We get it, it hit 4%
We get it, it hit 4%
In all seriousness it's very exciting, I just don't need to see the same information worded 20 different ways from random clickbait sites lol
110 comments
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Look....I use Linux. I love Linux. But let's be honest. That 4 percent is largely due to the steam deck; a gaming handheld where the vast majority of users don't know (or care) what operating system it uses as long as they can play their steam games on the go.
That's not "year of the Linux desktop", because it's not a desktop. It just has one hidden under the hood if you want to dig past the steam layer (which, as I said...the vast majority of users never will)
The year of the Linux desktop won't arrive until there is sufficient market share that software manufacturers are inclined to support us natively. That won't happen with a gaming handheld because no one would want to use a gaming handheld as a daily driver.
Sorry to be a wet blanket, folks. Downvote away....
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I agree Steam Deck played a role, but they didn't sell enough to make that large of an increase. That'd be insane. However, it did cause the appearance of gaming on Linux to change, which is the thing that was holding back a large number of users.
I had used Linux several times over the past decade or so. It was never my main OS, and I had actually stopped using it completely for probably 5 years, maybe more. This is exclusively because gaming on Linux was an issue and I didn't want to swap OSs just to play a game. Last year I went 100% Linux. I know I'm not the only one, and I'm extremely confident that the increase is mostly this, not the Steam Deck. The number of Steam Decks sold seems to be maybe 6m on the high end of estimates, which is not enough.
The Steam Deck was a catalyst, but it is not the source of the change.
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You might statistically be underestimating Steam Deck. Every player on Steam Deck is plus one in Linux and sometimes one in Windows.
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Most computer users don't even know what an operating system is
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Only 1.63% of Steam users were using Linux in 2023. Since pretty much all Steam Deck users are going to be using Steam, we can't attribute Linux's increase in market share to the Steam Deck alone.
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That doesnt have any correlation to number of non steamdeck linux users. So 1.63% of steam users could represent a number larger than linux users. And we know steam users is a large number.
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I'm pretty sure that this specific statistic leverages internet-user-agents. So a Steamdeck probably wouldn't be counted in as they aren't really used for browsing.
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That is not really true as far as I can tell. Linux is growing because it is maturing as a ecosystem. We don't need a bunch of proprietary software to have a good experience
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The steam deck doesn't work like a regular gaming console though. Without digging you can switch into desktop mode and it works like any desktop running KDE.
Also, if you're saying that we shouldn't count steamdecks because linux came preinstalled, we might as well disregard 98% of the windows market.
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While that has been a nice feature on mine, I've definitely been more frustrated with the KDE interface than I am when using my Windows desktop - even when my Deck is hooked up to monitors. Much of that could be familiarity, but familiarity is a very real, very important thing.
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India, the country with the largest population, has a 15% desktop Linux marketshare.
Additionally, these surveys are highly inaccurate. They are at best a "conservatively low balled figure". Linux installations don't send a ping to a server anywhere to count the install, and there's no other facility to gauge or count through the Linux ecosystem itself. Most computers used for Linux are also sold with Windows pre-installed, which means there's no clean way to use sales figures either.
All that leaves is the browser user agent when visiting select websites that track and share the number of unique visitors that identify as Linux.
I did the math a few months ago in a different discussion (not on Lemmy) and my math at the time came up to about 50 million desktop Linux users, and that was using the "official" reported numbers of 3.x% at the time.
That also ignores that the Stack Overflow developer survey puts desktop Linux at over 50% for personal use, and (IIRC) about 47% for professional use.
But let's be honest
You can't be honest if you look at a single boiled down percentage of a very large, very diverse and technical landscape with more variations and caveats than the English language.
Also, in case anyone is wondering, the Stack Overflow numbers didn't include WSL. If you do include that then desktop Linux usage was over 70% for personal use.
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It is actually a good thing because "I need windows for gaming" is the biggest reason why compsci and IT people still have windows.
You're still right that it won't win over non tech people though.
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due to the steam deck
You sure? Not proton?
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Linux Mint checking in!
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Every year is the year of the linux desktop. It's just that most don't know it yet.
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Yesterday my school principal decided to install Debian on all the school computers, lol.
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You would think schools would be all for it, especially since Microsoft office is a subscription service now.
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All the schools I have seen are using Google docs and sheets.
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every year since 2022 is the year of the Linux desktop. get used to it nerd
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Every year since 1993 is the year is the Linux desktop 😎
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Let me make this simple for everyone. There's only a real metric for "the year of the desktop Linux" and that's whenever Microsoft and Adobe release full featured versions of all their products for Linux. Not slimmed down web versions, no emulation/virtualization/-insert.hack- BS.
Get used it the idea, I know it hurts, but it's true.
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It's a vicious circle. Linux has no representation on the desktop because it lacks support from commonly used desktop apps. And lack support from those apps because it has no representation.
Windows have to screw really hard to push common folks to switch AND Linux must come pre-installed on cheap desktops to appease young people that are entering the ecosystem now.
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Exactly I agree with you but I also have to add that there's another factor at play. Half of the success of Windows and macOS lies from the fact that they provide solid and stable APIs and development tools that “makes it easy” to develop to those platforms. Linux is very bad at that. If major pieces of an OS are constantly changing and it requires large re-works of the applications then developers are less likely to support it. To be fair the Linux situation might be even harder than that - there are no distribution “sponsored” IDE (like Visual Studio or Xcode) and userland API documentation, frameworks etc. Besides, Linux has the worst track ever of supporting old software, even worse than Apple and I believe this speaks volumes about the situation.
