6 ms·
Thank you, Microsoft, for accelerating the advent of The Year of The Linux Desktop
by incognito124 10mo ago
Thank you, Microsoft, for accelerating the advent of The Year of The Linux Desktop
- petepete 10mo agoThey're pulling out all the stops. If you told me that whoever was in charge of the consumer versions of Windows was trying to drive it into the ground, I'd believe you.
- dotancohen 10mo agoTo be fair, Microsoft did deliberately drive Nokia into the ground.
- wvenable 10mo agoNokia was driving pretty close to the ground before Microsoft ever got involved.
- lfllfkddl 10mo agoWell, many consider Elop to be a Microsoft asset.
- saubeidl 10mo agoMaybe the Finns got their mole in to extract revenge. Don't forget Linux is Finnish as well ;-)
- wiseowise 10mo agoPerfectly balanced, as all things should be.
- justsomehnguy 10mo agoLook at the Nokia sales volume, revenue and the date of Burning Platform memo - and don't repeat this bullshit ever again.
- chocochunks 10mo agoThey're working on Xbox too!
- tialaramex 10mo agoAt this point probably there's no room for another Playstation-style video game console. My friend who plays only console-style video games, the sort of person who owned Wii-U and an Xbox One as well as that generation of Playstation, bought a gaming PC last year. He will undoubtedly buy a Switch 2 at some point, to play a Zelda or something, but why would you buy another Xbox? So I think Xbox becomes a brand for video games with Windows and then gradually it loses relevance until one day the question is "Why isn't Minecraft on Steam like a proper video game?"
- eek2121 10mo agoAccording to leaks with an excellent track recordWe are getting at least 1 more console, and possibly 2. The first (most likely) is a classic Xbox, the second is a handheld. After that, who knows? All I know is that I own both an Xbox Series X and a PS5. I use the PS5 more. I also own a PC, and it sees more than 1,000 times the usage of either. I bought the PS5 for exclusives, and Sony began changing that. However there are still alot of older PS4/PS5 titles that are fun to play, and some games are just better with a controller and a TV. That being said, I'm likely not going to purchase any other consoles.
- tialaramex 10mo agoThe desire for controller + TV obviously also affected my console-gaming friend. So, the gaming PC is hooked up to a wireless controller and to his gaming display + audio setup, which was historically a ceiling mounted projector and surround speakers (he moved since I last spent hours playing games with him) The PC means there's a wireless keyboard and some sort of pointing device, but they're just for launching games & basic admin. Edited to add: Also WTF for refreshing the Xbox. Who is the audience for this product? What is your lead title? Another Halo? But there's going to be an excellent Halo for the PS5 and for PCs, right? A GTA? But people want the newer GTA which won't fit. Maybe I just don't understand the vision here.
- AnthOlei 10mo agoI switched my parents onto Linux a couple months ago, after my mom kept getting confused between edge and chrome - not being to uninstall edge was the last straw, but the massive amount of adware slowing down her capable-but-old laptop was a close second. So far so good! Some smaller hiccups, like chrome won’t use dolphin, but I installed rustdesk so I can help them through whatever. Over Christmas the in-laws were asking about Linux because of windows issues, which was surprising since they’re technologically literate but in a layman sense. I didn’t try to switch them over since the parent experiment is still ongoing but a couple more months of seamless use and I’ll consider it a success. All this to say I’m very glad for Microsoft leadership!
- owaislone 10mo agoCool. I used to install it on all my family and friends computer when I was a teenager but as I grew older and had less and less time, being the constant tech support guy for everyone I introduced to Linux got very hard so I stopped recommended/installing it. Which distro did you choose for your parents?
- incognito124 10mo agoMy non-technical friend installed linux on her 10yo old laptop by herself after a windows update slowed down her device and rendered it unusable. She said she said she read about it somewhere and that the Ubuntu installation was pretty intuitive. I was both amazed and proud. She's daily driving Linux now (to be fair, it's just tv shows and web apps like chatgpt or docs, but still, Linux is now a good-enough alternative, at least anegdotally)
- plagiarist 10mo agoAFAICT the only thing that should be keeping people from Linux nowadays is gaming (especially VR) and systemd doing dumb shit device naming so that changing the physical location of an unrelated GPU renames your NIC and breaks your internet.
- graynk 10mo ago
- pjmlp 10mo agoBeing repeated since Windows XP days, and yet without Proton there is no Linux gaming.
