8 ms·

This. Where are "Linux evangelists" in 2025? GNU/Linux as a whole has never been in better shape to catch users fleeing from Windows, it surely looks like a muc

This. Where are "Linux evangelists" in 2025? GNU/Linux as a whole has never been in better shape to catch users fleeing from Windows, it surely looks like a much easier task than it was 15 years ago (even despite UEFI's additional complexity burden). Spot on the +17% in lenovo shipments, but shouldn't we also care about the huge number of computers they're replacing - just because they're incapable of running Windows 11?

raw_anon_1111 1y ago
So 2025 is going to be the “Year of Linux on the Desktop”?
- cbm-vic-20 1y ago
  "Linux on the Desktop" is great. I've been using it since 1994. "Linux on the Laptop" sucks- I just want my laptop to sleep and awake properly, without draining the battery. I'm old enough that I'm done spending time twiddling kernel parameters in an attempt to get all of the onboard devices working, including sleep.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    “Linux on the Desktop” is a 30 year old meme about this being the year that people will leave Microsoft en masse and install Linux.
  - trenchpilgrim 1y ago
    > I just want my laptop to sleep and awake properly, without draining the battery. To be fair this is _also_ a massive problem on Windows too, because of Windows Modern Standby encouraging laptop makers to replace ol' reliable S3 sleep with the terribly broken modern standby stuff. Macbooks and certain Framework models are the only laptops left with reliable sleep. Old video but nothing's really improved since: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c
    - whatevaa 1y ago
      Not a laptop, but steam deck sleeps perfectly. So it's not a Linux problem, but a laptop problem.
      - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
        Meanwhile, Microsofts cannot even get their own Surface line with Windows on them to not wake up while in your backpack.
      - xethos 1y ago
        Hell, my Pinephone Pro slept perfectly well as well. Beta-level hardware without a major company behind it, and sleep still worked reliably. At this point I expect sleep to work better on Linux than Windows machines.
  - NaomiLehman 1y ago
    I just want a laptop that has almost zero latency between the CPU and RAM and at least 300GB/s RAM bandwidth for data science. Not much choice there, unfortunately.
- willis936 1y ago
  I know many people (myself included) that stopped using Windows altogether this year. Even accounting for biases, this is a very bad year for Microsoft.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    “People you know” is anecdotal. We can look at broad base market share trends.
    - willis936 1y ago
      We don't have that data. You are quibbling on sample size but making no argument on effects. Make the case that this is a good year for Microsoft.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        We have the data, it is about 4% market share of people on planet Earth using GNU/Linux desktops. https://www.accio.com/business/operating-system-market-share-trend https://www.accio.com/business/operating-system-market-share...
        willis936 1y ago
        "March 2025" is not indicative of what happened in 2025.
- dehrmann 1y ago
  When the desktop environments unite and a single distro rises up as champion, the year is nigh.
gjsman-1000 1y ago
The “Linux demographics” were a bunch of 20-30 year olds who are now 40-50. Same with the “Free Software” crowd - those 20-30 year olds are now 50-60. Aging demographics that broadly failed to attract any interest from the next generation. Honestly though, why join? There’s nothing inherently attractive about either community. Hang out with toxic gamers on Discord and join a team, or hang out with toxic old nerds still on IRC for ideological purity. I know which one wins. Even professionally, I’d rather join a model train community.
- futuraperdita 1y ago
  This comment is getting downvoted for what is likely its tone of ageism, but I don't think that it's completely wrong: the original FOSS-activist community is now a group of oldheads and hasn't successfully made the same generational shift that maintained its original philosophy. Looking at any rant from Torvalds, the Linux programming community has often held technical elitism before inclusivity. "Open source" over "free/libre software" has found success not because of its personalities and community but rather because it is a meme that can be appropriated for your own. The counterculture I see in GenZ+ that is most interested in working with FOSS/public technologies is politically aligned differently and has more pragmatic goals (e.g. will use major commercial communications platforms such as Discord).
- pjmlp 1y ago
  You're being downvoted, however you're exactly right. Speaking as one of those 40-50, I firmly believe once our generation is gone all those ideals will be gone as well. Also everyone that thinks Valve will stay the Linux white knight after current management is gone, is in for a surprise, who knows what they will do with their assets.
gortok 1y ago
I use Windows for one reason only: Steam and best performance and compatibility for high resolution gaming. If I didn’t want that, I wouldn’t be on windows at all. The issue I have with Linux is that it’s 2025 and every single time I’ve created a Linux system in the past ten years, I have some sort of issue that I spend too much of my time figuring out. I am married, have three school age children, and have hobbies and I volunteer regularly. One of those hobbies is not “figuring out how to make Linux work.” The downside of open source is you have to have the time to fix it yourself, and that lack of time is what keeps me from pursuing Linux, even though I am absolutely furious at the crap Microsoft is pulling lately, from shutting off ability to create a local account, to forcing OneDrive, to throwing Ads onto the desktop, to the telemetry and marketing spyware that is now standard on Windows 11.
- politelemon 1y ago
