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And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it :). You can conquer the world, dominate every space and yet there's thus little voice ins
by bruce511 3y ago
And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it :).
You can conquer the world, dominate every space and yet there's thus little voice inside saying "but you're not good enough. See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling. "
Welcome to the human condition.
- ojbyrne 3y agoHonestly, it feels like mentioning the concept of "desktop" seems a little weak, like someone from 2010. Chances are you have linux running in a VM, or container, or phone, or other device right beside you.
- pjmlp 3y agoIndeed, if we are speaking about the Linux kernel, which isn't what most of these articles are about.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stingraycharles 3y agoI'm sure it stings Microsoft a lot more that Windows isn't the dominant server OS.
- bruce511 3y agoI'm sure it stings a lot! Windows Server is expensive, and a huge money earner for MS. They currently have around 20% market share (as Internet servers - much higher inside business LANs), which is a very nice chunk. And I'm sure encourages them to keep working on it. Frankly the tooling for MS server keeps it in the hunt - they really understand the concept of making things easier to use.
- vasco 3y ago> They currently have around 20% market share (as Internet servers - Extremely big doubts about this. How would anyone even know? All the hyperscale datacenters built by FAANG must be 99.9% Linux, and those DCs alone would probably be enough to make 20% impossible to hit for windows.
- fomine3 3y agoNit: many edge servers by N is FreeBSD at least.
- robertlagrant 3y agoIt might be that a load of Azure sites run IIS to do some auth work or something, and that's counted as Windows for each of those sites?
- mrweasel 3y agoAnd Active Director and Exchange, they have to count for a ton of installations as well.
- bruce511 3y agoSee https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys... (Scroll down to servers) Incidentally this is public facing Internet servers. The % -inside- enterprises us much much higher. Tools like Active Directory allow you to scale enterprise operations, which is important for companies that have hundreds-of-thousands of desktops etc. In any event your estimate of 99.9% is unlikely. AWS offers Windows based EC2 instances, and one presumes they're not doing that for 0.01% of the market. Azure will likely have an even higher %. From the data though, not just guessing, I'd say it's about 20% overall.
- ben0x539 3y agook maybe i'm a sore loser, but looking at where the popular desktop OSes have been going going i think i'm fine with linux remaining an enthusiast thing
- self_awareness 3y agoExactly my thoughts. I think Linux is in a good sweet spot; popular enough so that applications advertise support for Linux, but not popular enough to be spoiled and optimized for the "casual" user.
- ben0x539 3y agoIt also helps that there have been very few important (big, complicated) applications in the past decade or two. Firefox is there? My development environment is there? I'm probably good.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoAll work and no game ...
- benplumley 3y agoSteam is there, with Proton, and Lutris. It's almost a better experience than the twelve different launchers situation I left behind (though they're annoying in very different ways!)
- hanselot 3y agoI was recently surprised to find installing battle.net with Steam Proton is not only possible, but dead simple, and actually worked. I had been trying for days using the lutris installer, but just shit keeps breaking endlessly. At some point I compiled lutris into a venv just to try and solve all the dependency shit that was lurking in there. But lutris as it stands now breaks everything almost every time I use it. I had steam unlaunchable for over a week because of something lutris was doing implicitly. Now running steam directly off the CLI seems to be working for 90% of the games I play (which isn't a very long list). Only thing I doubt I will be able to figure out is stuff like fortnite or anything that uses easy-anti-cheat (since their devs give a fuck about linux and effectively believe we are all hackers trying to ruin their game). That's all I got, don't bother with Lutris unless you have an insane amount of time to debug which component is missing.
- smcl 3y agoI dunno, does it? I don't imagine Linus and friends would celebrate this any other way than saying "ah, neat"
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y agoLet’s not pretend it wouldn’t be good if I could run Linux on the desktop the way we run MacOS. It would be great to only have to learn one OS and it worked really smoothly.
