 12 months, but for the first time ever I have seen people say '2022 is the year of the Linux desktop' and I think that there is actual substance to it rather than just blind naïve optimism.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
"The year of Linux on the desktop" is a meme for a specific reason. It'll take longer than a year. The claim is funny because you imagine the whole world switching to Linux, like, overnight. Which is obviously unrealistic. It's a gradual process. But last year Chromebooks outsold Macs. Chromebooks are Linux. Even if they're not "Linux Linux," there isn't much you can do with one that you can't do with most other distributions. Which demonstrates that the barriers to adoption are falling and a major factor is now the need for better marketing. That still doesn't mean the percentage of desktops running Linux will be at 97% by end of December. But it'll probably be higher than it was last year.
- Zhyl 5y ago
  I agree with this. It's hard to engage with people like GP saying things like 'the year of the Linux desktop will never happen', as they are using the term to essentially dismiss Linux as a platform, however in order to counter it or to highlight the progress that has been made, you are effectively having to sidestep bad-faith framing of the issue. I don't think GP was universally dismissing Linux in the way that it is normally used (there are plenty of better examples in this thread, though), but it is similarly an inflammatory comment to make that detracts from proper discussion.
  - simonh 5y ago

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

It is because of our frustration with Windows. There was a time when it was a private system. Sure, the first couple of versions weren't particularly stable or secure, but for some reason you trusted the vendor of your operating system that they won't spy on you. Unfortunately, things went in the same direction as other greedy companies that pay lip service to valuing their users while exploiting their privacy in all possible ways. Microsoft went a step further, being actively user-hostile, for example changing telemetry settings so that your previous choices wouldn't work and enforcing remote accounts. Name a dark pattern, and Microsoft used it somewhere. So how couldn't we be frustrated? We receive a box full of adware with little control of how it's updated and what is going to run on it tomorrow. Sure, there are nice things like WSL, but they don't somehow cancel your shady doings. Fortunately the future is more and more web-oriented so it's getting easier to switch from Windows now than it was a decade or two ago.

fidesomnes 5y ago

> I'm a... at Microsoft opinion discarded.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fouric 5y ago

> that frankly, were settled two decades ago No, it wasn't. Windows didn't have a camera, TPM, TPM 2.0, and mandatory Microsoft online account requirements two decades ago, nor did it come "bundled" with Cortana, Teams, advertisements in your Start menu, Windows Defender, forced/"highly incentivized" OS updates, loads of dark patterns meant to try to get you to use a Microsoft account or switch to Edge, and telemetry that repeatedly re-enables itself after you disable it. All of that is new in the past two decades, and even before that, Microsoft was pulling anti-competitive shenanigans like the Secure Boot requirements and bundling IE with Windows. This article is extremely timely given the recent release of Windows 11, and gave me new information that I didn't have before (such as the requirement to have a camera). Poorly-written as it is, it's still both useful and relevant. > It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that. Are you able to predict the future? This is such a shallow dismissal, and the logic is both absurd and defeatist. Even if you had good reason to believe that "the year of the Linux desktop" (which is kind of a straw-man to begin with) was never going to happen, it's still useful to encourage people to switch away from a user-hostile operating system, both to preserve their own freedoms, and also to pressure Microsoft to walk back some of their anti-features. > Plus, the article is wrong. One point that you can kind-of contrive to not be universally true out of eleven doesn't seem like a good reason to call the whole article "wrong". > There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware Telemetry? Sure. Telemetry that's mostly opt-in and doesn't magically (re-)enable itself, and sends data to a source that I trust. Telemetry that doesn't fit those requirements, and has actual spyware, is rare both by user count (except for Deepin, which is kind of irrelevant for non-Chinese users) and absolute number of distros - and, you know, you have a choice as to which distro you use, whereas I believe that all versions of Windows 11 share the same set of anti-features... > Again, use whatever you want. Nobody (well, except maybe RMS), including the article, is telling you that you must switch to Windows. The article is a persuasive piece - and there's nothing wrong with that? If anything, I would expect to see persuasive content on HN (although, ideally, better-written than this one), right alongside technical content. From the guidelines: > What to Submit - On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Persuasive pieces generally satisfy my intellectual curiosity. Rants without any good arguments made? Not so much. > just because people want to get territorial about what computing platform other people use Sure, some people might be getting territorial - but many others (most?) are actually talking about the very real issues that Windows 11 has. If your best friend tells you that they're planning on quitting their job to play video games full-time, you might get worried about them, and try to talk them out of it, right? That's exactly what's going on here. > I'm disheartened to see it rank so highly on HN I'm more disappointed to see responses to it that rely on a bunch of emotional manipulation and shallow dismissals that don't stand up to scrutiny.

