10 ms·

I have to wonder how much of this is people switching to Linux vs the larger trend of people not having traditional computers to begin with. Outside of gamers,

I have to wonder how much of this is people switching to Linux vs the larger trend of people not having traditional computers to begin with. Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. So is a solid chunk of this the people that would have already had Linux desktops continuing to have theirs since they would likely be the same people (more technical, needing to do tasks not possible on phones and tablets) less likely to be making that switch. Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. Given these numbers are percents I would be very curious. Now yes there is a clear uptick thanks to the Steam Deck (however with Microsoft pushing their optimized for gaming Windows it will be interesting to see if that continues or goes backwards). But I would be reluctant to call that Linux Desktop anymore than I would call Android an uptick for Linux.

positron26 1y ago
[dead]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
palata 1y ago
I agree with your points, except this: > thanks to the Steam Deck [...] but I would be reluctant to call that Linux Desktop anymore than I would call Android an uptick for Linux. The Steam Deck very much runs Linux Desktop. Android runs the Linux kernel, but everything else is different. SteamOS is a Linux distribution based on Arch. If you run your Steam Deck in "desktop mode", it is very much a Linux Desktop (with a read-only system and A/B updates etc, but still).
- zozbot234 1y ago
  Android systems don't even run the linux kernel in any real sense, pretty much every downstream kernel has millions of lines of patched code that will never make it upstream in their current form. Of course, that's no different from mostly any other "Linux" embedded device, but it's very different indeed from what's standard on desktop systems.
  - palata 1y ago
    I would still count it as the Linux kernel. They don't change the syscall API, it's really mostly at the BSP level, right? Said differently: if manufacturers cared to mainstream their changes, they could. And we would all be better for it.
    - fsflover 1y ago
      > I would still count it as the Linux kernel. This may be technically true, except it has no single meaningful implication, like no Linux software works there.
      - MatthewPhillips 1y ago
        I think this really undervalues what Linux provides. The Android software is Linux software.
        fsflover 1y ago
        It's completely incompatible, so in practice it's a different OS. Doesn't mean it's not valuable.
        hagbard_c 1y ago
        Try Termux and you'll be surprised how much 'Linux' software runs fine on Android, this includes things made to run under X11 etc.
zeroc8 1y ago
The truth is, it doesn't really matter. What's important is that we have an alternative to keep Microsoft and Apple honest. If they overdo it with their crappy ideas - like showing ads in the start menu or recording the desktop - then people can easily switch, at least for personal computing.
- generic92034 1y ago
  But those "features" exist, and people did not switch (at least not in great numbers).
leereeves 1y ago
How many of the Linux desktops counted here are Steam Decks? The stats come from website trackers - do people browse the web on Steam Decks?
- freehorse 1y ago
  People do all kinds of crazy stuff with steam decks. I don't own one, but at least I give to steam that they created a general computing device that people can use however they please instead of yet another walled garden console. It would not surprise me if people actually also use them to browse the web.
- qwertycrackers 1y ago
  I do. It's a device that is often hooked up to my TV so it becomes the shared device for watching things like Youtube.
TacticalCoder 1y ago
[dead]
ryandv 1y ago
> At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. > [...] (more technical, needing to do tasks not possible on phones and tablets) Somewhat unrelated but something I never see discussed is how the form factor of the computing device changes our relationship to, and the types of, media that we produce and consume. One critical task not possible on phones and tablets is the production of long-form textual media; hence the concomitant rise of picture and video and the smartphone camera, which is now the primary medium through which many, many people view the world. Editing anything longer than a Tweet is torturous on a phone or even a tablet, and I suspect that this lack of ergonomics is what leads to the proliferation of reductive, simplistic, short-form, and byte-sized thinking. Computing "interface culture" was once hyper-literate; "in the beginning was the command line" [0], and people's primary way of seeing the internet was through words, keyboards, and terminals. Now we have the "colossal success of GUIs" and a Disney-fied [0], touchscreen interface to computing, where the control mechanisms used by adults are the exact same as the ones used by toddlers. [0] https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt
- paulcole 1y ago
  > One critical task not possible on phones and tablets is the production of long-form textual media The key addition obviously being “for me.” For others tablets (and for some others, phones) are what they use for producing long-form textual media. I, for example, have no issue producing long-form textual media on my iPad w/ Magic Keyboard. I’m sure that you will feel as though I’m not producing Real Long-Form Textual Media.
  - ryandv 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
adamc 1y ago
