Linux desktop market share climbs to 4.45%

https://ostechnix.com/linux-market-share-july-2024-report/

by naves • 2 years ago

358 378 2 years ago

ostechnix.com

randomdata5• 2 years ago

Nearly 6%, really. Only misreported due to a certain browser not including 'Linux' in its user-agent string.

aqfamnzc• 2 years ago

Which browser?

randomdata5• 2 years ago

Chrome.

rgrieselhuber2• 2 years ago

Having switched back to Linux after many years, even looking at Mac OS feels like poverty now. Not because of the UX or hardware but because of the company behind it.

juujian• 2 years ago

Feels like poverty?

dima55• 2 years ago

They can't afford more mouse buttons?

nequo2• 2 years ago

Maybe the thought of buying one brings up mental images of going broke?

Decent hardware that Linux is happy with is definitely much cheaper than a decent MacBook.

nawgz• 2 years ago

That seems like a bit of an emotionally driven non sequitur, to say the least!

adamwong246• 2 years ago

Poverty is not quite the right word. "Sterility" is the word I would use. My linux machine is a complex, fiddly beast, which I treat like a bonsai tree. My mac, however, gives me "dead mall vibes" in comparison. It's not all bad, I get more work done. But it certainly does not feel "alive" in the same way my linux machines feel.

tmiku• 2 years ago

The "alive" point hits the nail on the head for me, and covers the full system health spectrum - my underspec'd homelab/project laptop certainly feels alive, in the sense that only things that are alive can cough up blood.

rgrieselhuber2• 2 years ago

Yeah that’s a better way to put it. I meant “poverty” in a somewhat spiritual sense, like a lack of aliveness that you’re talking about. It is weird to talk about operating systems this way I guess, but it is how it feels.

JodieBenitez• 2 years ago

https://yotld.com

drhagen• 2 years ago

How much of this is due to non-technical users simply using phones and tablets instead of laptops and other devices with "desktop" OSes?

wmf• 2 years ago

So you're saying there could be a constant number of Linux desktop users who are a larger percentage of a shrinking market. I suppose anything is possible.

kibwen• 2 years ago

Without knowing the methodology that StatCounter is using, the numbers themselves aren't especially meaningful, although a consistent upward trend in those numbers could be showing something real.

In any case, ChromeOS is also Linux, so tack that on there as well, along with whatever portion of that 7% "unknown" that you think is reasonable (which could be a relatively large portion, depending on methodology).

(Also, the bar chart shown in the article is messed up because they're charting the value of each item averaged over the previous year.)

mrweasel• 2 years ago

For numbers I did like to see absolute numbers. While I have no doubt that people are switching to Linux, but an increasing number of people are also just giving up on computers in favour of just using their phones for everything. Some of the increase in percentage Linux is seeing could also be due to Windows and Mac users dropping having a computer in general.

That's not to say that people aren't switching, I see no reason to get a new Mac next time I'm replacing my laptop. My work will be done more easily on Linux at this point.

Aachen3• 2 years ago

It could also be showing that the market is consolidating towards big tech and that only those wanting to stay with their independent statistics provider are still with StatCounter. In turn, the users of services with such morals could be more likely to be Linux distribution users.

I don't have data better than StatCounter, but if we're thinking of methodology and whether it could be accurate, this is a possibility to take into account

The optimist in me wants to not leave unmentioned that Linux is more accessible than ever and information easier to come by while Windows has never been shittier (which old Windows version shipped with tracking and ads?) and macOS is still priced and protected the way it always has been: much easier to dual or live boot Mint. Come for the freedom and stay for the ease of use. It's no coincidence that Microsoft made it very easy to use Linux software within Windows now (obviously without contributing the inverse mechanism, that'd be stupid): people want it. I really hope there's more truth to this than to the first paragraph

pjmlp8• 2 years ago

ChromeOS uses the Linux kernel in a browser based userspace, and offers a VM for running GNU/Linux as guest OSes, isn't quite the same as being GNU/Linux, otherwise Windows with WSL is also Linux.

jimmar• 2 years ago

Linux seems to be stealing more market share from OSX than Windows: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide.

andrewmcwatters2• 2 years ago

Two Unix systems and one is increasingly infuriating professionals.

tambourine_man7• 2 years ago

Windows is shipping with its own Linux already, so it's getting harder to complain about Windows.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

AnimalMuppet• 2 years ago

Could you explain what you mean in your first paragraph? In what sense does Windows ship with Linux?

resource_waste4• 2 years ago

There are ads everywhere on Windows. And onedrive hijacks your filesystem.

Even at my fortune 20 company I see: "DNC RATINGS COMPARED TO RNC" clickbait crap. I'm amazed my company lets that garbage through. Probably because we have legacy software + some corruption with purchasing. Sharepoint... really?

zamadatix4• 2 years ago

I'd want to know a lot more about why macOS dropped ~5% in one month, why unknown doubled in ~1 year, why ChromeOS has more than 50% variance between halves of the school year, how ChromeOS had more users in the middle of summer '23 than the middle of spring '24, and more before I'd make any bold conclusions on how much what is changing and from where.

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

OSX has become a bloated pig of an operating system, and it's not that great as a unix system.

satnam14• 2 years ago

It's so strange. I'm an android user myself but majority of my dev friends are iPhone users. I can't see them switching because they of Apple ecosystem - mainly iMessage. So I'm really curious what's driving people from OSX to Linux

seec2• 2 years ago

And it's probably going to get much worse unless Apple radically change their pricing behavior. It has become very hard for most enthusiasts to justify the price of an high-end Mac...

SCUSKU• 2 years ago

I'm a macOS user but would be interested in getting a linux desktop, I've heard Linux Mint or PopOS are pretty good just from a ease of use perspective? I've used Ubuntu in the past and had all sorts of display graphics driver problems.

I know it's an impossible question, but nonetheless, what's the best distro to use for someone who just wants a useable desktop?

andrepd• 2 years ago

Linux Mint is an outstanding project, like you said focused on stability and ease of use. It's been my daily driver for over a decade!

zappchance• 2 years ago

I was looking around a while last year and those two are the exact ones I landed on, with a slight lean towards Pop!_OS due to the team behind it striving for maximum "out-of-the-box" usability.

Linux Mint has a special place in my heart as it was the first distro I used back in my high school computer science class and it holds up exceptionally well today. It's also community driven compared to Pop!_OS which is developed by System76.

ilaksh• 2 years ago

If you want to avoid all driver issues you should probably be asking about a hardware/OS combo, not just one or the other.

But over the last few years I haven't had significant problems.

benrutter• 2 years ago

I think a lot of stock gets put into distros for driver issues, but a huge factor is the hardware you're running on.

Some distros like popOS intentially bundle drivers for newer graphics cards and the like, but that aside, if you don't have really hardcore requirements, picking decent hardware that's a few years old will probably smooth out your journey a lot, regardless of which distro you pick.

If you're coming from macOS you might be happy to pay a premium for a purpose built machine as well (I have a System 76 laptop which has served me really well for a good 5 years or so now with no sign of slowing down)

As an aside, Linux Mint, PopOS and Ubuntu (the three you mentioned) are all great choices for a reliable, stable desktop.

sneed_chucker• 2 years ago

Fedora is a good desktop and if you have Centos/RHEL experience your muscle memory can be useful.

_ph_• 2 years ago

Seconded. I can also just recommend Fedora.

rahen3• 2 years ago

Fedora strikes a good balance between stability and being up-to-date and secure. It's also the recommended distribution by Privacy Guides: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/

I really, really want to migrate from macOS to Fedora on my M1 MBA but Asahi isn't completely there yet.

acomjean• 2 years ago

I’ve been daily driving popos for about 5 years. I’m not an admin by any stretch and it’s worked great. Upgrades and everything mostly flawless. I came from a 13” MacBook Pro (2015), it took a little adjustment but it’s been great overall. The good thing about POP is that we’ve found ububtu software works on it.

We ended up installing popos on our work Linux (Ubuntu)dell because we had trouble installing the nvidia drivers for the card we got.

I had one hiccup 4 years ago where it wouldn’t upgrade to the next version because I did some out of band install. (It was a usb to hdmi adapter…) It was a little to get it sorted but I never ended up with a unbootable system..

I don’t like the PopOS name though..

supportengineer• 2 years ago

I never had any trouble using Ubuntu, but I tried Mint for a project (I needed to import video over Firewire, and apparently, the kernel support for this has been removed) and Mint worked great for this project. I was so impressed I kept Mint installed because everything just worked.

kryptec• 2 years ago

I ended up moving to Linux Mint in 2018, as I need a new laptop and was annoyed that the current generation of Mac laptops didn't come with any USB ports. It's been my daily driver since, and I've been pretty happy with it in general.

