Interestingly the highest market share is in supercomputing with 100% of the top 500 since 2017. This is followed by the server market. "Big Iron" Linus said and the biggest iron it was.
Ever since I've upgraded to Windows 11 I am so extremely frustrated with explorer's performance. The shortest time I have to wait for it to react to a double-click is 5 seconds, sometimes it goes up to 30+ seconds when I've used the machine for a couple of hours. I don't mean the time it takes an application to "boot", but the time for explorer to deal with itself until it is able to launch something. Even a simple thing as showing the context menu and then displaying properties if that was selected. That is on a i9-9880H Laptop with 32GB of RAM and a Samsung 970 PRO.
It's intolerable and I'm preparing to move to Linux. Since there are some tools I first need to write in order to maintain my workflow, mostly mouse-gesture-related stuff, I'm still waiting for the Wayland transition to get settled.
If I could stay on X11 for a decade from now on, I would migrate ASAP, but if the Kubuntu team decides to fully switch to Wayland without using X11 being an option, I'd have a problem.
A way this used to be possible, also before win11, was misbehaving custom extensions to the explorer shell. IE, some applications install extra menus and handlers as part of the windows shell.
Particularly, some such extensions may fight with each other - you can have one installed, or the other, but not both.
I use the tortoiseGIT extension to integrate git into explorer, and a lot of the bugs it has seen over the years, have really been work-arounds to survive OTHER broken explorer extensions.
My point being, the problem may come from one of your staple applications, not from the fresh window install(?).
Somehow my windows taskbar crashes... And alt tabbing doesn't work properly, I have to manually click on the windows in the overlay. My taskbar is always on top of windows, and they don't respect it's space so they just go under it and hide important stuff. Except firefox, which does respect the taskbar's space on a non-primary monitor, obviously leaving the space, but on the main screen it overlaps the taskbar entirely.
Yes things that were broken for me by default are explorer, notepad (using it with files over a network), calendar pop up, and start menu. And don't get me started on the UI of the sound/battery/network widget.
Every day I'm reminded of something I think Jo Armstrong said in a talk, paraphrased "Ah, an update! Maybe they made it better ;)".
Explorer seems to have always been plagued by some original sin around how it's event model works. Blocking the main thread until every app involved can feed back which can often require network lookups. You can see them trying to move to an intent system but there's too much legacy for them to move past.
i think there is something wrong with your machine, probably malware of some sort, or whatever this "gesture" stuff is doing. clean install probably indicated.
If you wanted, you honestly could stay on X11 for the next decade. I highly doubt it's going anywhere. Also, no matter what your workflow is, you can write a program to do that. I'd guarantee you could write a small script to automate Wayland to do what you need
I am asking, because so far I have seen old linux users refusing to move because they require some specific x11 feature that is not (yet) supported on wayland. I thought that new linux user wouldn't have such requirements.
Recently we wanted to play Minecraft. I had to install fresh windows.
I found ISO laying on nas. Installed it. Run update, after fifteen minuts and two reboots update told me everything is up to date.
We tried to run several programs, but no luck. Some dll error with missing entrypoints. Installed several cpp runtimes, dotnet frameworks, still no luck.
The we installed Minecraft, but from a page since app shop was not working. Minecraft said we are missing critical updates and it fetched some.
Then windows update was able to find new updates, we had to go through more reboots, and twice i had to select correct privacy settings, because Microsoft likes my data so much.
It took days to correctly install windows. Could have been easier if I used up to date image.
Second scenario is also about minecraft. On windows it wanted me to create window account for my kids. Required kid account to be working, and there were some issues that it said that windows pin does not work, we could not change it on the machine. I think we managed to change it online by some Xbox online, or other Microsoft page. These pages are just a maze of accounts, setups, game passes.
In the end it was easier just to run it on linux, and put just username and password. No advanced admin account management required.
I can only see this trend continuing in the coming years.
I know people love to get cynical about Linux desktops being niche, but the reality is that desktops in general are becoming niche. Really consider the audience here, in broad strokes I'd divide it into three big groups: school, corporate and public.
