References
- “Linux hits another all-time high for July 2024 according to Statcounter”. Liam Dawe. GamingOnLinux. Published: 2024-08-01T11:35Z. Accessed: 2024-08-04T19:21Z. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/08/linux-hits-another-all-time-high-for-july-2024-according-to-statcounter/.
This is a big deal. More Linux users leads to more Linux-supporting software, which leads to more users.
The biggest resistence is front-loaded into that first few percent.
In my opinion, advancements in binary compatibility accross distributions (Flatpak, AppImage, …) and broad compatibility with Windows software (Wine and forks… thank you Valve!) are making Linux easier to use.
At the same time, I feel like nowadays there’s less forums or places people can ask help with, although today ChatGPT can be a good help with newbie questions.
I feel like nowadays there’s less forums or places people can ask help with
I’m sorry, what??
There are more places than ever to find support. The Ubuntu forums, EndeavourOS forums, Manjaro forums, NixOS forums, SUSE forums, etc. Just about every larger distro has it’s own forum and they’re all very active. Then there are general Linux, Linux “newbie”, Linux help communities on the various Lemmy servers and (whether you like it or not) on Reddit also. Then there’s Mastodon. General tech forums like Level1Tech, Hacker News, etc.
The only line which I demand must only go up.
300% percent Linux market share by 2070!
I really really hope this will lead to some major UX improvements as more “normal people” start trying to use Linux. Currently, it’s still often too complicated or cumbersome, if not downright buggy.
Example: I run Kubuntu and about 20% of the time when I plug in my external monitors, all my windows just crash. Things need to get to a state of “just working” much more often and in many more cases. I hope this surge of users will motivate people to move towards that or maybe bring in more contributors to advance that area.
KDE isn’t focused as much on stability or having a clean UI. However, it is very customizable.
If you want something easier look at gnome or cinnamon
I installed a new GPU and it changed the device name of my NIC so all my network setup suddenly broke.
Now every ~5th time I wake my computer from sleep the monitor comes on briefly and I then get a black screen. If I turn the monitor off and back on it fixes it.
Would be cool to have more people on Linux finding and fixing these little details.
Would be cool to have more people on Linux finding and fixing these little details.
Unlikely to happen. This is very complicated low level stuff that’s often completely undocumented. Often the hardware is buggy but it works with Windows/Mac because that’s what it’s been tested with, so you’re not even implementing a spec, you’re implementing Windows’ implementation.
Also the few people that have the knowledge to do this a) don’t want to spend a ton of money buying every model of monitor or whatever for testing, and b) don’t want to spend all their time doing boring difficult debugging.
I actually speak from experience here. I wrote a semi-popular FOSS program for a type of peripheral. Actually it only supports devices from a single company, but… I have one now. It cost about £200. The other models are more expensive and I’m not going to spend like £3k buying all the other models so I can test it properly. The protocol is reverse engineered too so… yeah I’ll probably break it for other people, sorry.
This sort of thing really only works commercially IMO. It’s too expensive, boring and time consuming for the scratch-an-itch developers.
If Linux adoption reaches a critical mass then the manufacturers will start fixing these issues themselves. If Linux was 30% of all users and AMD paid a team to fix Linux support, they would eat the competition alive, but if Linux is 3% it doesn’t make sense for them to devote resources to fixing Linux.
True but it’ll have to be like 10% and I don’t see that happening ever really. Unless Microsoft really screws up, which to be fair they are doing their best.
In 2424 108.5% of people will use linux 👍
It feels really good to be a part of this wave!
Yeah there’s no way I trust their methodology has stayed that stable over 15 years. Hell if you just look in the last year supposedly 3% of global users jumped from Mac to Windows in a single month (Nov 2023).
There are also loads of new Linux device classes that may have Linux in their user agent but aren’t really “the year of the Linux desktop” that you’re thinking of. It seems they try to count ChromeOS (though badly - seems like “Unknown” contains a lot of ChromeOS depending on the month), and obviously Android, but what about Steam Deck? Smart devices with web browsers built in? Is your Tesla desktop Linux?
I’d buy it’s gone up; not to 4% though. I would be moderately surprised if 4% of web users had even heard of Linux.
The year of the Linux desktop I’m thinking of was like 2008. That was then it became perfectly usable on the desktop and I haven’t had to switch back since.
I don’t understand why anyone care’s what Linux’s “market share” is. It’s open source, no one makes money when someone installs Linux.
it’s still a market, and “free” is still a price point
Someone should add major Windows releases on the X axis. There’s gotta be some correlation.
I had dabbled in it off and on since LONG LONG ago, but I only went full time (no dual boot) since windows 11 release. So yeah, I bet there’s lots others like me.
I had been dual booting for a while with Windows 11/Fedora until one day I needed to update the BIOS on my motherboard. Windows decided it was too big of an upgrade and wanted me to activate again. I called support, and they said that I had used up all my activations and would need to buy a new copy.
Thanks Microsoft, for helping me switch full time to Linux!
To the moon, boys!
💎👐