You should be able to try either distro with a live usb which will give you an indication if anything will break immediately on your system.

shepherdjerred11• 2 years ago

I had a pretty good experience with Manjaro and KDE. KDE Plasma 6 in particular feels very nice, though nothing is as polished as macOS.

resource_waste4• 2 years ago

I'd avoid outdated linux (Debian-family like Mint). Try Fedora.

foresto• 2 years ago

I've used Ubuntu in the past and had all sorts of display graphics driver problems.

Were you by any chance using Nvidia graphics hardware?

If you play games, you'll likely have the best overall experience with AMD graphics. (Assuming the GPU model isn't too new; it can take some months for the drivers to catch up to new models.) Most desktop distros will have everything you need; no need to go downloading drivers from vendors or turning to third party software repositories.

If you don't play games, either AMD or Intel graphics ought to be good.

Nvidia drivers can be made to work well with most games, and certain distros make the setup easy, but they come with baggage and hassles. They're huge, and they have a long history of integrating poorly with the OS overall. The problems they caused me outside of games were part of what drove me to stop buying their hardware.

EasyMark3• 2 years ago

Get a cheap used laptop for ~$300 and run linux on it, you will be surprised at how much value you can’t get out of that. I use it as a dev machine, although I only do embedded work and some web work on it. I still drive with my Mac, but I use the linux laptop over tigervnc and it work fine over ethernet. I would suggest looking at pop_os or mint. Both are stable LTS users but do seem to keep up with drivers and kernels reasonably close to “newish”

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

Fedora

jillesvangurp• 2 years ago

Depends on your experience level and willingness to tinker. The bad news is that in my experience, you always end up opening a terminal and fiddling with configuration files no matter what distribution you use. The good news is that if you are OK doing that, you don't actually need that much from your distribution other than the useful trick of keeping itself up to date.

Ubuntu is alright. But you trade off up to date software for stability. And the bi-annual upgrades to the latest LTS are a bit of a PITA and don't always go that smoothly. And you end up running older kernel and whatever else was current around the time they freeze their LTS version. So, for something that is supposed to be user friendly and stable, it actually ends up having a lot of issues and not being all that stable over time.

If you want to get the best possible experience with graphics, you basically need the latest kernels, drivers, fixes, etc. as soon as they get released. Ubuntu doesn't deliver that because you get stuck on either the yearly or LTS release.

These days I prefer rolling release style distributions. It's just less hassle in the end and not really less stable for me. The opposite actually in my experience. You could go with Debian testing, fedora, and a few other options. But I ended up using Manjaro which is based on arch linux. My reason is simple: the SteamDeck uses a distribution that is based on arch linux. I wanted to run steam on my laptop. So, I figured that using what Valve themselves seem to actively support and invest in makes a whole lot of sense. I've not been disappointed with this so far (three years and counting).

Installing games is easy. Getting things like Gnome, Steam, etc installed via pac is easy. And I can install whatever via snap, flatpak, or native arch packages. More importantly, everything stays up to date and fresh. After three years I have no need to reinstall my laptop because it's fine. Every once in a while I need to deal with some minor issues after some update for which the solution usually is a Google search away. But other than that, Manjaro has been rock solid for me. And besides, I've never used a Linux distribution in 30 years that didn't have that issue.

nequo2• 2 years ago

You can get newer kernels in Ubuntu LTS too. It’s called the hardware enablement stack:

https://ubuntu.com/kernel/lifecycle

myth_drannon2• 2 years ago

Linux on desktop is just a solid workhorse. My 13+ years laptop is chugging along happily with Ubuntu and my Windows8 10+ years beefed up desktop takes 10 minutes to start and 5 minutes to open a browser and basically a broken mess of security holes.

ogogmad• 2 years ago

What about the 6-monthly and 2-yearly forced upgrades? How are you faring with those?

prmoustache2• 2 years ago

forced? how?

myth_drannon2• 2 years ago

It's not forced, but it's a trivial upgrade if you have a basic setup. I also have a desktop where I do some hobby AI development and once in a blue moon, Nvidia drivers would break the system because of kernel upgrades.

wcchandler• 2 years ago

I've been a linux desktop user for a long time now (~25 years?). I generally don't talk about it, as it's not a suitable environment for a lot of people. So I'm always surprised when I stumble upon somebody using it. Just recently I took a Google Cloud training course and the instructor used it as his daily driver. Not only was this impressive to see "out in the wild" but it was nice to see all the tools needed to lead a remote training course worked in his setup. He had a webcam working great (even focused/panned on him as he moved). He had a powerpoint/slideshow going. He had zoom/teleconferencing software working. And it all worked through the course. There was never 10-20 minute pause because something wasn't working right. Having this level of viability and operability is something I never expected to see.

oblio• 2 years ago

Sorry to be a downer but a cloud instructor is still a techie. I'd be way more impressed with a lawyer or an accountant using it but I've never seen one so far.

layer8• 2 years ago

Having this level of viability and operability is something I never expected to see.

It’s unexpected even in the case of techies.

perbu• 2 years ago

fwiw; I worked in a company that was kind of a Linux pioneer back in the 90s. We ran Linux for everyone. The accountant ran a VM for his accouting software, but except that everything was Linux. And once set up, it worked very well, for techies and non-technical alike.

If you get past installation and initial setup, using Linux in a desktop role isn't really challenging if you've got access to support.

cyberpunk• 2 years ago

It's 2024 and we're suprised by a webcam working. It makes me a bit sad somehow.

fanatic2pope• 2 years ago

I cannot even remember the last time I plugged in a web cam and it didn't work on Linux. Just yesterday I borrowed a USB inspection camera from a friend in order to help me run a new ethernet line to my shop. The kit came with a "WIFI dongle" that you are supposed to use with your phone and some random app, but instead I just plugged it into my laptop, fired up Cheese and it came up immediately.

silisili• 2 years ago

Yeah, 20ish years ago I remember having to compile alsa drivers, network drivers, cups drivers, etc. I can honestly see why some left and never came back.

That hasn't been the case for a long time now. I can't remember the last time I plugged something in that didn't work. My home setup is a minipc with wireless kb and mouse on a unified USB receiver, hdmi to a large monitor, bluetooth speaker, wireless printer, and USB webcam with mic.

I didn't have to do a single thing. It all just works. And it has for years, through various distro hopping.

AQuantized• 2 years ago

This comment is a bit odd to me since I don't think those basic things you mention have been difficult to get working on most distros for quite a while now.

michaelt• 2 years ago

I mean, Ubuntu did break screen sharing for a while 2 years ago [1]

[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/1407494/screen-share-not-wor...

ryandrake• 2 years ago

These threads always seem to oscillate back and forth between "It's 2024 and you can't get Peripheral X working with Linux!" and "Peripheral X's have worked for 20 years now!"

magicalhippo• 2 years ago

It depends on which day of the week it is.

Ok a bit flippant, but I've been running KDE on my NUC as a secondary desktop for years now. Most of the time it works fairly well, but then suddenly something breaks or needs tweaking. And when it does it's often not trivial for a non-geek to handle.

That said, if they can get Krdp working properly, I'll almost certainly switch to KDE as my main driver, and demote Windows to my secondary.

vitorgrs2• 2 years ago

Weirdly, by compatibility is better on Linux than on Windows.

On Windows, on a clean install, I need to install the drivers from WU to get audio working, etc. And then I need to open Intel website to get the latest Bluetooth driver, go to Dell to get the latest wifi, as on Windows Update's these are not the latest.

And even after all of this, some of the drivers on Linux is better maintained, because the support for old Intel GPUs on Windows is very short. Meanwhile, on Linux, I get Vulkan support, and all recent drivers on my Broadwell. Video perf is way better on Linux here.

sickofparadox• 2 years ago

I'm always befuddled by comments like this. I have been daily driving Linux (arch,btw) for quite a while, and I have never once had a driver issue, even with NVIDIA graphics cards. The only times I run into issues is when I am trying to run games with anti-cheat, but even that is being worked on by Valve. Linux mostly just works in my experience, I don't see where the idea comes from that its a huge blocker, minus the lack of specialized software.

bpfrh3• 2 years ago

Friend of mine got a new laptop which i recommended without looking closely on the specs, as it was listed as supported on ubuntu a lenovo yoga x 11 gen I think.