Must be circles. I just visited relatives, and brought my laptop as well as my phone; I barely used the laptop. But my brother always uses his, and his kids used laptops, and even one of my great nieces used a laptop. Did they have phones? Yes. Games isn't the only driver. It's hard to do things like write papers on phones.
- dmd 1y ago
  Nearly everyone in our family’s (public, Massachusetts) high school writes papers exclusively on their phone.
  - virgildotcodes 1y ago
    This is incredible, wow.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    Wow, isn't that painful without a big screen and keyboard? [1] Most primary schools here (NL) use Chromebooks or Windows laptops. High schools sometimes have a BYOD, but you certainly have to bring a laptop. [1] Of course, you can hook up most phones to a display, keyboard, mouse, but that blurring the lines a bit. A Samsung DeX device or future Pixel desktop mode device hooked up to peripherals is pretty much a desktop (Pixel will even support Linux apps in a VM).
    - dmd 1y ago
      To you or me, yes. And I would say “oh they just don’t know what they’re missing” but they all have laptops and chromebooks but prefer to use their phones.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    How do you write long school papers on the phone's tiny screen and keyboard?
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
itsoktocry 1y ago
>everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets And of the remaining desktop/laptop users, 90% of their work is being done in a browser. Which makes Linux distros like Ubuntu suitable for more people.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  If you are doing all of your work in a browser anyway, you might as well use a less finicky iPad with longer battery life with a regular Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Why would I recommend a Linux system?
  - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
    > Why would I recommend a Linux system? Greater control over what hardware and software you wish to run. e.g. you wouldn't have to follow Apple's decisions in making things obsolete and effectively keep old hardware running for a lot longer if you so wish. There's also a possible issue in having a U.S. based company in control of your O.S.
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      But most people could care less as long as they have the apps they need. They don’t want to muck around with their computers. I’ve been programming as a hobby since 1986 and professionally since 1996 and I don’t want to muck around with my computer. But the comment is about most people only caring about the browser.
      - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
        I recently switched from windows to Linux Mint because I didn't want to muck around with my computer. Now it runs faster than ever, and everything I can dream up of doing I can get done. If I do have a question, AI answers it.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    A few reasons: 1. iPadOS is kind of ass. Multi-tasking is lacking, cursor support is ehhh, and applications are still dumbed-down. This means more clicks, more actions, to do the same thing. 2. Bluetooth is ass, trust me I know. Thing will disconnect and you will need to manually reconnect them. I don't know why in the year 2025 bluetooth isn't completely seamless, but it isn't. 3. Rinky-dink keyboard and real keyboard is night and day. I've used those iPad keyboards. They suck.
Fokamul 1y ago
> At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here Interesting, could you tell me which part of US you are from? --- My 2 cents, small country, mid-Europe, more or less in the middle of list of GDP / AIC per capita in EU. Nearly everyone has some sort of PC or laptops for personal use. Now it's changing, kids(~5-13yrs old) are using phones and tablets for school, Tiktok, Ytube, games. And only minority of kids is using PCs. After they reach certain age, they've switched to PC games, at least in the past. Let's see what will happen now. Gamers use primarily PC (Windows, because forced BS Anticheats), consoles are minority. Probably because big tradition of piracy here, for long time it was legal to download anything. Even after forced change from EU, it's somewhat grey area and you can torrent anything, without VPN and nobody will care. But regarding pirating games, it changed years ago, with Steam of course. Like everywhere else. Still it's funny that we have same price or sometimes even higher than US and our median salary is ~5x lower than US. :-) Here we call it "specific market", meaning "everybody buys it and everybody's stupid". Only prosecuted cases I know, it was people uploading movies (usually local production) and they've made money from it. In case of Germany and their automation of spamming letters from lawyers with ransom for €1k because someone on your internet torrented something. That's totally ridiculous from our point of view and it would spawn huge public backlash. I think that even lawyers torrents here :D
- xaitv 1y ago
  Netherlands here. Most people I know (outside of gamers) tend to have a laptop only if they have one for work anyway, they use their phones for banking, tax, searching the correct spelling of words etc. That's in the age groups from like 30 all the way to 70. I don't think I know any non-gamer that has an actual desktop, just people with laptops. For the gamers consoles are the vast majority, of the PC gamers pretty much all use Windows. When I tell friends I use Linux it's mostly "oh yeah I looked into that as well when Windows 11 came out but didn't end up switching".
  - Fokamul 1y ago
