4 ms·

The fact that Linux is still around 4% of the desktop market share is the example I use to illustrate that technical superiority doesn't always means commercial

The fact that Linux is still around 4% of the desktop market share is the example I use to illustrate that technical superiority doesn't always means commercial success.

rbanffy 2y ago
It's Betamax all over again ;-)
voidfunc 2y ago
Honestly, keep it that way. Desktop linux is designed for nerds, power users, and developers mostly. You start pulling in the plebs and unwashed masses of computer users and it will start to suck quickly especially once some mega corp embraces selling to consumers and ruins the entire ecosystem.
magicalhippo 2y ago
Just like how most people don't use a race car as their daily driver, performance isn't the main criteria for selecting a desktop OS for most people. Assuming the performance is above some minimum threshold, of course.
surgical_fire 2y ago
Because normal people don't even really understand what an OS is. For a layman, it is esoteric, arcane knowledge. My wife is not a technical person. She wouldn't know what Linux was or even that it existed if I never told her. Much less how to install it, what benefits it has in relation to Windows, etc. For her, if her computer is slow, it is because it is old or broken, not because the OS is a pile of crap. Beyond that, switching OS can be a major endeavor. I wanted to switch to Linux years before I took the plunge 3 years ago, but many things (including inertia) held me back. It was when I was going to do one of my yearly fresh windows installs that I decided to "let me give Linux a shot, if it doesn't work I do the fresh Windows install later". Linux worked well, and now I am here.
- glimshe 2y ago
  Same with my family. Sometimes people don't realize that our amazing techie community is a minuscle percentage of the world. People out there don't usually share our interests and passions. With no offense intended, the average person is a lot more concerned with looking good at church or their city's football team's performance... NOT with their operating system's thread switching overhead.
nine_k 2y ago
The desktop PC market is dominated by three factors: MS Office, other large proprietary software (like CAD), and games. The games segment is being slowly chipped away by things like the Steam console, with the Wine / Proton layer also runnable under normal desktop Linux. The rest is very likely stuck "forever". Maybe the CAD software, and other third-party software, will run adequately under Wine one day; MSO likely never will, at least not legally.
- tyingq 2y ago
  I suspect at some point they will figure out how to make things like CAD and MS office run well enough in a browser that the native apps die. I get it's hard to see that now given that web app versions of things like Office are terrible.
ajross 2y ago
The fact that people cite "desktop market share" as a measure of "commercial success" is even more surprising. The world is all phones and data centers now, and Linux dominates both. "Desktops" are a weird thing corporate types have to use to get paid, when they aren't glued to TikTok or Insta or whatever on their phones.
- fsflover 2y ago
  > The world is all phones For some strange reason, when people speak about Linux adoption, they mean GNU/Linux but never say it. Then comments like yours appear. Android has almost nothing to do with actual Linux. You can't run Linux-specific software or drivers. Case in point: Librem 5 runs GNU/Linux, and it's not very popular.
  - vkazanov 2y ago
    The proper name would be then Android/Linux, I.e. Linux kernel with a non-gnu userspace. Either way, Linux the kernel has won everywhere but the desktop: server space, handheld, embedded, etc. In my house there is not a single device without a Linux kernel. This includes my NAS, the fridge, both washing machines, all routers, our tv, a gaming console, all mobile devices, my kids PC, my wife's laptop, and mine as well. It wasn't even a religious choice or something. Out of 20+ devices only 5 required some kind of choice: buying 2 Samsung phones instead of whatever apple sells, 2 dell laptops with Linux preinstalled and a steam deck. Linux success is so massive, I couldn't even imagine it 25 years ago.
  - ajross 2y ago
    > You can't run Linux-specific software Except the whole driver, storage, security and network stack, which people spend whole careers working on. Look if the kernel doesn't interest you, that's fine. But it's (by far) the biggest component of the system and to some of us it's kinda notable that it's taken over the world. You can semantically define us out of existence but it doesn't make the software go away. You're just not paying attention to it.
    - 2y ago
bitsandboots 2y ago
By which analytics do you get "still around 4%"? statcouter.com, which currently shows that? Because when you say "still", then put it into the perspective of: On statcounter, it was 3% mid-last year. On steam, it's currently over 2% and was 1% in 2021. So you can stay it's still 4%, or you can say it's grown 50%+ in recent years.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