yepthatsreality 5y ago

> It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that. The “year” already happened, I don’t know when specifically. We are years into Linux on the desktop. The idea was to provide a perfectly usable DE on Linux and comparable software for the every day user. Which now has several options and a plethora of software. Lots of people run Linux desktops on the daily. Is it mainstream? No, but no one actually cares about that because to get to that point you need some giant exodus migration from every platform to Linux…it’s impossible. So what’s possible for desktop Linux in a practical sense? That it’s available to install and use and is supported. So it’s here and no one cares that there isn’t a big giant annual release with lots of media attention crooning over how awesome the new OS menu is. Instead it’s people working and developing on Linux. I’m sorry for all those people who can’t live without their niche OS features and software, but it also tells me those people have no real technical skill or understanding anyways. Which is fine that software plane exists too.

danShumway 5y ago

Windows 11 is launching with literal TV commercials. The Surface Pro 7 earlier this year launched with commercials comparing the device to Apple laptops -- again, literal TV ads. So why is it suddenly toxic for a Linux Institute blog to advertise Linux? Why is it toxic to mention in a blog (completely accurately) that the average Linux distro (even commercial distros like Ubuntu) have less telemetry than Windows 11? Windows 11 Home edition does still require a Microsoft account that users need to use airplane mode during setup to circumvent, right? It does genuinely have camera requirements for new manufacturers, right? It's a wild double standard here to argue, from the position of a company that runs TV ads mocking its competitors about touchbars -- that the Linux community is stoking division by publishing a blog post that compares Linux to Windows on the day of a new Windows release. Of course there's a bias to the article, it's an advertisement. But I don't understand why the Linux community is held to this standard that no other OS manufacturer follows. Apple/Microsoft/Android run ads attacking competitors all the time, much more prominently, and nobody accuses them of being "territorial" because they try to distinguish their products.

pxc 5y ago

> Again, use whatever you want. But this is such lazy writing It is, but I also think ‘use whatever you want’ is lazy, or at least resigned, in a different way. There's a pattern that often takes hold with new desktop Linux users involving an intense evangelism phase. Some of the reasons for that phase are cultural artifacts that aren't especially interesting or valuable, like a tendency to ground one's identity in consumer choices. But the evangelistic phase in a new Linux user's journey with desktop Linux is also grounded in experiences of joy, wonder, and a kind of digital ‘pride of place’ that really are special to free software desktops, and is nowhere realized as fully as in the desktop Linux world. Those kinds of experiences are worth sharing, examining, and celebrating, even in naive forms. Some good examples of content creators who've gone through this process in the last few years are Jason Evangelho (Forbes writer and longtime tech/gaming journalist) and Chris Titus (longtime Windows sysadmin and power user gone Linux YouTuber). The ‘right tool for the job’, ‘use whatever works’ nostrum is as uninteresting and useless a meme as ‘Arch Linux is teh best and Ubuntu is for n00bz!!1’, with the additional problem that that its emptiness is obscured by its apparent even-handedness. To be clear, I agree with most of what you've said and overall critique of the specific article in the OP. But I want to point out that ‘why Linux’ as a genre or topic is not just flamebait, and that there are other articles along those lines that I think have a legitimate place on HN or any forum where people are interested in people's experiences with computers.

filmgirlcw 5y ago
> To be clear, I agree with most of what you've said and overall critique of the specific article in the OP. But I want to point out that ‘why Linux’ as a genre or topic is not just flamebait, and that there are other articles along those lines that I think have a legitimate place on HN or any forum where people are interested in people's experiences with computers. This is totally fair and I wouldn’t want to imply otherwise. My issues are with this article and the others of its ilk, but not the general genre of content. And you make good points about “use whatever you want” being an uninteresting meme too. And you make excellent points about the evangelism phase (which I think we both agree, this article isn’t indicative of, tho I imagine the person who shared it might be in that wonderful phase themselves), which is definitely important. As a longtime Mac user, we have that phase too (also, the fact that I still primarily identify as a Mac user even tho I’ve been using Linux since 1998, even if primarily on the server (I still distro hop like a mofo all the damn time tho), speaks to those cultural artifacts you mention that just stick with us), and Mac users are just as obnoxious as Linux users but in a different way. I truly have come to a place where I want people to enjoy what they enjoy and share that. I’m just exhausted by the evangelism and fierce defensiveness by any sect. But I’m definitely guilty of it too (she says as she types away at 100 words a minute on her iPhone that she is slavishly devoted to).