There is a Unix/X11 port that contains most of the Plan 9 userspace—including a version of rio—called plan9port.
It is not nearly as good as using the real thing.
They got a DE built in and say GNU is bloated. Foolishness
Out of curiosity, do you use it for fun, or does it provide you with some specific features?
I use it because it's truly a "complete system" in a way that Linux and even the BSDs are not—every program is an example in itself and it comes with a ton of various scratch-built utilities that you don't usually find as part of a typical Linux distro. Stuff like a basic torrent or IRC client just sort of fall out of the way Plan 9 is organized and implemented.
It also provides me with a distraction-free environment and a set of tools that I enjoy using, even if some aspects of Plan 9 as, say, a laptop daily driver are inconvenient or awkward. It really is better suited for networked computing.
I was pretty much sold from first contact because Plan 9 is the way that I feel best matches what I've always wanted from my machines: a simple grid of networked appliances where I can route the various resources and hardware in whatever way I require.
You explained it so well, that you actually got me interested in trying it some day.
What happens with the Plan 9 system after the boot camp has ended? From what I can see on that site, their Plan 9 shenanigans will end by mid-September. (SDF is NetBSD-centric AFAIK.)
It used to be that everyone in the Boot Camp got their own VM that was wiped each season, but recently everything was migrated to a single installation that doesn't reset and everyone uses.
In short: now you get a permanent account.
And yes, SDF itself is NetBSD-based—the largest single installation as well as a primary testing environment, if I'm not mistaken.
That's not too hard, given that NetBSD is a niche in a niche. But a permanent Plan 9 server account which I do not have to keep running sounds intriguing... thank you!
I wish someone would port Python and BorgBackup to it. Venti/Fossil are not quite as nice for multi-OS backups.
Python 2.5.1 was distributed as part of 9front back when it used hg, but it was ultimately removed from the base system once we switched over to git9. 9legacy still packages binaries, however; they're up to 2.7.6 for Python and 2.9.2 for Mercurial.
I never bother with venti/fossil, honestly. I'm more of a cwfs kind of person, but Ori's gefs has been attracting my attention lately.
Venti/Fossil are awesome for a Plan 9 network. Sadly, the world isn’t Plan 9. TIL about gefs though.
I mean, leave it to us weirdos on sdf for stuff like this.
Are you on oftc?
In #cat-v? Not regularly. I mostly hang out in gridchat with a handful of the 9front people.
ah. I've been doing linux things, but maybe i'll try out gridchat next time i'm on 9front
Surprisingly many people don't need the "modern" "web" for daily driving.
Can I join the club, I use 9front
One of the few times I think where this is not only correct, but also most accurate
The "unknown" is Windows. If you change the graph to see the whole range from 2008 to date, you will see that whenever there's a big spike or dip on Unknown, it's the exact opposite for Windows.
Thanks for ruining it for me.
Sorry but Linux is becoming too mainstream for me now. Time to hop on to BSD
Oh no, I feel it already the "I was on Linux before it was cool"
Dragonfly BSD, or else it will still be mainstream :)
Check out mister Mainstream over here. The rest of us snooty OS connoisseurs use Collapse OS.
Windows 11 is a strong motivator. I suspect like many other people, the only reason I was keeping Windows around was gaming. But thanks to Proton and the Steam Deck, the number of games in my library that won’t run on Linux is vanishingly small. I deleted my Windows partition a few months ago and haven’t looked back.
Install Linux or buy a Mac, fuck Windows.
Don't buy a Mac. That's more limiting than a Windows. But yeah install linux.
More limited, but also less enshittified than Windows.
If you want a good, well-polished experience for certain creative workloads, or even programming, MacOS is great and their Apple Silicon CPUs are excellent.
If you want to do ANY gaming besides WoW (which surprisingly enough has always had great MacOS support) or you can't stand the lack of configurability, Linux is immediately the superior choice by far.
I would like to add that if you want to do any real customization of your setup don't get mac either.
Oh definitely
The whole business model of Apple is to force a hardware upgrade cycle on you and force all your devices to be in that same ecosystem.
I mean, I can see the advantages of it on the short term, but on the longer term having stuff that keeps on working even as always even in older hardware (or you just install new hardware under it and it just recognizes it and keeps on working) is a massive benefit versus a $1500+ bill every two five years and having to migrate your stuff.
It’s more like 6-7 years and the migration tool basically clones your drive in 15 minutes
Even though I do hate Apple as a company, they do make great products, they just charge out the ass for them
Nah, even their hardware consists out of laptops with screen protection falling off, phones bending themselves into breakage and cables with the sensitive connectors on the outside so they'll break often.
Their OS is surprisingly buggy, too.
They're actually just shit all around, in my experience.
I dislike Apple as a company but I love Apple hardware. Old Macs are my favourite thing to run Linux on.
Gaming works pretty damn well as far as I'm concerned, the few that I can't get to work are irrelevant.
I'm keeping Windows around for work... fuck Autodesk and fuck Dassault. So I am trying to get a VM with GPU pass through to work (had it working once but then I screwed it up and now I can't seem to get it working again).
Having done the transition some months ago, there is still some stupid shit one has to deal with (especially, but not only, for games NOT from Steam) at times, more than in Windows, but it's all so much better than it was before and by now quite close to the Gaming experience in Windows.
Then on top of that there are all the the longer term peace of mind things versus Windows: upgrading your Linux costs zero, changing your hardware won't invalidate your Linux "OEM License" (plus it will probably just boot up as normal with if you just move your SSD to a whole new machine rather than throw you into driver nightmare), games that work in today's Linux will keep on working in tomorrow's and so on - this is actually massive advantage of Linux versus Windows which is seldom talked about: more often than not, hardware migration with Linux is to just move your SSD to a whole new machine, with all the stuff just the way you like it and all you files, and it just boots with and keeps on working.
(PS: Especially relevant for gamers who have to upgrade due to the increasing demands on hardware from the gaming side of things even though the hardware is fine for everything else they do in that machine, and who would rather that all those other things they've installed and kept on using rather than uninstall after "finishing the game", just carry on configured just the way they like it and working just the way they've always did, even when they do upgrade the hardware because of games. People who are fine with hardware dedicated to gaming and with replacing the whole thing - hardware and software - for newer games, just get XBoxes or similar consoles, not PCs)
Linux not only saves you from enshittification, keeps control in your hands and preserves your privacy, it's also a reliable and functional long term OS layer for your hardware that doesn't force hardware upgrades on you.
I dicked around with the VM route for a while and could never really get it working 100% to my liking. There was always a trade-off. I ended up just getting a second PC and tucking it in a cabinet out of sight. When I need Windows I just use remote desktop to connect to it.
Mac?! Darwin no, that’s doing the opposite of liberating yourself and it has less gaming than Linux I’d say.
It does. Gaming on mac is a pain. Gaming on linux is a much better experience, and has much better support at this point. Apple really alienates developers.
I didn’t mean for gaming specifically, probably should have used a transition statement. For creative and professional use cases, macOS is still far far better than Windows. For gaming yeah that’s not your platform, Linux is.
I don’t think “liberating” your machine is the reason people are just now getting mad at windows.
“I can't choose when to update, anymore”
“I can't uninstall all sorts of things, anymore”
“I can't even use my perfectly fine laptop of 6 years old, anymore”
It's all about liberation, I'd say.
“I can’t choose when to update, anymore”
That changed with windows 8 12 years ago.
“I can’t uninstall all sorts of things, anymore”
Unless you installed the embedded versions of windows you've never been able to do that, best you could do was turn like 5 things off in the features screen.
“I can’t even use my perfectly fine laptop of 6 years old, anymore”
I wouldn't call your computer not getting updates so you install a different OS "liberating" it.
Also your computer not getting updates doesn't magically turn it into a brick, you can still use it just fine. This is something I've never understood. As long as your web browser still gets updates that's the biggest security vulnerability that I'd be afraid of. Chrome supported Windows 7 until 109 in 2023, and Firefox ESR is still going until September this year. 10th gen and older intel machines don't get graphics updates anymore, are those machines ewaste? Shit some shitty laptops never get bios updates and there's a whole host of vulnerabilities there.
And not to mention specific equipment such as train management that uses Windows XP, Windows 98 or 95. Just one example.
That changed with windows 8 12 years ago.
Oh yeah, it's been a gradual process.
the number of games in my library that won’t run on Linux is vanishingly small
at this point, it's pretty much only about Roblox.
...which I don't want to play, I'm not happy about my nephews playing, but that seems like the only big one which really continues to struggle on Windows.
edit: that's from my limited POV, as someone who loves gaming but i don't follow or try out big new titles, I'm pretty much happy with my 30 favs, trying out like 5 new games a year, usually older or indie titles.
