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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

#291

Post by DeathArrow »

elektrontamer wrote: post #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 evangelist…

Take a page from other minorities/activists work and push for affirmative action for Linux in schools, universities and workplaces. If a place uses another OS, that means Linux users are being discriminated against.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#292

Post by DeathArrow »

notorandit wrote: post #73

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.

macOS does it, too. Android does it, too. Basically any os that cares about human interaction.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#293

Post by resolutebat »

jacquesm wrote: post #236
hnlmorg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I will use the OS I like and others will use the OS they prefer. It’s called choice. What stung before was that people were forced to use Windows because of lock-ins, software compatibility, etc. That doesn’t really exist any more. 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…

> What stung before was that people were forced to use Windows because of lock-ins, software compatibility, etc. That doesn’t really exist any more. That's a funny conclusion to make. In the business world that still exists and even my kids are forced into the Microsoft eco-system by their school because the software they insist you run (for which perfectly good web alternatives exist) only runs on windows.

True, but increasingly marginal. Many schools have adopted Chromebooks (Linux in disguise) and even the MS Office suite has largely moved online.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#294

Post by vinceent »

sersi wrote: post #65

Seems that this website blocks any access from HK completely through cloudflare... Cloudflare making it easy to block entire countries, allow people to be lazy in protecting their websites and goes completely against the open web. Of course I could use a vpn but it's getting tiring that I have to do so more and more often.

Russia is blocked as well

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#295

Post by einr »

zirgs wrote: post #254
Dylan16807 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, a desktop tower computer is not usable without using an external keyboard and mouse either.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#296

Post by usrbinbash »

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.

> stings a bit doesn't it :).

Not even a slight itch.

What do I care how many people use the thing I do? The only thing that matters to me is how good the toys I get to use are.

> See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling.

A lot more people eat fast food that gourmet food. I wonder if the people who can afford gourmet food feel like weaklings because of that. My guess is: No they don't.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#297

Post by jkaplowitz »

pluijzer wrote: post #264
aktenlage wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What stung before was that people were forced to use Windows because of lock-ins, software compatibility, etc. That doesn’t really exist any more. 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. The danger that the history will repeat for browsers instead of OSs is real. The less…

Did you try setting your User Agent to Chrome? I have to use Teams for work. Under Firefox it has problems and missing features, setting my user agent to Chrome solves all of it. Highly uncompetitive if you ask me.

To me that sounds more like bad software dev/test procedures at MS than anything intentionally uncompetitive. For example, maybe they don’t keep their Firefox support up to date because not enough Teams users use Firefox to warrant the effort, but maybe Firefox is increasingly Chrome-compatible. Firefox is not popular enough for MS to intentionally cripple.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#298

Post by tgv »

fulafel wrote: post #129

As observed by StatCounter, a web analytics company... I guess this is accurate for people who are in the web ads business, but otherwise obviously it's a bad proxy and seems likely it's undercounting a lot since Linux users tend to be savvy enough to block analytics and probably do less web browsing on StatCounter monitored sites. Eg they show Firefox as having too small to see ( https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-m…

I can tell you how much it is in 40000 requests from a "national representative sample" in the Netherlands obtained in the last 6 months: 393 user agents specify Linux without Android. That's just under 1%. Firefox is 2395, or 6%.

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#299

Post by jacquesm »

resolutebat wrote: post #293
jacquesm wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What stung before was that people were forced to use Windows because of lock-ins, software compatibility, etc. That doesn’t really exist any more. That's a funny conclusion to make. In the business world that still exists and even my kids are forced into the Microsoft eco-system by their school because the software they insist you run (for which perfectly good web alternatives exist) only runs on windows.

True, but increasingly marginal. Many schools have adopted Chromebooks (Linux in disguise) and even the MS Office suite has largely moved online.

MS is on a mission to go after schools that have adopted Chromebooks. If your school is using Chromebooks you can expect all kinds of stick-and-carrot tricks to try to get you to switch (back).

Re: Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share

#300

Post by dig1 »

jacknews wrote: post #45

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…

IMHO, this is more a choice overload [1] than a technical problem. You can pick whatever distro (another choice overload) and start using the default desktop environment, which is more than enough. Qt vs. gtk for desktop development? Use whatever you think will work for you, they are stable enough, and you can use almost any (even remotely popular) language under the sun for development. Java/Scala/Kotlin + Swing (or SWT) will also do the job (and let's put aside that Swing looks "old"; when you know what you are doing, you can make a modern looking-app with JVM stack as well, e.g. IntelliJ).

On Windows and macOS, you don't have any choice, so people usually see that as good enough because they can't compare it against alternatives on the same platform.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice

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