Found out afterwards that the version with windows preinstalled(that the friend bought, because of the cheap windows licence that maybe needed) comes with a special mipi camera from intel with ipu6 out-of-tree driver that only supports specific kernels and specific distros and while there are packages for ubuntu I couldn't get it to work.

Linux works if you don't buy the wrong hardware, windows works on any bought hardware.

I'm not against linux and I use it and most of the time it works out of the box, but this "most of the time" will bite you when you stop looking at specific reviews and driver support and just buy a laptop.

aborsy2• 2 years ago

I have used Linux desktop for around two decades on my laptops and never had any issues with drivers or anything else. Various distributions have worked very well out of box with different models of laptops and PCs.

pizza2344• 2 years ago

I'm a hardcore Linux user, and most of my machines always had some driver issues.

The laptop I'm writing from needs my mobile phone as wifi bridge, because the Linux driver is poorly written, and it causes extremely poor signal quality. I also can't workaround tearing that plagues the whole desktop environment.

My other laptop has issues with the speakers that will never be fixed. And another one or two issues that I can't remember.

I wanted to buy a certain Lenovo laptop that is officially Ubuntu certified. Lenovo doesn't offer the OEM Ubuntu that they used for the certification though, and the vanilla version doesn't work (I've stopped checking after an year or so).

My desktop has a wake from suspend problem.

To be fair though, I have no doubt that if one chooses a certain machine (laptop) based on Linux compatibility, they will be happy - but it implies a certain sacrifice upfront.

p4bl0• 2 years ago

I felt taken back before mid-2000 reading this comment. I mean it's been easily 15 years since those very basic things really just works on all the major Linux distributions.

neogodless• 2 years ago

I recently tried Linux Mint, initially Cinnamon, then installed KDE Plasma. In the former fractional scaling was badly broken. In the latter, I couldn't control screen brightness.

Overall almost everything worked but not all things. And I'm used to working through technical hiccups and being patient. But ultimately there's no guarantee "Linux" will be fully functional on your unique hardware setup, and it's still challenging to choose distribution, windows manager, desktop environment, etc and there's no way to know which combo is best for your hardware without a lot of time consuming trial and error.

chgs• 2 years ago

My mother-in-law remarried about 5 years ago. Her husband used to operate some oven cleaning business pre retirement, not exactly “techie”

He uses linux, has done for years, he just wants something that works.

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

I've been a linux desktop user for a long time now (~25 years?). I generally don't talk about it, as it's not a suitable environment for a lot of people.

Same: I was already using Debian 1.1 (1.1, not 11) on the desktop or something like that.

But why not talk about it? I switched both my wife (she's very OK with tech) and my mother-in-law (she's not good with tech) to desktop Linux.

If my mother-in-law can use Linux, everybody can. Most people nowadays only need one app: a browser and Linux is totally for that use case, which is about 99% of all users' out there's usecase.

mulmen• 2 years ago

I switched to desktop Linux about a year ago. Fedora Sway Spin. I have done a major version upgrade without issue. None of the buttons moved. Nothing broke. Just business as usual. No complaints about the OS itself. The final straw was a Steam game that wouldn’t launch on Windows 10 but worked in Steam/Proton. I haven’t booted Windows since.

resource_waste4• 2 years ago

Fedora woke me up to how Fedora is the best.

I'm not even going to say Linux, because people confuse it with Ubuntu/Debian/Mint GARBAGE. Never use that later crap for desktop. Its so outdated and buggy. You are using the terminal on a daily basis to get basic features working, if your hardware works at all.

Fedora is so good, I feel offended I didn't know about it until now. I am bitter against M$ and bitter against Canonical.

wafflemaker• 2 years ago

Is it including or excluding the SteamDeck users?

KTibow• 2 years ago

Most Steam Deck users aren't browsing with it

HideousKojima• 2 years ago

IIRC StatCounter's numbers are based on browser user-agent strings. I'm guessing most Steam Deck users are mostly using it for games as opposed to one web browsing, so probably not.

aborsy2• 2 years ago

As a Linux desktop user, I installed windows in a VM to use an application that is not available for Linux (a printer app made by a vendor was available only for Windows and macOS).

Awful! Slow, bloated, my files by default were uploaded to Microsoft (and the setting is easily reversed with updates if turned off), lots of advertisement everywhere I click, edge is slow, …

Glad to be a Linux user! The quality of open source software is frankly very high. The only limitation is that some drivers or software are not made for Linux.

tigeroil• 2 years ago

I know it's a minor detail but the other day I was using Windows for something and I was amazed by how sluggish even task manager felt.

Aachen3• 2 years ago

What blows me away is how poor printers still work. On a bare Debian laptop, I just walk up to it and it prints via USB with no configuration needed. Network printers I think auto-discover reliably as well, but it has been a few years since I've done that (we have a tendency to not trust printers at our small security firm so we don't hook them up to the network)

At least they've solved that you had to wait 2 minutes anymore when plugging your mouse into a different USB port before it finds the driver from Windows Update again

tambourine_man7• 2 years ago

C'mon Adobe. Release CC for Linux. Bless a DE or ship your own. Linux's market share will only increase and your suite should be pretty platform abstracted by now, anyway.

pluc• 2 years ago

Didn't they buy then bury Corel?

tambourine_man7• 2 years ago

No, but why would that matter?

tomovo• 2 years ago

If Google is paying Apple effectively not to make its own search engine, I would not be surprised if Apple and/or Microsoft were paying Adobe not to port CC to Linux.

tambourine_man7• 2 years ago

I don’t think we need a conspiracy theory. Most likely they don’t bother with 5% market share, most of which probably have strong feelings about closed source in general and Adobe in specific.

But if/when Linux reaches 10/15% that may change.

__MatrixMan__• 2 years ago

Linux is getting better all the time and Windows is getting worse all the time. We'll definitely make it to 5% eventually.

conqrr• 2 years ago

I used Linux first as a 14 year old kid in the 90s who found Win$ows to become slow overtime and we couldn't afford a new computer. Fell in love with Linux instantly given the customization and efficiency. Not needing things like an AntiVirus was huge. I haven't looked back at all and its likely what drove me into CS. Sometimes constraints are a good thing. We had a few courses in Undergrad (outdated of course) that required students to run things like LAMP server and GCC and there was a good culture of running Ubuntu and other distros. I would have done 30+ installs for my classmates and ran into all sorts of issues with laptop drivers, overheating etc. Things are probably better on that front now with compatible hardware, (I only buy linux compatible hardware so I'm not sure).I really wish to see more widespread adoption especially in developing countries.

k_bx6• 2 years ago

Bought $2k laptop Acer Predator Helios Neo 16. Windows 11 doesn't install at all (can't see the hard drive). Win10 installed but touchpad doesn't work (even after drivers install), network didn't work (neither ethernet nor wifi) without external USB stick, and so on. After internet connection and installing all updates touchpad and dynamics still don't work.

Pop OS works near-perfectly.

jtokoph• 2 years ago

Doesn't it come with Windows 11 preinstalled?

k_bx6• 2 years ago

Mine came with no OS. I need Linux primarily, but still Windows occasionally for Mission Planner and other Windows-only apps. So I've installed a second M.2 disk and had this terrible experience with Windows installation afterwards.

ziddoap2• 2 years ago

Where did you manage to get one of those without Windows pre-installed? I was looking at one to replace my outdated Predator, and was hoping to save the ~$100 on the license.

k_bx6• 2 years ago

In Ukraine. So.. it depends on how much do you want it haha https://rozetka.com.ua/ua/acer-nhqlveu00a/p416822133/

anemoknee2• 2 years ago

Today I learned there's a laptop out there with a mouthful of a name like that.

k_bx6• 2 years ago

Their official network drivers are called Killer and are very malware-looking ("unknown developer" blocked by windows). It's unbelievable. Looks like some weird spyware junk too.

minkles8• 2 years ago

I would be embarrassed to own something with a stupid name.

"Hey so what laptop did you buy?"

"Well I went for the ACER MEATGRINDER Z980 JUGULAR MOSH RAZOR in the end. The keyboard is 100% sRGB!"

brink• 2 years ago

Same experience with the new 2024 Zephyrus G16 and the latest official Win 11 image. Crazy. I had to inject drivers into the boot image using nlite.

eqvinox4• 2 years ago

Last time I got myself a new laptop (2 years ago), I just removed the SSD (with Linux on it) from the old one and put it in the new one. (It was larger than the included one anyway, I had previously upgraded it.)

…it simply booted and continued working as before. No driver reinstall, no reconfiguring things. I don't remember but I don't think I even had to muck with BIOS/UEFI boot settings or anything.

