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Together, Linux + ChromeOS (much closer to standard GNU+Linux than Android) have something between 6% and 7% of the desktop. I don't remember people saying the

Together, Linux + ChromeOS (much closer to standard GNU+Linux than Android) have something between 6% and 7% of the desktop. I don't remember people saying the same about MacOS when it was around that mark. Of course, we must be realistic. Linux around 6% is very different from MacOS at 6%. In that case, they already had support from items people complain to this day about Linux not having; main examĺes are msoffice and photoshop. Nevertheless, Linux on the desktop has never been so good. Flatpak (or even AppImages and snaps) allow me to have a "stable core" with recently updated software. Support for most hardware is much better now (looks like most vendors make sure the hardware supports Linux, even though they themselves don't announce it). Pipewire and Wayland matured to the point where you can finally stream your desktop on Wayland using Pipewire. GNOME is snappier today then it was and cleaner and more elegant; of course we still need some consistency but windows suffers from that too; and, look, it even has thumbnails on the file picker! The kernel evolved to a point where desktop is just another well supported system: MGLRU and other improvements made latency on the desktop even under memory pressure just ideal. The environment around it also evolved a lot. Many FLOSS software are on a quality level today that mostly only professional on almost niche areas can't use Linux on the desktop. Consider Blender, Godot, Audacity, Inkscape, Firefox, OBS... these things are refined, stable, elegant and don't try to steal your attention, require periodic payments or throw ads on your face. Actually a Linux desktop user feels very sorry when they see a "standard" windows user. And I'm not even talking about proton or areas where Linux leads or is well established. So yes, it improved. Nevertheless, I'd love to, but I don't think I'll see Linux on the desktop beat windows or MacOS. But, know one thing: I don't care. Linux on the desktop has been good enough for me for a very long time and it will only get better. I just hope someday its market share will be big enough for it to no longer be ignored by so many vendors. Watching current growth, I don't think that is too far anymore now.

Beached 3y ago
I use kubuntu as my daily driver for work for a little over 2 years now. I still run into daily issues that just make me not want to use it for my personal desktop os. I fret Everytime I update, yet I must update due to work. but I have to schedule and plan those updates so that when the whole thing takes a shit, I can spend 2 or 3 hours fixing it. Just using the built in update utility, or apt upgrade, or really anything runs about a 10-20% chance of shit breaking. (I didn't do the math) audio experience is terrible all around, and Bluetooth and wifi use out the box, is meh at best for range and stability. I've tried a dozen distros to see if the grass is greener somewhere else, it isn't, and I have to work, I don't have an hour every day to fiddle, I have to bill clients. good support is almost non existent, IF you get help, it's from some greater than thou righteous asshole who suggests you just rewrite the drivers yourself and create a pull request. while I agree it is close, there is a still a LOT of 'polish' that needs to come where I will feel confident that hitting update doesn't ruin my day, and that when I'm done with a stress filled day of work, I'll be able to boot up and play my games without having to troubleshoot for an hour first.
- skulk 3y ago
  Your overall point is valid and I don't want to minimize your struggles, but I do have a few questions. > I fret Everytime I update, yet I must update due to work. but I have to schedule and plan those updates so that when the whole thing takes a shit, I can spend 2 or 3 hours fixing it. Just using the built in update utility, or apt upgrade, or really anything runs about a 10-20% chance of shit breaking. (I didn't do the math) What... are you doing? Do you have some strange use-case that might be causing this? Since 2014 I've daily driven debians, Arch, and now NixOS and updates that break my system have been exceedingly rare. I don't remember a single time Arch pacman -Syu broke my system, nor apt, and, well, NixOS doesn't count ;) > good support is almost non existent, IF you get help, it's from some greater than thou righteous asshole who suggests you just rewrite the drivers yourself and create a pull request. Where do you ask for help? How do you ask it? I've never received such a dickish response when I go on IRC and ask questions, no matter how stupid. I'm consistently impressed at how dedicated some community members are to helping newbies out. What you're saying is completely opposite to my experience.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  It's got to be the hardware. Most people don't have two or three hours fixing their desktop after an update. I use Debian Testing, and I can't remember the last time an update went bad; it's been years. If you use bleeding-edge hardware with an OS that vendors aren't specifically targeting, expect problems. I gave up trying to put Linux on random new laptops, so I've researched compatibility ahead of every purchase I've made in the last 10 years. Also, if you buy from a vendor that specializes in Linux, there will be a markup, but you will also get assurances and support. We can pretend like that's a failure on the part of Linux, but Apple only gives you like five choices of machine, while Linux runs at least somewhat on every random computer-like object.
  - martinald 3y ago
    Feel like I'm on a different planet to a lot of these desktop Linux users. I've used desktop Linux since the late 90s - Redhat 6 was the first disto I used. I have had uncountable complete system failures since then. As the parent says doing a dist-upgrade has a very non-0 chance of completely bricking the system. I've even had apt brick itself multiple times through normal upgrades. Linux on the desktop for me over the past 25 years has been hilariously unreliable, by far the most buggy software I have used over my career. Linux on the server is flawless and I use it all the time, but the amount of software installed compared to desktop usage is tiny, and I don't do dist upgrades on servers (would rebuilt it onto another machine). For me after 25 years of various attempts the most reliable desktop "Linux" is actually Windows with WSL2. All hardware works great, sleep works, Bluetooth works, display scaling works, WiFi6E works etc. And I have a great Linux machine thru WSL2.
7e 3y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha... This has it at 5.1%. But ChromeOS has a lot of corporate mojo making it work. It’s only partially open source. A lot of the good bits are closed. So that puts Linux at 2.91%. A rounding error. For 30 years.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  3% is probably twice as many as 10 years ago. Pretty good for people who aren't selling you anything and aren't asking you to use Linux.
- marcodiego 3y ago
  Your data, as of this writing, is from January 23. Consider this: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201501-202307 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide... which fully agrees with your data and shows the combination Linux+ChromeOS above 7% in June 23. Thanks for pointing how fast Linux on the desktop has been growing lately.
jonnycomputer 3y ago
And Krita. Great software.

