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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

#251
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They currently have around 20% market share (as Internet servers - Extremely big doubts about this. How would anyone even know? All the hyperscale datacenters built by FAANG must be 99.9% Linux, and those DCs alone would probably be enough to make 20% impossible to hit for windows.

It might be that a load of Azure sites run IIS to do some auth work or something, and that's counted as Windows for each of those sites?

And Active Director and Exchange, they have to count for a ton of installations as well.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#252

I think that is an important milestone. An OS whose hardware support is largely closed source on one side and painfully reverse-engineered on the other. Thisnk about the graphics hardware. For years, during the desktop boom in the 2000s, most of the support for networking hardware, wired and wireless, was based on binary blobs coming from Windows OSs and "imported" into a Linux system. How could you dare to use Linux…

>Windows, on the other side, has a basically monolithic environment in the name of ... dunno what.

Consistency, stability?

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#253
I'd venture to say 99% of people don't give a damn on what their os is. All they care is to run their apps without the os getting in their way or breaking. They don't feel the need to and don't want to be forced to tweak, customize, fine tune and manage that os a lot.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A desktop PC is not a type of operating system. It’s a type of computer designed for a specific use case, distinct from servers, mobile devices, handheld gaming devices or gaming consoles. A windows server or Linux server with KDE/gnome is not a desktop. A mobile phone isn’t a desktop, and it wouldn’t become a desktop even if you installed a plain Linux distro with KDE on it. A PlayStation, switch or Xbox isn’t a des…

It really sounds like you don't understand how the OS is set up on the steam deck. It's a normal desktop environment with a customized version of steam installed. If laptops get to be included (which they usually are), then steamdeck gets to be included. It doesn't replicate "some subset" of the desktop experience. It does everything a small tower can, plus things it can't do.

Steam Deck's desktop environment is barely usable without connecting it to a dock and using an external keyboard and mouse.

You won't use it as a daily driver in handheld mode. The virtual keyboard covers half of the screen, the touchscreen is unusable as a mouse and touchpads are inconvenient.

Ordinary laptops don't have these problems.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok maybe i'm a sore loser, but looking at where the popular desktop OSes have been going going i think i'm fine with linux remaining an enthusiast thing

Exactly my thoughts. I think Linux is in a good sweet spot; popular enough so that applications advertise support for Linux, but not popular enough to be spoiled and optimized for the "casual" user.

>but not popular enough to be spoiled and optimized for the "casual" user

I'm trying really hard to come up with a scenario where optimizing the desktop experience for the average user is a bad thing.

For example, what keeps me on Windows (and WSL2) at the moment is that the freesync/variable refresh rate technology doesn't always behave as you would expect it to be, resulting in games that stutter, frame dip and eat inputs. Gnome devs have a branch pending final tests for vrr for months. KDE on Wayland is the best for what I'm asking atm but even that has its problems during gameplay.

And let's not forget the pains Nvidia's drivers cause compared to AMD on Linux for desktop. I built my desktop using AMD GPU and CPU specifically for Linux to play nice, and yet it doesn't for the only 2 games I play during my downtime. It's just sad.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is one good thing about web apps, it’s that browsers are now the application run time and browsers are more cross platform than any software libraries that have come before it. I'd take every day a native app running locally over a web app. And I am a web developer.

Not anymore. Last gen phones have enough performance to run webapps without a single loss in performance, look and feel compared to native apps. Native apps will remain, but you see more and more SPAs wrapped in a hybrid app still maintaining a 'native'look. Costs of developing webapps is dramatically lower. Although native knowledge is still required for Auth, billing, advertising and other required native stuff.

I still have to see a single webapp that is as performant and feels the same as a native one. We might get there, and lots of companies are happy to release a half-backed webapp today, but that is definitely not the experience today.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#257

The problem is the desktop situation is such a mess. Do you go with a gtk or qt desktop and which one? And then X11 which is ancient and creaky, or wayland which is fatally nerfed in design (if not it's entire development philosophy) even when it does do what you need which is far from always? OTOH windows is becoming adware/spyware and macos is becoming big brother lockdown-wear, so maybe it is time for linux to shi…

Last time I checked, I could run Qt apps on my MATE desktop and Gtk+ apps on my KDE desktop. I prefer X11 because it's mature and works perfectly for me. I might try Wayland sometime, but it had better support all of the weird things I do with X11. More to the point, the choice is a feature, and it comes with a bit of chaos. Would you rather live in an effectively single-party state like Singapore where everything is…

Honestly it's less like Netherlands and more like Sudan (or France?) sometimes. I've also used linux since SLS for what it's worth.

Choice is fine as long as everything can integrate properly and work together.

Maybe the desktop could do with a little bit of Singapore's sort-of benevolent-ish dictatorship - that's how the kernel is developed after all.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#258

Don't know, it used to be 100% in my company in 2007 and now it is like 80% because there are some iOS developers who need macOS and designers who use Sketch, which is insanely great and which alone is worth buying an alApple computer and suffering macOS to run it.

Have you used Figma? Feels like sketch got stuck in the Stone Age quickly once Figma made a performant browser based design tool

Yes, I have, and Sketch is far superior for me. So much that I would rather buy mac and Sketch than use Figma completely for free.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#259
I once installed an Ubuntu 17 on an old desktop and my mother used it just fine. Most people don't need Windows. It's just that it comes with anything you buy and most people won't learn something new unless forced to. And to be fair why should they? They don't mind the extra cost and couldn't care less about our oss. We need to get them when they're young and impressionable and turn them into little linux evangelists.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#260

Every once in a while I'm tempted to switch back to Linux (I used to have that as my desktop between 10 and 15 years ago), but then I remember: - My DJ software (which I pay for) is not supported at all on Linux (likewise true for most common music production software). - The Affinity suite (which I paid for) is not supported on Linux. - The best debugger I can find (remedybg, which I paid for) doesn't work there. -…

Re: debugger. It's the opposite for me. rr is the best debugger period, so I am miserable whenever I need to debug on Windows or macOS where rr doesn't work.

What I think Linux is missing is a good "first intention" debugger.

rr is great, I have used it a few times with great success, but always as a heavyweight, for solving really tricky bugs. Usually, printf is first, then gdb and/or valgrind, then rr.

On Visual Studio (which has a great debugger), the debugger is the first tool I reach. It is simply more convenient, more reliable on a day-to-day basis, plus, there is "edit and continue". Generally I prefer the Linux dev tools (rr is one of the good ones, I also love valgrind), but for interactive debugging, for me, Windows wins.

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