Roblox is about the only reason why I can't switch my kid's computer to Linux, they play almost exclusively that and Minecraft. Once win10 goes EOL, I'll probably start budgeting to replace my laptop with a new PC and give them the laptop. The old PC will then get Linux and handle 3d printer stuffs
I might be out of date but for a long time my 2 nephews (10 and 13, cousins to each other) have been playing Blox Fruits, which I understand is pretty much a standard "grind" MMORPG. (Which I don't necessarily find that bad; having to put a lot of work in a character and seeing it grow slowly and steadily can be a lesson.) I like how they are having fun trying to coordinate and take out a boss together (sometimes dying all the time), but I suppose other games can give that, perhaps even better-looking ones and certainly ones made by less shady companies. (Oh, and actually working on Linux/steam deck)
So I was wondering if there are other games that I could introduce them to, if only to remind them that world outside Roblox exists. I never played any MMORPG's (or pretty much anything multi-player, except Minecraft/Terraria/etc. with the kids) so I'm out of the picture. I've only tried few in my life and never stuck for long.
Albion Online seemed child-like enough, albeit a little boring for my taste. One I really enjoyed recently is Path of Exile (and I it looks more than good enough to be hard to resist for a kid), but who knows -- is that safe for 10 to 13 year olds...?
at this point, it's pretty much only about Roblox.
It's Honkai: Star Rail for me.
Petty as it may seem, I'll begrudgingly dual boot Win10 until H:SR is playable on Linux.
I'm Linux user since 2008 and as much as I want to agree with you, I can't. Even if Mac is much closer to Linux with its BSD roots, I probably would choose Windows over Mac. Why? Because Windows is much more open and less restrictive than OS X. And there is the support and compatibility of Steam games (and games in general) in Windows. The hardware repair ability is terrible on Apple too.
Yes, Microsoft is bad, Windows is bad; so is Apple and OS X. I personally can't live with the restrictions Apple has.
Same here. If I could get Vortex Mod Manager to work under Wine/Proton, I wouldn't use Windows at all.
Nexus Mods is working on an AppImage version of their mod manager that works perfectly in my testing.
Currently it only supports Stardew Valley and Cyberpunk i think.
I'm excited for it to have parity with Windows Vortex.
Give it a shot again, something changed recently in Proton (I assume) that made Vortex "just work" for me on my Steam Deck. I didn't even need to do any fiddling, I just ran the installer exe from desktop mode using Lutris and whatever Proton was latest, and it installed perfectly. Vortex now runs entirely as expected, even from game mode.
Vortex should be easy to get working, it probably just needs the Dot Net and Visual C libraries installed, which I think you can get via Wine Tricks.
What games are you using it for? I’ve used Mod Organizer 2 for Skyrim SE and it’s worked great on the deck
Really? The last few times I've tried (granted it was a year or more ago) I got like 15 FPS on a heavy modlist running on my desktop, which had a GTX 2080 and was running Arch, btw. Trying to get MO2 to launch the Linux version of Skyrim running via Steam/Proton and not the Windows version of Steam running through WINE was a fun mess to deal with. Once all that was handled, then half of the modding programs (xEdit, Nemesis, BodySlide, etc...) didn't work with MO2s virtual FS. It was just way too many layers of abstraction to deal with 🤯
Yes, really haha. I don’t think I would consider the mod list I used heavy, at least not graphically. I didn’t use any of those programs you mentioned.
Trying to get MO2 to launch the Linux version of Skyrim running via Steam/Proton and not the Windows version of Steam running through WINE was a fun mess to deal with
I recall using some sort of script that installed MO2 and handled all of this (at least for the Steam Deck).
Either way, I hope their new cross-platform launcher works out well.
Nice, thanks I'll give it a try again because Windows 10 is really pissing me off regarding how practically anything that you used to be able to easily disable now requires one or multiple registry hacks that may or may not work anymore.
I totally understand you not giving all that a try because while it is a handheld Linux PC, it's probably more of a pain in the ass to use on that screen and with the standard input (obviously docking it would solve these issues) than it's worth. I just keep Windows on my Desktop to play a few games, my home server is my workhorse and I have a Linux laptop that work gave me (literally, they laid me off and never asked for it back).
I checked out Mod Organizer 2 recently, but it didn't support Subnautica the last time I tried it. I only use mods for a few games, line Stardew Valley and the Fallout games.
Literally the only reason I keep Windows around is because modding Skyrim (using MO2, not Vortex) is a nightmare. I use Wabbajack as well, so the idea of installing 500+ mods manually in Vortex doesn't sound ideal, also since Vortex's conflict management is an absolute nightmare compared to MO2's.
FREEBSD >0.009% RAAAAAH 👹👹👹💪💪💪💪💪🦾🔥🔥🔥
BSD is dying
It is sad but we build up Linux so we have a libre privacy and freedom alternative
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.
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.
I like mint cause it stays out ofy way for literally everything.
Time to speak to our representatives to switch to Linux Systems as Switzerland did for cyber security and for fiscal responsibility.
We must not fall behind that smart country once again.
What?!
All that noise about Switzerland mandating usage of open sourced software in gov (there was a great step, but it's far from mandating anything) was already weird, now we are switching to linux? And caring about security and fiscal responsibility? There has to be another country called Switzerland than the one I live in.
You're right, I believe the only thing Switzerland mandated (or wants to mandate?) is for projects built FOR the government to be open sourced - and even then, there are exemptions.
Of course, unlike you, I don't live in Switzerland, so I'm probably not as informed.
Il feels like every month that passes Linux keeps breaking all time highs! So exciting
Microsoft's advertising campaign for people to switch to Linux is working great.
YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
We’re gonna hit that 5%
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.
going to surpass 'unknown' any year now. it's happening.
THE LORD NEEDS NO NETWORKING!!! THE LORD IS THE NETWORK!
If you pray hard enough, the Lord will make the websites appear on your screen!
U glowing
Is someone kind enough to post a screenshot of the stats? I can't access it, because its a known tracking site and get blocked by the plugins.
Okay, I have bit the bullet and made an exception to provide screenshots myself:
Thanks for your service, comrade.
Next time try out visiting the page through archive.org
I didn't think of it, because I always think or archive.org as older pages/versions. The problem is, is it updated to current? It's a big site, so probably it will be. Good idea, I'll check that next time through archive.org.
You can always* request a new archive of a website. If you log in (warning: it has to load google code at least when registering) you can also request a screenshot (which I don't know how you find later on, but right after you get a link) and recursive archiving with a depth of 1.
Interactive elements remain interactive nowadays, but it has limitations.
In some cases archive.today is worth a try too. It has workarounds for e.g. facebook, or at least in the past it had a fake account to be able to save facebook content.
But this one loads whatever code from yandex, so if that's problematic for you be sure to block it. uMatrix is best for that task, probably uBO can do it too, the Firefox version I mean.
These sites are basically my "remote browser", and often it'll be even useful for others that I requested an archive. Quite often I'm requesting the first one.
* mostly, but you can't if the site was very recently archived, like in 30 minutes. Then there are some sites that are blacklisted for some reason but not much.
I wonder what happened to OS X
It does not mean that something happened with MacOS / OS X. If it stays the same and everyone else gets bigger, then the same gets smaller relatively speaking. Look at the dip for OS X in Nov 2023. Looks like almost the same amount of up for Windows. Also Chrome OS went a bit down and Unknown went up, only Linux stays the same.
So either something in their software changed or it was really a phase of people buying new computers and changing their OS. For a fact, I also build my PC in Nov 2023 (but stayed on Linux). Maybe that was a time of new hardware or lower prices, don't remember exactly.
It is 16% in India, lessgo!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think Gentoo with no binaries should be the new archlinux. I've literally used archlinux virtually unchanged outside of updates for years now. It's been trouble free outside of some minor bugs and I change my settings in the kde settings panel 90% of the time.
Cool. My wife switched to LMDE yesterday, so that's one more into the fold.
If only MS Office worked well on Linux, due to her muscle memory, my wife would've switched to Fedora for her laptop. Aside from light gaming (Sims 4, mostly), she's not a tech-person at all, so that's saying something in my book!
She might adjust to LibreOffice, it borrows heavily from the MS Office UI. I think it's also available on Windows if she wants to try it before switching. Sims 4 works great on Linux too.
soon we will reach the magic number companies need to finally consider supporting Linux for once
What is that magic number?
Always 5% higher than it currently is.
100%
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?
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 couple 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.
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?
It's a good question but I honestly have no idea how that works even today with windows actually because I have not owned a laptop in 15 years. In my mind, the laptop manufacturer has to guarantee compatibility with any OS it provides but even then, some support from the OS side may be needed. The best way to handle that would be if the manufacturer started contributing to the Linux kernel and provide full driver support because then everybody wins in the long run.
