I do have to say, though it took 10 years longer than I thought it would, the combination of hardware standardization in consumer laptops and maturity of Linux kernel has meant that, in the last few years, Linux has "just worked" more often than not (and WAY more often than it used to). I recently upgraded from a Lenovo X220 to a 4th-generation Lenovo X1 Carbon, and installed Ubuntu GNOME 17.04. Didn't need to tweak a single thing about the hardware. Everything just worked.
That said, I did hit a weird GPU bug[1] that reminded me that no matter how good Linux on the desktop has gotten, there's always something. :-/
To be blunt, those i915 GPU drivers are shit. I battled a brand new Dell XPS 13 for like two weeks before I hit a stable mix. Once I fixed everything it is great.
In particular virt-manager/virt-viewer/libvirt/KVM have come a long way. I don't need Workstation or Virtualbox any longer. Having Docker and a real X11 server is nice. Everything /generally/ works. A few things I have to run a VM for like Webex.....
Regardless I don't think I experience much more bugginess than my Mac peers now, and most things work out of the box.
Linux on the desktop: Most things work out of the box ;)
these days, for stability it's prefereable to use the modesetting X driver (comes with xorg-server /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/modesetting_drv.so) instead of the xf86-video-intel driver.
My XPS 15 with i915 + Mobile Nvidia GPU has been really un-fun to deal with, but it's finally getting better now. Docking and undocking is still an adventure every time, though.
It's interesting, most of our company is on Macs and people experience lots of issues waking up from sleep. Mac didn't used to be that way for many years.
I run i3 and just logout before any sort of monitor changing.
I've been on desktop Linux since 2003, and agree. I would add that Linux is now a viable replacement for Windows and Mac OS X for the vast majority of people, who are not gamers and don't need highly specialized applications.
For what it's worth, my experience with Linux vendors like System 76 has been good, particularly in recent years.
While I agree in terms of stability and general usability, I'd say that missing support from popular applications are a deal breaker for many. For most people it's probably MS Office, for others Adobe CS products. If those had (officially supported) Linux versions, I can even imagine many companies considering a switchover.
Alternative software available on Linux is often not fully compatible, so people are effectively locked into Windows/MacOS as long as they want to keep their existing data or work with others (who often use those lock-in products). In addtion, UX of FOSS like GIMP is at the least very different from big commertial counterparts like Photoshop and takes a lot of time to learn, which many people simply don't want to invest.
I run Windows 10 in a VMWare Workstation instance for this. Luckily with modern multi-core high-memory machines and Intel VT-x, this runs really, really well. So I really don't need the vendors to expend any effort on a port.
That said, one sad thing is that VMWare recently laid off and/or outsourced their VMWare Workstation team[1], and it is now in "maintenance mode", so I will be really sad if this product gets sunset somehow. It's still infinitely better a VM option than Virtualbox for running Windows.
I experimented with this extensively and found that while VBox and VMWare had different performance profiles, overall it'd come out to a wash in terms of a real performance "winner".
As of June, I'm running Win10 "natively" on an ArchLinux hypervisor with GPU and USB passthrough via vfio-pci. It was a marathon to get this configured, but overall it's quite nice. Previously, I had switched to Win10 native and ran Linux out of VBox for "real work", after finally getting sick of waiting 2 min+ for something to churn in DxO via VMWare and/or VBox on the Linux host.
Combined with virtio drivers, the passthrough VM gives me practically-native performance (Geekbench shows ~15-20% loss in single-core performance, and about equivalent multicore performance) and the flexibility of a virtualized environment (qcow2 images, etc).
It also allows my workstation to operate independently from the other services in my house (Plex, work VM, etc.). One of the biggest annoyances of a Win10 host and a Linux guest VM was that Win10 would sometimes force the box offline for updates. Still annoying, and doesn't really happen since I switched to the "business release channel", but at least it doesn't take everything down.
The coolest part of this setup: my son has a Win10 VM with GPU passthrough to the secondary GPU in the hypervisor that he uses via Steam Link to connect to "his computer" from several "thin terminals" in the house. Would love to develop this out as a product some day.
All this said, since it is an experimental setup that depends on some cutting-edge features, there have been some kernel-related struggles and I've been on the kvm mailing list a couple times in the last few weeks. 4.11.x is mostly-stable (one system lock on it), 4.12.x crashes after a few hours, 4.13rc1-7 crash after tens of hours, but 4.13rc7 with the mmu-notifier patchset from Jerome Glisse is stable so far. I'm anticipating a clean 4.14, which will be LTS, and then I'll probably stick to that branch until the next LTS comes along.