- capitol_ 10mo agoAnd yet, without the software for Linux gaming, there is no Linux gaming. Very hard to falsify such a statement.
- FridayoLeary 10mo agoevery discussion like this has at least one of these comments. The year of the Linux Desktop must be nearly here. They've been predicting it for years already!
- abdusco 10mo agoLinux on desktop = the fusion energy of computing.
- throwaway1389z 10mo agoYeah, except there has been a steady increase in Linux (~5% "confirmed") and a steady decline of Windows. I bet a large percentage of those "unknown" are also linux machines. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202512 https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
- Gander5739 10mo agoURLCheck flags that host as adware/malware for some reason. Anyway, I assume you mean 5 percentage points? 5% increase probably wouldn't keep pace with desktop users growth.
- willi59549879 10mo agoi wondered why it is they can't tell which os is being used. i guess most browsers return some text in the user agent
- llm_nerd 10mo agoAs the old saying goes, it happens slowly and then all at once. The things tethering people to Windows have largely disappeared for many/most people. One of my sons has a desktop that is quite powerful and overwhelmingly adequate for what he does. As Windows 10 hit the end of support we were considering how to move forward as Windows 11 refuses to work on his device. We realized there is absolutely nothing keeping him on Windows, and perhaps we just replace his PC with a Mac Mini. But in the meantime he's rolling with Ubuntu and has lost absolutely nothing and gained plenty.
- throwaway1389z 10mo agoThe only thing holding millions, possibly in the 100s, from switching to Desktop Linux from Windows is Apple's iPhone support.
- stefanfisk 10mo agoAs a Mac user I might be missing something obvious - why do they need iPhone support on their computer?
- throwaway1389z 10mo agoBackups. Copying photos. Sharing files. As a Mac User, you're probably well served with backups integration in Finder, as well as iCloud, AirDrop, iMessage, and friends without realising it.
- llm_nerd 10mo agoDo you mean like...iTunes? Huh? I know approximately zero people who still tether an iPhone to a desktop for any sort of backups.
- throwaway1389z 10mo agoNo.
- lorenzhs 10mo agoEven if it was still a thing (and it really isn’t, imo), libimobiledevice does a decent job already, and given a little funding it shouldn’t be super hard to close the gaps and build a nice UI on top of it. But that’s not happening because very few people care about it at all. Now, AirDrop support is a completely different beast. But it requires hardware support (promiscuous mode, iirc) that many common chipsets simply lack.
- throwaway1389z 10mo ago
- mat_b 10mo agoHaha. Been seeing this comment for at least 20 years now. Some things never change...
- eek2121 10mo agoI've been using Linux since the 90s, however I was never super awesome with it. I can do the basic stuff, and with a bit of documentation/guidance, a bit more. I was able to install Arch Linux at least 3X, for example. I also managed to build a kernel like twice...although I didn't do a great job of configuration. I think my crowning achievement came early on when I managed to follow Linux From Scratch all the way through. I say all of this to say that I am finally off Windows for good. It has become my daily driver. I've no obstacles. Not in gaming, software dev, personal work, media consumption (beyond streaming services degrading streams for a non-supported OS), or anything else. I've found open source apps to be quite a bit better than their closed source equivalents. Things have really shifted in the past 5-10 years, and I dig it. KDE + CachyOS is great! Although I hear Bazzite is better for new users (I have some decent experience using Arch so I prefer Cachy) I don't foresee ever moving back to Windows. The AI and constant push to Microsoft Edge, Second OOB experience, and other nonsense (including Diablo 2: resurrected, a [now] Microsoft owned product that still gets a few updates, hard locking my system), I decided to take my ball and go home...to Linux. A few people I know who aren't even remotely computer literate at all have done the same, and they've been surprised at how much better everything is, particularly on somewhat older hardware.
- criddell 10mo agoIs it The Year of the Linux Desktop again?
- nacozarina 10mo agoNadella is The Linux Hitman
- GuB-42 9mo agoI suspect that Microsoft doesn't even care anymore. Windows is not at the core of their strategy anymore. With Azure, they are as much of a Linux company as they are a Windows company now, and most of their software runs in a browser now. Windows is just a gateway to their services. If it was easy for them to have their users run Linux instead of Windows and sell Office 365 subscriptions, they would prefer that instead of having to maintain a full OS.