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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

#481

Post by lynndotpy »

ninth_ant wrote: post #247
lynndotpy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of momentum in my social circles. My friends and their parents (!!!) who are asking about Linux. My "year of the Linux desktop" was in 2010, because even then everything was much, much faster on Ubuntu. (It helps major browsers were shipping 64-bit versions for Linux only, but Minecraft simply did not run on my laptop under Windows). Does anyone else feel kind of sick (something lik…

> These past six years have been absolutely bonkers incredible for Linux, and it can all be attributed to Microsoft shooting themselves in the head with Windows. It can’t all be attributed to Microsoft. There have been huge efforts by many parties to make this happen. Folks working on the Kernel, desktop environments, distros, applications, tooling, advocacy, and more. I believe people who say they are being pushed a…

Yeah, I should have been a bit more nuanced. I don't mean to dismiss the incredible mass of raw human achievement that is open source.

Microsoft is one of Valve's direct competitors and Valve is totally dependent on Microsoft. Among the notoriously poorly-received changes in Windows 8, Microsoft also started to clamp down on who can run software. Valve saw the writing on the walls and released their first Steam Machines. But those flopped due to the state of Linux gaming at the time, they started pouring resources into Proton, which had the distinction from WINE in that they would develop Linux-specific patches.

For sure, Valve would have nothing if WINE hadn't already done the bulk of the work, if Vulkan didn't exist, if Linux didn't exist, etc. But there's a world where Microsoft decided not to rock the boat with Windows, and in that world, Linux gamers would almost exclusively be dual booting.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#483

Post by MBCook »

ghaff wrote: post #256
MBCook wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Several of my friends own Steam Decks which is pretty wild to me given they are just normie gamers. I would say that’s absolutely the most normal gamer way of playing PC games. As someone who is mostly given up on playing games on a computer and prefer consoles, I’ve thought of doing the same thing. I agree it’s really impressive that lots of people have decided to try Linux, far more than I remember ever before. B…

I was never really a serious gamer and don't do it much at all any longer. But one of my senses is that the sort of games that really benefited from a desktop system--primarily Windows--like serious simulations and resource allocation games are increasingly fringe. Certainly there are games on Linux today but I also wonder if a lot of people won't decide, as you say, that consoles are just easier.

That’s true. You’d have to be a little picky. I know you can plug in a KB and mouse but… why?

Still there are a huge number of games from indies or small publishers that may not make it to console but would still work fantastically with a controller. Or maybe they’re successful and they will make it over, you just don’t want to wait the two years.

Those kind of games are the ones that make me consider getting a Steam Deck.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#484

Post by nirui »

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…

That brings back my memory (again) installing Mandriva on my old old old computer which has a NVIDIA TNT2 graphics card. It was a completely nightmare back then to install driver for it in order to get it to output at the correct resolution and refresh rate...

Now I have a Thinkpad T440p with a GeForce GT 730M dGPU which NVIDIA no longer provide driver for newer Linux kernels, so I have to use slower nouveau driver.

Ah, something never change.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#486

Post by FractalParadigm »

jorvi wrote: post #457
lenkite wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Phone was actually doing well and adoption was taking off when Nadella came in and killed it. It didn't help that they changed the app framework and then blamed lack of apps. Such a brain-dead decision.

Windows Phone was dead in the water because many services did not have first party support, and the third party clients kept getting killed / people banned from said services. Google was extremely aggressive in muscling Microsoft out. They refused to release a Gmail, YouTube or Maps client for Windows Phone but made sure those services did not work (properly). And indeed on top of that, Microsoft switched UI framewor…

What burned me was that there was no updating from WP7 to WP8 - After playing around with one and genuinely enjoying the experience, I convinced myself to buy a Lumia 900 in April of 2012, just for Nokia/Microsoft to effectively say "that was stupid, wasn't it?" when the Lumia 920 and WP8 launched just 7 months later. Releasing a so-called flagship device that they knew would be incompatible with their upcoming OS, effectively killing software support before the year was even finished, really doesn't inspire confidence in the longevity of a product.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#487

Post by AdrianB1 »

markus_zhang wrote: post #458
nextos wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that because their total compensation is lower than FAANG, especially at senior levels, and they are seen as uncool, they sometimes have issues retaining top-notch talent. It's paradoxical, because MS Research is probably the best PLT organization in the world. But they have failed to move a lot of that know-how into production. Besides, because it's an older company, it might have more organizational entropy…

Is compensation really the issue? Like, people earning 160k simply can’t take a dive into the OS source code and make proper fixes, but people earning 250k magically can? I don't know. I know there are a lot of people who want to work on the OS source code, given the chance, but need some hand holding in the beginning. Companies in general are not willing to give them the chance, because they don't want to hand hold…

Compensation can be the issue if the cost of living is creating problems. If you need 150k to just live in an area, 160k is not motivating while 250k gives you the peace of mind to focus on the work, not just on surviving. If you live in Bangladesh, the difference between 160k and 250k is almost meaningless.

Also compensation is a sign of respect and influences motivation. If you position yourself lower in the market, there is no reason to deliver top results for less money, correct? This attracts mediocrity, especially in management, and slowly kills companies. Usually there is no way back, no large company can replace the entire management and once and the mediocre ones will reject new, better ones.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#488

Post by markus_zhang »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #479
markus_zhang wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is compensation really the issue? Like, people earning 160k simply can’t take a dive into the OS source code and make proper fixes, but people earning 250k magically can? I don't know. I know there are a lot of people who want to work on the OS source code, given the chance, but need some hand holding in the beginning. Companies in general are not willing to give them the chance, because they don't want to hand hold…

I think uncompetitive compensation is the dominant factor in Microsoft’s decline. Up there with stack ranking. They claim that it’s 30% cheaper to live there but then they go and capture most of that 30% for themselves. It is my opinion that developer ability is on a Pareto distribution, like the 80 20 rule when 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. The job market is more liquid for those that are extremely p…

I still think there are ways to hand hold people a bit and grow an ordinary engineer to a better one who is fit for system programming in maybe 12 months.

Otherwise as you said the only way is to offer the best compensation so that people don't leave. But again those people probably would leave for different reasons (culture e.g.).

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#489

Post by sandworm101 »

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.

I am forced to use windows at work. Last week my web searches looked strange ... not getting the ussual results. Bing! Some windows update reset my default search from google to bing. Again! Microsoft's dirty tricks will never stop.

I am considering writing software specifically to feed random junk jnto Microsoft's telemetry cloud. I will call it "fusk-MS" and it will send random searches to Bing and fake screenshots of a linux desktop to copilot ten times a second until Microsoft stops acting like such a jerk.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#490

Post by AdrianB1 »

SpaceNoodled wrote: post #350
asveikau wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when I was there, part of my calculus was that cost of living in Seattle was cheaper than the bay. It was about 35% cheaper back then, according to regional CPI data I looked at at the time. Not sure what the difference is today. I believe housing is still substantially cheaper. I think a few years after I left when more Big Tech opened offices in Seattle, competing companies started paying Bay Area salaries for…

Seattle cost of living is still significantly cheaper than the Bay Area. A lower salary goes even farther given the lack of state income tax, too.

But in a world where Amazon prices are the same, car and gas are the same, cost of living is just rent?
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