The fact that Linux is still around 4% of the desktop market share is the example I use to illustrate that technical superiority doesn't always means commercial success.

rbanffy 2y ago

It's Betamax all over again ;-)

voidfunc 2y ago

Honestly, keep it that way. Desktop linux is designed for nerds, power users, and developers mostly. You start pulling in the plebs and unwashed masses of computer users and it will start to suck quickly especially once some mega corp embraces selling to consumers and ruins the entire ecosystem.

magicalhippo 2y ago

Just like how most people don't use a race car as their daily driver, performance isn't the main criteria for selecting a desktop OS for most people. Assuming the performance is above some minimum threshold, of course.

surgical_fire 2y ago

Because normal people don't even really understand what an OS is. For a layman, it is esoteric, arcane knowledge. My wife is not a technical person. She wouldn't know what Linux was or even that it existed if I never told her. Much less how to install it, what benefits it has in relation to Windows, etc. For her, if her computer is slow, it is because it is old or broken, not because the OS is a pile of crap. Beyond that, switching OS can be a major endeavor. I wanted to switch to Linux years before I took the plunge 3 years ago, but many things (including inertia) held me back. It was when I was going to do one of my yearly fresh windows installs that I decided to "let me give Linux a shot, if it doesn't work I do the fresh Windows install later". Linux worked well, and now I am here.

glimshe 2y ago
Same with my family. Sometimes people don't realize that our amazing techie community is a minuscle percentage of the world. People out there don't usually share our interests and passions. With no offense intended, the average person is a lot more concerned with looking good at church or their city's football team's performance... NOT with their operating system's thread switching overhead.

nine_k 2y ago

The desktop PC market is dominated by three factors: MS Office, other large proprietary software (like CAD), and games. The games segment is being slowly chipped away by things like the Steam console, with the Wine / Proton layer also runnable under normal desktop Linux. The rest is very likely stuck "forever". Maybe the CAD software, and other third-party software, will run adequately under Wine one day; MSO likely never will, at least not legally.

tyingq 2y ago
I suspect at some point they will figure out how to make things like CAD and MS office run well enough in a browser that the native apps die. I get it's hard to see that now given that web app versions of things like Office are terrible.

ajross 2y ago

The fact that people cite "desktop market share" as a measure of "commercial success" is even more surprising. The world is all phones and data centers now, and Linux dominates both. "Desktops" are a weird thing corporate types have to use to get paid, when they aren't glued to TikTok or Insta or whatever on their phones.

fsflover 2y ago
> The world is all phones For some strange reason, when people speak about Linux adoption, they mean GNU/Linux but never say it. Then comments like yours appear. Android has almost nothing to do with actual Linux. You can't run Linux-specific software or drivers. Case in point: Librem 5 runs GNU/Linux, and it's not very popular.
- vkazanov 2y ago
  The proper name would be then Android/Linux, I.e. Linux kernel with a non-gnu userspace. Either way, Linux the kernel has won everywhere but the desktop: server space, handheld, embedded, etc. In my house there is not a single device without a Linux kernel. This includes my NAS, the fridge, both washing machines, all routers, our tv, a gaming console, all mobile devices, my kids PC, my wife's laptop, and mine as well. It wasn't even a religious choice or something. Out of 20+ devices only 5 required some kind of choice: buying 2 Samsung phones instead of whatever apple sells, 2 dell laptops with Linux preinstalled and a steam deck. Linux success is so massive, I couldn't even imagine it 25 years ago.
- ajross 2y ago
  > You can't run Linux-specific software Except the whole driver, storage, security and network stack, which people spend whole careers working on. Look if the kernel doesn't interest you, that's fine. But it's (by far) the biggest component of the system and to some of us it's kinda notable that it's taken over the world. You can semantically define us out of existence but it doesn't make the software go away. You're just not paying attention to it.
  - 2y ago

bitsandboots 2y ago

By which analytics do you get "still around 4%"? statcouter.com, which currently shows that? Because when you say "still", then put it into the perspective of: On statcounter, it was 3% mid-last year. On steam, it's currently over 2% and was 1% in 2021. So you can stay it's still 4%, or you can say it's grown 50%+ in recent years.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]