    Yes, top of the list, it shows :) Latops and desktops, it's a mix here. Older people had mainly desktops in the past. That's my experience, at least. Banking, yeah mainly phones because of ridiculous forced banking apps from corporate masters, like everywhere else? (certain bank even lost a lot of customers because of that) Taxes, if you are just an employee, taxes are done by your employer for you, by law. (I presume it's a post-communism BS, so people doesn't pay attention how much taxes we pay.) If you have other types of income, you do it yourself, you have app/website to click through it, easy. Not automatic though. Self-employed IT pay less taxes than normal employees :D and overall lower-income people pay bigger taxes by percentage, what a great country :D We call your country Holland, great country imho, If I would thinking about moving, that's top option for me. Only thing that keeps me here are best gun laws in EU (I have Glock, AR15 clone, Bren3 ordered), you can conceal carry nearly everywhere, you can even use gun for self-defense, sadly very low criminality here :) Hell, I can even legally carry katana, not kidding. Linux is used only by IT people, friends cannot switch because they play MP games with invasive Anticheat running on kernel. Personally, I'm only switching people to Linux if they cannot afford new PC because of Win11 upgrade. Zorin OS usually.
JohnFen 1y ago
> Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. Interesting. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a personal computer at home. Mostly laptops. With the exceptions of nerds like myself, the signifier that someone is a gamer is that their home computer is a tower rather than a laptop. I wonder how much regional variation there is around this sort of thing? It sounds like it might be quite a lot.
- chrisweekly 1y ago
  FWIW, this is my experience too. I'm 50yo, live in the Boston area.
- aiisjustanif 1y ago
  Hey, some of us are non-gamer nerds doing computing infrastructure and cybersecurity with towers too :)
api 1y ago
Tablets and phones have replaced PCs for casual use and content consumption. If you want to make anything beyond posts and videos you usually need a PC. Mobile OSes are strictly designed for consumption and are too restricted for most other use cases. It’s an OS limit not a hardware issue.
dfxm12 1y ago
Yeah, are there any big box retailers selling machines with Linux installed as an option? Maybe the numbers are small enough for hobbyists to make a dent, but until you see Linux machines in best buy, etc., this is probably due more to people dumping their personal windows machine in favor of a using their work laptop or iPad almost exclusively.
- donkeybeer 1y ago
  Dell
nobodyandproud 1y ago
> Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. A Linux desktop is far better to run LLM experiments with. My home, tinker workstation used to be Windows but there was no reason to keep it that way, when most of the build and support tooling prefer Linux.
- oblio 1y ago
  That's a tiny minority of PC users, though.
  - nobodyandproud 1y ago
    It’s not 50% territory; but it’s enough to push it up from 1-2% to 5%. There’s interest in LLM and GenAI beyond regular tinkerers; local NSFW image generator models are apparently a thing.
eqvinox 1y ago
> Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. Why? If Windows & OSX desktops are in decline, but Linux isn't, I'd still celebrate that - apparently Linux is serving the more "important" / long-lived use cases?
- nerdjon 1y ago
  The article is specifically claiming a shift and growth. But if all that really changed was an increase in percentage due to less devices overall there really isnt much of a shift or growth. I think there is likely an argument that the people that would have previously used Linux are likely using Linux for tasks that would not easily work on a phone or a tablet and are likely more technical users. Where as many users who would have previously used Windows or Mac for general basic computing can easily accomplish those tasks on their phones or tablets. (Not all tasks obviously, but there are a lot of tasks that an iPad can do that you would have previously done on your traditional computer). That is why to me just celebrating a percent change really is not telling us much of the story. And to be clear here, I am asking the question not to say that the number is not something to celebrate but to ask why the number is the way it is and celebrate accordingly.
TuringTest 1y ago
> Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. So, the true meaning of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" was that in the end there would only be a single unit left?
giancarlostoro 1y ago
I'm not sure but going on 3 years now after having mostly only used it full time at a previous job where everyone's workstation was a Linux one. It helps that I can now do all of my gaming on Linux, so I'm not touching Windows again, outside of an employer paying for my work devices to use it on.
alnwlsn 1y ago
Both my parents run on Microsoft Excel. Neither of them care much for phones or tablets, but if there was an ExcelDeck running ExcelOS and it had a web browser and worked like the desktop version of Excel does, maybe they would go for it. As it stands though, that's not the case, so I'll be stuck supporting a couple of Windows desktops permanently. Before you suggest the app versions of Excel or Google Sheets, that's already a step too far. My mom told me she's "basically done learning new technology" and that's just how it's going to be.
leptons 1y ago
>Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. That's very anecdotal of you. Proves absolutely nothing. Since we're posting anecdotes here, everyone I know has at least one computer that is not "their work computer" (which is confusing, is it employer-owned, or just personally owned for their own purposes?). Many people do not like typing on tablet or phone keyboards, real keyboards are much nicer. Bigger screens are also much nicer than tiny phone screens and most tablet screens. I suspect your anecdotal circle is probably very young and may just not be able to afford a real computer, or have never used one, so they are fine with their tiny devices, not knowing the benefits of having a more traditional laptop or desktop computer.
_verandaguy 1y ago
I'll chime in here; while I'm in one of those niches you described at the start of your comment (with multiple laptops, a gaming PC, and a homelab made up of what I'd call a reasonable number of physical computers of various descriptions), me and a few other friends of mine recently made the jump away from Windows and to various Linuxes on our gaming PCs. I went for Ubuntu, while my friends mostly went to some type of "gaming-optimized" flavour of Arch. I'm definitely an edge case as most computing goes, but it feels for the first time like the gaming-on-Linux train's gaining traction, and there's enough community support out there that making the jump feels like a palatable ideal.
thewebguyd 1y ago
> Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. I've been saying this for a while, in the sense that the "year of the Linux desktop" isn't going to come from mass adoption of Linux on the desktop, but will come because overall "desktop" market share will decrease to the point where if you need a desktop, you are probably technical enough and more likely to be running Linux. Desktop (and laptop) computing is becoming niche outside of work. Like you said, most folks just use their phones, and maybe an iPad. By having a non-day job computer at home, and having it be a core device, already puts you in a niche group of users. Gamers, devs, media professionals and enthusiasts are the remaining desktop computing users. Linux is well suited to take over gamers and devs, media professionals will continue using Macs. So yeah, it might appear Linux usage is growing, but I think the more likely story is it's relatively stable and overall desktop usage is shrinking.
trod1234 1y ago
This is largely people who were previously Windows customers but who chose to go another way. Microsoft is doing a lot of shenanigans with their monopoly power, and anti-trust is largely toothless. I know quite a lot of professionals, who for them the last straw was purchasing the professional edition, and then finding out later after an update that their company lock screens now have ad's posted; and worse, those ads frequently have malware that cause even more headaches for them in a unmanageable way. The bean counters at MS pushed their biggest supporters over the knifes edge, and alot more people are getting serious about alternatives to MS now.
Melatonic 1y ago
I think this is probably it. That plus the SteamDeck and maybe other random linux running devices.
pms 1y ago
Why is this is a top comment? Market share is a relative measure. Even if there is a drop in the number of personal computers, still it's an achievement that the drop didn't affect Linux, while it affected other platforms. > Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. I disagree. Imagine that Linux became the OS used on 95% of personal computers. According to your reasoning there wouldn't be much to celebrate. Says who?
- throwawaylaptop 1y ago
  Because it's an important distinction. If all PC sales fall to almost zero, and only the most hardcore tech nerds keep using them, and use Linux like they've been doing for two decades now, did Linux really win the battle or did the entire war evaporate and they are some long lost leftover soldier in the jungle fighting some battle no one else even is anymore.
  - pms 1y ago
    If an OS is used, then that's because people need it, not because they're fighting some imaginary fight in the jungle. It's their preferred OS. If the number of people using computers shrinks, because non-pro users move to mobiles, while the fraction of pros using Linux increases to 95%, or even 50%, I think that's a very clear win for Linux. The reason why MacOS grew in popularity is because it started to be used by pros, myself included, i.e., I've switched from Linux to MacOS seeing many top computer scientists using MacOS. However, after over 10 years of using MacOS, I'm actually still not sure whether it was worth it, and I'm considering to go back to Linux since a few years. The main reasons stopping me from switching is a reliable Calendar app and concerns about battery life.
    - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
      It was just an analogy. My point is still that if you get 1 million nerds using Linux in 2006, and even if they remain 1 million as the whole market dies in 2028, that doesn't say much more about Linux than it did in 2006 when only 1% of desktop users used it. On a side note, I'm no computer scientist (I don't even know what that means, and I'm from the SF bay area), but I used MS products since 1989. A friend gifted me a 2017 iMac Pro recently. I was impressed.. for 3 days. And then I wondered how people even work like this. Finder limitations, dock limitations, and the final nail in the coffin was no cutting files via command x. Apparently that's a thing apple people have put up with for decades? It just doesn't seem made for serious work. It's an amazing Linux Mint machine though.
kenny239 1y ago
it seems grok thinks that its mainly due to more people using linux now: https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_3ca6a3ae-6342-422e-9cee-9c48aeb195c7 https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_3ca6a3ae-6342-422e-9...