  True about open source though it's the only place where your computer is and feels like yours. Macs and Windows have you beholden to companies that have increasingly been user hostile and both have been keeping me in a constant state of revulsion. That said, if you're having to fix your system constantly then something is off, as many distros have become incredibly stable. Of course I don't know your circumstances so can't say anything specific.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    On any Linux distro it feels somewhat like my computer belongs to a bunch of opinionated nerds, and none of them are me, and their motivations are peculiar. But also somewhat like it's mine, I must admit.
- keyringlight 1y ago
  Just speaking personally, but one thing I wonder about with the issues is putting aside the 'internet knowledge base' how much I've accumulated knowledge of how to gloss over all the little issues in windows that doesn't translate over, and whether that applies to other people in general. There's the common "I migrated grandma and pointed her at firefox and she's loves it" anecdote for users with little assumptions, so for different types of user it'd be an interesting project to catalogue what pain points they come across, major ones are likely well known but I expect it'd be really interesting to gather minor ones. How much is adaptation to the windows/linux "DNA" or ways of doing things that would cause breakage if they were changed and how much could be looked at by various projects.
izacus 1y ago
They're right here and are organizing campaigns to switch to Linux: https://endof10.org/ https://endof10.org/ Did you even look before you threw out a lazy negative post?
trenchpilgrim 1y ago
We hang out in different circles because a surprising number of my non-tech worker PC using friends are trying out Linux and liking it. The only thing holding most of my friends back at this point is kernel anti cheat.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  Games using kernel anti-cheats + Ableton + Unreal Engine (editor + plugins) not running properly on Linux are the three only things stopping me from removing Windows fully from my desktop.
  - Melonai 1y ago
    Are you still having bad issues with Ableton? I did until recently, but now with Ableton in a fairly simple Bottles setup it works quite well (for me, at least). Do you have more specific needs where the normal way doesn't work? I'm no music producer, so there's lots of stuff I probably don't even know about, would love to hear your thoughts. :)
    - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
      > Are you still having bad issues with Ableton? I did until recently, but now with Ableton in a fairly simple Bottles setup it works quite well (for me, at least). Could you share the config somehow so I could try it out? Last time I tried to get it to work I couldn't get it to recognize my audio interface (USB class compliant, Steinberg UR44), and the UI was very glitchy. I don't think I have any special needs compared to others, do fairly basic things. Which version is it that you've tried it with? Tried v11 years ago I think, and v12 when it was just released, but not since then.
- SubmarineClub 1y ago
  I’m on Windows 10 and can’t upgrade to 11 even if I wanted to - my hardware is too old to be supported. I’ve already messed around with a Fedora dual-boot, but now I’m fully planning to go 100% Linux once I get around to building a new computer. Luckily I don’t really play multiplayer games so I don’t need to worry about the anti cheat issue.
ac29 1y ago
Of all of the things that are a challenge on Linux, UEFI isnt one of them. I'm curious what you mean. The term might come up in Linux distro installers but the ones I have used recently all handle it fine (Arch, Debian, Fedora). Secure boot is even supported without hassle by all the major distributions. Once Linux is installed the user definitely doesn't need to care about the pre-OS boot firmware.
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago
  If anything I UEFI is _easier_ on Linux than Windows. Especially if you aren't dual booting and can use EFISTUB.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Not on the Gigabyte Brix I bought and for whatever reason could only boot from Windows formatted M2 drives, regardless of how many UEFI partition flavours I tried.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      RMA. Don't stick with faulty hardware because you're lazy or stubborn, brand loyalty rewards no one.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        If you knew half the story regarding RMA, nah never again.
karlgkk 1y ago
> GNU/Linux as a whole has never been in better shape to catch users fleeing from Windows It’s still in really bad shape, from a consumer perspective.
- Jare 1y ago
  My recent experience with Linux Mint on a new PC is the opposite. I went from USB installer to a fully functional system with drivers, chrome, my fave web pages, and my fave games on Steam and Battlenet, etc running flawlessly without ever doing a single "techie" thing. On Windows 11 I had to figure out that I needed hop on another computer to search, download and copy via USB some motherboard and wifi drivers before I could even access the Internet. A number of things in the system remain rather quirky and not entirely reliable, including video playback of all kinds. If I was setting up a PC for say my dad tomorrow, I'm finally at the point where I'd rather give him Linux than Windows.
  - hypercube33 1y ago
    I have a laptop running Zorin I'm probably going to flip to Mint if the new release doesn't fix my stuttering issues otherwise I had the same experience. Also bazzite on an AMD desktop and my steam deck are a breeze to use.
  - karlgkk 1y ago
    “Works for me” is the rallying cry of Linux desktop users. Did they fix full screen video playback?
    - trenchpilgrim 1y ago
      I'm not aware it was ever broken? Been using desktop linux for 15 years.
      - karlgkk 1y ago
        Tearing is a consistent complaint that shows up even on recent versions of mainstream desktop distributions.
pjmlp 1y ago
I have been hearing evangelism since Windows XP days, when DX 10 drivers were Vista only, when driver model changed, when Windows 8 went to WinRT, when Windows 10 introduced telemetry, when.... In the end, Valve had to come up with Proton. Signed ex-FOSS zealot.