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.
2033!!! = At least 16
The crowdstrike failure is probably helping Linux.
This is what I was thinking when it happened. Businesses lose a shit ton of productivity and money due to Microsoft and Windows being a clusterfuck in multiple ways and they decide it's time to switch to something more stable.
Actually, crowdstrike has a very bad record regarding this, their services even managed to break Debian servers one time.
Source: some article.
In fact, that failure occurred this year. Now all that's left is for macOS to have a failure with that company and the collection is complete.
I believe BSD has more servers than macOS.
I highly doubt businesses would have been this fast in making the switch.
It helps to move quickly when your entire infrastructure crashes.
One crash will absolutely not make this big of an uptick. The amount of highly specialized software and hardware that is OS dependant means switching will only be possible when those companies, hell really entire industries, decide to move over to a more open standard soft/hardware setup. In this case, a crash is a big deal, but the IT teams get on it and fix it in a day or two.
Also, certain Linux machines were affected by the cloudstrike outage. Even less reason to switch when the alternative was effected as well.
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 🚩
Hmm is this really happening so fast? It's a little hard to believe.
I suspect it's a bump due to Windows Recall. I know I fully switched because of it after 25 years of off and on the Linux Desktop. And I will not be going back.
I suspect it's a bump due to Windows Recall.
I don't believe it that much. It may just be the Steam Deck's financial success. But everything is possible.
100% switched because of Recall. Been a Linux user on and off for 20 years, windows was my daily driver for the past 5 or so (windows 10 was OK in my mind). Once Recall was announced, I bounced back to Linux. Having Steam popularize gaming on Linux has helped a ton
Maybe not, but, anecdotally, I know of a number of people who have made the switch because of Recall. Steam Deck surely adds to it, but people who have the choice to stop using Windows seem to be doing so.
Maybe not, but, anecdotally, I know of a number of people who have made the switch because of Recall.
Tbh I don't get it. Wasn't this feature only on Copilot+ PCs that almost nobody had? Why did so many switch if it wasn't even confirmed that it's coming to regular x86 machines? I always find it extremely weird.
Microsoft showed their hand and for some it was the last straw. It might not come to non-copilot pcs (for now) but they showed users they are OK with turning the OS into spyware.
Imo Windows is not even an OS anymore.
Agreed. It’s mostly an ad delivery platform these days. Can be somewhat OK if you have a DNS based blocker but hard to block built in spyware.
Why did so many switch if it wasn’t even confirmed that it’s coming to regular x86 machines?
Panic.
Or they see the writing on the wall
I wasnt thrilled about upgrading to win11 - it adds an irritating layer of stuff that I didnt want or need. The ads and telemetry bugged me too. I was probably going to reluctantly upgrade at some point though.
But then recall was announced and I realised how much worse it could get. Been really happy with the switch to Linux.
What distro do you use?
Mint cinnamon 21, then upgraded to 22.
Great choice
Considering this is browser stats I doubt the steam deck has much to do with it, the steam deck is all about never opening anything other than steam.
Are you sure Steam is not one of the data suppliers for it though?
Steam deck alone isn't much. It's not even popular in a lot of places in the world. But there are a lot of things happening in the market, and each small factor adds up to a general trend. So, there's no single factor that we can point that will explain the linux growth in marketshare.
Yes, although it's not evenly distributed. Much of this rise is due to India doing some heavy lifting - they're on like 16%, and they're not exactly a small population.
Most places are in the 1.5-3.5% range.
Even 3.5% is quite a lot imo.
Indeed it is. But this is also calculated based on monthly page views, so it only really covers devices that are used in that month.
There's a non-trivial amount of Windows users that have a dusty laptop that they only pull out when they need to write a document or fill in a form that they got emailed, and will otherwise do all their computing on their phone.
My guess would be that Mac and Linux have fewer of these types of users? But who knows. I have a couple of Linux devices that I almost never use 🤷♀️
I've seen many people having Linux on such devices so idk either.
You should go to your local university or knowledge center. The percentage is like 10%-20%
That's what she said
There's some kind of network effect associated to it, so the greater the numbers, the more likely to grow even more, and faster. For example, when linux was used only by a very few people in IT, most people were unlikely to even give it a try, but now that every class or working group are likely to have one or two linux users, more people will be likely to try it, and so on.
Yes, things move very fast if you haven't noticed sugar pie
I understand you're excited, but aren't you overdoing it a bit?
Quick give me more subs to crosspost
We need more cross posts
on Reddit I think it makes sense but on Lemmy it's usually obnoxious in my experience, because it's not so populated and busy, the default browsing experience already gives you posts from all over... so unless you strictly browse followed communities (which i don't know if most people even do this) you end up seeing the same thing over and over.
I have been dual booting for some time now. Come back to windows 10 for gaming. But then I suddenly realize that the blizzard games that I play can run on Linux, and even from the same folder with the NTFS partition. I was stunned. No notable performance difference either.
I recently shows my mum that have an old Core 2 Duo that it can run Linux Mint. She said it works, and the computer shutdowns directly when I tell it to do. No more updating windows to wait for before unplugging the power cable.
Still have to dual boot Windows 10 for Microsoft Office Word document compatibility and Google Picasa.
She also just have bought a new computer with Windows 11, could barely make it through the installation. So many questions and configuration needed to get rid of ads and popups in Edge. Need to evaluation Mint more before I try to dual boot it on this machine as well.
Or.... Just fuck off windows altogether?
There is a learning curve for old people. It takes time. So dual boot is a must until then.
It also doesn't help that my dad still isn't filly convinced Linux isn't a virus/dangerous to my PC.
He is just afraid of learning new things. Best way here is to show him how it works. Learning.
Oh I've been trying. He's tech adverse in general, so the concept of open source software scares him because it means trusting others with regards to tech.
This. It feels to me like driving a stick shift when you've been using an automatic transmission for years. You have to do a little more fiddling but I honestly don't mind learning a new OS that isn't actively working against me.
With Windows . . . on the other hand . . . every time I've had to go "under the hood" (tweak Registry settings, Config files, etc) it's been to prevent Microsoft from doing something crappy to me.
Yes, with Windows it is a fight about disabling all the new stuff they come up with.
Here, you must use OneDrive if you save a file. Here, lots of ads in the start menu, nothing is installed. Or here, please try copilot+ or bing. Do you want to set bing as your startup page? If you say no, we will ask you again...
A new windows update? Lets ask everything again.
Picasa? That's been google-bandoned for a while now. What does she use it for? Plenty of photo management tools in Linux. Darktable, Digikam...
If the office alternatives in linux don't cut it, and she uses Office 365, you can run it in Linux as a PWA
Picasa because it had worked fine. And the replacement, Google photos, is not an option with storing everything in the cloud.
Both Darktable and Digikam looks too advance. I think Gwenview will be a good fit. Will try later when she has the time to test. Just viewing the images in the folder, that is all that is needed.
It would be a good idea with the Office 365 but we don't want things in the Cloud. If the PWA could run offline it would be a different story.
You might want to check out Libre Office. It's document compatible with MS-Office and I think it comes pre-installed on Linux Mint.
If you want you can try OnlyOffice, it works really well as a replacement for Office. That is if you only use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I even convinced some Windows people to use it as its free, open source, cross platform and perhaps even easier to use at this point.
For Picasa maybe digikam? It maybe isn't a perfect replacement though. You could always try to run Picasa in a VM (or maybe even wine?)
Microsoft does not follow its own standard for doc and docx. Any other software tries to follow the standard, thus you can get different view of the document depending on what editor you use.
Picasa I think is easier to replace. Just need to relearn. Leaning towards Gwenview. VM is not an option, too complicated and slow for her. Picasa has been depricated for a long time now so it is time to move on.
My argument is, from the eyes of the website you visit, the Steam Deck user would be identified as a desktop user. That's because the browser you are using (most likely Firefox) and the desktop environment (most likely KDE) in the Desktop mode would be seen as a desktop. In short, yes, I think Steam Deck would be counted, but only if people visit the pages in Desktop mode. So not all Steam Deck users are counted here.
Game mode doesn't have a browser. I would be interested to find out of the steamdeck sales almost directly correlate to this increase. Not that I am complaining, it's a great way to use a linux desktop experience. I didn't really read how these numbers were measured.
The other explanation I could think of is that linux desktop is being adopted widely in India. I don't think that government's adopting linux desktop accounts for a significant portion of the machines.
Unknown
Would be interesting to know how much of that the steam deck is
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
Well, I guess I won’t need one then. Hardware is a bit older but if I can get the same performance I’ll avoid the windows partition.
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.
In my head it’s like half a percent, 4.45% seems huge.
about 1/20 computers that browse the web run linux, thats pretty goofy
To what extent could it be acceptable?