positron26 1y ago

[dead]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

palata 1y ago

I agree with your points, except this: > thanks to the Steam Deck [...] but I would be reluctant to call that Linux Desktop anymore than I would call Android an uptick for Linux. The Steam Deck very much runs Linux Desktop. Android runs the Linux kernel, but everything else is different. SteamOS is a Linux distribution based on Arch. If you run your Steam Deck in "desktop mode", it is very much a Linux Desktop (with a read-only system and A/B updates etc, but still).

zozbot234 1y ago
Android systems don't even run the linux kernel in any real sense, pretty much every downstream kernel has millions of lines of patched code that will never make it upstream in their current form. Of course, that's no different from mostly any other "Linux" embedded device, but it's very different indeed from what's standard on desktop systems.
- palata 1y ago
  I would still count it as the Linux kernel. They don't change the syscall API, it's really mostly at the BSP level, right? Said differently: if manufacturers cared to mainstream their changes, they could. And we would all be better for it.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    > I would still count it as the Linux kernel. This may be technically true, except it has no single meaningful implication, like no Linux software works there.
    - MatthewPhillips 1y ago
      I think this really undervalues what Linux provides. The Android software is Linux software.
      - fsflover 1y ago
        It's completely incompatible, so in practice it's a different OS. Doesn't mean it's not valuable.
        hagbard_c 1y ago
        Try Termux and you'll be surprised how much 'Linux' software runs fine on Android, this includes things made to run under X11 etc.

zeroc8 1y ago

The truth is, it doesn't really matter. What's important is that we have an alternative to keep Microsoft and Apple honest. If they overdo it with their crappy ideas - like showing ads in the start menu or recording the desktop - then people can easily switch, at least for personal computing.

generic92034 1y ago
But those "features" exist, and people did not switch (at least not in great numbers).

leereeves 1y ago

How many of the Linux desktops counted here are Steam Decks? The stats come from website trackers - do people browse the web on Steam Decks?

freehorse 1y ago
People do all kinds of crazy stuff with steam decks. I don't own one, but at least I give to steam that they created a general computing device that people can use however they please instead of yet another walled garden console. It would not surprise me if people actually also use them to browse the web.
qwertycrackers 1y ago
I do. It's a device that is often hooked up to my TV so it becomes the shared device for watching things like Youtube.

TacticalCoder 1y ago

[dead]

ryandv 1y ago

> At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. > [...] (more technical, needing to do tasks not possible on phones and tablets) Somewhat unrelated but something I never see discussed is how the form factor of the computing device changes our relationship to, and the types of, media that we produce and consume. One critical task not possible on phones and tablets is the production of long-form textual media; hence the concomitant rise of picture and video and the smartphone camera, which is now the primary medium through which many, many people view the world. Editing anything longer than a Tweet is torturous on a phone or even a tablet, and I suspect that this lack of ergonomics is what leads to the proliferation of reductive, simplistic, short-form, and byte-sized thinking. Computing "interface culture" was once hyper-literate; "in the beginning was the command line" [0], and people's primary way of seeing the internet was through words, keyboards, and terminals. Now we have the "colossal success of GUIs" and a Disney-fied [0], touchscreen interface to computing, where the control mechanisms used by adults are the exact same as the ones used by toddlers. [0] https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt

paulcole 1y ago
> One critical task not possible on phones and tablets is the production of long-form textual media The key addition obviously being “for me.” For others tablets (and for some others, phones) are what they use for producing long-form textual media. I, for example, have no issue producing long-form textual media on my iPad w/ Magic Keyboard. I’m sure that you will feel as though I’m not producing Real Long-Form Textual Media.
- ryandv 1y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

adamc 1y ago

Must be circles. I just visited relatives, and brought my laptop as well as my phone; I barely used the laptop. But my brother always uses his, and his kids used laptops, and even one of my great nieces used a laptop. Did they have phones? Yes. Games isn't the only driver. It's hard to do things like write papers on phones.