raw_anon_1111 1y ago

So 2025 is going to be the “Year of Linux on the Desktop”?

cbm-vic-20 1y ago
"Linux on the Desktop" is great. I've been using it since 1994. "Linux on the Laptop" sucks- I just want my laptop to sleep and awake properly, without draining the battery. I'm old enough that I'm done spending time twiddling kernel parameters in an attempt to get all of the onboard devices working, including sleep.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  “Linux on the Desktop” is a 30 year old meme about this being the year that people will leave Microsoft en masse and install Linux.
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago
  > I just want my laptop to sleep and awake properly, without draining the battery. To be fair this is _also_ a massive problem on Windows too, because of Windows Modern Standby encouraging laptop makers to replace ol' reliable S3 sleep with the terribly broken modern standby stuff. Macbooks and certain Framework models are the only laptops left with reliable sleep. Old video but nothing's really improved since: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c
  - whatevaa 1y ago
    Not a laptop, but steam deck sleeps perfectly. So it's not a Linux problem, but a laptop problem.
    - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
      Meanwhile, Microsofts cannot even get their own Surface line with Windows on them to not wake up while in your backpack.
    - xethos 1y ago
      Hell, my Pinephone Pro slept perfectly well as well. Beta-level hardware without a major company behind it, and sleep still worked reliably. At this point I expect sleep to work better on Linux than Windows machines.
- NaomiLehman 1y ago
  I just want a laptop that has almost zero latency between the CPU and RAM and at least 300GB/s RAM bandwidth for data science. Not much choice there, unfortunately.
willis936 1y ago
I know many people (myself included) that stopped using Windows altogether this year. Even accounting for biases, this is a very bad year for Microsoft.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  “People you know” is anecdotal. We can look at broad base market share trends.
  - willis936 1y ago
    We don't have that data. You are quibbling on sample size but making no argument on effects. Make the case that this is a good year for Microsoft.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      We have the data, it is about 4% market share of people on planet Earth using GNU/Linux desktops. https://www.accio.com/business/operating-system-market-share-trend https://www.accio.com/business/operating-system-market-share...
      - willis936 1y ago
        "March 2025" is not indicative of what happened in 2025.
dehrmann 1y ago
When the desktop environments unite and a single distro rises up as champion, the year is nigh.