Goofy like silly, not like unacceptable. Reckon all three of us are happy it’s as high as it is!
4.45 is huge. 0.5 is normal sized.
Huge is just about 9 times the size of normal.
Why is it OS X but Windows doesn't specify which number?
They are referring to macOS here
OS/X is just short for Mac OS X, which is what they call their desktop OS.
Not anymore.
How far down are PC sales in general though?
Is it that more people are buying Linux, or fewer Windows customers are buying new computers at all?
A few years ago, you'd have households with a laptop for every member of the family. Now with tablets and phones doing so much of the heavy lifting, many families are dropping to just 1 Windows or Mac laptop that mostly gathers dust.
My experience is more people having those devices on top of having laptops. I don't know a single person in Uni that does not have a laptop at all. At last when it comes to writing reports or thesis you just need a proper keyboard device.
Meanwhile gaming and also PC gaming has become much bigger over the years, which keeps driving computer sales.
Believe it or not - but most people actually aren't college students. Crazy, right?
Anybody in this forum isn't a typical tech user.
I carry 3 laptops in my backpack (one for 8-5 job, one personal, and one for teaching night classes at the University) along with a foldable phone, a work phone, and e-ink notepad.
Between my 3 laptops, Rog Ally, 2 desktops, and some old laptops I keep around for media devices and network interfaces around the property, I've got like 10 Windows machines in my life.
But I also know I'm an outlier.
Have you told your therapist?
If you carry three laptops around you are definitely doing things wrong. There is no real world scenario where doing what you say you do needs 3 physical computers, and if you have a 9-5 AND teach night classes , you don't have extra minutes to use your "personal" laptop that day, which leads me to call bull on the carry 3 laptops thing
The course I teach involves photo and video editing, which I do on my personal laptop for 2 reasons:
Because I own the photos and videos I capture, the raws stay on my device.
My personal laptop has a lot more horsepower
I can see it. My corporate work laptop is locked down with their security and monitoring software, so I'm not using it for personal things, even if it is allowed for some limited things. And there's company resources that I can only access through the machines under their control, so I couldn't ditch it either. And using that laptop for a second job would be a big no-no.
I can see the school laptop being similar, though my experience is that they tend to not be locked down quite as hard as the corporate machine, unless you do boneheaded things with it and piss off the school's IT department.
So I can see the need for a personal computer, plus it's always nice to keep that well separated to avoid things like incidents hooked up to a projector and screen sharing.
ooh! what’s the e-ink notepad, and what’s your usecase like?
it seems so appealing to just have a functionally infinite notebook on hand, but i’ve yet to find one that could ACTUALLY replace a regular physical notebook for me.
Boox Tab Ultra C.
It's a 10" color e-ink tablet that runs Android.
Don't get the keyboard case for it - it sucks hard. It's so thick it turns it into another laptop, it types terribly, and when folded backwards so you can write it still tries taking over from the pen.
Other than that I love it.
argh that’s literally the ONE that was tempting me, now I guess I GOTTA buy one! this sucks!
(thank you so much i’ve wanted to buy this since it came out)
I used to think that I'd be glued to my PC forever, but ever since getting a foldable I've found that I'm no longer reliant on computers anymore for daily tasks. Plus there's no point in eating up 300w of electricity during the summer (according to my watt meter), just to watch YouTube.
These days the only time I boot my PC is to play a game, search for a job, or make a large purchase. I'm a MilleniaI, so big purchases have to be done on the big computer. The phone is more than adequate for everything else. It's not the 2010s anymore; phone screens are finally large enough now to replace a PC, and there's an Android equivalent for almost everything a computer can do.
Programming?
Nah. It's a consumption device, not a creation device.
Run Vim in termux
Really ain't writing code in termux. I want an IDE. Why use a substandard device?
I'm not a programmer.
Yeah I used to think I'd always need a desktop, but these days I mostly only use my phone and laptop. And considering how small desktops are getting, I can only imagine the days of the traditional desktop are numbered.
or people are like me, not gamers, so perfectly contented to upgrade old used PC gear....shoehorn a CPU in with higher core count, max out RAM with a new matched pair of sticks, install a fresh NVMe drive, good to go!
I recently ordered parts from China to repair my old mechanical keyboard =^_^= Also ordered fancy new mice for other PC's & wife's laptop woo just a little tech refresh goes a long way for me =^_^=
Both
Windows isn't only losing markershare to linux, but also to android and ios. That can be seen in the chart for all OSes, also available in that site:
It's also interesting to notice that linux is growing in that chart, which means that linux is really growing in popularity, and it's not just an effect of the desktop market possibly shrinking or something.
9 crossposts is crazy
One for every current ~0.5% market share!
with like 600 comments between them, holy moley
nice
I'm actually gearing up to convert all of my Windows machines to Linux once the updates for 10 stop coming. This will be especially easy once the new WINE gets integrated and the few windows game apps that I use can run well on Linux.
Better to do it at least a few months before end off life just in case you need to move back for some reason. The alternative is Windows 11 which is very similar to Windows 10
Is the data of specific distros available somewhere ?
Unsurprisingly, usage numbers for distros are hard to get due to lack of telemetry and what not.
However, some measurements do exist; like data from ProtonDB. These are used by Boiling Steam for their excellent reports in which some representation regarding usage across distros can be found. Their most recent report can be found here.
Note, however, that the following, as has been excellently touched upon by Boiling Steam, applies:
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
Since we hear some of the following comments EVERY SINGLE TIME, let’s address them here and now:
“Duh, it’s not representative of Linux usage in general!”: And nowhere does it claim to be. As often as possible we make it clear this is Linux usage in a gaming context. The usage of Debian and Ubuntu on servers is safe for now, no need to panic.
Thank you. This does give an idea.
Follow up question : Is Arch really that good?
Thank you. This does give an idea.
It has been my pleasure.
Follow up question : Is Arch really that good?
Depends entirely on your needs. There is a use case for Arch. However, if you're completely new to Linux, then it's very likely that a 'slower'-moving distro (like (anything based on) Debian (or Ubuntu)) might better suit you.
@mukt@bsergay Naa bhai bs faltu ka drama h. Opensuse ya fedora use kiya kr. Best hai for most cases. 😉
How do I hide which OS I am using? What is behind the high Unknown number?
Use user agent switcher and set it to something random. However that makes your fingerprint unique. I've read that people set it to windows just to blend in the masses
Every browser has a description like "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.1.0; SM-T580) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.157 Safari/537.36" called User Agent. You can set this value to something else, but be careful. If you set it to something that does not exist, then it makes it more likely to be identifiable. Or some things could potentially not work right if it expects a specific operating system, in example when downloading files. Usually not a big deal.
So ultimately you want to set this value to something that exist and something that is used by many people. There are addons which can make this process much easier or even change it automatically after some time period in example.
Chameleon at https://sereneblue.github.io/chameleon/ is such an addon for the browser. There are lot of other alternatives, I used a few of them in the past, but stopped using them because there was here and there trouble. If you do, I recommend to install this addon from the addon store of your browser and not from the website, but that is just my personal recommendation.
Thanks.
So what is measured is merely the browsers people are using? Then I can see why the metrics are more general ballparks than precise measurements, seeing that the user agent can be modified with ease.
The question is, if they only evaluate the User Agent? This is an organization specialized into statistics, they know it can be modified too. The ad industry tries to track you and find out everything about you despite these modifications. Don't underestimate them!
Fair enough. They still don't know what >7% of people are using, though.
That 7% might not even be people. It could be bots doing HTTP requests and throwing garbage in the user-agent.
No? It says Linux/Android not far into it.
We are so back
I never left the party
Reference to my server lol
Cool
I wonder if it is higher. Think about all the people using Librewolf
To the moon!!! ┗(°0°)┛ ..○
This is the year!
Time for me to go FreeBSD i guess
[joke] That must be my friend's laptop. [joke]
i didn't need this date; i already knew this because the number of people coming up to me on the street and telling me they use Linux btw unprompted has increased noticeably.
Best still rare even though potentially very user friendly and accessible.
FFS! CHROMEOS IS F***ING LINUX, G** D***IT, WHYYY YOU DO THIS, IT'S LINUX, C***** ON A BIKE!
Why use the words if you're just gonna censor them?
i think i was parodying my own indignant rage
Cockin on a bike? What did you write there?
C*****! THAT COMMON SWEAR WE HAVE AMONG US CHRISTIAN PEOPLE THAT WE CANT SAY, DUH
7.14% unknown!
The year of Plan 9 on the desktop!
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Serious question: you'd use that for your daily driver?
I already do.
A rare sighting of a Plan 9 user! You need to be protected at all cost! Your species is extremely rare and important for future studies.
