5 ms·

2026 is the year of Linux on the Desktop! > At this point I'm convinced that no matter how much or little Linux desktop is improved, its market share is solely

by RajT88 4mo ago

2026 is the year of Linux on the Desktop! > At this point I'm convinced that no matter how much or little Linux desktop is improved, its market share is solely dependent on how much Microsoft fucked up. Lifelong Windows user here. If you could get the kind of driver support you have with Windows for just whatever the fuck you have lying around, I'd probably use my Ubuntu laptop as more of a daily driver.

tracker1 4mo ago
I'm not really using anything too exotic... my hardware all works, and my printer has generally been without issue (HP Color Laser on ethernet) regardless of what I use to print from. For me, I switched when the start menu started showing internet ads as part of the results... I ran insiders for years, often joking that WSL was my favorite Linux distro... I love the new MS Terminal, and pretty happy with a lot of things. That said, there's far more that annoys me... it's too in your face trying to sell you additional software/services/features that frankly I find offensive from an OS. It's like built in malware ads. They might as well try to sell me an X10 camera in those popups, I'd feel just as irritated about it. I went from dual booting, to just Linux for my personal use a few years ago and been pretty happy. I'm not a gamer, and was already using Linux as my dev target for server software. It wasn't a big deal for me. Even the growing pains for Cosmic have been less annoying than some of the "features" of Windows.
saltcured 4mo ago
Not lifelong, but I've been using Linux since 1993. Through subconscious selective pressure, I only have things lying around that are useful with Linux. It's kind of liberating, to be able to ignore a huge amount of crap in the market because you can tell it is just some sort of delivery vector for proprietary Windows drivers and their dodgy installers.
fluffybucktsnek 4mo ago
Unless your hardware is exotic (or actively anti-consumer), most devices are well supported. If you wouldn't mind, what issues did you have recently?
- mjmas 4mo ago
  Not OP, but I have an Asus StudioBook 17. Of what is builtin, the fingerprint reader and the numberpad functionality of the touchpad don't work. Everything else works fine though.
- annzabelle 4mo ago
  On the desktop that's true, but when I last used linux laptops (Debian, probably in 2021 or so), there were significant driver issues for the touchpad, touchscreen, buttons for brightness, and audio on every laptop I tried. I eventually gave up and bought a Macbook and installed Homebrew and Rectangle on it. I haven't thought about drivers or firmware updates for that device since I bought it. If I did own a desktop, I would use linux on it, and I solely use linux when I'm using VMs or cloud providers. Recently started working at a company that uses windows and .net and it's so bad.
  - edg5000 4mo ago
    Did you install the nonfree Debian ISO? Debian back then by default did not ship non-free drivers, meaning half your stuff won't work. You should have used their special (released by them) nonfree ISO or Ubuntu and you would've been fine. Your stuff is probably supported by official debian repos, just not ones that are enabled by default. Try Linux sometime again! You won't regret it.
  - Grombobulous 4mo ago
    I would say even 2021 is long enough ago for that landscape to have changed quite a bit. For one thing, Framework was barely a company back then, now they’re a mature and highly viable OEM choice. As a small tip, I prefer using Arch-based distributions as they get new kernels rapidly and therefore new hardware support comes fast. They’re also an obvious choice for people who play games on Steam since SteamOS is arch based. In the AI age, almost any problem with Linux is a quick query or copy/pasted error message away. The days of spending hours on troubleshooting are over. If you were willing to buy a whole new piece of hardware with a MacBook, perhaps you’d be willing to buy a Linux-first laptop in the future? For example, the Framework 13 Pro has purportedly caught up to many of the advantages of a MacBook Pro (battery life, haptic trackpad, CNC aluminum chassis), judging by early press impressions. Over half of Framework 13” customers install Linux and it’s Ubuntu certified. Besides being the premier Linux laptop, you also get all the repairability and modularity benefits the brand has on offer. I personally own the current non-Pro model and despite its shortcomings that the new model doesn’t have (I have my preorder in), the overall package is a pretty modern laptop where 100% of the hardware works flawlessly with Linux. Even if you aren’t looking for that type of machine and just want something from a more common OEM like Lenovo or ASUS, I have found that solid Linux support is not tough to find. Basically any common laptop that’s older than 6 months old is well-supported. One of my friends bought a $500 ThinkPad T14 on eBay and of course 100% of the hardware works. Macs are the gold standard for not having any need to mess with drivers, but I have found my AMD graphics driver to be a lot more stable in Linux than in Windows. That was the major decision point in wiping my desktop gaming PC and installing CachyOS. My “final straw” motivation to leave macOS on my laptop last year was Liquid Glass. Other motivations included my frustration with certain Apple services and the level of abstraction and lock-in they have, running out of storage space in my system, as well as frustration with my laptop being capable enough but unable to play any of most of my PC games from a software standpoint. Returning to speaking of something relevant to this article, now that I have no macOS or Windows, I am no longer tied down with Thunderbolt as the only viable desktop email client anymore as I don’t need to support all three operating systems. I’m enjoying Evolution a lot more than Thunderbird, but of course there are numerous Linux-only choices I could have gone with.
coffeebeqn 4mo ago
Try mint on a live boot. I’ve found it to be the most “just works” on various laptops
- fuzzfactor 4mo ago
  Desktops too, and I've been preferring the Debian version known as Linux Mint Debian Edition since they came out with LMDE 7.
laughing_man 4mo ago
I switched to Ubuntu a few months back, and I didn't have any issues. It was faster than installing Windows.