dmd 1y ago
Nearly everyone in our family’s (public, Massachusetts) high school writes papers exclusively on their phone.
- virgildotcodes 1y ago
  This is incredible, wow.
- microtonal 1y ago
  Wow, isn't that painful without a big screen and keyboard? [1] Most primary schools here (NL) use Chromebooks or Windows laptops. High schools sometimes have a BYOD, but you certainly have to bring a laptop. [1] Of course, you can hook up most phones to a display, keyboard, mouse, but that blurring the lines a bit. A Samsung DeX device or future Pixel desktop mode device hooked up to peripherals is pretty much a desktop (Pixel will even support Linux apps in a VM).
  - dmd 1y ago
    To you or me, yes. And I would say “oh they just don’t know what they’re missing” but they all have laptops and chromebooks but prefer to use their phones.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  How do you write long school papers on the phone's tiny screen and keyboard?
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago

itsoktocry 1y ago

>everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets And of the remaining desktop/laptop users, 90% of their work is being done in a browser. Which makes Linux distros like Ubuntu suitable for more people.

scarface_74 1y ago
If you are doing all of your work in a browser anyway, you might as well use a less finicky iPad with longer battery life with a regular Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Why would I recommend a Linux system?
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  > Why would I recommend a Linux system? Greater control over what hardware and software you wish to run. e.g. you wouldn't have to follow Apple's decisions in making things obsolete and effectively keep old hardware running for a lot longer if you so wish. There's also a possible issue in having a U.S. based company in control of your O.S.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    But most people could care less as long as they have the apps they need. They don’t want to muck around with their computers. I’ve been programming as a hobby since 1986 and professionally since 1996 and I don’t want to muck around with my computer. But the comment is about most people only caring about the browser.
    - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
      I recently switched from windows to Linux Mint because I didn't want to muck around with my computer. Now it runs faster than ever, and everything I can dream up of doing I can get done. If I do have a question, AI answers it.
- const_cast 1y ago
  A few reasons: 1. iPadOS is kind of ass. Multi-tasking is lacking, cursor support is ehhh, and applications are still dumbed-down. This means more clicks, more actions, to do the same thing. 2. Bluetooth is ass, trust me I know. Thing will disconnect and you will need to manually reconnect them. I don't know why in the year 2025 bluetooth isn't completely seamless, but it isn't. 3. Rinky-dink keyboard and real keyboard is night and day. I've used those iPad keyboards. They suck.

Fokamul 1y ago

> At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here Interesting, could you tell me which part of US you are from? --- My 2 cents, small country, mid-Europe, more or less in the middle of list of GDP / AIC per capita in EU. Nearly everyone has some sort of PC or laptops for personal use. Now it's changing, kids(~5-13yrs old) are using phones and tablets for school, Tiktok, Ytube, games. And only minority of kids is using PCs. After they reach certain age, they've switched to PC games, at least in the past. Let's see what will happen now. Gamers use primarily PC (Windows, because forced BS Anticheats), consoles are minority. Probably because big tradition of piracy here, for long time it was legal to download anything. Even after forced change from EU, it's somewhat grey area and you can torrent anything, without VPN and nobody will care. But regarding pirating games, it changed years ago, with Steam of course. Like everywhere else. Still it's funny that we have same price or sometimes even higher than US and our median salary is ~5x lower than US. :-) Here we call it "specific market", meaning "everybody buys it and everybody's stupid". Only prosecuted cases I know, it was people uploading movies (usually local production) and they've made money from it. In case of Germany and their automation of spamming letters from lawyers with ransom for €1k because someone on your internet torrented something. That's totally ridiculous from our point of view and it would spawn huge public backlash. I think that even lawyers torrents here :D

xaitv 1y ago
Netherlands here. Most people I know (outside of gamers) tend to have a laptop only if they have one for work anyway, they use their phones for banking, tax, searching the correct spelling of words etc. That's in the age groups from like 30 all the way to 70. I don't think I know any non-gamer that has an actual desktop, just people with laptops. For the gamers consoles are the vast majority, of the PC gamers pretty much all use Windows. When I tell friends I use Linux it's mostly "oh yeah I looked into that as well when Windows 11 came out but didn't end up switching".
- Fokamul 1y ago
  Yes, top of the list, it shows :) Latops and desktops, it's a mix here. Older people had mainly desktops in the past. That's my experience, at least. Banking, yeah mainly phones because of ridiculous forced banking apps from corporate masters, like everywhere else? (certain bank even lost a lot of customers because of that) Taxes, if you are just an employee, taxes are done by your employer for you, by law. (I presume it's a post-communism BS, so people doesn't pay attention how much taxes we pay.) If you have other types of income, you do it yourself, you have app/website to click through it, easy. Not automatic though. Self-employed IT pay less taxes than normal employees :D and overall lower-income people pay bigger taxes by percentage, what a great country :D We call your country Holland, great country imho, If I would thinking about moving, that's top option for me. Only thing that keeps me here are best gun laws in EU (I have Glock, AR15 clone, Bren3 ordered), you can conceal carry nearly everywhere, you can even use gun for self-defense, sadly very low criminality here :) Hell, I can even legally carry katana, not kidding. Linux is used only by IT people, friends cannot switch because they play MP games with invasive Anticheat running on kernel. Personally, I'm only switching people to Linux if they cannot afford new PC because of Win11 upgrade. Zorin OS usually.

