The year of the Linux desktop will happen when a large (EDIT: large, CONSUMER-FOCUSED AND CONSUMER-FRIENDLY) company decides to donate a remarkable amount of resources to the development and maintenance of a specific distro to make it user friendly and give it the feeling that someone who actually knows better than most users is taking care of important stuff in the background.
…Valve? 👀
AND runs all windows programs right out of the box with no faffing about.
TBH: Most private users aren’t really using many programs. They are running chrome. Maybe an email client, but even that is declining. They are looking at pictures with the standard photo viewer and maybe at some PDFs and sometimes they are writing a letter and print it? Linux totally can do that.
Sure, but chances are if that’s your use case, you moved to a tablet years ago. Your photo storage is likely Facebook and Google Photos backup.
The casual people doggedly hanging onto PCs likely have some obscure software they need to run on it, either for work or personal use.
That’s not completely accurate. Remember, a lot of people want a full keyboard for typing; and an iPad with a keyboard is way more expensive than a mid-range Chromebook. Plus, a whole generation of students are growing up and entering the workforce having used nothing but ChromeOS for their entire middle school and high school careers; for them, a Chromebook feels very familiar.
Microsoft is VERY close to losing every install advantage they have. Gaming, corporate, devops, and government are the only use cases their leads are still in any way commanding in; and they’re fiddling while Valve puts the finishing touches on Steam OS, they’re about to lose their tenth consecutive K12 graduating class who will go into the workforce more familiar with ChromeOS than Windows, devops is increasingly moving toward web portals, and government…well, let’s face it, that’s not a particularly lucrative single game to win.
Google has already eaten Microsoft’s lunch and dinner. And now they’re about to split Windows’ breakfast with Valve. Unless they make some major changes, and quick, Microsoft is going to go into the 2030s less relevant than they’ve been in decades.
Novell tried to do that with SuSE Linux in the early 2000’s and I’ve never forgiven them. Edit, AND did deals with Microsoft. Brr.
Taking the dive on my gaming tower. Wish me luck bois
You don’t need luck. You’ve got us! (And the Internet to verify our claims lol)
Just triple check every step, learn how to prevent ESD, and pull that useless little sticky plastic protector off the cooler before you install it! (That one gets SO many system builders).
Youll prefer tinkering with the os rather than playing in no time ;)
Posting pictures of riced-out tiling window manager desktops is the hot new game they’re looking for.
Where’s you’re going you don’t need luck, just a solid enough internet access point to search for solutions!
ME ??
That wasn’t a good OS either…
You mean the year of unpatched Windows 10.
As long as the browsers keep getting patches we’re all good.
You can now pay for extended updates.
Yes, precious.
We wants it!
I’ve been learning GIMP to replace Photoshop in preparation. So far, so good, but there are still things about GIMP I just dont get. Like, it’s seems impossible to paint onto a fully transparent layer because the paint tool doesn’t modify the mask as it goes. I don’t even want that layer to have an alpha channel, but it seems like you have no choice if you want a transparent layer.
If you try to paint on a transparent layer, you just get… nothing. It’s so trivial in Photoshop to make a new layer and just paint into it, and I can’t figure it out at all in GIMP. (I really should ask in a forum, but I also feel like I shouldn’t have to.)
Being able to script in Python to simulate Photoshop actions is both awesome and crappy. It’s awesome because of how powerful it is, but crappy that I can’t just whip up an action in seconds to make a quick, repeatable edit.
I guess I’ll have to use a VM to run Autodesk Fusion. ☹️
Maybe try https://photopea.com/, an in browser Photoshop recreation.
After switching about 3 years ago, I tried running photoshop through wine. It was a little glitchy visually (I hear it’s ok nowadays though) so I tried gimp and just couldn’t get used to it. I tried krita and its perfect for what I use it for, very easy to use coming from photoshop. I’m not sure about actions as I don’t think I used them in Photoshop but it has plugins so you might be able to find something to replace what you used before
Not sure what you need from Fusion but have you had a look at OnShape?
OnShape has a very weird and outdated workflow. It’s also browser based without offline functionality and it forces all your work to be public unless you want to pay for a subscription. Not a good choice at all.
I have not. I use Fusion for CAD and CAM for a CNC router.
For home use FreeCAD might be an okey replacement for autodesk. It’s not as polished, but working well enough for simple geometrioes
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It is a meme. I saw people joking about it on Slashdot back when Linux 2.4 was recent.
Near? You can install Linux right now, no need to wait for anything to happen.
And that’s because the year of the Linux desktop was when Intel started full upstream contributions of drivers.
No, I literally cannot muster the willpower to switch.
Everyone migrates to Ubuntu. One finger of the monkey’s paw curls up.