Downside: a year later the SSD died ;D (possibly age/use related, it was 5~6 years old at that point)

ihateolives• 2 years ago

If Linux kills SSDs in 5-6 years then it's not a good sign.

threePointFive• 2 years ago

I had a similar issue trying to do a Windows reinstall on a Dell laptop. The cause was due to the default setup of Intel RST for the storage. The suggested fix was injecting the RST drivers into the Windows installer. I couldn't get that to work and ended up installing it in a VM then cloning the VM hard-drive onto the laptop's via Clonezilla. Unfortunately it was for work so just using Linux wasn't an option.

michelsedgh• 2 years ago

I wonder if more people are using linux as a desktop or generally, people are using less desktop devices with the rise of phones and tablets. What i mean is, before even old people and the normal users would need desktop and they would prefer windows and mac, but now i feel like they are generally less probe to use desktops and dont need them so that might be contributing to the sudden market share rise of linux maybe? U know what i mean?

bogwog2• 2 years ago

Semi-relevant but a few years old, a 2021 VFX industry survery found that around 60% of workstations run Linux, and that number is expected to continue growing.

What's interesting to me is that VFX and game dev are kind of similar in terms of software and expertise, but game devs predominantly use Windows. I wonder why that is?

Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15b-4GMTSEE9tyqeQdBfy_LZnxQI...

(From https://vfxplatform.com/linux/)

ido• 2 years ago

Because the games have to run on windows

jay_kyburz• 2 years ago

And both Unreal and Unity both mostly only work on Windows. (Linux support very sketchy)

hollerith2• 2 years ago

VFX and game dev are kind of similar in terms of software and expertise, but game devs predominantly use Windows. I wonder why that is?

The deliverable of a VFX project is a video file or an artifact that goes into a video file (no complex dependency on Windows) whereas most games need to be able to run on Windows.

bogwog2• 2 years ago

I don't think that's it. Games also need to run on consoles, mobile phones, and sometimes web browsers. Cross platform development isn't a new concept in game development, and all major commercial game engines work on Linux (well, they do today at least)

Most software used in the VFX industry does officially support Linux, and a lot of those tools are also used in game dev. Maybe Unity and Unreal's Linux support hasn't been great, and that's the only reason?

I guess it's easier to get into gamedev than VFX as an indie, and if you have little/no technical background then there's a good chance you're on Windows or Mac when you start looking up Unity/Unreal/etc tutorials, and then you just stick with what you know.

jayd162• 2 years ago

The market is on Windows and the engine/tools target Windows first. Visual Studio, Maya, Adobe, etc have dominated historically. Jetbrains and Blender have gained ground but run well on Windows.

I'm not even sure you can deploy to an Xbox or Playstation from Linux/Mac officially but I haven't tried this gen.

With WSL and containers etc, getting something on Linux from a Windows machine is way easier than the other way around so there's really no driving force towards Linux.

But I'm also very confused by your link. Do you mean the visual effects industry or whoever uses this VFXPlatform project that added Windows and Mac support much later?

bitwize• 2 years ago

1) If you want to sell your game, you go where the users are buying: Windows.

2) Visual Studio still offers a second-to-none developer experience. If you're targeting Windows exclusively (which you are in PC gamedev), Visual Studio is pretty much a must.

0xcde4c3db2• 2 years ago

I get the impression that career Windows C++ programmers, and especially game programmers, tend to really like Visual Studio. Especially IntelliSense and the debugger. To the extent that equivalents exist on Linux, the consensus seems to be that they require way too much setup for a UX that isn't nearly as good (I vaguely recall one statement along the lines of "like going back to the 80s, and not in a good way").

fxtentacle• 2 years ago

I believe it's the other way around: V-Ray explicitly advertises that you can avoid those expensive Windows licenses for your render farm by using Linux. And Houdini and its Mantra renderer run natively on Linux since forever. As does Renderman, the Pixar in-house engine.

If Pixar was forced to use Windows on their render farm, they'd be looking at a roughly $24mio !!! licensing bill. That's a VERY strong incentive to use Linux as much as possible.

pjmlp8• 2 years ago

Because VFX was mostly UNIX thanks to SGI, and then moved on into Linux.

They also don't have any issues with FOSS religion, they will gladly use proprietary drivers and UNIX software on GNU/Linux.

isk517• 2 years ago

After all of the frustration I experienced getting Windows 11 setup in a way that was comfortable for me to use I'm ready to switch to Linux the next time I need to reinstall a operating system. So glad that SteamDeck is making Linux gaming viable. Now we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same driver support Windows gets.

owenpalmer• 2 years ago

https://youtu.be/OF_5EKNX0Eg?si=fFi2L2k2J6TvTRtc

mdp20212• 2 years ago

The above would be Linus Torvalds saying

Nvidia has been the single worst company we have ever dealt with. So, Nvidia: [angrily for moment, wags a middle finger to the camera] fuck you.

shepherdjerred11• 2 years ago

I had similar feelings about Windows 11, but I recently found the Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC build, and it works perfectly for me.

Debloated and no ads. You do have to do a little bit of troubleshooting, install extra components (e.g. to install the Microsoft store), etc., but it was significantly easier than debloating a regular Windows 11 install.

https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links

candiddevmike3• 2 years ago

Why would I want to roll the dice with Windows install media from a third-party site instead of just using Linux (and possibly making it work better?)

binkHN4• 2 years ago

I thought about going down this route, but decided not to; if Microsoft is purposefully making it challenging to make Windows usable, why should I devote resources trying to fight it?

snovymgodym2• 2 years ago

How do you know you can trust massgravel?

minkles8• 2 years ago

Ah you'll spend all that time trying to get Linux to do all that and then it'll hit a wall somewhere and 1-2 apps you really need won't work so you'll be ready to switch back to Windows 11 the next time you need to reinstall an operating system.

They all suck the same. In different ways.

surgical_fire3• 2 years ago

I've been on Mint for 2 years. Never looked back.

I never hit that wall you speak of. Has been so amazing I donate 20 bucks every year to the project, just because I feel it has no right being at the same time free and that good.

BeefWellington• 2 years ago

I've shared this before but in recent years (basically Win8+) it's actually been the opposite. I've had to help companies set up Linux systems running wine because they have better compatibility with ancient "must have" applications.

These days for 90% of users, the only "must have" application is a web browser anyways.

mdp20212• 2 years ago

You run the best OS for productivity as a base and virtualize other systems you need.

rurp2• 2 years ago

Eh, it depends on what you're using it for. I switched to Linux around six years ago and am quite happy about it. It's not all rainbows and sunshine of course, but at this point I much prefer it to the alternatives.

If Microsoft and Apple weren't continually making their platforms worse I might switch back to one, but they have been continuously going in the wrong direction for many years now, while Linux keeps getting incrementally better.

I actually booted up an old Windows 7 PC the other day and had forgotten how clean and nice the UX was. An OS like that is not bad, but Windows 11?! Good lord, I want nothing to do with it and would much rather deal with some occasional rough edges in Linux.

rahen3• 2 years ago

There are entire companies and institutions that operate exclusively or almost exclusively with Linux on the desktop.

Google, Facebook, Valve, Red Hat, the French Gendarmerie, the Munich city hall...

I contend that if they can do it, others can too.

jcalvinowens8• 2 years ago

Now we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same driver support Windows gets.

We're already there: AMD has first class upstream Linux support!

I played steam games for ten hours on 6.11-rc3 last week with zero problems, on a very old userland (Debian bullseye). The amdgpu driver was built-in, not a module.

kmarc2• 2 years ago

We organized a LAN PARTY (oh my, what a flashback) in 2005 in our student hostel, where we played CS / Half Life on wine, under Linux.

I thought we were already there, 19years ago

kemotep2• 2 years ago

Can confirm. Playing Elden Ring on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Just installed the Steam flatpak, enabled proton, installed the game, works just as well if not better than my Windows install. Nothing extra to install gpu driver wise this is practically vanilla OpenSUSE install with Steam really the only extra thing, playing online with multiplayer summons, etc.

brendoelfrendo• 2 years ago

Bought an AMD GPU as my most recent graphics card for this reason. I was able to play just about all my Windows games without issue, except for multiplayer games that rely on anticheat that does not run on Linux.

When Win10 goes out of support I'll probably be using Linux as my daily driver for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad Valve put in the work.

Farfignoggen• 2 years ago

Now ask yourself the same question but only for iGPU/dGPU compute API support from AMD on Linux and I do not think that you or anyone will come to the same conclusion on Linux!

