I put Ubuntu on my year old Windows laptop and to my surprise, everything is just better. I mean better than Windows AND better than Linux ever was before when I used it previously. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some major manufacturers shipping PCs with Ubuntu pre-loaded in the coming years.
better than Linux ever was before
I did Linux on the desktop for 15 years. I was primarily Windows at home, Linux at work. With a job change, I took a detour through Mac for a couple of years, then WSL hit, and I ran Windows for quite a while.
I dropped back in, but only at home when Bookworm landed. I was playing Steam games with video acceleration right out of the gate. For a lot of people, it’s just going to work right out of the gate, and updates are just going to work. Now that a lot of shit’s going Electron, a lot of apps that had an edge in windows are now identical through their web interfaces.
If you’re not playing games with a lot of anti-cheat, using proprietary hardware or don’t need access to some windows-only apps (or you can put up with Wine), all the distros are up to the point where they operate just as you’d expect them to.
I will mainly switch to Linux whenever I feel ready for the headache of setting it up for the first time too. Already got another M.2 SSD to run it alongside my existing Win 10 for anything that doesn’t run on Linux.
It really depends on your hardware. I have a Dell XPS with an 11th gen Intel i5 that I’m running Fedora (Gnome desktop environment) on and it was rock solid from minute one. Things to check:
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Make sure your network card is supported. Intel network cards are some of the better choices for open source compatibility. On most laptops this can be swapped out if necessary.
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Camera
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Touchpad
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Fingerprint sensor
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Sound driver
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Any niche functions or modules. Think things like a secondary display on the keyboard, speciality ports etc.
Support is much better now than in the past and remember you don’t need everything to work to have a good time. My fingerprint sensor doesn’t work but it didn’t work well under windows so no big loss for me.
- You can always use a live bootable USB drive to test your hardware without having to commit to anything. This will tell you a lot about the experience you might have after installation. Heck, if you’re board you can try this right now and it won’t touch your current hard drive or operating system.
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I’m doing my part! Switched to Linux earlier this year because Microsoft started showing ads in the start menu. I tried Nobara but ran into some glitches that I didn’t want to troubleshoot so I switched to Bazzite. So far so good.
congratulations, you now walk with the righteous.
sparky linux LXQt was the one i settled to in the end. Despite having a top spec laptop and desktop PC, i wanted a light weight Linux, based on Debian, with no “fluff” at all. PC boots fast, shuts down in 2 seconds, no updates, secure, every program is instant. Windoze is plain stupid now with ads.
They’ve been showing ads in the start menu for years now. Since windows 8 honestly.
I hadn’t seen a single ad until a few months ago. I had snagged a copy of Windows 10 Pro (and Windows 7 Pro before that) from my workplace so I imagine it was debloated to an extent.
As pointed out on hackernews, this is likely attributed to (a) decrease in desktop usage by non-linux-users, and (b) the gaming hardware industry embracing linux (steam deck etc.)
That HN thread was such a shitshow lol. Also I dont think there is anything credible to suggest this increase from 4.6% to 5% is due to ‘non linux users’ or steamdeck. Steamdeck has contributed sure but desktop linux is growing but every single metric (steam hardware survey, PH Desktop user survey, US Gov traffic, tech youtuber trends, etc).
useless antidote: My friend who is a non techie gamer and she plays a lot of anti cheat type multiplayer games ASKED me to help her switch to linux mint and even when I said thats a bad idea she shouldnt switch she still wanted to. She ended up loving it even though there was a few pain points (fucken nvidia dual screen config on x11) and i think a few of her other friends have even switched after hearing her say it works well.
I’d honestly be curious to see what percentage of Linux is steam decks now
This doesn’t give a complete answer, but according to Steam’s Hardware and Software Survey, 31% of Steam’s Linux users are using “SteamOS Holo”. It’s the name of SteamOS 3, used by Steam Decks. 2.57% of Steam users are using some Linux distro.
It doesn’t say how they got this number in the piece (unless I missed it), but it’s likely more than 5% if they are, say, counting the OS by user agent strings hitting a particular tracker. Linux distros use different browsers and they don’t report the OS in an accurate way all the time.
For a long time my UAS just said “Firefox, the version #, NT-based” or something like that, but now it reports Linux properly… I haven’t been paranoid enough to use a agent switcher lately.
I hopped on the Linux train when Microsoft began pushing hard for AI integration and Microsoft accounts. I fucking hate AI and I don’t need some corpo cunt looking over my shoulder and taking notes while I use my computer.
Same. It should be illegal for them to be forcing this shit on us. At least I only have to endure it on my work pc. No windows on personal devices
Welcome! Because we Linux aficionados are incorrigibly nosy and passionate, which distro did you pick and how are you liking it so far?
I went with Mint because my technical knowledge of Linux is very basic at the moment. I imagine I’ll jump to a more hands-on distro as my familiarity with it increases. EndeavorOS looks interesting.
