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2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

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Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#421

Post by embedding-shape »

mcv wrote: post #381
RajT88 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software biz in general has a major "out with the old, in with the new" attitude, which paired with the attitude of, "We're going to build what we know, instead of learning the old stuff which is new to us". I've seen time and again, things like apps rewritten from scratch because nobody knew C++, and they only had C# devs. Or a massive runaround because the last guy on the team who knew C++ wrote a bunch of stuf…

Out with the old, in with the new, doesn't have to be bad, but it depends on what your old and new are. I'd be a lot less skeptical about migrating OS-level sttuff from C to Rust than from C to React.

If the motivation is "Because I refuse to learn C", then both approaches will be bad. You can't avoid understanding what you're migrating, but seemingly Microsoft thinks they're above that. Fits with the average mindset of developers within the Windows ecosystem, at least from my experience.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#422

Post by pjmlp »

trinix912 wrote: post #368
pjmlp wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Win32 is basically frozen on Windows XP. Since Vista most newer APIs are done in COM, or WinRT nowadays.

I remember a thin book describing changes to the API in Vista and 7 compared to XP and it was really thin. Just a few extra APIs to be able to show controls in the taskbar preview and things like that. Win32 is a stable API and I hope they don't let anyone from the Windows 11 modernization team touch it.

Except for anything that came after XP, you need to at least make use of COM.

WinRT can be avoided if you don't do any modern stuff like the new context menu, WinUI, or Windows ML.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#423

Post by jama211 »

bradley13 wrote: post #289
cjk wrote: post #22

Yeah. I feel the same way. If not for the fact that my gaming PC pulls double duty as a work PC, I'd seriously consider ditching Windows 11 for Bazzite. I worry that we are edging closer and closer to a similar phenomenon with macOS as well. Apple seems intent on squandering every bit of stability and sanity that macOS used to represent. Maybe now that Alan Dye is gone, we will at least see the abomination that is Li…

All of my Steam games work under Linux. For one or two, I gave to select a specific Proton version, but that's the only issue. Try dual-booting, and see if your games work...

Depends on your hardware. I have a pascal era nvidia card, and everything _supposedly_ works, but games have issues for me still that aren’t concrete, e.g. cyberpunk crashes in specific and repeatable locations for seemingly no reason and it never happens to me on windows. New amd cards are probably much more reliable. It’s no one’s fault but nvidias really that my card is unreliable in Linux, but as an end user I’ve been told many times Linux “just works” now and I’m upset that that hasn’t been my experience.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#424

Post by jama211 »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #20
xattt wrote: post #5

I’d love to be a fly on the wall at Microsoft right now, to see if they are in red alert to get users back, planning subterfuge by breaking APIs used by Wine or what have you, or if they are taking it as a loss. I recently jumped to Debian/KDE as a daily driver, and it feels great. I am coming after many years of running Linux via cli on my home server. I am also unironically enjoying wobbly windows.

I think they have moved on to other sources of revenue, so I don't think they care that much anymore.

Yup. They’re not stupid, they’re sunsetting that pandering to consumers OS market.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#425

Post by voxleone »

Welcome to the Linux desktop club. One small heads-up from experience: if you’re running NVIDIA hardware, expect a few bumps along the way. The proprietary drivers work well once set up, but kernel updates, Wayland quirks, and driver installs can be more hands-on than with AMD or Intel. Not a dealbreaker, just something to be aware of.

Overall though, solid choice. Hope 2026 really is your year of the Linux desktop.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#426

Post by willtemperley »

Root_Denied wrote: post #385
willtemperley wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics show adoption rate is increasing. According to [1] it historically took a decade to double Linux desktop market share, but market share has almost doubled since 2022. Now, two in five PCs worldwide are running Windows 10, an unsuppoted OS. What are the user's options? Either buy a new PC, switch to Mac or run Linux. [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/2025-could-finally-be-the-year...