The public market for desktops is dying, or maybe it's already dead? The average person, especially the ones on the younger side, will just use their phone or tablet for all their general computing needs. If, for whatever reason, they do need to use a desktop, it will be for work or school, and most of their time on that desktop will be spent inside a web browser. For most people's personal life their desktop operating system just doesn't matter. Video games are an exception here, but will they remain that way?
Schools are broadly switching to Chromebooks, these are technically Linux machines, but really they are just terminals to a web browser. The underlying OS exists purely to prevent students from do anything else with them. Even the cases where schools stick to Windows, this reality doesn't change, the platform of schooling is web browsers now.
I'll admit, none of this is particularly new, but I naively assumed that the legendary stubbornness of corporate IT would be what keeps Windows dominant indefinitely, and that's quite a big audience right? Yet despite working at a big boring Fortune 500 company in an industry uniquely entrenched with Windows, they are now officially offering Linux laptops to developers who want them. Apparently Lenovo officially supporting Ubuntu was a big deal, and since all of our development targets embedded & cloud systems anyway, it was kind of a no-brainer decision for management. We still need Outlook, Teams, Office, and such, but we can do so via Office 365, so there isn't much holding back the transition...
Naturally many niches will remain, I'm not saying Windows will go away here, nor am I saying a web dominated world necessarily equals a world dominated by Linux desktops. But rather than Linux Desktops becoming a niche within a niche, I think that Windows will join Linux, and they both will become equally niche together :)
I would argue, that the dividing line lies elsewhere: between creation and consumption.
The average person does not create much, so for consumption, mobile devices are fine (though it is amazing, what a teenager can do to the photos with just a phone). For any creation, be it media, engineering, science, or even just plain old bureaucracy, you still need either desktops, or workstation, and it is going to stay that way for a while. But the market will be a lot smaller than in 90's or 2000's, since all just-consumers moved elsewhere.
When I worked at a F500 a decade or so ago, I asked about a Linux laptop and was basically told they would like to support them and were working on it, but couldn't because vendors we used didn't support Linux.
I wonder if that's why support for Linux laptops is finally landing. All the endpoint protection and license auditing and what not finally supports Linux.
4% starts getting it into the threshold of Nassim Taleb's "intolerant minority" to take effect. It is too big of a market share to be served only by a niche player like System76 or Starlite, so we should start seeing all major manufacturers (beyond Dell and their XPS line) to add Linux-only hardware.
And from there, what's stopping them from joining Valve to make Proton work for all the Windows-specific applications that are still used in the enterprise?
> And from there, what's stopping them from joining Valve to make Proton work for all the Windows-specific applications that are still used in the enterprise?
If they tried, which I don't expect, I'd guess adoption would stop it. Microsoft is entrenched with the public sectors and companies all over the world. The cost of switching would exceed any potential savings for years...
Lenovo also ships Linux laptops, although their Linux team needs the ability to veto hardware choices that were made in support of Windows. (I wonder if the XPS team can choose their hardware; my developer edition XPS was rock solid.)
Lenovo's Linux team seems to use up a lot of their QA/support resources because they are handed a dozen new laptop designs each year with (for instance) a MIPI IPU6 webcam having no kernel driver, S0ix suspend broken at the EC-level, new types of forcepads and trackpoints and touchscreens and styli and soldered on Wi-Fi card with a track record of crashing in Linux... and told to figure it out.
Plus, I think they occasionally get sidetracked by stupid bullshit like getting the boot logo to not flicker moving from BIOS to Plymouth.
Also, they maybe should have pushed really hard on AMD (and possibly Qualcomm and their BIOS supplier) for having _multiple_ kernel releases that reached the stable "updates" on non-Rawhide Fedora that then broke suspend on several ThinkPad models. Bisect. Blame. Revert. If Linus used a newer AMD ThinkPad, some choice words would have landed on the mailing list.