gjsman-1000 1y ago

The “Linux demographics” were a bunch of 20-30 year olds who are now 40-50. Same with the “Free Software” crowd - those 20-30 year olds are now 50-60. Aging demographics that broadly failed to attract any interest from the next generation. Honestly though, why join? There’s nothing inherently attractive about either community. Hang out with toxic gamers on Discord and join a team, or hang out with toxic old nerds still on IRC for ideological purity. I know which one wins. Even professionally, I’d rather join a model train community.

futuraperdita 1y ago
This comment is getting downvoted for what is likely its tone of ageism, but I don't think that it's completely wrong: the original FOSS-activist community is now a group of oldheads and hasn't successfully made the same generational shift that maintained its original philosophy. Looking at any rant from Torvalds, the Linux programming community has often held technical elitism before inclusivity. "Open source" over "free/libre software" has found success not because of its personalities and community but rather because it is a meme that can be appropriated for your own. The counterculture I see in GenZ+ that is most interested in working with FOSS/public technologies is politically aligned differently and has more pragmatic goals (e.g. will use major commercial communications platforms such as Discord).
pjmlp 1y ago
You're being downvoted, however you're exactly right. Speaking as one of those 40-50, I firmly believe once our generation is gone all those ideals will be gone as well. Also everyone that thinks Valve will stay the Linux white knight after current management is gone, is in for a surprise, who knows what they will do with their assets.

gortok 1y ago

I use Windows for one reason only: Steam and best performance and compatibility for high resolution gaming. If I didn’t want that, I wouldn’t be on windows at all. The issue I have with Linux is that it’s 2025 and every single time I’ve created a Linux system in the past ten years, I have some sort of issue that I spend too much of my time figuring out. I am married, have three school age children, and have hobbies and I volunteer regularly. One of those hobbies is not “figuring out how to make Linux work.” The downside of open source is you have to have the time to fix it yourself, and that lack of time is what keeps me from pursuing Linux, even though I am absolutely furious at the crap Microsoft is pulling lately, from shutting off ability to create a local account, to forcing OneDrive, to throwing Ads onto the desktop, to the telemetry and marketing spyware that is now standard on Windows 11.

politelemon 1y ago
True about open source though it's the only place where your computer is and feels like yours. Macs and Windows have you beholden to companies that have increasingly been user hostile and both have been keeping me in a constant state of revulsion. That said, if you're having to fix your system constantly then something is off, as many distros have become incredibly stable. Of course I don't know your circumstances so can't say anything specific.
- card_zero 1y ago
  On any Linux distro it feels somewhat like my computer belongs to a bunch of opinionated nerds, and none of them are me, and their motivations are peculiar. But also somewhat like it's mine, I must admit.
keyringlight 1y ago
Just speaking personally, but one thing I wonder about with the issues is putting aside the 'internet knowledge base' how much I've accumulated knowledge of how to gloss over all the little issues in windows that doesn't translate over, and whether that applies to other people in general. There's the common "I migrated grandma and pointed her at firefox and she's loves it" anecdote for users with little assumptions, so for different types of user it'd be an interesting project to catalogue what pain points they come across, major ones are likely well known but I expect it'd be really interesting to gather minor ones. How much is adaptation to the windows/linux "DNA" or ways of doing things that would cause breakage if they were changed and how much could be looked at by various projects.

izacus 1y ago

They're right here and are organizing campaigns to switch to Linux: https://endof10.org/ https://endof10.org/ Did you even look before you threw out a lazy negative post?

trenchpilgrim 1y ago

We hang out in different circles because a surprising number of my non-tech worker PC using friends are trying out Linux and liking it. The only thing holding most of my friends back at this point is kernel anti cheat.