BTW for a moment I was upset, because I thought this is a screenshot of Reddit. I kinda like the old look of it.
What desktop environment is that? Or is it built in by default or doesn't work quite similar to linux?
It is called
rio(1)and it comes with Plan 9.There is a Unix/X11 port that contains most of the Plan 9 userspace—including a version of
rio—called plan9port.It is not nearly as good as using the real thing.
They got a DE built in and say GNU is bloated. Foolishness
Out of curiosity, do you use it for fun, or does it provide you with some specific features?
I use it because it's truly a "complete system" in a way that Linux and even the BSDs are not—every program is an example in itself and it comes with a ton of various scratch-built utilities that you don't usually find as part of a typical Linux distro. Stuff like a basic torrent or IRC client just sort of fall out of the way Plan 9 is organized and implemented.
It also provides me with a distraction-free environment and a set of tools that I enjoy using, even if some aspects of Plan 9 as, say, a laptop daily driver are inconvenient or awkward. It really is better suited for networked computing.
I was pretty much sold from first contact because Plan 9 is the way that I feel best matches what I've always wanted from my machines: a simple grid of networked appliances where I can route the various resources and hardware in whatever way I require.
You explained it so well, that you actually got me interested in trying it some day.
If you ever want to just poke around a Plan 9 system, SDF Public Access UNIX System offers an ongoing Plan 9 Boot Camp.
Stop by and join us in
comsometime!Bottom of site: SDF Public Access UNIX System
I love this!
Edit: I just noticed this. Is this a miscalculation of the time or am I in the wrong timeline?
DECSYSTEM-2065
What happens with the Plan 9 system after the boot camp has ended? From what I can see on that site, their Plan 9 shenanigans will end by mid-September. (SDF is NetBSD-centric AFAIK.)
It used to be that everyone in the Boot Camp got their own VM that was wiped each season, but recently everything was migrated to a single installation that doesn't reset and everyone uses.
In short: now you get a permanent account.
And yes, SDF itself is NetBSD-based—the largest single installation as well as a primary testing environment, if I'm not mistaken.
That's not too hard, given that NetBSD is a niche in a niche. But a permanent Plan 9 server account which I do not have to keep running sounds intriguing... thank you!
I wish someone would port Python and BorgBackup to it. Venti/Fossil are not quite as nice for multi-OS backups.
Python 2.5.1 was distributed as part of 9front back when it used
hg, but it was ultimately removed from the base system once we switched over togit9. 9legacy still packages binaries, however; they're up to 2.7.6 for Python and 2.9.2 for Mercurial.I never bother with venti/fossil, honestly. I'm more of a
cwfskind of person, but Ori'sgefshas been attracting my attention lately.Venti/Fossil are awesome for a Plan 9 network. Sadly, the world isn’t Plan 9. TIL about gefs though.
I mean, leave it to us weirdos on sdf for stuff like this.
Are you on oftc?
In
#cat-v? Not regularly. I mostly hang out in gridchat with a handful of the 9front people.ah. I've been doing linux things, but maybe i'll try out gridchat next time i'm on 9front
Surprisingly many people don't need the "modern" "web" for daily driving.
Can I join the club, I use 9front
One of the few times I think where this is not only correct, but also most accurate
GNU HURD remains ignored.
Good.
https://plan9.io/plan9/
I unironically would use it
Additionally, for those that may want a Plan 9 that's being actively developed and will actually work on modern hardware:
https://9front.org
There's also 9legacy, which is basically "classic" Plan 9 with some patches from 9front.
It says “THE PLAN FELL OFF” and “DO NOT INSTALL”, everything OK over there?
The front fell off.
DO NOT INSTALL!
Please do. Why don't you yet?
The "unknown" is Windows. If you change the graph to see the whole range from 2008 to date, you will see that whenever there's a big spike or dip on Unknown, it's the exact opposite for Windows.
Thanks for ruining it for me.
Sorry but Linux is becoming too mainstream for me now. Time to hop on to BSD
Oh no, I feel it already the "I was on Linux before it was cool"
Dragonfly BSD, or else it will still be mainstream :)
Check out mister Mainstream over here. The rest of us snooty OS connoisseurs use Collapse OS.
Windows 11 is a strong motivator. I suspect like many other people, the only reason I was keeping Windows around was gaming. But thanks to Proton and the Steam Deck, the number of games in my library that won’t run on Linux is vanishingly small. I deleted my Windows partition a few months ago and haven’t looked back.
Install Linux or buy a Mac, fuck Windows.
Don't buy a Mac. That's more limiting than a Windows. But yeah install linux.
More limited, but also less enshittified than Windows.
If you want a good, well-polished experience for certain creative workloads, or even programming, MacOS is great and their Apple Silicon CPUs are excellent.
If you want to do ANY gaming besides WoW (which surprisingly enough has always had great MacOS support) or you can't stand the lack of configurability, Linux is immediately the superior choice by far.
I would like to add that if you want to do any real customization of your setup don't get mac either.
Oh definitely
The whole business model of Apple is to force a hardware upgrade cycle on you and force all your devices to be in that same ecosystem.
I mean, I can see the advantages of it on the short term, but on the longer term having stuff that keeps on working even as always even in older hardware (or you just install new hardware under it and it just recognizes it and keeps on working) is a massive benefit versus a $1500+ bill every
twofive years and having to migrate your stuff.It’s more like 6-7 years and the migration tool basically clones your drive in 15 minutes
Even though I do hate Apple as a company, they do make great products, they just charge out the ass for them
Nah, even their hardware consists out of laptops with screen protection falling off, phones bending themselves into breakage and cables with the sensitive connectors on the outside so they'll break often.
Their OS is surprisingly buggy, too.
They're actually just shit all around, in my experience.
I dislike Apple as a company but I love Apple hardware. Old Macs are my favourite thing to run Linux on.
Gaming works pretty damn well as far as I'm concerned, the few that I can't get to work are irrelevant.
I'm keeping Windows around for work... fuck Autodesk and fuck Dassault. So I am trying to get a VM with GPU pass through to work (had it working once but then I screwed it up and now I can't seem to get it working again).
Having done the transition some months ago, there is still some stupid shit one has to deal with (especially, but not only, for games NOT from Steam) at times, more than in Windows, but it's all so much better than it was before and by now quite close to the Gaming experience in Windows.
Then on top of that there are all the the longer term peace of mind things versus Windows: upgrading your Linux costs zero, changing your hardware won't invalidate your Linux "OEM License" (plus it will probably just boot up as normal with if you just move your SSD to a whole new machine rather than throw you into driver nightmare), games that work in today's Linux will keep on working in tomorrow's and so on - this is actually massive advantage of Linux versus Windows which is seldom talked about: more often than not, hardware migration with Linux is to just move your SSD to a whole new machine, with all the stuff just the way you like it and all you files, and it just boots with and keeps on working.
(PS: Especially relevant for gamers who have to upgrade due to the increasing demands on hardware from the gaming side of things even though the hardware is fine for everything else they do in that machine, and who would rather that all those other things they've installed and kept on using rather than uninstall after "finishing the game", just carry on configured just the way they like it and working just the way they've always did, even when they do upgrade the hardware because of games. People who are fine with hardware dedicated to gaming and with replacing the whole thing - hardware and software - for newer games, just get XBoxes or similar consoles, not PCs)
Linux not only saves you from enshittification, keeps control in your hands and preserves your privacy, it's also a reliable and functional long term OS layer for your hardware that doesn't force hardware upgrades on you.
I dicked around with the VM route for a while and could never really get it working 100% to my liking. There was always a trade-off. I ended up just getting a second PC and tucking it in a cabinet out of sight. When I need Windows I just use remote desktop to connect to it.
Mac?! Darwin no, that’s doing the opposite of liberating yourself and it has less gaming than Linux I’d say.
It does. Gaming on mac is a pain. Gaming on linux is a much better experience, and has much better support at this point. Apple really alienates developers.
I didn’t mean for gaming specifically, probably should have used a transition statement. For creative and professional use cases, macOS is still far far better than Windows. For gaming yeah that’s not your platform, Linux is.
I don’t think “liberating” your machine is the reason people are just now getting mad at windows.
It's all about liberation, I'd say.
That changed with windows 8 12 years ago.
Unless you installed the embedded versions of windows you've never been able to do that, best you could do was turn like 5 things off in the features screen.
I wouldn't call your computer not getting updates so you install a different OS "liberating" it.
Also your computer not getting updates doesn't magically turn it into a brick, you can still use it just fine. This is something I've never understood. As long as your web browser still gets updates that's the biggest security vulnerability that I'd be afraid of. Chrome supported Windows 7 until 109 in 2023, and Firefox ESR is still going until September this year. 10th gen and older intel machines don't get graphics updates anymore, are those machines ewaste? Shit some shitty laptops never get bios updates and there's a whole host of vulnerabilities there.