by RajT88 4mo ago

tracker1 4mo ago

I'm not really using anything too exotic... my hardware all works, and my printer has generally been without issue (HP Color Laser on ethernet) regardless of what I use to print from. For me, I switched when the start menu started showing internet ads as part of the results... I ran insiders for years, often joking that WSL was my favorite Linux distro... I love the new MS Terminal, and pretty happy with a lot of things. That said, there's far more that annoys me... it's too in your face trying to sell you additional software/services/features that frankly I find offensive from an OS. It's like built in malware ads. They might as well try to sell me an X10 camera in those popups, I'd feel just as irritated about it. I went from dual booting, to just Linux for my personal use a few years ago and been pretty happy. I'm not a gamer, and was already using Linux as my dev target for server software. It wasn't a big deal for me. Even the growing pains for Cosmic have been less annoying than some of the "features" of Windows.

saltcured 4mo ago

Not lifelong, but I've been using Linux since 1993. Through subconscious selective pressure, I only have things lying around that are useful with Linux. It's kind of liberating, to be able to ignore a huge amount of crap in the market because you can tell it is just some sort of delivery vector for proprietary Windows drivers and their dodgy installers.

fluffybucktsnek 4mo ago

Unless your hardware is exotic (or actively anti-consumer), most devices are well supported. If you wouldn't mind, what issues did you have recently?

mjmas 4mo ago
Not OP, but I have an Asus StudioBook 17. Of what is builtin, the fingerprint reader and the numberpad functionality of the touchpad don't work. Everything else works fine though.
annzabelle 4mo ago
On the desktop that's true, but when I last used linux laptops (Debian, probably in 2021 or so), there were significant driver issues for the touchpad, touchscreen, buttons for brightness, and audio on every laptop I tried. I eventually gave up and bought a Macbook and installed Homebrew and Rectangle on it. I haven't thought about drivers or firmware updates for that device since I bought it. If I did own a desktop, I would use linux on it, and I solely use linux when I'm using VMs or cloud providers. Recently started working at a company that uses windows and .net and it's so bad.
- edg5000 4mo ago
  Did you install the nonfree Debian ISO? Debian back then by default did not ship non-free drivers, meaning half your stuff won't work. You should have used their special (released by them) nonfree ISO or Ubuntu and you would've been fine. Your stuff is probably supported by official debian repos, just not ones that are enabled by default. Try Linux sometime again! You won't regret it.
- Grombobulous 4mo ago
  I would say even 2021 is long enough ago for that landscape to have changed quite a bit. For one thing, Framework was barely a company back then, now they’re a mature and highly viable OEM choice. As a small tip, I prefer using Arch-based distributions as they get new kernels rapidly and therefore new hardware support comes fast. They’re also an obvious choice for people who play games on Steam since SteamOS is arch based. In the AI age, almost any problem with Linux is a quick query or copy/pasted error message away. The days of spending hours on troubleshooting are over. If you were willing to buy a whole new piece of hardware with a MacBook, perhaps you’d be willing to buy a Linux-first laptop in the future? For example, the Framework 13 Pro has purportedly caught up to many of the advantages of a MacBook Pro (battery life, haptic trackpad, CNC aluminum chassis), judging by early press impressions. Over half of Framework 13” customers install Linux and it’s Ubuntu certified. Besides being the premier Linux laptop, you also get all the repairability and modularity benefits the brand has on offer. I personally own the current non-Pro model and despite its shortcomings that the new model doesn’t have (I have my preorder in), the overall package is a pretty modern laptop where 100% of the hardware works flawlessly with Linux. Even if you aren’t looking for that type of machine and just want something from a more common OEM like Lenovo or ASUS, I have found that solid Linux support is not tough to find. Basically any common laptop that’s older than 6 months old is well-supported. One of my friends bought a $500 ThinkPad T14 on eBay and of course 100% of the hardware works. Macs are the gold standard for not having any need to mess with drivers, but I have found my AMD graphics driver to be a lot more stable in Linux than in Windows. That was the major decision point in wiping my desktop gaming PC and installing CachyOS. My “final straw” motivation to leave macOS on my laptop last year was Liquid Glass. Other motivations included my frustration with certain Apple services and the level of abstraction and lock-in they have, running out of storage space in my system, as well as frustration with my laptop being capable enough but unable to play any of most of my PC games from a software standpoint. Returning to speaking of something relevant to this article, now that I have no macOS or Windows, I am no longer tied down with Thunderbolt as the only viable desktop email client anymore as I don’t need to support all three operating systems. I’m enjoying Evolution a lot more than Thunderbird, but of course there are numerous Linux-only choices I could have gone with.

coffeebeqn 4mo ago

Try mint on a live boot. I’ve found it to be the most “just works” on various laptops

fuzzfactor 4mo ago
Desktops too, and I've been preferring the Debian version known as Linux Mint Debian Edition since they came out with LMDE 7.

laughing_man 4mo ago

I switched to Ubuntu a few months back, and I didn't have any issues. It was faster than installing Windows.