[Root_Denied]

Unironically it might actually be 2025.

In the last 18 months we've seen a lot of maturation in various linux distros trying to make them "out of the box" usable by people who are not all that technical. More GUI utilities, better stability, compatibility layers for gaming driving adoption, and dead simple setup.

Valve has been doing a lot of the work driving adoption from gamers with Proton, PulseAudio is suddenly way more functional and compatible, working Nvidia GPU drivers (565+), and immutable spins on distros have all made it so that linux overall is more approachable than ever.

I think we'll look back at 2025 and see it as the inflection point where suddenly linux became a viable alternative to Apple/Microsoft in a way it wasn't before, driven in part by development targeting a new demographic along with the spotlight on both the technical and consumer issues with OSX/Windows (such as patches bricking hardware, attempting to crowbar AI into everything, and antagonizing their customer base with things like subscriptions and data harvesting).