And not to mention specific equipment such as train management that uses Windows XP, Windows 98 or 95. Just one example.
Oh yeah, it's been a gradual process.
at this point, it's pretty much only about Roblox.
...which I don't want to play, I'm not happy about my nephews playing, but that seems like the only big one which really continues to struggle on Windows.
edit: that's from my limited POV, as someone who loves gaming but i don't follow or try out big new titles, I'm pretty much happy with my 30 favs, trying out like 5 new games a year, usually older or indie titles.
Roblox is about the only reason why I can't switch my kid's computer to Linux, they play almost exclusively that and Minecraft. Once win10 goes EOL, I'll probably start budgeting to replace my laptop with a new PC and give them the laptop. The old PC will then get Linux and handle 3d printer stuffs
I might be out of date but for a long time my 2 nephews (10 and 13, cousins to each other) have been playing Blox Fruits, which I understand is pretty much a standard "grind" MMORPG. (Which I don't necessarily find that bad; having to put a lot of work in a character and seeing it grow slowly and steadily can be a lesson.) I like how they are having fun trying to coordinate and take out a boss together (sometimes dying all the time), but I suppose other games can give that, perhaps even better-looking ones and certainly ones made by less shady companies. (Oh, and actually working on Linux/steam deck)
So I was wondering if there are other games that I could introduce them to, if only to remind them that world outside Roblox exists. I never played any MMORPG's (or pretty much anything multi-player, except Minecraft/Terraria/etc. with the kids) so I'm out of the picture. I've only tried few in my life and never stuck for long.
Albion Online seemed child-like enough, albeit a little boring for my taste. One I really enjoyed recently is Path of Exile (and I it looks more than good enough to be hard to resist for a kid), but who knows -- is that safe for 10 to 13 year olds...?
It's Honkai: Star Rail for me.
Petty as it may seem, I'll begrudgingly dual boot Win10 until H:SR is playable on Linux.
I'm Linux user since 2008 and as much as I want to agree with you, I can't. Even if Mac is much closer to Linux with its BSD roots, I probably would choose Windows over Mac. Why? Because Windows is much more open and less restrictive than OS X. And there is the support and compatibility of Steam games (and games in general) in Windows. The hardware repair ability is terrible on Apple too.
Yes, Microsoft is bad, Windows is bad; so is Apple and OS X. I personally can't live with the restrictions Apple has.
Same here. If I could get Vortex Mod Manager to work under Wine/Proton, I wouldn't use Windows at all.
Nexus Mods is working on an AppImage version of their mod manager that works perfectly in my testing.
Currently it only supports Stardew Valley and Cyberpunk i think.
I'm excited for it to have parity with Windows Vortex.
Give it a shot again, something changed recently in Proton (I assume) that made Vortex "just work" for me on my Steam Deck. I didn't even need to do any fiddling, I just ran the installer exe from desktop mode using Lutris and whatever Proton was latest, and it installed perfectly. Vortex now runs entirely as expected, even from game mode.
Vortex should be easy to get working, it probably just needs the Dot Net and Visual C libraries installed, which I think you can get via Wine Tricks.
What games are you using it for? I’ve used Mod Organizer 2 for Skyrim SE and it’s worked great on the deck
Really? The last few times I've tried (granted it was a year or more ago) I got like 15 FPS on a heavy modlist running on my desktop, which had a GTX 2080 and was running Arch, btw. Trying to get MO2 to launch the Linux version of Skyrim running via Steam/Proton and not the Windows version of Steam running through WINE was a fun mess to deal with. Once all that was handled, then half of the modding programs (xEdit, Nemesis, BodySlide, etc...) didn't work with MO2s virtual FS. It was just way too many layers of abstraction to deal with 🤯
Yes, really haha. I don’t think I would consider the mod list I used heavy, at least not graphically. I didn’t use any of those programs you mentioned.
I recall using some sort of script that installed MO2 and handled all of this (at least for the Steam Deck).
Either way, I hope their new cross-platform launcher works out well.
Nice, thanks I'll give it a try again because Windows 10 is really pissing me off regarding how practically anything that you used to be able to easily disable now requires one or multiple registry hacks that may or may not work anymore.
I totally understand you not giving all that a try because while it is a handheld Linux PC, it's probably more of a pain in the ass to use on that screen and with the standard input (obviously docking it would solve these issues) than it's worth. I just keep Windows on my Desktop to play a few games, my home server is my workhorse and I have a Linux laptop that work gave me (literally, they laid me off and never asked for it back).
I checked out Mod Organizer 2 recently, but it didn't support Subnautica the last time I tried it. I only use mods for a few games, line Stardew Valley and the Fallout games.
Literally the only reason I keep Windows around is because modding Skyrim (using MO2, not Vortex) is a nightmare. I use Wabbajack as well, so the idea of installing 500+ mods manually in Vortex doesn't sound ideal, also since Vortex's conflict management is an absolute nightmare compared to MO2's.
FREEBSD >0.009% RAAAAAH 👹👹👹💪💪💪💪💪🦾🔥🔥🔥
BSD is dying
It is sad but we build up Linux so we have a libre privacy and freedom alternative
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.
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.
I like mint cause it stays out ofy way for literally everything.
Time to speak to our representatives to switch to Linux Systems as Switzerland did for cyber security and for fiscal responsibility.
We must not fall behind that smart country once again.
What?! All that noise about Switzerland mandating usage of open sourced software in gov (there was a great step, but it's far from mandating anything) was already weird, now we are switching to linux? And caring about security and fiscal responsibility? There has to be another country called Switzerland than the one I live in.
You're right, I believe the only thing Switzerland mandated (or wants to mandate?) is for projects built FOR the government to be open sourced - and even then, there are exemptions.
Of course, unlike you, I don't live in Switzerland, so I'm probably not as informed.
Il feels like every month that passes Linux keeps breaking all time highs! So exciting
Microsoft's advertising campaign for people to switch to Linux is working great.
YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
We’re gonna hit that 5%
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.
going to surpass 'unknown' any year now. it's happening.
https://invidious.reallyaweso.me/watch?v=qK5nqmHz0UA
Yes
Nobody using TempleOS? =(
THE LORD NEEDS NO NETWORKING!!! THE LORD IS THE NETWORK!
If you pray hard enough, the Lord will make the websites appear on your screen!
U glowing
Is someone kind enough to post a screenshot of the stats? I can't access it, because its a known tracking site and get blocked by the plugins.
Okay, I have bit the bullet and made an exception to provide screenshots myself:
Thanks for your service, comrade.
Next time try out visiting the page through archive.org
I didn't think of it, because I always think or archive.org as older pages/versions. The problem is, is it updated to current? It's a big site, so probably it will be. Good idea, I'll check that next time through archive.org.
You can always* request a new archive of a website. If you log in (warning: it has to load google code at least when registering) you can also request a screenshot (which I don't know how you find later on, but right after you get a link) and recursive archiving with a depth of 1.
Interactive elements remain interactive nowadays, but it has limitations.
In some cases archive.today is worth a try too. It has workarounds for e.g. facebook, or at least in the past it had a fake account to be able to save facebook content.
But this one loads whatever code from yandex, so if that's problematic for you be sure to block it. uMatrix is best for that task, probably uBO can do it too, the Firefox version I mean.
These sites are basically my "remote browser", and often it'll be even useful for others that I requested an archive. Quite often I'm requesting the first one.
* mostly, but you can't if the site was very recently archived, like in 30 minutes. Then there are some sites that are blacklisted for some reason but not much.
I wonder what happened to OS X
It does not mean that something happened with MacOS / OS X. If it stays the same and everyone else gets bigger, then the same gets smaller relatively speaking. Look at the dip for OS X in Nov 2023. Looks like almost the same amount of up for Windows. Also Chrome OS went a bit down and Unknown went up, only Linux stays the same.
So either something in their software changed or it was really a phase of people buying new computers and changing their OS. For a fact, I also build my PC in Nov 2023 (but stayed on Linux). Maybe that was a time of new hardware or lower prices, don't remember exactly.
It is 16% in India, lessgo!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think Gentoo with no binaries should be the new archlinux. I've literally used archlinux virtually unchanged outside of updates for years now. It's been trouble free outside of some minor bugs and I change my settings in the kde settings panel 90% of the time.
Cool. My wife switched to LMDE yesterday, so that's one more into the fold.
If only MS Office worked well on Linux, due to her muscle memory, my wife would've switched to Fedora for her laptop. Aside from light gaming (Sims 4, mostly), she's not a tech-person at all, so that's saying something in my book!