Considering that safari with my ad blockers blocked access to statscounter, I would be very suspicious that this percentage is much higher. The intersection between linux users and users who worry about privacy and know how to block trackers is big enough.
Good point, Linux users tend to be more privacy conscious.
I would probably not be counted by statcounter either.
Having used Linux for 25 years I really don't care about stats. The community remains healthy and there will always be a demographic who want to use an OS that provides more control.
This article does not mention the release of the SteamDeck at all. I wonder if this could have had an impackt on Linux usage large enough to see in trends like these or if it's just a drop in the bucket.
According to Steam hardware survey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=linux 35% of Steam Linux users have "AMD AMD Custom GPU 0405" (the custom amd chip used by steamdeck). ~1 year ago it was 21%. That gives an upper bound of 35% from those 4% being Steamdeck. Although actual fraction is probably lower because:
* not every Linux user plays games or uses Steam, but probably almost all Steamdeck users use Steam.
* StatCounter numbers are based on website views. You can browse web on steamdeck but it's not very convenient, so I guess that, unless it's their only computing device and they have connected external monitor and mouse, most steamdeck users do most of their web browsing using their phone or computer instead of steamdeck.
In 1997-ish I failed to install Slackware from 16 or so floppies repeatedly. In 2000 I had a system up and running but could not get connectivity. In 2005 almost everything "just worked" out of the box. In 2013 everything just worked.
I have recently started reflecting on how easy it is to do things now for free compared to the proprietary landscape we had before. Virtually every proprietary software has a (or multiple) free open source alternatives. The potential for human intellectual productivity has never been this high.
Interesting that they are counting chrome os separately since it is Linux based. That's another 2%. So 6% of the desktop market is running some form of Linux. There's another 6% unknown, which I bet might include some Linux users that are a bit savvy about configuring their browsers to not leak information. The Unkown line seems to climb faster than the linux line in the graph; which is interesting as well.
I'd imagine it's only as much Linux as Android and FireOS are, which might be argued aren't desktop OSes. But for that matter, ChromeOS might in turn be arguably closer to Android than what would be considered desktop Linux.. (disc: have not used ChromeOS)
It's probably obvious to most, but I wish headlines like these would clarify _desktop_ market share. Linux has had majority market share in the server space for decades now.
I'm am a retired old bloke who has used linux for about 20 years since the early releases of ubuntu and linux mint.
I do my best to advise and promote linux to all my elderly friends and have even installed linux as a replacement to windows for a few of them. Once they get used to Linux they are forever smitten. The increased speed and ease of use is nothing like windows complexity.
Even I struggle with windows, that damn search box, what is that really about but to confuse. Windows is supposed to be a personal computer not a time travelling machine, so whats the issue with updates taking a millennium. I got better things to do than wait for that unnecessary waste of time.
It must be brainwashing and propaganda that convinces people that a windows machines are better in some way.
I watch my friends struggling with their windows data collecting machines and I cry inside.
My old life is so much easier, restful, stress free and I have more pension to spend on myself.
I installed a Linux distro on a spare SSD that I had this week, to once more try out doing more development in it and daily drive it for a bit.
I went for Linux Mint because it has the convenience of Ubuntu (and Debian), though doesn't make me use snaps, in addition to their Cinnamon desktop just being all around a comfortable choice.
So far, all of the tooling just works, the desktop experience (even including audio) seems bug free, though I've had issues in the past with my netbook instead of the desktop. Regardless, it uses less RAM than Windows, feels more snappy and for development, I'm very happy with it. All of my IDEs and toolchains work, productivity and content creation software doesn't have issues either.
Even things like gaming seem more and more viable thanks to Steam and Proton, although it's not quite where Windows is now and won't be there for a while.
Either way, I'm pretty glad with how the OS and its distros/desktop environments are progressing.
To the extent that Linux has always represented an advanced technical subset of the market, the desktop market is effectively shifting further to technical users. "Casuals" increasingly rely on mobile devices --- smartphones and tablets, possibly netbooks. Technical users who are already more likely to choose Linux (or similar alternatives such as the *BSDs) are increasingly concentrated in the desktop market.