I think the fastest way for Linux to spread is for there to be a cheap gross dirty disgusting commercial version pushed at bestbuy/walmart…etc where people can become familiar enough with it to switch to other distros and out still feel familiar.
I think the fastest way for linux to spread are a) a state-sponsored (totally open source) product that sees a free and open OS as part of a commitment to a free and open society. or 2) one of these fuckhead billionaires drops $200M or so into a trust, rather like the Poetry Foundation, which has the singular commitment to create an OS for people and to support it indefinitely.
I don’t think the answer to any of society’s ills is to get Wallmart involved. ed: walmart however its spelled WGAS.
Im a long time Mac user but recently got a steamdeck. Desktop mode uses a version of kde and I really like it, if I had to switch from Mac I would definitely go with linux instead of windows. I think the steam deck will introduce a lot of people to linux.
Do you think ChromeOS could fit that role? At least it shows that an alternative to Windows exists.
Google will merge Android and ChromeOS.
Iine go up diamond hands
I made the switch recently for probably the strangest reason.
I’ve been running win 11 for over a year using a shell tool that allowed me to move my task bar to the top of the screen and some other win 10 functionality.
However win 11 removed the ability to move the task bar and my shell program lost most of its functionality. After that I was done.
I’ve Linux off and on since 2002ish so it’s not scary to me and I’m pretty happy with Arch and KDE right now. Still the occasional crash that appears to happen sometimes when watching YouTube.
Hey, don’t knock customization as a reason. A couple of decades ago, I was sold on Linux by silly Beryl/Compiz videos such as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=038RHEGu4OYyo compiz is the shit. You can do ANYTHING with it. It took me a while to figure out because where the hell is the manual, but I have my own custom thing going on and it’s brilliant.
If anyone is stuck on windows and not able to switch there’s a program called wind hawk that will let you download customizations in windows 11 including moving the bar
it’s sad, pathetic, and stupid that one has to download a potentially dangerous hack to do something so basic.
From my reading all ways to move the task bar have been removed.
This is working currently on windows 11 23h2. There are other mods for the top too I just prefer a right side vertical.
Fine… that version, not 24H2
idk how you stayed on windows so long, had I tried linux sooner I wouldve dumped it faster, no software support or piracy for said software if it does have support is rough tho like houdinifx is hard to pirate if not impossible, davinci is easy tho, adobe has no support (no idea if it works well with wine pirated)
I use arch btw
This guy uses arch btw
It wasn’t immediately clear, I think you need to change your username to IUseArchBtw so we all know off the bat.
Real men and women run Slack. Tarballs Yum!
To head off the zealots-- ./././
Gentoo with allllllllll the custom cflags while hanging a 20 lb weight off your scrotum
That’s not even close to a proper test of Linux womanhood/manhood.
my linux runs only in RAM, has just a terminal
Wow, that’s excluding Chrome OS, which has 2.71% on it’s own. So you could say Linux is at over 7%, but glad they split it so we know.
ChromeOS is going to the Google graveyard, to be replaced by android
(Maybe this is a good thing as Chromebooks have an expiration date averaging 3-5 years where they stop getting Chrome updates, when if it’s android can get updates to the browser for a much longer time AND have Firefox as default)
Android is also Linux though
I have an old Chromebook that I used for D&D sessions that is now collecting dust because they stopped supporting the model and use security hardware to prevent overwriting the drive that I have neither the tools or skills to circumvent.
Google can blow me where the pampers is.
Well yes, but Android now has a Debian container option. If they expose some Wayland/X interface to it for displaying stuff on Android, for a load of stuff, maybe that is good enough for a lot of stuff?
Linux as an OS is generally meant as Desktop Linux, and it most definitely is in this context that is about desktop marketshare, Desktop Linux is mostly following freedesktop guidelines, which has traditionally helped standards on Linux a lot to streamline developments. So for instance XFCE/Gnome/KDE desktop apps can be run in all the different desktop environments. For instance also standardizing things like how tray icons work. Freedesktop is part of X.Org Foundation, and Chrome OS does not use X.org or Free Desktop standards at all. The newer Wayland to replace X is also an X.org standard.
So while Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel, it is NOT a Linux OS in the original sense, a term that became popular decades before Chrome OS or Android became a thing.
If you include Chrome OS you might as well include Android too. As it can run on for instance Raspberry Pi and other mini systems, and could be used as a desktop system.
Chrome OS is a Linux kernel based OS, and not much more than that.
It’s somewhat confusing in some situations that Linux as a desktop OS doesn’t have a unique name, but it wasn’t a problem originally, as what some prefer to call GNU/Linux was made 100% for desktop use originally.The Linux kernel is way way more widespread and successful than what we usually term Desktop Linux or GNU/Linux.
TLDR:
Linux OS, Desktop Linux, GNU/Linux are generally meant as the same thing.
