Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

ostechnix.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 635 posts

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#451

Post by wrasee »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #305

Recently moved to Arch Linux after 25+ years on Windows. It was a LOT of work (my whole career is on the computer and I have a lot of custom scripts and tools), but I'm so happy with the result. No more hundreds of background processes sapping my battery life and performance. No more blatantly manipulative ads every time Windows updates, about how I won't be "safe" unless I sign up for OneDrive, switch to Edge, and s…

So refreshing isn’t it? It’s like having an OS that’s actually designed for you, not them. Imagine!

Occasionally I will boot into a Windows partition because I have to do something windows-only. I’m so out of the Windows world these days that I mentally have to prepare myself not to get too fired up with it all, just calm down do the thing and get out. :)

Agree that it’s a lot of effort to switch though, so good for you on making the switch!

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#452

Post by fuck_AI »

Microsoft Seriously though, I switched to Linux late last year and haven't looked back. It has everything I need for a computer and a lot of the "problems" people say is holding them back from switching full-time are greatly exaggerated. Like if you're not willing to make some small compromises so you can have a computer that respects you as a human and not a metric then I don't know what to tell you.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#453

Post by fsflover »

willhslade wrote: post #445
fsflover wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably talking about enshittification [0], which typically affects centralized for-profit entities, not community-based free software projects. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41277484

Mozilla says hello.

Firefox is for-profit and centralized.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#454

Post by rhabarba »

tock wrote: post #314
rhabarba wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Role models for computer use in my generation: RMS, Bjarne Stroustrup, Doug McIlroy. Role models for computer use today: “PewDiePie”. This is why we can't have nice things.

PewDiePie is awesome. His linux video has over 6M views. We need to make linux cool again for the general audience.

I don't know whether operating systems need to be "cool". Is Windows, the market leader, "cool"?

Or rather, I don't know whether those who think PewDiePie is "cool" have the same understanding of "cool" as computer nerds do.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#455

Post by blueflow »

TheDong wrote: post #442
blueflow wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alpine and GNU/Linux are Posix, while Android is not.

I don't think Posix is very relevant to what is or isn't linux. macOS is more posix than NixOS, but everyone knows NixOS is a real linux distro, and macOS is not one.

Me neither! I was suggesting to use "Posix" instead of "Linux" because it properly separates GNU/Linux or other Linuxes from Android. Posix is what Android isn't but what MacOS is. What people erroneously try to call "Linux" because they don't have a better word.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#456

Post by qwerpy »

sschueller wrote: post #208

I hope we get to a point where enough "professionals" are using it to force companies like Acrobat to offer Linux versions of their software (cough Fusion 360). It is the only thing keeping me from completely ditching my windows VM. Using CAD in a virtulabox VM is torture. FreeCAD is sadly not a viable replacement (maybe in the future but a lot of work is needed). I was able to switch to other tools for other things…

Oh hey another "I'd fully be on Linux if it wasn't for Fusion 360" person. Although in my case I'm too lazy to maintain VMs, so I just use windows as my base OS. Microsoft may force the issue next year when my perfectly good desktop stops getting Windows 10 updates and can't install Windows 11.

What's torturous about using Fusion 360 in a VM?

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#457

Post by kristopolous »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #3

I work in the refurb division of an e-waste recycling company. Due to licensing costs and our certifications, we can't sell anything with Windows. My coworkers install Ubuntu, but I install Linux Mint. We don't have any clue if people keep using Linux or install Windows, but it's cool to think we're helping to move this needle. Edit: might as well link to the merch: https://www.ebay.com/str/evolutionecycling

I've sold linux mint laptops on ebay and I always reach out after sale basically saying "just to be clear, this isn't running windows, it's linux. I'll be happy to cancel if this isn't what you expected"

and 100% of the time the person was like "yes! Linux is what I wanted"

Well alright then, there you go...

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#458

Post by mmphosis »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #100

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…

Coming from decades of using a Mac, I swap left alt and left ctrl. I remap the Terminal using AutoKey so that ctrl+c and ctrl+v are copy and paste, and alt+c effectively sends a ctrl+c to terminate a program.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#459

Post by alnwlsn »

nerdjon wrote: post #53

I have to wonder how much of this is people switching to Linux vs the larger trend of people not having traditional computers to begin with. Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. So is a solid chunk of this the p…

Both my parents run on Microsoft Excel. Neither of them care much for phones or tablets, but if there was an ExcelDeck running ExcelOS and it had a web browser and worked like the desktop version of Excel does, maybe they would go for it.

As it stands though, that's not the case, so I'll be stuck supporting a couple of Windows desktops permanently.

Before you suggest the app versions of Excel or Google Sheets, that's already a step too far. My mom told me she's "basically done learning new technology" and that's just how it's going to be.

Re: Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share in USA

#460

Post by lukeschlather »

JadoJodo wrote: post #239

I am in this category, but I'm growing increasingly frustrated with the state of the market for OS's: I've used macOS for work for many years and Arch-based derivatives for personal desktop. The challenge with that has always been gaming: Gaming on Linux _mostly_ works, but third-party launchers (e.g., Battle.net, Origin, etc.) HATE it. I also don't love the Proton shuffle (i.e., "Which version of Proton do I need to…

I am still using Windows 10. I use Flow Launcher ( https://www.flowlauncher.com/ ) and have it bound to ctrl-alt-shift-g, but then use an AutoHotkey binding to rebind it to Caps lock. Point being I almost never use the Start Menu, I just use Flow Launcher. And Flow Launcher has half the latency to display with no ads. When I'm forced to update to Windows 11 I may be forced to investigate alternate taskbars.

Fundamentally the thing that keeps me on Windows is battery life. I need to be able to trust that my laptop won't lose more than 20% of its charge in a week when not in use and Linux just can't reliably do that.

A related thing is stuff like play/pause/mute not working when the screen is locked.

Post reply on HN