I'll note that I'm not one to lump Android in with Linux, as the overwhelmingly prominent Android UX does not include Linux applications or environments, even if those are in theory available (e.g., through Termux).
Whether or not overall Linux usage is increasing, as in total interactive users and time-in-OS (that is, for those using multiple environments, including virtualised environments, what is the split of time between OSes), and the value associated with usage (especially in professional / commercial contexts) isn't clear from the Linuxiac article. I suspect that there's some absolute growth as computer markets grow modestly overall, but that it's less significant than the percentage of desktop top-line figures would suggest.
(Written as a Linux user for well over a quarter century, and an Android user for a decade and a half, along with numerous other platforms.)
Here seriously looking for alternative to Win 11 for small family company becouse buying old computers with Win 10 Pro gives just few years. Best thing I found is invoicing app written in Java LOL. Need to call that company and ask do they support non Oracle Java :>
But other then that, Linux is good, Emacs can generate simple pdf's to print, Perl scripts still able to sum few digits, even git via ssh works like NAS :)
[+] [-] weinzierl|2 years ago|reply
EDIT: Depending on how you count, its more around 50% according to Wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys...
Interestingly the highest market share is in supercomputing with 100% of the top 500 since 2017. This is followed by the server market. "Big Iron" Linus said and the biggest iron it was.
[+] [-] qwertox|2 years ago|reply
It's intolerable and I'm preparing to move to Linux. Since there are some tools I first need to write in order to maintain my workflow, mostly mouse-gesture-related stuff, I'm still waiting for the Wayland transition to get settled.
If I could stay on X11 for a decade from now on, I would migrate ASAP, but if the Kubuntu team decides to fully switch to Wayland without using X11 being an option, I'd have a problem.
[+] [-] fifticon|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yesguidance|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BSDobelix|2 years ago|reply
I think they all talk about that move but i make a bet no one will actually do it. Remember Nvidia?
And i think anything archlinux/gentoo will stay with x11 AND Wayland for at least the next 10 years.
[+] [-] jimlikeslimes|2 years ago|reply
Every day I'm reminded of something I think Jo Armstrong said in a talk, paraphrased "Ah, an update! Maybe they made it better ;)".
[+] [-] moritonal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zabzonk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slowbdotro|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnben|2 years ago|reply
why is that?
I am asking, because so far I have seen old linux users refusing to move because they require some specific x11 feature that is not (yet) supported on wayland. I thought that new linux user wouldn't have such requirements.
[+] [-] vman81|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caeril|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renegat0x0|2 years ago|reply
Recently we wanted to play Minecraft. I had to install fresh windows.
I found ISO laying on nas. Installed it. Run update, after fifteen minuts and two reboots update told me everything is up to date.
We tried to run several programs, but no luck. Some dll error with missing entrypoints. Installed several cpp runtimes, dotnet frameworks, still no luck.
The we installed Minecraft, but from a page since app shop was not working. Minecraft said we are missing critical updates and it fetched some.
Then windows update was able to find new updates, we had to go through more reboots, and twice i had to select correct privacy settings, because Microsoft likes my data so much.
It took days to correctly install windows. Could have been easier if I used up to date image.
Second scenario is also about minecraft. On windows it wanted me to create window account for my kids. Required kid account to be working, and there were some issues that it said that windows pin does not work, we could not change it on the machine. I think we managed to change it online by some Xbox online, or other Microsoft page. These pages are just a maze of accounts, setups, game passes.
In the end it was easier just to run it on linux, and put just username and password. No advanced admin account management required.
[+] [-] BSDobelix|2 years ago|reply
Try "sfc /scannow" next time in cmd (as admin)
But overall...trow that image on your nas away.
[+] [-] yesco|2 years ago|reply
I know people love to get cynical about Linux desktops being niche, but the reality is that desktops in general are becoming niche. Really consider the audience here, in broad strokes I'd divide it into three big groups: school, corporate and public.