She might adjust to LibreOffice, it borrows heavily from the MS Office UI. I think it's also available on Windows if she wants to try it before switching. Sims 4 works great on Linux too.
soon we will reach the magic number companies need to finally consider supporting Linux for once
What is that magic number?
Always 5% higher than it currently is.
100%
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?
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 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 couple 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.
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?
It's a good question but I honestly have no idea how that works even today with windows actually because I have not owned a laptop in 15 years. In my mind, the laptop manufacturer has to guarantee compatibility with any OS it provides but even then, some support from the OS side may be needed. The best way to handle that would be if the manufacturer started contributing to the Linux kernel and provide full driver support because then everybody wins in the long run.
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.
2033!!! = At least 16
The crowdstrike failure is probably helping Linux.
This is what I was thinking when it happened. Businesses lose a shit ton of productivity and money due to Microsoft and Windows being a clusterfuck in multiple ways and they decide it's time to switch to something more stable.
Actually, crowdstrike has a very bad record regarding this, their services even managed to break Debian servers one time.
Source: some article.
In fact, that failure occurred this year. Now all that's left is for macOS to have a failure with that company and the collection is complete.
I believe BSD has more servers than macOS.
I highly doubt businesses would have been this fast in making the switch.
It helps to move quickly when your entire infrastructure crashes.
One crash will absolutely not make this big of an uptick. The amount of highly specialized software and hardware that is OS dependant means switching will only be possible when those companies, hell really entire industries, decide to move over to a more open standard soft/hardware setup. In this case, a crash is a big deal, but the IT teams get on it and fix it in a day or two.
Also, certain Linux machines were affected by the cloudstrike outage. Even less reason to switch when the alternative was effected as well.
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 🚩
Hmm is this really happening so fast? It's a little hard to believe.
I suspect it's a bump due to Windows Recall. I know I fully switched because of it after 25 years of off and on the Linux Desktop. And I will not be going back.
I don't believe it that much. It may just be the Steam Deck's financial success. But everything is possible.
100% switched because of Recall. Been a Linux user on and off for 20 years, windows was my daily driver for the past 5 or so (windows 10 was OK in my mind). Once Recall was announced, I bounced back to Linux. Having Steam popularize gaming on Linux has helped a ton
Maybe not, but, anecdotally, I know of a number of people who have made the switch because of Recall. Steam Deck surely adds to it, but people who have the choice to stop using Windows seem to be doing so.
Tbh I don't get it. Wasn't this feature only on Copilot+ PCs that almost nobody had? Why did so many switch if it wasn't even confirmed that it's coming to regular x86 machines? I always find it extremely weird.
Microsoft showed their hand and for some it was the last straw. It might not come to non-copilot pcs (for now) but they showed users they are OK with turning the OS into spyware.
Imo Windows is not even an OS anymore.
Agreed. It’s mostly an ad delivery platform these days. Can be somewhat OK if you have a DNS based blocker but hard to block built in spyware.
Panic.
Or they see the writing on the wall
I wasnt thrilled about upgrading to win11 - it adds an irritating layer of stuff that I didnt want or need. The ads and telemetry bugged me too. I was probably going to reluctantly upgrade at some point though.
But then recall was announced and I realised how much worse it could get. Been really happy with the switch to Linux.
What distro do you use?
Mint cinnamon 21, then upgraded to 22.
Great choice
Considering this is browser stats I doubt the steam deck has much to do with it, the steam deck is all about never opening anything other than steam.
Are you sure Steam is not one of the data suppliers for it though?
Steam deck alone isn't much. It's not even popular in a lot of places in the world. But there are a lot of things happening in the market, and each small factor adds up to a general trend. So, there's no single factor that we can point that will explain the linux growth in marketshare.
Yes, although it's not evenly distributed. Much of this rise is due to India doing some heavy lifting - they're on like 16%, and they're not exactly a small population.
Most places are in the 1.5-3.5% range.
Even 3.5% is quite a lot imo.
Indeed it is. But this is also calculated based on monthly page views, so it only really covers devices that are used in that month.
There's a non-trivial amount of Windows users that have a dusty laptop that they only pull out when they need to write a document or fill in a form that they got emailed, and will otherwise do all their computing on their phone.
My guess would be that Mac and Linux have fewer of these types of users? But who knows. I have a couple of Linux devices that I almost never use 🤷♀️
I've seen many people having Linux on such devices so idk either.
You should go to your local university or knowledge center. The percentage is like 10%-20%
That's what she said
There's some kind of network effect associated to it, so the greater the numbers, the more likely to grow even more, and faster. For example, when linux was used only by a very few people in IT, most people were unlikely to even give it a try, but now that every class or working group are likely to have one or two linux users, more people will be likely to try it, and so on.
Yes, things move very fast if you haven't noticed sugar pie
Sus
Thank you Windows 11!
I understand you're excited, but aren't you overdoing it a bit?
Quick give me more subs to crosspost
We need more cross posts
on Reddit I think it makes sense but on Lemmy it's usually obnoxious in my experience, because it's not so populated and busy, the default browsing experience already gives you posts from all over... so unless you strictly browse followed communities (which i don't know if most people even do this) you end up seeing the same thing over and over.
linux_gaming@lemmy.world is on there twice ???
I have been dual booting for some time now. Come back to windows 10 for gaming. But then I suddenly realize that the blizzard games that I play can run on Linux, and even from the same folder with the NTFS partition. I was stunned. No notable performance difference either.
I recently shows my mum that have an old Core 2 Duo that it can run Linux Mint. She said it works, and the computer shutdowns directly when I tell it to do. No more updating windows to wait for before unplugging the power cable. Still have to dual boot Windows 10 for Microsoft Office Word document compatibility and Google Picasa.
She also just have bought a new computer with Windows 11, could barely make it through the installation. So many questions and configuration needed to get rid of ads and popups in Edge. Need to evaluation Mint more before I try to dual boot it on this machine as well.
Or.... Just fuck off windows altogether?
There is a learning curve for old people. It takes time. So dual boot is a must until then.
It also doesn't help that my dad still isn't filly convinced Linux isn't a virus/dangerous to my PC.
He is just afraid of learning new things. Best way here is to show him how it works. Learning.
Oh I've been trying. He's tech adverse in general, so the concept of open source software scares him because it means trusting others with regards to tech.
This. It feels to me like driving a stick shift when you've been using an automatic transmission for years. You have to do a little more fiddling but I honestly don't mind learning a new OS that isn't actively working against me.
With Windows . . . on the other hand . . . every time I've had to go "under the hood" (tweak Registry settings, Config files, etc) it's been to prevent Microsoft from doing something crappy to me.
Yes, with Windows it is a fight about disabling all the new stuff they come up with. Here, you must use OneDrive if you save a file. Here, lots of ads in the start menu, nothing is installed. Or here, please try copilot+ or bing. Do you want to set bing as your startup page? If you say no, we will ask you again... A new windows update? Lets ask everything again.
Picasa? That's been google-bandoned for a while now. What does she use it for? Plenty of photo management tools in Linux. Darktable, Digikam...
If the office alternatives in linux don't cut it, and she uses Office 365, you can run it in Linux as a PWA
Picasa because it had worked fine. And the replacement, Google photos, is not an option with storing everything in the cloud. Both Darktable and Digikam looks too advance. I think Gwenview will be a good fit. Will try later when she has the time to test. Just viewing the images in the folder, that is all that is needed.
It would be a good idea with the Office 365 but we don't want things in the Cloud. If the PWA could run offline it would be a different story.
You might want to check out Libre Office. It's document compatible with MS-Office and I think it comes pre-installed on Linux Mint.
If you want you can try OnlyOffice, it works really well as a replacement for Office. That is if you only use Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I even convinced some Windows people to use it as its free, open source, cross platform and perhaps even easier to use at this point.
For Picasa maybe digikam? It maybe isn't a perfect replacement though. You could always try to run Picasa in a VM (or maybe even wine?)
Microsoft does not follow its own standard for doc and docx. Any other software tries to follow the standard, thus you can get different view of the document depending on what editor you use.
Picasa I think is easier to replace. Just need to relearn. Leaning towards Gwenview. VM is not an option, too complicated and slow for her. Picasa has been depricated for a long time now so it is time to move on.
Are steamdecks getting counted in this?
I had a discussion about this 1 months ago: https://beehaw.org/post/14768525 And decided not to bring it up again. :D
My argument is, from the eyes of the website you visit, the Steam Deck user would be identified as a desktop user. That's because the browser you are using (most likely Firefox) and the desktop environment (most likely KDE) in the Desktop mode would be seen as a desktop. In short, yes, I think Steam Deck would be counted, but only if people visit the pages in Desktop mode. So not all Steam Deck users are counted here.