Beached 3y ago

I use kubuntu as my daily driver for work for a little over 2 years now. I still run into daily issues that just make me not want to use it for my personal desktop os. I fret Everytime I update, yet I must update due to work. but I have to schedule and plan those updates so that when the whole thing takes a shit, I can spend 2 or 3 hours fixing it. Just using the built in update utility, or apt upgrade, or really anything runs about a 10-20% chance of shit breaking. (I didn't do the math) audio experience is terrible all around, and Bluetooth and wifi use out the box, is meh at best for range and stability. I've tried a dozen distros to see if the grass is greener somewhere else, it isn't, and I have to work, I don't have an hour every day to fiddle, I have to bill clients. good support is almost non existent, IF you get help, it's from some greater than thou righteous asshole who suggests you just rewrite the drivers yourself and create a pull request. while I agree it is close, there is a still a LOT of 'polish' that needs to come where I will feel confident that hitting update doesn't ruin my day, and that when I'm done with a stress filled day of work, I'll be able to boot up and play my games without having to troubleshoot for an hour first.

skulk 3y ago
Your overall point is valid and I don't want to minimize your struggles, but I do have a few questions. > I fret Everytime I update, yet I must update due to work. but I have to schedule and plan those updates so that when the whole thing takes a shit, I can spend 2 or 3 hours fixing it. Just using the built in update utility, or apt upgrade, or really anything runs about a 10-20% chance of shit breaking. (I didn't do the math) What... are you doing? Do you have some strange use-case that might be causing this? Since 2014 I've daily driven debians, Arch, and now NixOS and updates that break my system have been exceedingly rare. I don't remember a single time Arch pacman -Syu broke my system, nor apt, and, well, NixOS doesn't count ;) > good support is almost non existent, IF you get help, it's from some greater than thou righteous asshole who suggests you just rewrite the drivers yourself and create a pull request. Where do you ask for help? How do you ask it? I've never received such a dickish response when I go on IRC and ask questions, no matter how stupid. I'm consistently impressed at how dedicated some community members are to helping newbies out. What you're saying is completely opposite to my experience.
pessimizer 3y ago
It's got to be the hardware. Most people don't have two or three hours fixing their desktop after an update. I use Debian Testing, and I can't remember the last time an update went bad; it's been years. If you use bleeding-edge hardware with an OS that vendors aren't specifically targeting, expect problems. I gave up trying to put Linux on random new laptops, so I've researched compatibility ahead of every purchase I've made in the last 10 years. Also, if you buy from a vendor that specializes in Linux, there will be a markup, but you will also get assurances and support. We can pretend like that's a failure on the part of Linux, but Apple only gives you like five choices of machine, while Linux runs at least somewhat on every random computer-like object.
- martinald 3y ago
  Feel like I'm on a different planet to a lot of these desktop Linux users. I've used desktop Linux since the late 90s - Redhat 6 was the first disto I used. I have had uncountable complete system failures since then. As the parent says doing a dist-upgrade has a very non-0 chance of completely bricking the system. I've even had apt brick itself multiple times through normal upgrades. Linux on the desktop for me over the past 25 years has been hilariously unreliable, by far the most buggy software I have used over my career. Linux on the server is flawless and I use it all the time, but the amount of software installed compared to desktop usage is tiny, and I don't do dist upgrades on servers (would rebuilt it onto another machine). For me after 25 years of various attempts the most reliable desktop "Linux" is actually Windows with WSL2. All hardware works great, sleep works, Bluetooth works, display scaling works, WiFi6E works etc. And I have a great Linux machine thru WSL2.

7e 3y ago

https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-share-of-windows-7/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha... This has it at 5.1%. But ChromeOS has a lot of corporate mojo making it work. It’s only partially open source. A lot of the good bits are closed. So that puts Linux at 2.91%. A rounding error. For 30 years.

pessimizer 3y ago
3% is probably twice as many as 10 years ago. Pretty good for people who aren't selling you anything and aren't asking you to use Linux.
marcodiego 3y ago
Your data, as of this writing, is from January 23. Consider this: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201501-202307 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide... which fully agrees with your data and shows the combination Linux+ChromeOS above 7% in June 23. Thanks for pointing how fast Linux on the desktop has been growing lately.

jonnycomputer 3y ago

And Krita. Great software.