For a lot of those people the options are "spend a lot of money to upgrade your hardware to either run Win11 or buy a Macbook" or "use your existing hardware and ask your tech friend for a Linux distro recommendation". When prices are going nuts and the economy is tanking the option that doesn't cost you money starts to look a lot more appealing, and for some the first isn't even an option; they're completely priced…

In reality, people will probably keep their insecure Win 10 machines running as long as they can. Linux is a leap especially for busy folk (most people in this economy).

I predict a rise in antivirus company share prices.

If Apple do make the rumoured cheap A-series based MacBook, it could be a hit.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#427

Post by harel »

Maybe I'm more tolerant, but for me Linux was ready for the desktop in 2005 and windows 11 is ok for what I use it for (cubase and games). When I switched my laptop from Windows XP it was a test. 3 years later I noticed I didn't boot back into windows not even once so concluded the test successful. My desktop later was windows only because cubase (and later steam) runs on it, but I honestly don't mind. However, I had to do some development on windows once for a client and that was indeed a horrible experience.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#428

Post by bonesss »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #35
roxolotl wrote: post #4

“start menus made with React Native, control-alt-delete menus that are actually just webviews” Haven’t used windows in five years or so but I’ve kept hearing bad things. This really is the icing on the cake though. Yea the AI stuff is dumb but if a OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs something has gone horribly wrong.

Microsoft has a history of creating new UI frameworks. IMHO it's the result of Ballmer's "Developers, developers, developers!" attitude, which I think is a good thing at core (court the developers that add value to your platform!) But this results in chasing a new paradigm every few years to elicit new excitement from the developers. It'll always be more newsworthy to bring in a new framework than add incremental fix…

> the result of Ballmer's "Developers, developers, developers!" attitude

I think Microsoft’s framework chasing has been a betrayal of that philosophy. Internal divisional politics have been major drivers behind fracturing and refusing to unify the stack and its UI approach, and without clear guidance from the Office team the direction of the entire platforms UI is opaque. Short term resume and divisional wins at the expense of the whole ecosystem.

A developer centric platform would let developers easily create platform specific UIs that look modern and normal. As-is the answer to how to ‘hello world’ a windows desktop app is a five hour “well, akshully…” debate that can reasonably resolve to using Meta’s stack. “VB6 for the buttons, C++ for the hard stuff” is a short conversation, at least.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#429

Post by gabrielgio »

stateofinquiry wrote: post #293
handbanana_ wrote: post #214

I really don't understand what is different about my installs of Windows 11 compared to what I read in all these types of articles. I have zero issues with the platform day in and day out with heavy workloads like Pro Tools and Unreal Engine devkit. Games run without stutter and issue, all my features are snappy, Explorer loads instantly, etc. Even search is performant and gives decent results. I have tweaked a few s…

I have the same confusion as you do. Note, I am not ignorant about Linux or MacOS. I ran Linux as my main OS from 2001 - 2015, still run it on a server. MacOS from 2015 - 2021. Since 2021 I am on Windows for my main machine (a laptop) and my gaming desktop. Win 11 seems fine to me. I do see Copilot appearing everywhere. I don't see ads from MS at all, though- sometimes my vendor driver-management software asks me if…

> I do see Copilot appearing everywhere.

> I don't see ads from MS at all

You can only pick one.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#430

Post by Vinnl »

the_hoser wrote: post #236

For those of us that have been using Linux for a long time (since 1999, here), the improvements have been incremental, and hard to spot over time. But sometimes I encounter something and it just blows my mind how good desktop Linux has become. I just bought a laptop that came with Fedora installed. This isn't anything new, but what really blew me away is that everything... just worked. No tinkering. No alternative mo…

I had a similar experience after switching to Fedora Silverblue (but any of the immutable Linuxes will probably do - and over time, I'm sure most will be like that). Had set aside a bunch of time to do a major version update, everything fully backed up, and then it was done in a couple of minutes. Literally no different from any other update.

I've done more than a handful of major version updates since then, and almost don't bother to backup any more.

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