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
Games using kernel anti-cheats + Ableton + Unreal Engine (editor + plugins) not running properly on Linux are the three only things stopping me from removing Windows fully from my desktop.
- Melonai 1y ago
  Are you still having bad issues with Ableton? I did until recently, but now with Ableton in a fairly simple Bottles setup it works quite well (for me, at least). Do you have more specific needs where the normal way doesn't work? I'm no music producer, so there's lots of stuff I probably don't even know about, would love to hear your thoughts. :)
  - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
    > Are you still having bad issues with Ableton? I did until recently, but now with Ableton in a fairly simple Bottles setup it works quite well (for me, at least). Could you share the config somehow so I could try it out? Last time I tried to get it to work I couldn't get it to recognize my audio interface (USB class compliant, Steinberg UR44), and the UI was very glitchy. I don't think I have any special needs compared to others, do fairly basic things. Which version is it that you've tried it with? Tried v11 years ago I think, and v12 when it was just released, but not since then.
SubmarineClub 1y ago
I’m on Windows 10 and can’t upgrade to 11 even if I wanted to - my hardware is too old to be supported. I’ve already messed around with a Fedora dual-boot, but now I’m fully planning to go 100% Linux once I get around to building a new computer. Luckily I don’t really play multiplayer games so I don’t need to worry about the anti cheat issue.

ac29 1y ago

Of all of the things that are a challenge on Linux, UEFI isnt one of them. I'm curious what you mean. The term might come up in Linux distro installers but the ones I have used recently all handle it fine (Arch, Debian, Fedora). Secure boot is even supported without hassle by all the major distributions. Once Linux is installed the user definitely doesn't need to care about the pre-OS boot firmware.

trenchpilgrim 1y ago
If anything I UEFI is _easier_ on Linux than Windows. Especially if you aren't dual booting and can use EFISTUB.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Not on the Gigabyte Brix I bought and for whatever reason could only boot from Windows formatted M2 drives, regardless of how many UEFI partition flavours I tried.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    RMA. Don't stick with faulty hardware because you're lazy or stubborn, brand loyalty rewards no one.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      If you knew half the story regarding RMA, nah never again.

karlgkk 1y ago

> GNU/Linux as a whole has never been in better shape to catch users fleeing from Windows It’s still in really bad shape, from a consumer perspective.

Jare 1y ago
My recent experience with Linux Mint on a new PC is the opposite. I went from USB installer to a fully functional system with drivers, chrome, my fave web pages, and my fave games on Steam and Battlenet, etc running flawlessly without ever doing a single "techie" thing. On Windows 11 I had to figure out that I needed hop on another computer to search, download and copy via USB some motherboard and wifi drivers before I could even access the Internet. A number of things in the system remain rather quirky and not entirely reliable, including video playback of all kinds. If I was setting up a PC for say my dad tomorrow, I'm finally at the point where I'd rather give him Linux than Windows.
- hypercube33 1y ago
  I have a laptop running Zorin I'm probably going to flip to Mint if the new release doesn't fix my stuttering issues otherwise I had the same experience. Also bazzite on an AMD desktop and my steam deck are a breeze to use.
- karlgkk 1y ago
  “Works for me” is the rallying cry of Linux desktop users. Did they fix full screen video playback?
  - trenchpilgrim 1y ago
    I'm not aware it was ever broken? Been using desktop linux for 15 years.
    - karlgkk 1y ago
      Tearing is a consistent complaint that shows up even on recent versions of mainstream desktop distributions.

pjmlp 1y ago

I have been hearing evangelism since Windows XP days, when DX 10 drivers were Vista only, when driver model changed, when Windows 8 went to WinRT, when Windows 10 introduced telemetry, when.... In the end, Valve had to come up with Proton. Signed ex-FOSS zealot.