Game mode doesn't have a browser. I would be interested to find out of the steamdeck sales almost directly correlate to this increase. Not that I am complaining, it's a great way to use a linux desktop experience. I didn't really read how these numbers were measured.
The other explanation I could think of is that linux desktop is being adopted widely in India. I don't think that government's adopting linux desktop accounts for a significant portion of the machines.
Unknown
Would be interesting to know how much of that the steam deck is
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
Well, I guess I won’t need one then. Hardware is a bit older but if I can get the same performance I’ll avoid the windows partition.
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.
In my head it’s like half a percent, 4.45% seems huge.
about 1/20 computers that browse the web run linux, thats pretty goofy
To what extent could it be acceptable?
Goofy like silly, not like unacceptable. Reckon all three of us are happy it’s as high as it is!
4.45 is huge. 0.5 is normal sized.
Huge is just about 9 times the size of normal.
Why is it OS X but Windows doesn't specify which number?
They are referring to macOS here
OS/X is just short for Mac OS X, which is what they call their desktop OS.
Not anymore.
How far down are PC sales in general though?
Is it that more people are buying Linux, or fewer Windows customers are buying new computers at all?
A few years ago, you'd have households with a laptop for every member of the family. Now with tablets and phones doing so much of the heavy lifting, many families are dropping to just 1 Windows or Mac laptop that mostly gathers dust.
My experience is more people having those devices on top of having laptops. I don't know a single person in Uni that does not have a laptop at all. At last when it comes to writing reports or thesis you just need a proper keyboard device.
Meanwhile gaming and also PC gaming has become much bigger over the years, which keeps driving computer sales.
Believe it or not - but most people actually aren't college students. Crazy, right?
Anybody in this forum isn't a typical tech user.
I carry 3 laptops in my backpack (one for 8-5 job, one personal, and one for teaching night classes at the University) along with a foldable phone, a work phone, and e-ink notepad.
Between my 3 laptops, Rog Ally, 2 desktops, and some old laptops I keep around for media devices and network interfaces around the property, I've got like 10 Windows machines in my life.
But I also know I'm an outlier.
Have you told your therapist?
If you carry three laptops around you are definitely doing things wrong. There is no real world scenario where doing what you say you do needs 3 physical computers, and if you have a 9-5 AND teach night classes , you don't have extra minutes to use your "personal" laptop that day, which leads me to call bull on the carry 3 laptops thing
The course I teach involves photo and video editing, which I do on my personal laptop for 2 reasons:
I can see it. My corporate work laptop is locked down with their security and monitoring software, so I'm not using it for personal things, even if it is allowed for some limited things. And there's company resources that I can only access through the machines under their control, so I couldn't ditch it either. And using that laptop for a second job would be a big no-no.
I can see the school laptop being similar, though my experience is that they tend to not be locked down quite as hard as the corporate machine, unless you do boneheaded things with it and piss off the school's IT department.
So I can see the need for a personal computer, plus it's always nice to keep that well separated to avoid things like incidents hooked up to a projector and screen sharing.
ooh! what’s the e-ink notepad, and what’s your usecase like?
it seems so appealing to just have a functionally infinite notebook on hand, but i’ve yet to find one that could ACTUALLY replace a regular physical notebook for me.
Boox Tab Ultra C.
It's a 10" color e-ink tablet that runs Android.
Don't get the keyboard case for it - it sucks hard. It's so thick it turns it into another laptop, it types terribly, and when folded backwards so you can write it still tries taking over from the pen.
Other than that I love it.
argh that’s literally the ONE that was tempting me, now I guess I GOTTA buy one! this sucks!
(thank you so much i’ve wanted to buy this since it came out)
I used to think that I'd be glued to my PC forever, but ever since getting a foldable I've found that I'm no longer reliant on computers anymore for daily tasks. Plus there's no point in eating up 300w of electricity during the summer (according to my watt meter), just to watch YouTube.
These days the only time I boot my PC is to play a game, search for a job, or make a large purchase. I'm a MilleniaI, so big purchases have to be done on the big computer. The phone is more than adequate for everything else. It's not the 2010s anymore; phone screens are finally large enough now to replace a PC, and there's an Android equivalent for almost everything a computer can do.
Programming? Nah. It's a consumption device, not a creation device.
Run Vim in termux
Really ain't writing code in termux. I want an IDE. Why use a substandard device?
I'm not a programmer.
Yeah I used to think I'd always need a desktop, but these days I mostly only use my phone and laptop. And considering how small desktops are getting, I can only imagine the days of the traditional desktop are numbered.
@chiliedogg @Magnolia_
or people are like me, not gamers, so perfectly contented to upgrade old used PC gear....shoehorn a CPU in with higher core count, max out RAM with a new matched pair of sticks, install a fresh NVMe drive, good to go!
I recently ordered parts from China to repair my old mechanical keyboard =^_^= Also ordered fancy new mice for other PC's & wife's laptop woo just a little tech refresh goes a long way for me =^_^=
Both
Windows isn't only losing markershare to linux, but also to android and ios. That can be seen in the chart for all OSes, also available in that site:
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share#monthly-201501-202407
It's also interesting to notice that linux is growing in that chart, which means that linux is really growing in popularity, and it's not just an effect of the desktop market possibly shrinking or something.
9 crossposts is crazy
One for every current ~0.5% market share!
with like 600 comments between them, holy moley
nice
I'm actually gearing up to convert all of my Windows machines to Linux once the updates for 10 stop coming. This will be especially easy once the new WINE gets integrated and the few windows game apps that I use can run well on Linux.
what's the new wine?
https://www.howtogeek.com/wine-9-0-release/
Better to do it at least a few months before end off life just in case you need to move back for some reason. The alternative is Windows 11 which is very similar to Windows 10
Is the data of specific distros available somewhere ?
Unsurprisingly, usage numbers for distros are hard to get due to lack of telemetry and what not.
However, some measurements do exist; like data from ProtonDB. These are used by Boiling Steam for their excellent reports in which some representation regarding usage across distros can be found. Their most recent report can be found here.
Note, however, that the following, as has been excellently touched upon by Boiling Steam, applies:
Thank you. This does give an idea.
Follow up question : Is Arch really that good?
It has been my pleasure.
Depends entirely on your needs. There is a use case for Arch. However, if you're completely new to Linux, then it's very likely that a 'slower'-moving distro (like (anything based on) Debian (or Ubuntu)) might better suit you.
@mukt @bsergay Naa bhai bs faltu ka drama h. Opensuse ya fedora use kiya kr. Best hai for most cases. 😉
How do I hide which OS I am using? What is behind the high Unknown number?
Use user agent switcher and set it to something random. However that makes your fingerprint unique. I've read that people set it to windows just to blend in the masses
Every browser has a description like
"Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.1.0; SM-T580) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.157 Safari/537.36"called User Agent. You can set this value to something else, but be careful. If you set it to something that does not exist, then it makes it more likely to be identifiable. Or some things could potentially not work right if it expects a specific operating system, in example when downloading files. Usually not a big deal.So ultimately you want to set this value to something that exist and something that is used by many people. There are addons which can make this process much easier or even change it automatically after some time period in example.
Chameleon at https://sereneblue.github.io/chameleon/ is such an addon for the browser. There are lot of other alternatives, I used a few of them in the past, but stopped using them because there was here and there trouble. If you do, I recommend to install this addon from the addon store of your browser and not from the website, but that is just my personal recommendation.
Thanks. So what is measured is merely the browsers people are using? Then I can see why the metrics are more general ballparks than precise measurements, seeing that the user agent can be modified with ease.
The question is, if they only evaluate the User Agent? This is an organization specialized into statistics, they know it can be modified too. The ad industry tries to track you and find out everything about you despite these modifications. Don't underestimate them!
Fair enough. They still don't know what >7% of people are using, though.
That 7% might not even be people. It could be bots doing HTTP requests and throwing garbage in the user-agent.
No? It says Linux/Android not far into it.
We are so back
I never left the party
Reference to my server lol
Cool
I wonder if it is higher. Think about all the people using Librewolf
To the moon!!! ┗(°0°)┛ ..○
This is the year!
Time for me to go FreeBSD i guess
[joke] That must be my friend's laptop. [joke]
i didn't need this date; i already knew this because the number of people coming up to me on the street and telling me they use Linux btw unprompted has increased noticeably.
Best still rare even though potentially very user friendly and accessible.
FFS! CHROMEOS IS F***ING LINUX, G** D***IT, WHYYY YOU DO THIS, IT'S LINUX, C***** ON A BIKE!Why use the words if you're just gonna censor them?
i think i was parodying my own indignant rage
Cockin on a bike? What did you write there?
C*****! THAT COMMON SWEAR WE HAVE AMONG US CHRISTIAN PEOPLE THAT WE CANT SAY, DUH