“No, golblammit! I said the year of Linux is n-” CLANG!
I remember similar articles when Windows 7 reached end of life. People will complain but mostly adapt to Windows 11, and Linux will gain 0.2% market share.
Will they though ? Me and all my nerd friends straight up ignored windows 8, I’m sure we weren’t alone. I also saw the writing on the wall with windows 11 and went with Linux for my new gaming PC
I ignored Windows 8, and even 10 for a while, but that was because Windows 7 was still working and supported and still kinda is my favorite version of Windows.
Then at some point I just switched to 10 and been using it ever since while installing the occasional distro to see if I can move off of Windows (Answer is still no) or as an emergency desktop bootable USB
This time is a little different. A lot of slightly older but really decent hardware won’t be compatible with Window’s TPM requirements. They’re forcing their customers to buy all new hardware for an overall worse experience. Pair that with the upcoming Trump tariffs and you’ll see some people second guess their next choice of OS if it means they can save on a lot of money if they make some concessions on what they want. I’m not saying it’ll be a huge change but at least it’ll keep ticking up the Linux market share enough for some software publishers to start offering their products on the platform like Steam already is.
For most non-tech savvy people, the OS is part of the computer. It comes with win 10, that’s just the way the computer works and it will stay with 10 until the hardware fails or is too slow and they need a new PC. They’re not separate. And if a PC costs more, they’re just going to deal with it longer or give up on a desktop/laptop and do more on their phones.
When Windows 7 reached EOL in 2012, ChromeOS wasn’t even a year old, MacOS was too expensive, SteamOS wasn’t close on the horizon, tablets weren’t really usable, smartphones were severely underpowered, and most applications didn’t have web-based versions or replacements.
This time around, none of those things are true, and Windows 11 lost market share last month (which is frankly unprecedented).
Plus, even with that dearth of options, people griped and complained and refused for so long that Microsoft made a big marketing deal out of Windows 8.1. And even after that, they offered Windows 7 users free Windows 10 licenses to get them to upgrade.
Linux probably won’t get the crown (though I’d say a bump as high as 1-2% isn’t out of the question). It’ll probably be ChromeOS, if anything, simply because of the commanding lead Google has held for the past decade or so in K12. But in any case, if Microsoft doesn’t shift their strategy, they’re unlikely to win this one; there are a lot of options.
windows 7 reached extended eol in 2020, for security updates only, i believe that’s what they were talking about
I don’t think so. The big switchover push for 7 (like what’s happening now with 10) happened in 2012.
i am incredibly confused by what you mean, Microsoft’s website clearly states the extended end of supoort for 7 was jan 2020 as stated here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/windows-7, and besides, the marketshare for windows 7 was still growing in 2012
by any chance, do you mean a push over to windows 7 from something like xp? or are you talking about a push from 7 to 8, which never really happened as all the focus was on the impending 2014 windows xp end of support date
No. I mean the push to switch away from Windows 7. Windows 8 was released in 2012, which is when Microsoft began pushing users to switch. The end of extended support is almost a footnote; it doesn’t even register as a blip for most users. It’s the release of the successor that begins the big marketing push.
Look, I like Linux too, and I think governments should definitely use it to move away from Microsoft.
But as long as prebuilt PCs and laptops are sold with Windows, people will stay accustomed to it and be way more hesitant to switch. You can tell them, ‘It works just like Windows! It just looks a bit different!’ Yet their minds will still think, ‘New = scary.’ and won’t use it.
That was true in the past. But in the last 10 years people have stalled their PC upgrades. That’s the real reason why they don’t move to Win11, because they don’t want to buy a new PC. And that’s where Linux is going to get that market from MS.
No, it won’t. People don’t want updates because they don’t want to see a change, not because they don’t want a new PC. And Linux is even a bigger change with even more updates.
There are more devices that ship with Linux or actively advertise support for it than ever tho. Of course far from the majority, but it’s a start that you can get basically anything with Linux if you want
The issue for me as a potential advocate to my immediate circle of friends and family is that I don’t want to become the only source of tech support. Now realistically they’ll probably have fewer issues, but as soon as they want to fix something they’ll have to come to me. No they won’t Google things, and if they do they won’t understand it.
Yeah, just like how Netflix’s rule changes was going to get everyone to turn to piracy. In reality, their subscription numbers skyrocketed, just like how new Windows PC sales will in 10 months.
To put this in perspective, it fell by 0.48%
Windows 10 grew by 0.89%
Linux actually dropped by 0.26% in that same period.
Not that I’d be too concerned about any of that, because that’s all data from reported OS in website visits, so all those are well within the margin of error.
I finally switched. Honestly, the only thing I hate is the audio manager.
Which can easily be replaced 😁