And really Valve/Linux Community is more responsible for AMD's Opensource Radeon drivers and Gaming performance on Linux than AMD is!

Even Intel has better Blender 3D iGPU/dGPU Accelerated Cycles rendering support for Intel's ARC/Earlier iGPUs and dGPU hardware(Via OneAPI/Level-0) and iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux. And so really one must first consider what Linux Opensource applications need proper iGPU/dGPU compute API support so they do not have to use the slow and power hungry CPU rendering/whatever fallback instead.

And Blender 3D used to support OpenCL as the iGPU/dGPU compute API for AMD and Intel Graphics but even back then AMD's OpenCL component was not easy to get installed and working on Linux. And Linux/MESA had the old clover OpenCL implementation in the MESA drivers but that was not kept updated for OpenCL feature set support! And even with the newer Rusticl OpenCL Implementation in MESA that's just been created is that Rusticl/OpenCL implementation been fully enabled in any Ubuntu versions or Ubuntu derivatives currently?

Look at support for AMD's ROCm/HIP in Linux and for Consumer/Client iGPUs and dGPUs and that's rather limited and Polaris dGPUs have long since been dropped form the ROCm/HIP support matrix and Vega iGPU/dGPUs are on borrowed time for ROCm/HIP support.

So be careful there giving too much credit to AMD's iGPU/dGPU efforts on Linux as there's more to that story. And Look at Blender 3D where that works with Nvidia's CUDA and Works with Apple's Metal and iGPU compute API support there and dGPUs as well.

And I'm on Linux Mint and never going back to Windows but all my older AMD iGPU/dGPU hardware has never been properly supported for Blender 3D's iGPU/dGPU accelerated Cycles rendering. Intel's got better iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux but for ARM Based Processors Apple's the only choice there for proper Blender 3D iGPU support and no mention of Blender 3D iGPU accelerated Cycles rendering support for Qualcomm's Adreno X1 iGPUs on the Snapdragon X Elite SOC based laptops or Mini Desktop PC(Coming soon for consumers).

rapatel02• 2 years ago

NVIDIAs latest Linux driver is open source (they were kinda forced to because of data center usage of GPUs and GPL requirements for kernel extensions)

It’s a matter of time.

CoastalCoder• 2 years ago

Is there a significant difference between built in and loadable module?

Aside from source availability and maybe the risk of version mismatch, I mean.

ajvs2• 2 years ago

It really hasn't got it still unfortunately. Been waiting for hot-unplug support for years, eGPU gaming is still not viable on Linux https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1081

hintymad2• 2 years ago

same driver support Windows gets.

Naive question: Most of ML workload in a datacenter runs on Linux, for which I assume there's good driver support. Why do we say that Nvidia does not have enough driver support on linux?

emporas• 2 years ago

As far as i know, Nvidia drivers are not stable enough. When a driver crashes in a data center the computer might reboot and continue the operation after some minutes. When a player plays a game and the graphic card crashes, he might readily switch to Windows.

eitally• 2 years ago

It's a reasonable but naive question. There's a big difference between Nvidia offering driver/CUDA support for DC hardware vs providing driver support for desktop/gaming gear. There's also a big difference between the quality & consistency of driver support for desktop GPUs between Nvidia & AMD.

talldayo2• 2 years ago

Why do we say that Nvidia does not have enough driver support on linux?

It's a long story.

Nvidia has provided pretty-good datacenter/CUDA support on Linux for a long time, now. The problem is desktop Linux. Nvidia wanted to focus on supporting the old x11 desktop server at a time when most distros were switching to Wayland as a replacement. Nvidia tried to fix the issue by giving Linux devs a proprietary render API to develop Wayland support on, but it was largely rejected since it required writing a lot of platform-specific code. For a few years, the only way to properly accelerate Wayland on Nvidia hardware was to use the reverse-engineered Nouveau drivers that broke most desktop software - a catch-22 for Nvidia users that wanted a more updated desktop experience.

Very recently, a few things started changing. For one, Nvidia started to shuffle around their proprietary GPU code to make their hardware more open and modular. For two, starting with 510-series drivers and continuing through 535 and 555, Nvidia has started to make Wayland support a priority. In the long-term this should resolve the issue of Nvidia GPUs requiring special workarounds to support modern desktops.

jayd162• 2 years ago

What frustrated you?

Modified3019• 2 years ago

There’s definitely been a sea change in efforts to provide a better UX when it comes to gaming. When steamos released, it seems to motivate scattered efforts to start congregating together in a more coherent way. See also:

https://bazzite.gg/

https://chimeraos.org/

imbnwa5• 2 years ago

Serious PC gaming requires mod managers, which are all written for Windows AFAIK

iechoz6H• 2 years ago

This comment would almost make sense 20 years ago (too)!

brettermeier• 2 years ago

What about using rufus with preset settings like not have to use a Microsoft Account and so on? Just drop a Windows iso in it and it will make a nice Windows copy out of it.

taeric2• 2 years ago

I really don't think I can say enough good things about the Steam Deck. If you haven't seen it, they have even supported the device helping people install Windows on it.

I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past. Given time, I'm sure they will do more in the future. Today, though, they are such a breath of fresh air for the support they have shown.

Link: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BA...

feoren2• 2 years ago

I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past

Oh man, what did they do in the past? I have Valve on my very short list of "good companies". Go ahead and rip off that band-aid: what are you referring to?

__s3• 2 years ago

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Steam still has Linux at only 2%, but agreed, I've been playing most Windows games fine through Proton

imbnwa5• 2 years ago

Are you playing Cyberpunk or Alan Wake 2?

DesiLurker• 2 years ago

with vulkan I do actually have some hope of this happening.

etaioinshrdlu• 2 years ago

I kind of wonder or suspect that user agents are being misidentified. I have heard that sometimes Android gets identified as Linux. (which I guess is actually not wrong, but you get the point...)

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

I am done with windows after issues with the quality of windows updates (even security updates!), dark patterns everywhere, pushy anti competitive nudges to Microsoft products, copilot privacy issues, and things like ads in the start menu. I want to use Linux but the main issue for me is battery life of common Linux laptops, especially since standby doesn’t work reliably.

AmVess• 2 years ago

I hope adoption of Linux accelerates.

Windows has become incredibly anti-user. I built a new PC recently. No internet because the latest version of the Windows 11 installer didn't have a realtek Wifi driver on it. This driver was present in the Windows 10 installer.

If I didn't know the work around, I would not have been able to install the OS.

Ok, so I got the OS installed, and was greeted with an OS with 4 different UI styles glued together from W7 on up. Keep in mind, the OS in its entirety has UI elements dating back to Windows 3.1.

Still no WIFI drivers which I had to hunt down and wait because the OEM's website was spittling out corrupt data for a while.

WIFI up, Windows update missed a bunch of drivers. Installed them manually.

After about 45 minutes, finally got the OS ready to install apps. Basic apps. Office, dev stuff, photo stuff. This took over an hour, what with Windows updates, and all.

I also put the latest copy of Fedora on my laptop. No internet connection needed. Typed in username, passcode. Installed in about 10 minutes. WIFI working out of the box. One reboot later, I had a fully functioning OS that came with everything I needed. 20 minutes total, perhaps.

Microsoft has completely thrown away any notion of usability while Linux is accelerating towards it.

I still can't quite wrap my head around requiring internet to install the OS while also not providing a means to access the internet via WIFI.

And then of course there are all the other issues surrounding the OS that has been talked about at length here.

Finally, Windows 11 is a buggy, slow, unresponsive mess of an OS, and it makes using Windows 10 feel like a breath of fresh air due to its comparative responsiveness and lack of bugs. Keyword is comparative. Windows 10 is still a corpulent waddling pig of a sloppily glued together OS.

hypeatei• 2 years ago

Moved to Linux Mint a few months ago and 90% of the Steam games I play work the same (or better) which surprised me. Dev experience is way better and I haven't had to tinker with much at all, Bluetooth controllers connect just fine and no more bloat + spying by default.

gamepsys3• 2 years ago

I had the same experience about 5 years ago.

alphabettsy• 2 years ago

I don’t trust these stats at all. I’d like to see a breakdown by user agent.

It makes much more sense to me that ChromeOS is becoming more common than that everyday users are switching to Linux.

bachmeier• 2 years ago

It makes much more sense to me that ChromeOS is becoming more common than that everyday users are switching to Linux.

It's not necessary for anyone to switch to Linux to see this behavior. These are shares. I'm actually not surprised by these numbers because I've noticed Windows users use their desktops less, instead doing more with other devices. I wouldn't be surprised to see the number rise to 20% or more in the next few years even if there's no pickup in folks moving to Linux on the desktop.