The public market for desktops is dying, or maybe it's already dead? The average person, especially the ones on the younger side, will just use their phone or tablet for all their general computing needs. If, for whatever reason, they do need to use a desktop, it will be for work or school, and most of their time on that desktop will be spent inside a web browser. For most people's personal life their desktop operating system just doesn't matter. Video games are an exception here, but will they remain that way?
Schools are broadly switching to Chromebooks, these are technically Linux machines, but really they are just terminals to a web browser. The underlying OS exists purely to prevent students from do anything else with them. Even the cases where schools stick to Windows, this reality doesn't change, the platform of schooling is web browsers now.
I'll admit, none of this is particularly new, but I naively assumed that the legendary stubbornness of corporate IT would be what keeps Windows dominant indefinitely, and that's quite a big audience right? Yet despite working at a big boring Fortune 500 company in an industry uniquely entrenched with Windows, they are now officially offering Linux laptops to developers who want them. Apparently Lenovo officially supporting Ubuntu was a big deal, and since all of our development targets embedded & cloud systems anyway, it was kind of a no-brainer decision for management. We still need Outlook, Teams, Office, and such, but we can do so via Office 365, so there isn't much holding back the transition...
Naturally many niches will remain, I'm not saying Windows will go away here, nor am I saying a web dominated world necessarily equals a world dominated by Linux desktops. But rather than Linux Desktops becoming a niche within a niche, I think that Windows will join Linux, and they both will become equally niche together :)
[+] [-] vetinari|2 years ago|reply
The average person does not create much, so for consumption, mobile devices are fine (though it is amazing, what a teenager can do to the photos with just a phone). For any creation, be it media, engineering, science, or even just plain old bureaucracy, you still need either desktops, or workstation, and it is going to stay that way for a while. But the market will be a lot smaller than in 90's or 2000's, since all just-consumers moved elsewhere.
[+] [-] tim333|2 years ago|reply
https://canalys.com/newsroom/global-pc-market-Q4-2021
Looking around the Pret where I am I see eight people using laptops and two on phones.
If by desktop you mean something stuck on a desk then yeah everyone has laptops.
[+] [-] everforward|2 years ago|reply
I wonder if that's why support for Linux laptops is finally landing. All the endpoint protection and license auditing and what not finally supports Linux.
[+] [-] daeros|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rglullis|2 years ago|reply
And from there, what's stopping them from joining Valve to make Proton work for all the Windows-specific applications that are still used in the enterprise?
[+] [-] staunton|2 years ago|reply
If they tried, which I don't expect, I'd guess adoption would stop it. Microsoft is entrenched with the public sectors and companies all over the world. The cost of switching would exceed any potential savings for years...
[+] [-] PennRobotics|2 years ago|reply
Lenovo's Linux team seems to use up a lot of their QA/support resources because they are handed a dozen new laptop designs each year with (for instance) a MIPI IPU6 webcam having no kernel driver, S0ix suspend broken at the EC-level, new types of forcepads and trackpoints and touchscreens and styli and soldered on Wi-Fi card with a track record of crashing in Linux... and told to figure it out.
Plus, I think they occasionally get sidetracked by stupid bullshit like getting the boot logo to not flicker moving from BIOS to Plymouth.
Also, they maybe should have pushed really hard on AMD (and possibly Qualcomm and their BIOS supplier) for having _multiple_ kernel releases that reached the stable "updates" on non-Rawhide Fedora that then broke suspend on several ThinkPad models. Bisect. Blame. Revert. If Linus used a newer AMD ThinkPad, some choice words would have landed on the mailing list.
[+] [-] bluish29|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] INTPenis|2 years ago|reply
I would probably not be counted by statcounter either.
Having used Linux for 25 years I really don't care about stats. The community remains healthy and there will always be a demographic who want to use an OS that provides more control.
[+] [-] frereit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karliss|2 years ago|reply
* not every Linux user plays games or uses Steam, but probably almost all Steamdeck users use Steam.
