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im doing my part 💪
switched to arch a week or so ago, absolutely loving it
I’m doing my part
Linux Mint here. Soon to switch to a more “manual” distro.
I can’t think of time where I needed anything more than Mint for a desktop. It’s been on at least one device in my house since 2010.
The only real reason to switch to another distro nowadays is because you want to get updates faster (rolling release [like Arch] vs steady releases) and/or you want the ability to customize the OS more easily. Also, if you wanna be that person that wants to remove SystemD from Linux or have a version controlled OS.
I like mint cause it stays out ofy way for literally everything.
Or if you’re sold on the hype of atomic distros (such as Fedora Kionite)
Or if you’re sold on reproducable OS configuration (Nix)
Or if you simply like the defaults of another distro better and don’t want to have to deviate from standards.
Or…
Nah, there’s still a lot of variety to Linux systems.
Microsoft’s advertising campaign for people to switch to Linux is working great.
Thank you Windows 11!
At this rate the Year Of Linux On The Desktop will be 2033!!!
Call me naive, I know I am. But how can Linux be a moderated product to sell for desktop? I know phones run Linux, and many other products like streaming pucks run Linux (or is called unix?), but what would it take for an operating linux system to be centralized into a package to toss into a lenova laptop you’re staring at in best buy?
Some laptop manufacturers (and at least one of the larger ones) already offer Linux (Ubuntu) as a pre-installed OS. I suspect this will become more common if/when Linux becomes more popular as a mainstream desktop OS. Most likely it will still be 1 or 2 pre-selected distros though even then.
That’s really cool I didn’t know that was an option already. How does Ubuntu and windows compare for operating system support if I have a problem with the laptop? Is the manufacturer liable for the smooth running of the operating system? Or is the owner of the operating system liable?
One way to do it is for each company to develop their own flavor to ship with their laptop, in much the same way phone manufacturers just modify Android and ship it.
As an example, check out System76 and their laptops featuring their Pop!_OS distro, which is very user friendly and stable in my experience.
how can Linux be a moderated product to sell for desktop
It kinda depends on each individuals’ use case; there’s lots of different Linux distributions that are better (or worse) for specific workloads.
Any given laptop I’m staring at in a store will probably work perfectly fine as a general-use machine with Linux Mint installed. This is my go-to distro when repurposing a machine because it works great out of the box. If I were running a computer store and wanted to sell consumer laptops with Linux on them, I’d default to Mint.
If someone is looking to turn their PC into something more specialized for gaming, they can look at something like Bazzite or Batocera. These will generally require some tinkering.
If an individual or company is looking to build an office with many workstations and user accounts, they might consider Red Hat Enterprise Linux so they can benefit from official support channels if something needs troubleshooting. Many computer labs at NCSU used RHEL when I attended many years ago.
Want a stable server environment? Debian is a standard pick.
Want a barebones system with no bells and whistles (but great battery life)? Alpine oughta work.
So Linux has many options for end users to pick from, which can be seen as a good thing (more options is generally good), but also a bad thing (many end users might consider the plethora of options to be overwhelming if they’ve never used Linux before).
Linux (or is called unix?)
Linux (Or GNU/Linux) operating systems are a modern implementation of an old research OS that was called “Unix”. Spiritual successors to Unix like Linux and BSD try to bring a lot of the design philosophies of Unix into modern OSes (I believe this is generally called the “POSIX” standard. e.g.: macOS is a POSIX compliant OS, iirc).
If I’ve gotten any of this information incorrect, please don’t tell Richard Stallman.
This is the greatness of Linux. Instead of having to change your workflow to be compatible with your OS, you can change your OS to be compatible with your workflow.
So if you did open a computer shop and are selling this plethora of Linux options, doesn’t that leave you liable if there are issues with the operating system?
If I buy a laptop and my windows is running poorly don’t I have windows support taking care of my windows problems?
If I buy a laptop from you with mint installed and am having problems I can’t contact Linux for support, I’ll have to contact you the shop owner.
Won’t this liability discourage shop owners from selling laptops/desktops with Linux?
I’m no legal expert; I assume support can be either offered or completely avoided depending on the shop owner’s preference. Most Linux distributions come with a “this software is free (as in freedom) and comes with no warranty or guaranteed functionality” disclaimer.
If I wanted to engage more with my clients and build more trust, I might offer some degree of troubleshooting/support for the Linux machines I sold. But I don’t think I’d be under any legal obligation to offer that service just for selling the laptops.
Whether or not the computer shop offers support might affect whether or not a customer wants to shop at my store. Maybe I can sell my laptops cheaper if I don’t offer support, or maybe my laptops cost a bit more because I do offer aftermarket support.
It’s a tough sell because there is no monetary incentive to get Linux on laptops and desktops. Dell has a few computers that ship with Ubuntu, and Lenovo with Fedora, and there’s System76. The problem is that the big manufacturers (namely Dell) get push-back from Microsoft if they start to sell other OSes with their products, so they no longer have 100% domination. Microsoft will say “Oh you’re selling a few products that come with Linux? Well, we won’t offer you the ability to sell Windows anymore…” which would obviously be a huge impact to their business. They have gotten around this, but their offerings are still really slim. The market just isn’t there compared to Windows based computers. Shelf space is expensive so they go with what sells: Windows based products.
