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Won’t be like that much longer. Windows continues to become worse, Linux (desktop) is on a steep upwards trend. I’ve been using desktop Linux since 1998 and desktop Linux has always been at or around 1% market share, for 15-20 years it was just flat basically, which tells the story that only geeks and nerds used it, which is the story that everyone’s familiar with.
But these days? It’s approaching 5%, and most of that climb was just in the recent 5 years. That’s insane. At the same time, Windows continues regressing from about 95% market share in 2009 or so to something like 70% these days. And this tells the story that people are growing increasingly fed up with Windows (and rightfully so).
In all other areas, Linux is already the dominant OS. It dominates servers, supercomputers, mobiles and embedded systems. Since Microsoft doesn’t appear to get their sh!t together, it’ll soon dominate the desktop as well.
It feels like most people here are only reacting to the title. If you actually look at the article, it talks about commonly mentioned advantages and examples of Linux.
It’s really not that interesting to me as an article, but from scrolling through some others there might be more interesting stuff here. Or am I missing something?
From my experience, an average user goes to a local “walmart” and buys whatever laptop they like visually. It has Windows pre-installed. They just use it.
It’s already a big step forward if they install Chrome instead of Edge. If they install Firefox or LibreOffice, they are a highly advanced average user.
Do you think anyone would care to change the OS? There should happen something really big for it to happen.
Most people grew up using windows. Familiarity has a huge part. Why isn’t everyone using macos?
Very different questions though. Linux offers massive and plentiful advantages over both of those.
I am not disagreeing with the familiarity idea, though; change terrifies most people.
A lot of people just need to get shit done and it’s easier to just use the tool they know than to relearn how to use a computer.
I think relearn how to use a computer is a real stretch. Like colossal. Plenty of distros and DEs make it even easier than Windows, can look exactly like either, and are far less accident prone.
I don’t think it’s a stretch. I’ve been using both for >15-20 years.
Lots of people don’t even know how to install windows. While linux is easier to install IMO (and has been for years) I’d say a significant amount of the population doesn’t even know how to control computer boot behaviour. Linux is not preinstalled on a significant amount of computers due to Microsoft’s monopoly on the PC market. After you get past this, everything looks different. SameButDifferent.gif.
KDE Plasma for example, sure it looks close at a glance but the icon is different for the menu. This is enough to trip up some. Dolphin looks similar but behaves a bit differently than Explorer. “I want to install adobe photoshop. Hey, why can’t I open this installer?” - how software is managed on Linux is quite a bit different since windows still doesn’t really have a good package management method.
Then hardware compatibility, distro choice, and stability. I’ve been running nvidia for years and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve rebooted my various systems over the years after patching it and I’m greeted by a shell and an error message. Good luck, majority of the population.
I can’t tell you the amount of hours I’ve burned trying to fix my GUI using a spare computer or my cell phone to look up error messages.
Of course, for all those instances there are computers that work just absolutely flawlessly. But the software and DEs all still have some of a learning curve.
That all said, most people will just see the firefox icon and be like “durr - internet!”
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Actually back in the early days of Microsoft before the huge antitrust case, their deal was if you want any computers to license windows, you can’t offer anything except windows on any computers.
