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Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

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Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#191

Post by scrlk »

H8crilA wrote: post #170
nine_k wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kernel does not provide "generic" functionality; it provides very specific, often top-notch functionality which you can't easily find elsewhere, at least not as an easy replacement. Linux has the largest collection of various hardware drivers, and a rather wide community of kernel developers who know how to produce them. Linux has a number of specialty filesystems, some pretty important for embedded development.…

Let's remember that until fairly recently the Windows kernel supported only one architecture, lol.

It was designed for portability from the beginning and was ported to x86:

> Various versions of NT family operating systems have been released for a variety of processor architectures, initially IA-32, MIPS, and DEC Alpha, with PowerPC, Itanium, x86-64 and ARM supported in later releases.

> In order to prevent Intel x86-specific code from slipping into the operating system, due to developers being used to developing on x86 chips, Windows NT 3.1 was initially developed using non-x86 development systems and then ported to the x86 architecture. This work was initially based on the Intel i860-based Dazzle system and, later, the MIPS R4000-based Jazz platform. Both systems were designed internally at Microsoft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#192

Post by vkazanov »

shmerl wrote: post #61
gregman1 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision of Microsoft to withdraw from Russia has had a significant impact as well, particularly due to the emergence of government-supported Linux distributions that are gaining popularity among various organizations and companies in the former USSR and BRICS nations.

That never stopped pirates there so I doubt it's much of an incentive. The biggest driver of adoption is simply more computers sold with Linux pre-installed. Very small fraction of users ever installs an OS.

I've been buying machines with Linux preinstalled for 7-8 years now, both for myself, my wife and my kid.

It is possible, and that's great, but boy Dell et al do obfuscate the choice on their sites. You have to know the machine exists, need to know the generation, the year, etc.

It's almost as if they don't want people to buy these machines.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#193

Post by kallistisoft »

pjmlp wrote: post #14
genmud wrote: post #2

Probably 70 or 80% of cloud workloads are Linux, and like 60% of embedded devices, of which there are billions. And of those embedded/mobile devices, the rest will either be running iOS, vxworks, freertos or zephyr. I think the joke has always been "this is the year of Linux", but in all honesty... it's the decade of Linux. It's probably one of the few areas where there is growth in computing capacity and by far most…

Good luck trying to run a proper GNU/Linux on those Android devices. Actually tbere are plenty of other options for embedded. As for the server room, UNIX was already the winner there anyway, since the 1990's.

> Good luck trying to run a proper GNU/Linux on those Android devices.

The Termux App [https://termux.dev/en/] provides a full linux terminal with zsh, emacs, and apt based package manager. I've been using it in lieu of creating full apks for personal projects -- much easier to spin up a database and local webserver via ssh on my phone than to build a proper app package.

I find it fits most of my linux on the go needs; for example I can pull up a node REPL and quickly test code on my phone, or curl a API endpoint

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#194

Post by fsflover »

gcoakes wrote: post #125
7e wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, Linux is on many, many devices which have proprietary UIs. And there it does pretty well, because the kernel just provides generic functionality cheaply. It’s a commodity backend that could be swapped with another commodity backend without any users knowing or caring. Hooray. Linux is the go to choice when you could just as well be using something else that’s really cheap, like BSD. However, desktop Linux is wh…

> 100% OSS Tell that to your BIOS or the firmware that runs on your WLAN or NVMe. Hell, tell that to the CPU itself[^1]. [^1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

The parent is talking about the operating system, not all software running on the machine.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#195

Post by 8fingerlouie »

bruce511 wrote: post #68
DiabloD3 wrote: post #49

I wonder why they keep making these articles. Linux is on more computers both today and all of the computers ever made put together than any other OS. It is on virtually all servers on the Internet, the majority OS on phones, its in many TVs and STBs and streaming sticks, its one of the few OSes ever in space, its one of the few OSes ever on Mars, and it is also the OS behind ChromeOS (which that article mistakenly b…

And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it :). You can conquer the world, dominate every space and yet there's thus little voice inside saying "but you're not good enough. See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling. " Welcome to the human condition.

> And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it :).

Depending on how you define "desktop" i would argue that Linux has a very big presence on the desktop. Considering the "new desktop" is a smartphone, and Android is based on Linux, that alone would account for a very large desktop presence.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#196

Post by vkazanov »

pjmlp wrote: post #126
vander_elst wrote: post #57

Chrome OS is actually also Linux isn't it?

It uses the Linux kernel with a browser userspace. Some selected models allow to run GNU/Linux, WSL style, in its own sandboxed environment.

What a long way to say that "yes, it is linux indeed" :-)

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#197

Post by p0w3n3d »

I would say that Linux is the second desktop for development (behind MacOS, in front of Windows), however...

I wonder if any of you tried to develop C/C++ on MacOS. It seems that it's impossible to find leaks and misbehavior, while on Linux there is this valgrind that does everything for you. MacOS have some `leaks` tool but it does not really do half of the things valgrind does. So probably I would say "Linux is in the first place". /Writing this on my company's mac/

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#198

Post by ssnistfajen »

bruce511 wrote: post #68
DiabloD3 wrote: post #49

I wonder why they keep making these articles. Linux is on more computers both today and all of the computers ever made put together than any other OS. It is on virtually all servers on the Internet, the majority OS on phones, its in many TVs and STBs and streaming sticks, its one of the few OSes ever in space, its one of the few OSes ever on Mars, and it is also the OS behind ChromeOS (which that article mistakenly b…

And yet not having a presence on the desktop stings a bit doesn't it :). You can conquer the world, dominate every space and yet there's thus little voice inside saying "but you're not good enough. See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling. " Welcome to the human condition.

It has full presence on my desktop, which is all that matters.

Despite the lack of any exponential moonshots in marketshare, compatibility layers like Wine and Wine derivatives, as well as platform agnostic package management tools, have made Linux desktops much more pleasant to use compared to just 4-5 years ago. This has allowed me to almost completely de-Windows my computer usage without abandoning Windows-only applications.

I do try to shill Linux to friends from time to time as a casual tease. Haven't had much success in that regard but it's not a concrete goal of mine. Despite having all gone to the same STEM program that required Linux environments for most courses, I'm the only one using it as a daily driver outside of work among the 15-20 people I still regularly contact.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#199

Post by Jnr »

electricduck wrote: post #10

I'm kinda surprised this entirely forgot to mention the SteamDeck. I'd love to know how much of an impact that had, considering apparently 3 million units have been sold (according to Valve). Alas, how many of those users know they are running Linux is another question.

This is about desktop market share. Even though Steam Deck has KDE on it, out of the box it boots into Steam and I suspect it is enough for majority of users.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#200

Post by fsflover »

deaddodo wrote: post #176
klabb3 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (the computers that humans interface with to tell core components what to do) aren't running anything like Ubuntu or Fedora, but instead run a heavily ruggedized and customized Linux system based on the Titanium suite from Star Lab. That’s not to be minimized. Sounds like very much on the critical path, and definitely not some shitty infotainment sidecar. If that crashed, you couldn’t control core functions of the…

> That’s not to be minimized. Sounds like very much on the critical path, and definitely not some shitty infotainment sidecar. If that crashed, you couldn’t control core functions of the sub? Are there overrides? Sure, it's an important component of the entire system. Much as a steering wheel is an important component of a car, it still doesn't "run" the car. You need to interface, yes obviously; but if the machine c…

If the goal of such parallel is to show how Linux is more reliable than Windows, then being the steering wheel is sufficient, compared to Windows not being a part of the car at all.
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