Chrome OS and Android do not belong in that category. They are Linux based as in the Linux kernel only, but do not follow the standards of Desktop Linux.This isn’t entirely right because Chrome OS is using a lot more of normal desktop Linux than Android does, which basically uses none.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChromeOS
Android is this completely different thing (built round OpenBinder) that ended up using the Linux kernel for good hardware support. It’s basically got nothing to do with desktop Linux, bar needed it to actually build Android. You can argue that Google basically tried forking Linux for Binder and control.
Oh so you can install KDE/Gnome/XFCE apps on Chrome OS and they will work?
You know the “desktop” in Desktop Linux means compatibility is on the desktop apps,and that goes way beyond terminal commands right?Yes you can, but they are actually in a LXC container with Wayland/X from outside (I think it is also in a KVM/QEmu). (Interesting project : https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/HEAD/vm_tools/sommelier/README.md)
If you look at the architecture it looks more normal than Android.
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/software-architecture/
Others note this:
It’s made of lots of FOSS, but it is a dystopian version of a Linux desktop.
OK maybe you are technically correct which is the best kind of correct.
It just goes against every nerve in my body to categorize Chrome OS as part of Desktop Linux.Yeah, I hear you. It’s not going to be the case for long anyway.
Every year Linux fans:
👐 It’s happening! 👐
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I’m not in the US, but here in the UK I made the switch too.
I went from Windows PC + Windows laptop ~2 years ago to now having a Linux PC (ZorinOS), Samsung tablet and a home server running Proxmox with an Ubuntu VM for Docker.
Never been happier with my setup. The grass truly is greener over here.
I couldn’t find it is in the article, is this new purchases, or how is this measured. If a computer ships with windows and I install mint on it, how do they know where that tally goes?
The stats are from StatCounter which has this in their FAQ:
What methodology is used to calculate Statcounter Global Stats? Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 1.5 million sites globally. These sites cover various activities and geographic locations. Every month, we record billions of page views to these sites. For each page view, we analyse the browser/operating system/screen resolution used and we establish if the page view is from a mobile device.
So it’s the percentage if web traffic (to sites that use this analytics service)
Ah so that should be pretty accurate then, because the amount of users spoofing their OS is likely fairly low, and I would assume would mostly be Linux users as well, meaning it wouldn’t sell the data as being higher than it is, but rather possibly lower.
Also someone who uses Linux is more likely to use adblock and telemetry blocking features. The actual count is definitely slightly higher.
Does telemetry block that? If you go to a site like this, does it get your OS correct? I figured you’d have to use the spoof features like in Firefox to get it to say something different. (Like telling it your chrome so it doesn’t block your browser on certain pages)
I know in Cromite I can do some of it from here:
You can get the browser version. But as per OP StatCounter says this
Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 1.5 million sites globally.
I am assuming these are some extra js files or external scripts that the website will try to load, it won’t be part of the native website itself. Adblocker will completely prevent those file or websites from loading in the first place.
My initial point might not be quite right though, in the sense of Linux might be higher by pure numbers but not by percentage. The sheer number of people using Windows, even if a small portion use adblocker could outnumber the Linux users.
My first guess is the author is aggregating the numbers from either the distros download data directly or they are getting the numbers from some place like Distro Watch. You can even get a crude sense of the increase in new users if you hang out in a distro help forum. I check the r/Fedora sub on reddit a few times a week, (I run Fedora 42 BTW), and there has been enough of an increase in new users posting “OMG, I just ditched Windows and look at my shiny new Gnome/KDE desktop!” to be annoying to some people. It can be hard to find those posts from people looking for help with a problem sometimes.
What no one can say is just how long those shiny new users will stick with Linux or run back to Windows at a later date. My gut feeling is, if half of this new 5% sticks it’s a major, major victory for all the distros.
A lot of it kicks back to companies as well. If every time someone interviews for a new job they are telling users they need to run their programs or even just the application for the interview from a Windows machine it pressures users into going back. I always see shit like that for stuff that is even just browser based. I prefer not to install zoom, teams, and such and just open in the browser, but ive run into companies saying their typing tests and other pre employment material only run on Windows. It’s usually false, as I never actually have needed it to install Windows, but it sows doubt in people who don’t want to take chances when they are already in a potentially tight spot.
I switched to mint like a month before PewDiePie lol
My main issue is that I kinda need actual Excel every so often because I require things like power query. I tried installing it using Wine, but it needs to authenticate with Microsofts servers, even the older versions.
You can spin up a virtual machine running Tiny10 and install office on that. Should work fine.
I switched over to EndeavourOS around the same time. I relegated my old windows install to a virtual image, which I boot into for specific games and Excel. 10/10 recommend.
Have you tried OnlyOffice? It has better compatibility with MS formats than LibreOffice.
OnlyOffice is worse (and not because of the security breach implications), but because it misses the Ctrl+D shortcut (copies the cell above to the current cell). Which is something I use A LOT for data entry.
Wait, what security breach implications?