- nine_k 3y agoLike macOS, that is, all locked down, with abilities to customize things revoked with every release, with most software paid, and only available on a narrow choice of pretty expensive (though powerful) hardware? No, not really. You can't make things smooth and flexible at the same time, it takes too much effort. You can't support a ton of varied hardware and make everything work smoothly in every case; it again would take non-viable amounts of work. You can have a pretty smooth desktop Linux experience if you pick a large mainstream distro, pick reliable, well-supported mainstream hardware, and pick a polished desktop environment such as KDE or that Gnome variant of Pop OS. But if you want to tweak things, you've got to tweak things.
- criddell 3y agoIMHO, desktop Linux could use a little bit of locking down and progress is slowly being made in that direction. It feels a little bonkers that in 2023, Flatpak or something like it isn’t the default way software is installed. That calculator you just installed should not have access to your camera or microphone or file system. That weather app may need your location, but you should be able to grant access to sensitive resources always, never, or only after asking.
- nine_k 3y agoIf you look at your system like that, maybe QubesOS would be appealing to you. Or maybe Fuchsia, when it's ready for desktop.
- philwelch 3y ago> It feels a little bonkers that in 2023, Flatpak or something like it isn’t the default way software is installed. That calculator you just installed should not have access to your camera or microphone or file system. That weather app may need your location, but you should be able to grant access to sensitive resources always, never, or only after asking. This approach was widely ridiculed in the Vista days. Maybe I’m old but I still think it’s absurd security theatre that trades off a ton of usability for a tiny amount of imaginary security. It annoys me to no end that on macOS, for instance, opening a terminal emulator and trying to `ls` inside my home directory freezes on a security popup that wants me to allow my terminal emulator to access my home directory. If you want a locked down appliance, there’s always Chromebooks. Which run a linux kernel btw.
- EGreg 3y agoPretty much how the USA feels, and also its oligarch billionaire class LOL
- hnlmorg 3y agoNo. I will use the OS I like and others will use the OS they prefer. It’s called choice. What stung before was that people were forced to use Windows because of lock-ins, software compatibility, etc. That doesn’t really exist any more. If there is one good thing about web apps, it’s that browsers are now the application run time and browsers are more cross platform than any software libraries that have come before it. The only area I wish had a better story was the enterprise desktop space (like Windows domains or jamf on macOS) but currently I can’t justify allowing my team to run Linux because having its hard enough for small companies to manage a mixture of macOS and Windows fleets without adding a 3rd platform into the mix.
- hgomersall 3y agoI will use the OS I like and others will use the OS I tell them to use. It's called "my choice".
- Nux 3y agoAdobe (and others) wants a word with you.
- aktenlage 3y ago> What stung before was that people were forced to use Windows because of lock-ins, software compatibility, etc. That doesn’t really exist any more. If there is one good thing about web apps, it’s that browsers are now the application run time and browsers are more cross platform than any software libraries that have come before it. The danger that the history will repeat for browsers instead of OSs is real. The less market share for browsers other than Google Chrome or Chrome-based ones, the more likely it is, that we will be forced to use those because of incompatible web applications. E.g. at work, using a Linux Computer, I switched to Chrome for Teams and Outlook, because of compatibility issues.
- pluijzer 3y agoDid you try setting your User Agent to Chrome? I have to use Teams for work. Under Firefox it has problems and missing features, setting my user agent to Chrome solves all of it. Highly uncompetitive if you ask me.
- constantcrying 3y agoWho cares? I don't use Linux because it is or isn't popular. Who actually has an emotional bond to the market share of their software? I use Linux because it works for me and makes my life easier, is free/open and because I don't have to deal with Windows.
- kaba0 3y agoMarket share/popularity correlates directly to amount of available software, and their support. So it is completely rational to care about these metrics.
- globular-toast 3y agoI care about other people having to suffer a shitty computing experience.
- ehnto 3y agoIt is a little funny that I can't tell if this comment is pro or against desktop Linux.
- icemelt8 3y ago[dead]
- IshKebab 3y agoCould be both tbh. There are definitely ways in which Linux is better - no ads (cough Microsoft) or artificial restrictions (e.g. recording desktop audio cough Apple). But in the most important ways - software availability and reliability - it is much worse.
- ehnto 3y agoReliability for sure, though it has gotten better. You could argue that availability is better because it's all free, but I see what you are saying. Often enough I can't use a program natively on Linux.
- Dylan16807 3y agoI'm not worried about whether Linux is "good enough". I want Microsoft to stop having a monopoly.
