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I think there are 3 major points that made Linux much more viable option in the last 2-3 years. 1) Somehow both GNOME and KDE got much better in the last 2 yea
by nout 7mo ago
I think there are 3 major points that made Linux much more viable option in the last 2-3 years.
1) Somehow both GNOME and KDE got much better in the last 2 years. It's very smooth and polished experience that I now prefer to both MacOS and Windows. I only need to install 1 or 2 extensions and it's good to go for me.
2) AI! It's orders of magnitudes easier to fix any Linux issue now compared to 3 years ago. The issues that would take a whole afternoon of fighting are now just a couple back-and-forths with the LLM like ChatGPT or Gemini.
3) Valve and SteamOS. The large and mostly successful push by Valve to make Linux be the platform for gaming has cleared many Linux issues and hurdles on the way. I think this will have ripple effects in the industry. My prediction is that thanks to Valve and SteamOS we will see a viable, widely used Linux based phone in the next 3 years.
- idiotsecant 7mo agoWoooah that's a long way from 'gaming works on linux' to 'this is now suitable as a general purpose mobile OS'
- nout 7mo agoThere are more details that make me believe that linux as mobile OS is more feasible in near future. Apart from the Valve&SteamOS push, the one notable phenomenon that I see happening is retrogaming. In retrogaming handhelds ecosystem there are now many devices with form factor close to phones (they often literally use screens from older iPhones, etc) that are running on Linux or in some cases provide option to easily switch between Android and Linux. For example on Anbernic RG35XX using Garlic OS there's a toggle in the UI to switch between Android and Linux. Similarly Retroid Pocket 5 allows switching in the bootloader menu. As a separate point, it seems quite feasible to run Android apps in VM on Linux based phone and make the experience fairly seamless. Something like what Waydroid provides.
- keyringlight 7mo agoIt looks like the combination of PostmarketOS (based on Alpine linux) and Waydroid would seem to fit that.
- dpark 7mo ago> As a separate point, it seems quite feasible to run Android apps in VM on Linux based phone and make the experience fairly seamless. But why? The premise of Waydroid seems to be to bring Android apps you want to your Linux desktop. But why would you want the phone in your pocket to run Desktop Linux so that you could then run Android apps on your Desktop Linux mobile phone instead of just running Android on your phone? What desktop Linux features do you want on your phone that would justify this complexity?
- nout 7mo agoI want to use pre existing apps from the Android ecosystem, but I want the system to let me install and change anything I want. It looks like android is going to heavily restrict installing apps that are not on play store and there are now ~5 apps that I use that don't exist on Play store, but only on Obtanium or Zapstore. My hope is that installation of the Android apps on Linux phone could be made seamless.
- dpark 7mo agoIt seems like an Android fork that supports the stores you want would be a lot simpler. I’m sure Google would deny Google Play Services to any popular fork that didn’t follow their rules. But they would do the same to any Linux desktop or whatever that didn’t follow their rules, too, if it became popular.
- nout 7mo agoYeah, you have a good point that Android fork would cover a lot of what I'm asking.
- bigyabai 7mo agoLinux has all the pieces. Other commercial vendors like Jolla have put it together before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS There are open UI shells from KDE and GNOME, multitouch gesture support, Android emulation... it's all there.
- hungryhobbit 7mo agoLinux has been able to serve most non-gaming use cases for over a decade now (source: I've been running the OS longer than that). The one thing it used to not be able to do was play games ... and now it does that.
- Arainach 7mo agoFor non technical users it simply isn't true. The happy path has improved a lot. When Linux is working it's reasonably usable. But once something breaks it breaks HARD and recovery is still miserable. For reference I've been using Linux since Red Hat 5.2 circa 2000. I cut my teeth debugging problems without internet access. I ran an LTSP lab at my high school. I remember the hell that was XF86Config (I was there, Gandalf, I was there 3000 years ago). ....and like the previous commenter I run Windows on my personal machines because I want to spend my free time using them, not debugging them.
- noisy_boy 7mo agoI don't get this. People would put up with absolute nonsense on Windows. But when it comes to Linux, they want to experiment, mess around with the configs, copy/paste random commands from internet and basically turn into l33t haxers and then stuff breaks, its Linux's fault. Like how? Install Fedora, don't add any extra repos, don't install anything not in the Software Center and let us see how many times your system breaks. I have been using Linux since 2000s as well. I do remember the rpm hell, dealing with x config issues etc. It is NOT the same experience now a days. I don't have the time or inclination to mess around so I use Fedora + KDE and that basically stays out of my way. I don't rice my desktop or do any hacking around beyond basic automation and I have had zero instances of the system just breaking.
- Arainach 7mo agoExamples from the last 3 years: * I wanted to update a Raspberry Pi from Ubuntu LTS 22 to LTS 24. Turns out this is basically impossible. Ubuntu themselves tell you not to do it and their recommended solution is to wipe the system and try again. I ignored them and tried to do it anyway and my Pi ended up refusing to boot. Great. * I needed to update a Raspberry Pi to change the list of WiFi networks it knew about. Except apparently there are two different networking stacks for Linux with different config files and I edited the wrong one. * I built a new TrueNAS server. Turns out that you absolutely cannot configure the networking from the GUI. There's a section there, sure, but every time it refuses to save the information until you "test the changes" and that fails to reconnect every single time. You have to locally plug a monitor into the machine, boot it, and log in with a keyboard to get to the config there. * Not strictly a bug, but I installed Debian in WSL and it doesn't include `man` by default. So I get a command line and no help for it. Brilliant.
- reverius42 7mo ago> we will see a viable, widely used Linux based phone in the next 3 years Isn't there already a viable, widely used Linux based phone OS called Android?
- gzread 7mo agoLinux the kernel, not Linux the desktop OS
- HaZeust 7mo agoHis comment stands?
- dpark 7mo agoRight, but you’re presumably not going to run Linux the desktop OS on your phone. You’re going to run a mobile OS and the Linux kernel.
- gzread 7mo agoWhy not? It works fine on pine devices.
- dpark 7mo agoI guess I’m not clear what the point would be. I suppose you could build a phone that uses more of the gnu ecosystem than Android does, but you’re not going to run desktop apps on your phone because none of them are made for the phone. It would be a bad experience. So it becomes (Desktop) Linux for (Desktop) Linux’s sake.
- Arainach 7mo agoEvery long term review of Pine devices I've read ends with ".... so I ended up going back to my previous platform"
- yonatan8070 7mo agoThe point isn't "run the Linux kernel on a phone", the point is "run an non-big-tech OS that respects the user's privacy and choices". See also Google's recent announcement regarding locking down Android app installation to "protect users"
- qingcharles 7mo agoI think this is an underrated comment. On (2) you're totally right. Fixing issues is so much easier now I can interrogate an LLM for the right changes to make. It's not for everyone, but it makes my life a lot less stressful.