Workaccount23• 2 years ago

I switched to linux desktop about 2.5 years ago.

TBH, I'm ready to go back to windows.

The way I put it, driving a car with a driver's seat that looks like 747 cockpit is pretty cool and definitely very powerful. And it has auto-pilot if you just want the basics.

But man, if you want to do more than the absolute basics, a regular Toyota corolla drivers seat is _way_ more accommodating and intuitive. You don't need to spend a year studying the machine to use it fluidly.

Linux is cool, the idea incredible, but man, searching for guides that tell you to turn cryptic knobs, flick unlabeled switches, and push seemingly random buttons just to get the window to roll down has become too taxing for me. Especially when half the time it doesn't even work.

I want a GUI, .exe's, and hover text on options. There is a reason every consumer grade linux/unix OS hides the terminal (android, iOS, macOS).

aaomidi2• 2 years ago

You practically described how I feel every time I run into an issue on windows and have to resort to editing undocumented registry keys.

AndroTux2• 2 years ago

And that happens how often? Once a year? On Linux, that’s more like one a day. Once a week if you’re lucky.

Arnavion• 2 years ago

Or worse, the knobs don't exist because Daddy knows what's best for you, and you can't have the source to implement those knobs yourself either.

silverquiet• 2 years ago

I've found Pop!_OS to be completely boring in a good way, though I do think there are some rough edges that are inherent to Linux as a sort of hacker first OS, if that makes sense. I also buy Corollas or at least cross shop them when looking for a car.

abdullahkhalids• 2 years ago

Can you outline what things you were messing with? I am a long time linux user, and I haven't configured my computer on the command line in years. Everything works, so there is no need to change much. Last time was 3 years ago, when I really wanted an pipewire ahead of time, and so I spent some time installing and configuring it. That was indeed painful.

Otherwise, I fight with python on the command line, but you do that on Windows and Macos as well.

Workaccount23• 2 years ago

Just recently I got the urge to play dwarf fortress again. For the first time on Linux too.

Of course you need to run dwarf therapist, a 3rd party program, alongside the game to manage your dwarves. Dwarf therapist hooks into dwarf fortress to load data about your game in real time.

Of course, as I have come to normally expect, it didn't work. It could not find the active game session, despite the game running.

So you get on the linux answer machine (google) and start looking for those cryptic codes to painfully ctrl+shift+v (note: cannot have ctrl+v like every other interface on earth) and offer up to the emotionless terminal god with the hope that things work after submitting those magic characters (no response or confirmation, you just try to do the thing you want to do again to see if it worked).

This time around it was "ptrace_scope" settings. What is that? I have no fucking idea, I just want to use dwarf therapist.

https://github.com/Dwarf-Therapist/Dwarf-Therapist/blob/mast...

So I follow those steps to make a permanent adjustment, including getting this thing called "libcap2-bin" (again, no idea what that is, could be installing a botnet for all i know). And as I have come to expect, it doesn't work.

So instead now I have to run a terminal command (i have it saved in a text file on my desktop) everytime i turn on the PC to disable ptrace so I can run dwarf therapist.

Compare this to windows:

Download dwarf therapist.

Run it.

Works first time.

It's just such a classic linux experience.

resource_waste4• 2 years ago

You didnt mention which distro.

Are you using outdated Linux? (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint)

Or modern linux? (Fedora)

Too many people fell for Ubuntu's Free CD marketing 20 years ago and repeat a prayer that its 'sTaBlE'. Its not stable, Outdated linux is garbage.

Since switching to Fedora, I install RPM fusion + Nivida and never touch the terminal. I don't use app managers either, I just havent had a reason to use either app managers or the terminal in the last 1.5 years.

eqvinox4• 2 years ago

Are you using outdated Linux? (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint)
Or modern linux? (Fedora)

Citation needed. As an application developer, I'm seeing interest and activity on Fedora and Ubuntu decrease, and Debian and Mint increase.

(I'll agree with Ubuntu being a "trap", though not really for any reason related to stability.)

surgical_fire3• 2 years ago

Without knowing what distro you use it is impossible to derive any meaning from your post.

dark__paladin• 2 years ago

I have had a lot of luck using the Plasma desktop environment (on Arch). Super customizable, to the level of hyper specificity you've described (down to the pixel, sometimes), and is mostly intuitive how to make these customizations.

My local machine basically looks/runs like Windows 10, but with the KDE Plasma logo in the corner instead of Microsoft Windows.

I have a similar setup using Cosmic on Pop_OS!

zokier• 2 years ago

TBH, I'm ready to go back to windows.

I'm ready to go back to Windows 7. But between Windows 11 (or 12 or whatever), ios ("macos"), and Linux, it's not so simple anymore. It's just bad options all around.

albertopv• 2 years ago

I had a very old HP laptop. I installed Ubuntu 20.04, no problems. Laptop board died. I bought a mini pc, different CPU and GPU. I moved Ubunuty SSD from HP laptop to mini pc as it was, and it worked. Without doing anything all was running: wifi, gpu, bluetooth (even better than corporate Win11 laptop). I run Steam and I was playing just like before my old games. Magic.

minkles8• 2 years ago

100% agree with this.

From my perspective, Linux only works for people if you give a fuck about Linux and make it part of your core being. Some of us give a fuck about solving the problem, not the tool.

There is nothing more frustrating when I'm told "have you used Linux on the desktop". I literally use it on the server, have done everything down to writing kernel modules, have brought up startups and piles of infrastructure on it for 25 years but fuck no, it isn't going to the desktop because it doesn't solve any problems there, only creating new ones.

feoren2• 2 years ago

Despite the downvotes, I agree with you: I only care about getting the thing done. I don't want the OS to matter. I don't want it to be part of my identity. I don't want to think about the OS at all. Whereas most people using Linux are like: "whatever, once you read all the man pages and understand how the process isolation model works and find the right Discord chats to ask your question and know which packages to download and pick correctly from the 743 different distributions and make sure all hardware you buy is Linux-compatible and configure your kernel to sudo dev/null/ then you really don't have to jump down to the console more than once every few weeks" ... sorry, it's still currently much easier to unplug the internet when you first install Windows, edit a few regex keys to disable some ads, and then tell that popup "later" every few weeks. While the latter is infuriating, it takes two orders of magnitude less upfront mental load.

paretoer• 2 years ago

You can't be using KDE Plasma then.

I don't even know how to access the KDE Plasma help because it is just so easy to use.

I am writing this on a $500 ASUS Vivobook that came with Windows 11. The hardest thing was making the KDE thumb drive because Windows kept giving me a blue screen of death.

Once installed everything just works.

lovecg• 2 years ago

Finally, 2024 will be the year of the Linux desktop!

On a serious note there seems to be an interesting lesson here about what sort of products just don’t seem to work in a non-commercial open source model. Specifically, simple user friendly UIs for non-power users seem to require financial incentives and competition.

sebtron• 2 years ago

Nice news, slow and steady grows in the past decade :)

Regarding the article...

While Linux's growth is noteworthy, it's important to view it in the context of the overall desktop operating system market:
Windows remains dominant with a 72.08% market share
macOS holds steady at 14.92%
Chrome OS trails at 1.41%
Linux's 4.45% puts it firmly in fourth place, ahead of Chrome OS but still well behind the market leaders.

Uhm what? And some people claim LLMs are great at summarizing data...

api• 2 years ago

Linux can win the desktop by just sitting still while Windows makes itself more and more awful and user-hostile.

halotrope• 2 years ago

Linux Desktop got so much better in recent years but it also stayed the same. If you’re trying to be productive and not just switching between editor and terminal windows there are still endless frustrations that never end.

systemtest• 2 years ago

I used to run Linux on my desktop as a teenager, but now as a middle aged man I just want to sit down after work, boot up my computer, click the icon of my favourite game and relax for a bit.