Until we don’t get a single DE with a single solid and well designed theme, UI library, developer friendly frameworks and whatnot Linux won’t be getting any meaningful traction among regular people and professional developers.
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All you can do is switch to it and wait
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The vast majority of people use a web browser, an office suite, an image viewer, a video player, and maybe some games. They'll use whatever OS came free with the machine, or whatever they can get a friend / relative to install for them.
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Most people have at least one other app that most people don't use, that they use religiously, and has little UI foibles they don't want to change. For some, it's a native-app E-mail client they're familiar with where they have 20-year-old messages backed up. For others, it's a photo management app.
It often doesn't matter if AltWinMintbuntuXYZ has those capabilities. If it doesn't handle them in the exact same way, it's an anxiety-producing shift.
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You're forgetting Autodesk.
They are the real power-holders.Libre Office is already better than MS Office acc. to me (thanks to MSO going downhill starting 2013) and I don't see Adobe having anything irreplaceable. People that use Adobe stuff do so because it is more convenient and easy to find; and because their coworkers use similar stuff. Any real +ives it has over others are just differential and a matter of time and money for the competitors.
In case of Autodesk CAD software for CIVIL engineers, no FOSS alternatives even come close to them. (Blender is not yet suitable for Civ Engg., while qcad and similar stuff kinda work for basic work) Other competitors are all closed source and still way behind.
_ Oh, and Solidworks
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For me, the year of the Linux desktop was nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell - er, no, I mean 2017 is when I switched all my computers to Linux.
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Everybody I found /u/shittymorph on Lemmy!!!
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Be the shittymorph you wish to see in the Lemmy.
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We finally hopped ship this year. Some small bs antifeature finally pissed us off enough to (gasp) learn something new and now I can't find my way out of Vim.
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Did you try to alt+F4 ? I want to jump ship too, next computer will have an AMD graphic card. I only have Nvidia ones and it crash games on Linux.
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I'm just waiting for windows 12. If reports are to be believed, it's going to be a subscription cloud OS, probably with a thin client. If they really go through with that, then I can imagine linux gaining some ground in 2026 when windows 11 hits EOL.
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Windows 11 EOL in 2 years?
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Quite possibly.
Windows 8 reached end of support in only 4 years.
Particularly if Microsoft thinks they can get away with "Operating System as a subscription" as part of "Windows 12", then they may well be very aggressive about retiring Windows 11. The software companies are falling all over themselves to force people to pay monthly in perpetuity.
However, I'm thinking that Microsoft sees Windows as their gateway drug, so I don't think they'd risk making the base platform subscription. They want people to still get "free" OS that nags them with "hey, give us money for backup storage, and you want office, right, and oh you are a powershell user I see? Then you'll just love renting an Azure instance so we'll advertise that as part of launching a powershell prompt?" They'll of course continue the milk the OEMs for license fees offset by bloated "sampleware", and still ostensibly charge for it to drive the perception of value, but broadly Windows is more a launching board for steering people toward Microsoft subscription services.
If they did throw the switch on "subscription for OS", then they'd risk people just getting ChromeBooks which will steer the users instead toward Google Docs and Google Drive and all the other services Microsoft expressly doesn't want users to get into.
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I doubt Microsoft is that dumb, though.
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Don't think of it like that. Think of it like, "next quarter's profits".
It takes a lot of effort for non-technical people to switch to a new OS. Microsoft can capitalize on that to rake in egregious profits for probably five years or more before businesses finish sincere efforts at supporting Linux.
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Yeah, probably they aren't, but who knows. Unity thought they were infallible and went for their "pay the installation fee or else" that gave power to engines like Godot.
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Damn, a lot of people bought Steam Decks.
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Linux desktop and fusion energy have something in common, it seems.
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No one realizes that the equation to calculate both of them have a limit where a value is devided by x where x is approaching 0
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Upvote for Jimmy Neutron meme
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To forestall the year 2038 problem maybe we could just start reckoning time based on years of the linux desktop.
Today is 06 March 33 YLD
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Yeah, everyone knows the year of Linux will be in +∞
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The year of the Linux desktop is long ago, but this year definitely will be the year of Linux mobile
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Dont you get it? Every year is the year of linux.
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Contrary to the idea that most of these new users come from steam decks, I've had 3 of my friends switch to or at least partially use linux. We are certainly growing.
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Microsoft has made their os so annoying and I loath when their updates revert settings that took me an hour to find in the first place. Or worse, remove the settings and features I liked to shove some more bs ads and data harvesting down my throat.
So yeah, I'm planning on downloading Linux mint to a flash drive and giving it a try on one of my laptops this month.
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A windows update broke my computer. My system image I made using Windows couldn't restore. I have zero faith in windows. The culprit was something like an update that fucked driver signatures.
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The combined number of years of my marriage and the ages of all of my children is a number that when subtracted from 2024 would not equal the first time I heard this.
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While I love the meme, Linux is doing pretty good recently
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wasnt it a year of Linux desktop ? It after all grow by 25% (3% => ~4%) in a year - thats really considerable growth by every measure...
110 comments