Nearly everyone in our family’s (public, Massachusetts) high school writes papers exclusively on their phone.
Interesting. I'm also in MA, and my daughters (like all their classmates) mostly use the chromebooks issued by their public high school. They strongly prefer their macbooks tho. Granted, we live in an affluent town. But I thought the chromebooks were a statewide thing.
We’re also in a quite affluent town, and yes everyone does have chromebooks. But they’re considered uncool to use.
Nearly everyone in our family’s (public, Massachusetts) high school writes papers exclusively on their phone.
Interesting. I'm also in MA, and my daughters (like all their classmates) mostly use the chromebooks issued by their public high school. They strongly prefer their macbooks tho. Granted, we live in an affluent town. But I thought the chromebooks were a statewide thing.
I'm in San Jose and it's school-issued Chromebooks here, too, though many students have their own [superior] laptop they are able to use. In the case of my household, my son has a Thinkpad X1 Carbon and my daughter has a Pixelbook Go, I use a MacBook Pro M1 and my wife uses an old Pixelbook or an old iPad with a Magic Keyboard. Everyone's pretty much chained to their phones but recognize a real keyboard and bigger screen are beneficial for certain tasks (like writing, or Khan Academy, or even consuming media).
The posts on this thread arguing that Android is not a real Linux should take a look at the increasingly blurred lines between MacOS and iPadOS. Android tablets are on a similar trajectory. ChromeOS Flex pretty much is a desktop Linux distro with an Android runtime. Some people will find the idea of elements of a mobile OS on their desktop attractive. Other people will find it less unattractive than buying a new PC t…
I've been using Android tablets for a long time. They're way behind iPads in terms of apps available for them, and for them to be usable as main computers for anyone half technical they'd basically needs access to all the Linux desktop software, which they don't have access to.
I have a great computer, but it isn't compatible with Windows 11, so now I'm using Ubuntu on it. It's not ideal, but at least it's not a brick. I hate the requirements for Windows 11.
Microsoft is the biggest contributor to the Linux desktop market share.
Desktop Linux has a clear scope, and we all know. We can act like we don't, but we do. Can I install LibreOffice on Android? Gnome, KDE, Xfce? Which percentage of packages in the Debian repos can I use on Android?
Linux is a kernel, that's it. There is an organisation maintaining it, and also the trademark. There is also a major family of OSes building on the kernel + gnu userspace, which you probably call "desktop linux". In my house there are dozens of devices running linux the kernel: routers, a tv set, washing machines, NAS, printers, etc. Some have the full gnu posix-like stack, others are very barebones. Then, there's is…
To me, Desktop Linux is the Linux I run on my work computer: the one that has a screen, a keyboard and a mouse. It is based on Linux (obviously), the GNU userland to some extent, and then it has a graphical environment (usually based on Xorg or Wayland).
This is different from embedded Linux or Linux on a server. And this is different from Linux-the-kernel (which runs on Android).
Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love Linux are the ones making Linux. You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal. No faster way to scare off users than give them a CLI heavy OS and have the trip over the very first copy+paste command they try to run (once they figure out the circa ~1982 cursor) I really cannot say enough about the total fumble of Linux distros in an age when people are more des…
Ctrl-C means something different in the terminal. Always has been. And if it doesn't make sense to use Ctrl-C, there is no sense in Ctrl-V either.
Nearly everyone in our family’s (public, Massachusetts) high school writes papers exclusively on their phone.
Wow, isn't that painful without a big screen and keyboard? [1] Most primary schools here (NL) use Chromebooks or Windows laptops. High schools sometimes have a BYOD, but you certainly have to bring a laptop. [1] Of course, you can hook up most phones to a display, keyboard, mouse, but that blurring the lines a bit. A Samsung DeX device or future Pixel desktop mode device hooked up to peripherals is pretty much a desk…
To you or me, yes. And I would say “oh they just don’t know what they’re missing” but they all have laptops and chromebooks but prefer to use their phones.
Windows 11 and Steam OS are starting to make impact. I am sticking to Windows 10 until is stops working but I think Linux might be finally in my future.
> I would still count it as the Linux kernel. This may be technically true, except it has no single meaningful implication, like no Linux software works there.
Checkout https://postmarketos.org Those vendor provided kernel trees let you run a real Linux distribution on your phone.
PostmarketOS doesn't use downstream kernel trees because those are useless for anything that's not AOSP-based (unless you use terrible hacks like libhybris) and are often not upgradable to newer versions. They rely on "close-to-mainline" kernels that are much closer to real Linux.
I had a Teams meeting for an outside of work topic this morning. Since all my personal machines are Linux based I was kinda happy I had my work laptop available with Windows and Teams installed. Booting it up about half an hour before the meeting... Installing updates... After rebooting twice and only five minutes before the meeting started I reverted to my Linux desktop, opened the email with the link to the Teams m…