JohnFen 1y ago

> Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. Interesting. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a personal computer at home. Mostly laptops. With the exceptions of nerds like myself, the signifier that someone is a gamer is that their home computer is a tower rather than a laptop. I wonder how much regional variation there is around this sort of thing? It sounds like it might be quite a lot.

chrisweekly 1y ago
FWIW, this is my experience too. I'm 50yo, live in the Boston area.
aiisjustanif 1y ago
Hey, some of us are non-gamer nerds doing computing infrastructure and cybersecurity with towers too :)

api 1y ago

Tablets and phones have replaced PCs for casual use and content consumption. If you want to make anything beyond posts and videos you usually need a PC. Mobile OSes are strictly designed for consumption and are too restricted for most other use cases. It’s an OS limit not a hardware issue.

dfxm12 1y ago

Yeah, are there any big box retailers selling machines with Linux installed as an option? Maybe the numbers are small enough for hobbyists to make a dent, but until you see Linux machines in best buy, etc., this is probably due more to people dumping their personal windows machine in favor of a using their work laptop or iPad almost exclusively.

donkeybeer 1y ago
Dell

nobodyandproud 1y ago

> Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. A Linux desktop is far better to run LLM experiments with. My home, tinker workstation used to be Windows but there was no reason to keep it that way, when most of the build and support tooling prefer Linux.

oblio 1y ago
That's a tiny minority of PC users, though.
- nobodyandproud 1y ago
  It’s not 50% territory; but it’s enough to push it up from 1-2% to 5%. There’s interest in LLM and GenAI beyond regular tinkerers; local NSFW image generator models are apparently a thing.

eqvinox 1y ago

> Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. Why? If Windows & OSX desktops are in decline, but Linux isn't, I'd still celebrate that - apparently Linux is serving the more "important" / long-lived use cases?

nerdjon 1y ago
The article is specifically claiming a shift and growth. But if all that really changed was an increase in percentage due to less devices overall there really isnt much of a shift or growth. I think there is likely an argument that the people that would have previously used Linux are likely using Linux for tasks that would not easily work on a phone or a tablet and are likely more technical users. Where as many users who would have previously used Windows or Mac for general basic computing can easily accomplish those tasks on their phones or tablets. (Not all tasks obviously, but there are a lot of tasks that an iPad can do that you would have previously done on your traditional computer). That is why to me just celebrating a percent change really is not telling us much of the story. And to be clear here, I am asking the question not to say that the number is not something to celebrate but to ask why the number is the way it is and celebrate accordingly.

TuringTest 1y ago

> Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. So, the true meaning of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" was that in the end there would only be a single unit left?

giancarlostoro 1y ago

I'm not sure but going on 3 years now after having mostly only used it full time at a previous job where everyone's workstation was a Linux one. It helps that I can now do all of my gaming on Linux, so I'm not touching Windows again, outside of an employer paying for my work devices to use it on.

alnwlsn 1y ago

Both my parents run on Microsoft Excel. Neither of them care much for phones or tablets, but if there was an ExcelDeck running ExcelOS and it had a web browser and worked like the desktop version of Excel does, maybe they would go for it. As it stands though, that's not the case, so I'll be stuck supporting a couple of Windows desktops permanently. Before you suggest the app versions of Excel or Google Sheets, that's already a step too far. My mom told me she's "basically done learning new technology" and that's just how it's going to be.

leptons 1y ago

>Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. That's very anecdotal of you. Proves absolutely nothing. Since we're posting anecdotes here, everyone I know has at least one computer that is not "their work computer" (which is confusing, is it employer-owned, or just personally owned for their own purposes?). Many people do not like typing on tablet or phone keyboards, real keyboards are much nicer. Bigger screens are also much nicer than tiny phone screens and most tablet screens. I suspect your anecdotal circle is probably very young and may just not be able to afford a real computer, or have never used one, so they are fine with their tiny devices, not knowing the benefits of having a more traditional laptop or desktop computer.