And for that, I prefer Windows. I have stopped caring about my distro, my window manager, my desktop environment, the package manager I use. Even my wallpaper is just the default Windows 11 one.

mysteria• 2 years ago

With modern hardware it's also completely viable to have a Windows VM idling in the background on a Linux desktop to run things like MS Office. Local RDP performance (with FreeRDP/etc.) is excellent and suitable for business or dev work that doesn't require accelerated graphics. You can have shared directories, a shared clipboard, and so forth.

rossdavidh• 2 years ago

In case you're wondering if it's real growth, or just noise:

2009: 0.69

2012: 0.85

2015: 1.5

2018: 1.69

2021: 2.38

2024: 4.54

skwirl2• 2 years ago

As a user of 27" 4k monitors, the terrible 150% DPI scaling has been a dealbreaker for Linux desktop for me for years. Every so often I will go out and search to see if it's any better, and I always find people insisting that it works "perfectly" now, and then I will go and try to replicate what they did only to find out that "perfectly" means something very different to Linux desktop users who clearly have never used MacOS or even Windows with fractional DPI scaling.

gamepsys3• 2 years ago

As a 4k monitor user, I think KDE has DPI scaling on par with MacOS.

binkHN4• 2 years ago

Seconded; while the occasional legacy program might have issues, I'm happily doing 4K with scaling in KDE with Wayland.

shiroiushi4• 2 years ago

I'm typing this from a Debian system with dual 27" 4k monitors. Why do you need 150% DPI scaling at all? It works just fine for me without it. Just set your font sizes larger if they're too small.

porridgeraisin• 2 years ago

You can't be serious. That approach has so many downsides you can't list them in a hackernews comment. For example, icons will not be scaled in your method. So any app like audacity where tons of icons are the primary visual component are completely unusable. Not to mention icons on the taskbar look garbage. And not to mention...

You get the idea

skwirl2• 2 years ago

This comment is a great example of the Stockholm Syndrome related to DPI scaling and desktop Linux. This is just slightly better than the "why does anyone need 4K monitors to begin with" takes.

If anyone is really bored, go try what this comment is suggesting. Run things at native resolution and change every system/application font setting to be 1.5x the default. Or instead just think about it for 30 seconds and just realize that a lot of UI is not text, and now you get 'normal' sized text with tiny images, icons, scroll bars, etc. and a lot of UI glitches such as text overflowing tiny buttons or clipping out of panels. The entire experience being suggested is hot garbage.

hollerith2• 2 years ago

How do you configure 150% scaling on MacOS? Doing it in Settings > Displays makes everything blurry in my experience.

jsnell3• 2 years ago

Statcounter's "stats" are garbage, and should not be reported on. They're computed from untrustworthy information generated from a skewed and undisclosed sample, and processed with an unknown methodology. All that's published is aggregate data that's so coarse that it's impossible to actually reason about what's happening and what's driving the changes to the number.

But fairly regularly their stats are either so volatile or so absurd that it's obvious they have no relationship with reality. Like when they reporter Windows 8.1 climbing from 0.1% to 6% market share in the US in late 2023.

One could easily come up with half a dozen other explanations for this Linux desktop market share number that are as plausible as the hypothesis of significant growth in desktop Linux usage.

boomboomsubban3• 2 years ago

Though I agree that Statcounter's stats are garbage, their methodology is somewhat known. They have connections to supposedly 3 million websites that run their script, that script records each hit, and the end stats say 4.45% of desktop hits come from Linux.

It's unclear what sites they, but I doubt it's a representative sample. Even if it is, like one person figuring out which site was tracked setting up a refresh script could be enough to meaningfully damage the data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StatCounter

jsnell3• 2 years ago

We know the methodology by which they collect the data, which is why we can tell it's a skewed sample. We don't know how they process it.

It's not possible to reliably determine the operating system from just the user-agent. You could try to enrich the UA data with other signals, but all of those avenues are either being closed off by the browsers as fingerprinting vectors or are going to have trouble distinguishing Linux and Android.

Likewise we know they do some filtering of bot traffic, but not the details of how or even the proportion of traffic they're filtering out (which would at least allow us to reason about the quality of that filtering).

drewg123• 2 years ago

FreeBSD at 0.01%. There are dozens of us! :)

eqvinox4• 2 years ago

"Linux's 4.45% puts it firmly in fourth place,"

I don't think it makes sense to count "unknown" as being in third place…

franczesko• 2 years ago

"As awareness of data privacy issues grows, more users are turning to open-source alternatives like Linux"

I'd love to see Linux for mobile devices just because of that reason. Old school "what happens on device, stays on device"

underseacables• 2 years ago

I think the more people that have to suffer with windows 11, the more they will turn to Linux. To the average user, Linux is still a clunky, disjointed operating system, but despite its flaws it's vastly better than Windows 11.

shiroiushi4• 2 years ago

Every OS now is clunky and disjointed in some way. But only one of them has ads on the desktop.

mrinfinitiesx• 2 years ago

Good. Linux desktop is the future.

lvl1552• 2 years ago

I think Windows 10 was the best desktop experience. There was a period when OSX was nice. Linux is doable but it’s always 80% there (speaking strictly in terms of DE). Things break more often than I’d like. Not a problem if you do everything in terminal.

pantalaimon5• 2 years ago

Windows has a lot more jank these days than the average Linux desktop.

lvl1552• 2 years ago

11 is horrible. Windows 10 was GOAT for awhile right after they released WSL2. If you can give me Windows 10 environment with Debian as the base, that’d be perfect.

yorwba• 2 years ago

The highest share seems to be in India with 16.21% Linux. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india

I wonder whether that's real or a mirage caused by Linux servers masquerading as desktops.

pantalaimon5• 2 years ago

India is rather poor, Windows screams for new hardware (and Windows 11 just obsoleted perfectly fine hardware that's still plenty fast).

Karliss• 2 years ago

Statcounter data is based on website visits. It is very unlikely that any significant fraction of them are being used for browsing web, or even have a graphical interface with web browser installed for doing it.

boomboomsubban3• 2 years ago

I've always assumed the sites they track lead to some serious small sample biases in certain countries. It's an Irish company, so I'd guess most of their sites are European language based and wouldn't be surprised if there's a high amount of tech sites.

For example, it wouldn't be that surprising if they got data from HN, or a similar site. What portion of Indian desktop hits to this site do you think report using Linux?

apatheticonion2• 2 years ago

Across the week, I go between Linux, MacOS and Windows - my work issued device runs MacOS and my personal desktop PC dual boots Windows and Linux. I am biased towards Linux because I like it but it's far from perfect.

UX is a passion of mine and something I'm a little pedantic about and while Linux has made strides, it still has a long way to go in this department though it's _so close_ and constantly getting better.

Gnome and KDE all have their little inconsistencies and/or lack of functionality. Individually they are minor but together they make it feel unpolished or incomplete.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of things that I feel could be improved - don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it constantly - nit picking is my way of finding areas to improve it so I can recommend it in earnest to friends looking for a bit of OS strange.

Some things that I think could be improved;

===

- Gnome; has an incomplete file manager, though generally no file manager available on MacOS or Linux beats the one on Windows 7 or 10.

- Gnome; Window snapping doesn't always work for Chrome and in general window snapping needs some love.

- Gnome,KDE; While Chrome has its own style on all platforms, it somehow feels less congruent to Linux desktops than it does to MacOS and Windows - plus you can't drag tabs off the window in Wayland Chrome.

- KDE; Password keychain stuff. Feels like this needs to be native to Linux and not the DE.

- KDE; (minor) If you have a high refresh screen, KDE will use 60hz for workspace transition animations but 144hz for everything else.

- Gnome; Window decorations on Gnome are overly padded which makes the interface feel unpolished and somewhat clumsy compared to the tight fonts and spacing you see on Windows and MacOS. I assume this is because Gnome aspire to make a play for a mobile OS one day in the future?

- Gnome; The Gnome/libadwaita guidelines prefer a application menu design that is obscured from view resulting in too many clicks - I think this is also related to their mobile play. I believe that Cosmic gets this right.

- Linux; Please fix application installations. Flatpak is kind of okay but I constantly have issues with it so I tend to avoid it. I really love MacOS's "Foo.app" "executable folder" concept. It feels similar to AppImage but I don't think that's going to win the packaging wars any time soon.

- Fedora 40 + AMD GPU; This is my configuration but it might affect other distros/hardware - Steam doesn't launch from the icon right now. You must install Steam then launch it from the terminal.

===

There are lots of areas for improvement but regardless - every new release of Gnome and KDE gets better and better.

Steam has helped put Linux gaming on the map, that combined with the poor experience of Windows 11 has encouraged IT savvy people & gamers to genuinely consider running a Linux desktop for the first time.

Also the Cosmic desktop is shaping up to be a real strong contender in the Linux DE space and I am excited to see what happens there.

It's an exciting time to be watching the desktop computing space and I am hopeful that the additional attention Linux is getting will continue to push investment into polishing the desktop experience.

binkHN4• 2 years ago

Gnome and KDE all have their little inconsistencies and/or lack of functionality. Individually they are minor but together they make it feel unpolished or incomplete.