Is it because Microsoft is the big dog with money and Linux is no dog because there is no company backing Linux? Windows sells solely because Windows can push the product?
Would it be benificial (albeit this will be extremely frowned upon by this community I believe) for a Linux distro to be backed and monetized via a corporation with a legal team to help push a Linux product on the shelves? In the short run it’s a bad idea, but in the long run it’ll familiarize the public, and push software developers for compatability. The incentive being that there’s money now involved and it won’t be a project for people.
Because right now to use Linux for the majority of user case operations you’d need at least computer science 101 to start installing a distro, partitions, manual software installation, to get running. Or am I wrong on this part?
There are a coupoe of OEMs like System76 and Starlabs that sell laptops with Linux on them, provide tech support for customers and so on.
And no, installing most distros aren’t hard. You just click the buttons to proceed and fill out the username and password box, select your time zone and select your wi-fi network if you’re using wifi.
You can do manual partitioning but why would you if you don’t know what you’re doing?
Installing software in the GUI is as easy as installing software from the Microsoft Store. Just search or look around and when you see something you want, just click the Install button.
Would be interesting to know how much of that the steam deck is
Yeah, these results are skewed because it’s only desktop Linux, so mobile devices (which I believe the Steam Deck and other portable PCs/gaming devices fall under) aren’t counted, and those primarily run Linux. It seems that the foothold of Linux never was, and probably never will be, the desktop PC.
It is not a steam user percentage, but according to the site by user data from web pages, it explicitly mentions search engines and social media. I doubt that the steam deck is extremely significant here.
I’ve been docking mine and using it as my primary pc. The only issue I’ve had is that I was able to play CSGO perfectly, and CS2 don’t do so good.
i hear its great for that, but you are the exception.
Oh yeah, people who need more power definitely want something else. It’s all I need really. I’m about to inherit my daughter’s old gaming laptop though so I’m not sure what I’ll do then. Definitely Linux with a small partition for windows to play some VR games. I’d say I’ll still use the Steam deck for most things though because it’s so portable.
Why a windows partition for vr? Vr works on linux
FREEBSD >0.009% RAAAAAH 👹👹👹💪💪💪💪💪🦾🔥🔥🔥
BSD is dying
It is sad but we build up Linux so we have a libre privacy and freedom alternative
YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
We’re gonna hit that 5%
going to surpass ‘unknown’ any year now. it’s happening.
It is kinda crazy. Been using Linux since 2005 or 2006 on my desktop/notebook. I cannot believe we are almost mainstream now.
Now that we do so many things through a browser and WebKit/Blink (which run everywhere) have become the de facto standard browser engines, the OS no longer matters as much as it used to.
So like 6% if you class ChromeOS as Linux (which it essentially is, just with a proprietary DE)
Then 7% unknown, you’d imagine a disproportionate amount of those would be Linux users, who are more likely to have unusual useragents or things that mess with telemetry. But who knows.
That FreeBSD club looks pretty good. There’s a niche for every niche.
NetBSD needs some love too 🚩
9 crossposts is crazy
with like 600 comments between them, holy moley
One for every current ~0.5% market share!
Time for me to go FreeBSD i guess
FFS! CHROMEOS IS F***ING LINUX, G** D***IT, WHYYY YOU DO THIS, IT'S LINUX, C***** ON A BIKE!Cockin on a bike? What did you write there?
C*****! THAT COMMON SWEAR WE HAVE AMONG US CHRISTIAN PEOPLE THAT WE CANT SAY, DUH
Why use the words if you’re just gonna censor them?
Il feels like every month that passes Linux keeps breaking all time highs! So exciting
Why is it OS X but Windows doesn’t specify which number?
OS/X is just short for Mac OS X, which is what they call their desktop OS.
Not anymore.
They are referring to macOS here
I’m so happy.
But also liked when linux felt like a secret.
Microsoft finally did something right: they made their shitty product shitty enough for people to realize it.
But also liked when linux felt like a secret.
Don’t worry. You can still tap into that sweet sweet Linux elitism by running an Arch based system or a tiling window manager.
That’s old news, NixOS is the new hotness
I’m sorry, can you clarify what you wrote? I read it but then got distracted by my cursor moving on its own while I was reading an article about xzutils. Perhaps I should read it again since it made no sense the first time.
Only if you’ve installed Arch itself, using a GUI is noobs.
I see your Arch and raise you a Gentoo.
Also what the fuck is a tiling window manager? I want it!
Instead of having your windows float around, they perfectly snap and fill the space of the monitor depending on how many windows you have open. A new DE in alpha right now called Cosmic has both floating windows and tiling, you can change with just a toggle.
Cosmic is great so far, I run it on Fedora.
I want my windows anywhere I want them, and in Cinnamon I can snap windows to corners, o top, or bottom… Being forced to work tiled is backwards.
If as someone mentioned in Cosmic you can toggle it off and on ( and the toggle is esasily accesible, not buried in settings) I’m fine with that
“Being forced to work tiled” that’s the main feature of a tiling wm though…
If you tried it for a while, you’d realize just how annoying floating windows really are. All that manual positioning, focus issues, getting them stuck or hidden behind other windows, etc. For big monitors, I would say tiling is just flat superior to floating windows managers.
Oh my gosh I need this now.
Fedora? 🤢 jk
The big common ones are i3, Hyprland, or Awesome. However, there are tons out there and there is no right answers.