- vba616 3y agoWindows is the modern VT100. It's simply a category error to compare its market share to Linux these days.
- xupybd 3y agoWow, what's with that tone?
- 8fingerlouie 3y ago> And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it :). Depending on how you define "desktop" i would argue that Linux has a very big presence on the desktop. Considering the "new desktop" is a smartphone, and Android is based on Linux, that alone would account for a very large desktop presence.
- kaba0 3y agoFeel free to read the title as GNU/Linux. Unfortunately there is no real “transmission” between the two, pretty much only the kernel is shared, absolutely nothing in userspace. Hell, it is ridiculously difficult to even run/emulate android on a normal linux distro. Which is a shame, because while android’s model is far from perfect, it is definitely eons ahead of the traditional linux userspace, especially on the security front.
- ssnistfajen 3y agoIt has full presence on my desktop, which is all that matters. Despite the lack of any exponential moonshots in marketshare, compatibility layers like Wine and Wine derivatives, as well as platform agnostic package management tools, have made Linux desktops much more pleasant to use compared to just 4-5 years ago. This has allowed me to almost completely de-Windows my computer usage without abandoning Windows-only applications. I do try to shill Linux to friends from time to time as a casual tease. Haven't had much success in that regard but it's not a concrete goal of mine. Despite having all gone to the same STEM program that required Linux environments for most courses, I'm the only one using it as a daily driver outside of work among the 15-20 people I still regularly contact.
- dmz73 3y agoIt is a little worse that that for Linux - you have conquered the whole world except for the place where you were born - where you are still a nobody. You can't just forget about that place either because you wake up there every day to rule the rest of the world from.
- usrbinbash 3y ago> stings a bit doesn't it :). Not even a slight itch. What do I care how many people use the thing I do? The only thing that matters to me is how good the toys I get to use are. > See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling. A lot more people eat fast food that gourmet food. I wonder if the people who can afford gourmet food feel like weaklings because of that. My guess is: No they don't.
- jorvi 3y agoBy kilogram, there's more ants than humans on the world yet no one says ants dominate the world. Perception matters :)
- jongjong 3y agoFlies are clearly the master species. There is a lot we can learn from a creature whose life purpose is eating shit all day, every day.
- jongjong 3y agoAgreed, it stings. I see it as a measure of how brainwashed/psychologically coerced the masses are. Why would a sentient, rational agent expend resources for an inferior product while a superior alternative exists which costs nothing.
- simooooo 3y agoBecause you can’t play games simply and easily for one.
- School-Cotton 3y agoIt doesn’t sting at all because my personal worth isn’t tied to what OS is used where. But this comment explains a lot about the mentality I see where people argue it’s a failing of Linux that it’s not intuitive for non-technical grandmothers.
- phendrenad2 3y agoWell, people also argue that it's a virtue of Linux that it's easier for non-technical grandmothers to use than Windows. I'm not making that up, either.
- JohnFen 3y ago> And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it No. In fact, as a Linux user, I'm happy that Linux doesn't have a major share of the desktop. If it did, then I think it would have a terrible (to me) effect on the direction of Linux development, because it would be more tempting to aim for the most common denominator, and we already have good options for the most common denominator.
- ASalazarMX 3y ago> And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it :). NOO IT DOESN'T!! Love the can of worms you opened with that comment. It does sting, because the desktop market is optimized for proprietary software. Open source, even if superior, is always behind on a hill that is upwards both ways. Proprietary firmware, drivers, patents, vendor lock-in, etc., have become very high walls.
- fennecfoxy 3y agoLinux's culture abhors everything required to be a great desktop OS and I don't think that will change any time soon. For the average person, they don't care what a window manager is or pulse/alsa/jack or whatever. They just want a singular consistent experience that "just works", whatever software they install, whatever hardware they plug in. And the Linux community is obsessed with the complete opposite of this. Apparently a lot of the systemd pushback was because it was making everything "too similar and compatible with each other". Now isn't that just laughable; that's what most people want!
- koromak 3y agoNah. I play games on Windows because its easy, program on Mac because its comfortable, and deploy on Linux because its powerful. Its all good!