Fair, but for how many years now has Windows continued to have a legacy and "modern" way of accessing the OS's settings?

apatheticonion2• 2 years ago

100% agreed. I feel that since Windows 8, Microsoft have been essentially hostile to the Windows user experience and I'd speculate that this is a significant motivating factor for the recent uplift in Linux desktop adoption.

That said, I'd argue that we shouldn't solely rely on the failure of Microsoft to drive Linux DE adoption, instead we should strive to capitalize on this opportunity by rapidly improving desktop Linux and advertising it as a "no compromise" refuge/alternative to Windows (I believe this is what is happening anyway).

While Linux is good enough for me, I am not the average user. In my view, Linux can't just be an equal alternative to Windows, it needs to be better.

shiroiushi4• 2 years ago

Gnome and KDE all have their little inconsistencies and/or lack of functionality. Individually they are minor but together they make it feel unpolished or incomplete.

I've been thinking the exactly same thing about Windows for several decades now.

binkHN4• 2 years ago

I recently migrated from Windows to Linux. I bought a new machine with Windows 11 Pro preinstalled and it was a cesspool of Microsoft ads for their services coming from within the OS and preinstalled apps. It was happening so often, and affecting my productivity while annoying the heck out of me, that I decided Windows is hindering more than it's helping; I bit the bullet and installed Linux for the first time.

Fast forward and I've been on Linux for more than 6 months now and, while it's not all roses, my overall experience has been far better than Windows 11. I still remote into a Windows machine regularly for things that I have not yet migrated to Linux and, while it's a familiar space, it's no longer a space I want to be in.

leoedin• 2 years ago

I’m surprised about the amount of negativity in the comments here. I’ve been running PopOS on a few different machines for the last 4 years or so. It’s been almost seamless. I can’t think of the last time I even considered booting into windows - in fact I recently wiped my dual boot partition because I needed the disk space.

I’m not really a desktop power user - I don’t even bother changing the wallpaper usually.

I think it’s just so much easier now - almost every app is a web app. The stuff I run locally - development tools mainly - all have Linux versions.

BLKNSLVR• 2 years ago

+1 for PopOS as a daily driver and have barely used Windows at home in the last 5 years (outside of my work computer at least).

I love being free of Microsoft and Windows (and Aople and Facebook for that matter, but they're beside the point). On the way to minimising Google as well.

Gud• 2 years ago

I’ve heard good things about popos, will ditch my windows partition and give it a try!

pjmlp8• 2 years ago

It only took 30 years, time to update growing projections for the next 30 to come.

It will be beating the 10% mark?

INTPenis• 2 years ago

Atomic Linuxes really are the gateway for regular people to use Linux.

I've been using Linux since the 90s and I never really would recommend Linux to anyone unless there were very special circumstances.

But today I'd gladly recommend for example Fedora Atomic, I haven't tried other atomic Linux distros but the key feature is being able to revert back to a previous state in the boot manager.

No software will ever be perfect, but once an issue happens a non-technical user must be able to easily revert back to a functional state so they can proceed with their work and life. Otherwise the OS is worthless to them.

And sure you've been able to do this with BTRFS and snapshots but Fedora Atomic is the first time I've personally seen a distro come with this feature out of box, while also being very modern and easy to use.

Just the other day I did an ostree upgrade and after rebooting Firefox couldn't play videos, Steam wouldn't even start. I just wanted to get on with my day so I simply rebooted into the previous commit. An end-user is given time and breathing room to wait for the issue to be resolved and try another update.

arcastroe• 2 years ago

I've been using UWF on Windows. It essentially resets all changes on reboot so that every reboot is back to a clean state.

But I'll take a look at Fedora Atomic. What you describe sounds promising.

manx• 2 years ago

NixOS does this too.

openrisk2• 2 years ago

The beauty of this decades long race is that the end game is still ambiguous. The Windows desktop trends towards being a thin client for opaque cloud services, which means at some point the Linux desktop proposition will be quite dramatically different, with its emphasis on local, private, open source etc.

In any case, for power users the Linux desktop is already a formidable platform.

karmakaze2• 2 years ago

What part of Windows 11 is thin? Ads in the Start menu?

openrisk2• 2 years ago

Who mentioned Windows 11? Ever heard of Windows 365 and "cloud pc"?

andrewmcwatters2• 2 years ago

There’s already a massive gap between Windows and macOS. Though I feel like that gap between Windows and Linux is nominal.

I do think that Apple will continue to piss off engineers enough that over time Ubuntu or another mainstream distribution on a high quality laptop will be a popular choice for a plurality of developers.

geoffbp• 2 years ago

Year of the Linux desktop

0xcde4c3db2• 2 years ago

I wonder just how much of this has been driven by third-party vendors dropping Windows 7 users. I know it's not zero, because I helped a die-hard Windows 7 user switch to Linux specifically due to the Steam deadline. It's easy to chalk that kind of stubbornness up to a generic "fear of change", but in his case I think he very specifically loathed the direction Microsoft took with 8/10/11.

simonblack• 2 years ago

Ho, hum. Linux has been on my desktop for 23 years.

denimboy• 2 years ago

This is the year of the Linux desktop

DrNosferatu• 2 years ago

The year of the Linux desktop?

vitorgrs2• 2 years ago

I moved to Linux for a few months (currently on EndeavourOS, but just distro hopping...). The main reasons for me was because of how the latest updates on Windows 11 has been very horrible.

Windows had only one OK consumer mail app, the inbox Mail apps, and they killed and replaced with Outlook Web App basically.

File Explorer got super awful, unstable, slow...

A ton of native things getting replaced by web apps... And each web app using their own Webview2, instead of at least using a shared webview between the apps (that's how W8 and W10 worked).

The result for this is that to show a simple weather info on taskbar, it literally needs a webview. Yes, the temperature thing on taskbar uses webview. If you are low on resources, the system just can't handle all of that.

Meanwhile on Gnome here, although with some issues, none comes close to that, and the design has been very consistent as well.

adham-omran• 2 years ago

Sadly I'm moving back to Windows by the end of the month due to the lack of audio production software, the only area where WINE, virtual machines with USB passthrough fail..

I'll still use Linux VMs for various services while my host is Windows and I'll develop in WSL but it's sad that a creative niche like audio production has practically no players in the Linux scene, I'm talking Native Instruments, Spitfire, EastWest, Dorico, even MuseScore with its MuseHub do not run under NixOS for example. Quite a shame.

masfoobar• 2 years ago

I remember playing with GNU/Linux since 2005 due to frustrations with the Windows XP and, eventually, Windows Vista. I think it was around 2007 I commited to it, thanks to a "beginning Ubuntu" book that came with the recent release distro CD.

Since then, I have only used GNU/Linux, trying different distros. In the end I kinda settled down with Debian but open to others like Guix.

However, my recent laptop which I've had for 3 years now, came with Windows 10. About a year or so ago it just upgraded itself to Windows 11. I don't mind it but there are just ** on it I don't care for. If I want it, I will install it. Even when I remove it, it comes back on the taskbar, etc.

I am only on Windows due to my current job - but as I am close to resignation... it wont be long before I backup important data, wipe the hard drive, and install debian.

I honestly think GNU/Linux as a desktop is far superior that Windows 11. I guess it all depends what you use a PC/laptop for. If you are stuck in a world of Microsoft products, such as Office.. I get it. It can be hard to break away what you are familiar with and, in some ways, some Micrsoft products dont really have close alternatives.

For me as a programmer, I pretty much have everything I need and my wife who use her laptop as a general user, had no complaints, either.

Honestly, since the rise of Steam on Linux and complaints on Windows 11 -- I am not suprised the market share for linux is rising.

tony2016• 2 years ago

I don't know why this is always in the news. %4.45 is still very small. Linux came out 34 years ago. That's an ion in computer years. Linux desktop is in too many flavors. MacOS is one MacOS. whatever the latest. Windows 11 is Windows 11. Not many flavors of it.

I feel like Linux people are cheering for a tiny number. They'll take whatever desktop market share they can. 10 years from now maybe it will be 6%. Well... big f*king hurray! Open the champagne bottles!

This is all silly.

pixxel• 2 years ago

Linux doesn’t have the capital of tech giants to be installed onto new machines via partnerships (Microsoft), or its own hardware (Apple).

Linux is the greatest FOSS of all time, and small bumps in an upward trajectory are welcomed news. What is silly is jumping into such threads just to shit on progress made against the mega corporations that aren’t working for your best interests.

Linux desktop market share climbs to 4.45%

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