* StatCounter numbers are based on website views. You can browse web on steamdeck but it's not very convenient, so I guess that, unless it's their only computing device and they have connected external monitor and mouse, most steamdeck users do most of their web browsing using their phone or computer instead of steamdeck.
[+] [-] kramerger|2 years ago|reply
Linux is market leader once you bring in mobile, embedded and so on.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] iaw|2 years ago|reply
I have recently started reflecting on how easy it is to do things now for free compared to the proprietary landscape we had before. Virtually every proprietary software has a (or multiple) free open source alternatives. The potential for human intellectual productivity has never been this high.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boneitis|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SomeoneFromCA|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pilaf|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charcircuit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reify|2 years ago|reply
I'm am a retired old bloke who has used linux for about 20 years since the early releases of ubuntu and linux mint.
I do my best to advise and promote linux to all my elderly friends and have even installed linux as a replacement to windows for a few of them. Once they get used to Linux they are forever smitten. The increased speed and ease of use is nothing like windows complexity.
Even I struggle with windows, that damn search box, what is that really about but to confuse. Windows is supposed to be a personal computer not a time travelling machine, so whats the issue with updates taking a millennium. I got better things to do than wait for that unnecessary waste of time.
It must be brainwashing and propaganda that convinces people that a windows machines are better in some way.
I watch my friends struggling with their windows data collecting machines and I cry inside.
My old life is so much easier, restful, stress free and I have more pension to spend on myself.
Free as in Freedom, too cool!
[+] [-] smartmic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kavalg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ant6n|2 years ago|reply
And bugs.
And performance issues.
Still, office365/onedrive/teams is hard to beat on price for a small business.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] KronisLV|2 years ago|reply
I went for Linux Mint because it has the convenience of Ubuntu (and Debian), though doesn't make me use snaps, in addition to their Cinnamon desktop just being all around a comfortable choice.
So far, all of the tooling just works, the desktop experience (even including audio) seems bug free, though I've had issues in the past with my netbook instead of the desktop. Regardless, it uses less RAM than Windows, feels more snappy and for development, I'm very happy with it. All of my IDEs and toolchains work, productivity and content creation software doesn't have issues either.
Even things like gaming seem more and more viable thanks to Steam and Proton, although it's not quite where Windows is now and won't be there for a while.
Either way, I'm pretty glad with how the OS and its distros/desktop environments are progressing.
[+] [-] popol12|2 years ago|reply
My 2 cents: the best DE when coming from Windows is KDE. Kubuntu (ubuntu + KDE) is joy. It has a windows 7 feel, and is very customizable and stable.
[+] [-] jsnell|2 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38853877
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39252801
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200
[+] [-] dredmorbius|2 years ago|reply
To the extent that Linux has always represented an advanced technical subset of the market, the desktop market is effectively shifting further to technical users. "Casuals" increasingly rely on mobile devices --- smartphones and tablets, possibly netbooks. Technical users who are already more likely to choose Linux (or similar alternatives such as the *BSDs) are increasingly concentrated in the desktop market.
I'll note that I'm not one to lump Android in with Linux, as the overwhelmingly prominent Android UX does not include Linux applications or environments, even if those are in theory available (e.g., through Termux).
Whether or not overall Linux usage is increasing, as in total interactive users and time-in-OS (that is, for those using multiple environments, including virtualised environments, what is the split of time between OSes), and the value associated with usage (especially in professional / commercial contexts) isn't clear from the Linuxiac article. I suspect that there's some absolute growth as computer markets grow modestly overall, but that it's less significant than the percentage of desktop top-line figures would suggest.
(Written as a Linux user for well over a quarter century, and an Android user for a decade and a half, along with numerous other platforms.)
[+] [-] phantomathkg|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Woodi|2 years ago|reply
But other then that, Linux is good, Emacs can generate simple pdf's to print, Perl scripts still able to sum few digits, even git via ssh works like NAS :)
Just that mandated by law things are impossible.
No monopoly at all...
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lifeinthevoid|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timbit42|2 years ago|reply