_verandaguy 1y ago

I'll chime in here; while I'm in one of those niches you described at the start of your comment (with multiple laptops, a gaming PC, and a homelab made up of what I'd call a reasonable number of physical computers of various descriptions), me and a few other friends of mine recently made the jump away from Windows and to various Linuxes on our gaming PCs. I went for Ubuntu, while my friends mostly went to some type of "gaming-optimized" flavour of Arch. I'm definitely an edge case as most computing goes, but it feels for the first time like the gaming-on-Linux train's gaining traction, and there's enough community support out there that making the jump feels like a palatable ideal.

thewebguyd 1y ago

> Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. I've been saying this for a while, in the sense that the "year of the Linux desktop" isn't going to come from mass adoption of Linux on the desktop, but will come because overall "desktop" market share will decrease to the point where if you need a desktop, you are probably technical enough and more likely to be running Linux. Desktop (and laptop) computing is becoming niche outside of work. Like you said, most folks just use their phones, and maybe an iPad. By having a non-day job computer at home, and having it be a core device, already puts you in a niche group of users. Gamers, devs, media professionals and enthusiasts are the remaining desktop computing users. Linux is well suited to take over gamers and devs, media professionals will continue using Macs. So yeah, it might appear Linux usage is growing, but I think the more likely story is it's relatively stable and overall desktop usage is shrinking.

trod1234 1y ago

This is largely people who were previously Windows customers but who chose to go another way. Microsoft is doing a lot of shenanigans with their monopoly power, and anti-trust is largely toothless. I know quite a lot of professionals, who for them the last straw was purchasing the professional edition, and then finding out later after an update that their company lock screens now have ad's posted; and worse, those ads frequently have malware that cause even more headaches for them in a unmanageable way. The bean counters at MS pushed their biggest supporters over the knifes edge, and alot more people are getting serious about alternatives to MS now.

Melatonic 1y ago

I think this is probably it. That plus the SteamDeck and maybe other random linux running devices.

pms 1y ago

Why is this is a top comment? Market share is a relative measure. Even if there is a drop in the number of personal computers, still it's an achievement that the drop didn't affect Linux, while it affected other platforms. > Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate. I disagree. Imagine that Linux became the OS used on 95% of personal computers. According to your reasoning there wouldn't be much to celebrate. Says who?

throwawaylaptop 1y ago
Because it's an important distinction. If all PC sales fall to almost zero, and only the most hardcore tech nerds keep using them, and use Linux like they've been doing for two decades now, did Linux really win the battle or did the entire war evaporate and they are some long lost leftover soldier in the jungle fighting some battle no one else even is anymore.
- pms 1y ago
  If an OS is used, then that's because people need it, not because they're fighting some imaginary fight in the jungle. It's their preferred OS. If the number of people using computers shrinks, because non-pro users move to mobiles, while the fraction of pros using Linux increases to 95%, or even 50%, I think that's a very clear win for Linux. The reason why MacOS grew in popularity is because it started to be used by pros, myself included, i.e., I've switched from Linux to MacOS seeing many top computer scientists using MacOS. However, after over 10 years of using MacOS, I'm actually still not sure whether it was worth it, and I'm considering to go back to Linux since a few years. The main reasons stopping me from switching is a reliable Calendar app and concerns about battery life.
  - throwawaylaptop 1y ago
    It was just an analogy. My point is still that if you get 1 million nerds using Linux in 2006, and even if they remain 1 million as the whole market dies in 2028, that doesn't say much more about Linux than it did in 2006 when only 1% of desktop users used it. On a side note, I'm no computer scientist (I don't even know what that means, and I'm from the SF bay area), but I used MS products since 1989. A friend gifted me a 2017 iMac Pro recently. I was impressed.. for 3 days. And then I wondered how people even work like this. Finder limitations, dock limitations, and the final nail in the coffin was no cutting files via command x. Apparently that's a thing apple people have put up with for decades? It just doesn't seem made for serious work. It's an amazing Linux Mint machine though.

kenny239 1y ago

it seems grok thinks that its mainly due to more people using linux now: https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_3ca6a3ae-6342-422e-9cee-9c48aeb195c7 https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_3ca6a3ae-6342-422e-9...