Increasingly though mainstream users don't need to run local applications. Some do; I have a combination of Linux, Mac, and Windows systems I use for various things. But a lot of the time when I travel I just take a very portable Chromebook with me. The vast bulk of what I need to do on a day to day basis I do online.
since you mentioned chromebooks i feel obligated to mention the truly stellar galliumOS, an xubuntu derivative for chromebooks. i've been using it for about a year on a toshiba chromebook 2 and it's been a joy -- everything works perfectly, and after swapping in a 128gb ssd i have zero complaints.
Microsoft Excel, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign work very well for me under WINE.
There are cases where those programs don't work 100% but they work 99% for everything that I need which is fine for me. It feels much faster than running the same programs under Windows 8.1.
Been running Linux as desktop since circa. 1993 and the 0.97/0.98 kernel series and the SLS distribution [1]. Even that far back, if one was running older, common, hardware it nearly "just worked".
I tried on the Lenovo X1 carbon and had the opposite experience.
Did you manage to solve the fact that, when plugged to an external monitor, if screen is turned off and back on (or the computer sleeps if you walk away for 20 minutes), upon logging back in all windows are in different workspaces than you had originally set them in? If so I'm very curious, it was the thing that made me switch back to mac (and I irrationally hate mac).
I need to tweak the graphics config for no screen tearing. I needed to install palm detection to be able to type. And I still can't get HDMI with audio to work when connecting my TV.
It still doesn't work out of the boys like Windows.
That seems like a suspiciously large bump. I could imagine a scenario where the numbers are right, though. Is Chrome OS counted as Linux? School is starting up again in many areas...
Well, it seems like either:
1) Chrome has a market share less than FreeBSD, and so is not mentioned
2) Chrome is not considered a desktop/laptop OS, or
3) The Linux numbers include Chrome.
Option (3) seems the most likely, and I have to agree that it's driven by schools. A lot of mainstream schools are starting to use Chromebooks for their students, it's almost the default school option now, I think.
If you're counting operating systems by the kernel, why would ChromeOS be counted as anything other than Linux. Sure it is a variant, but so is Fedora or Gentoo or Arch.
I don't think you should really count the operating system by the kernel. You should count it by the API it exposes. That's what really matters.
Under this system Android and ChromeOS wouldn't really be counted as Linux because you can't easily run normal Linux programs on them. Although they may use Linux under the hood, that isn't really visible to user-space programs. Android, and especially ChromeOS could easily switch kernel with no visible effect to apps. The kernel is an implementation detail.
Many people that count on Android as Linux, just because of the NDK, usually don't have any idea how little of Linux is actually exposed to developers using the NDK for app development.
Basically any POSIX like kernel with enough support for libc and libc++ would do the job.
That was my first question, where is Chrome OS counted? Is it considered a desktop or mobile OS? I figured it should be counted with the laptops, and the mobile category doesn't include Windows so laptops must be in the desktop category. Since they don't break Chrome OS out on its own, I assume it's counted as Linux.
Even then, there's either way more chromebook-using students than I'd have ever guessed, or there's way fewer other linux users...probably a little of both.
This partially thanks to Apple, every developer I know using Apple has some issues with OS X quality and/or the increasing price (they already subscribed to the premium idea years ago but the touchbar price boost was a new level of kicker). Strangely I suspect Microsoft may of actually dented some of this, social media around win10 and wsl generally seem positive. Disclaimer bounce: Long time ubuntu user, just listening social media.
Also, I'd be interested to know if chromebooks factor into this stat?
I can only chime in with my anecdote but I started hitting hardware limits on my macbook and I went to shop for a new computer.
The cheapest mac that solved my bottleneck (ram) was a $900 Mac Mini but that computer had no upgrade room and I recently got a 4k display and I didn't want to find out whether the Iris graphics were up to the task.
I built a badass linux box for $850 - Ryzen 1600, 1050 ti, SSD, 32 gb of ram. It's hard to make an linux to apples comparison because mine is just a desktop and most macs come with displays but the apple premium just wasn't worth it.
I had a few issues out of the gate (not getting it running, but installing Nvidia drivers and getting tensorflow to use GPU acceleration) but it was an excellent learning experience and a few hours of time (which was honestly an enjoyable use of time) saved me considerable money over Apple. My desktop is the performance peer of an $2,400 iMac.
I'd pay a premium for an Apple but not 3x as much. And I'll probably continue to use a Macbook as a secondary device but when my Macbook fails, it's going to be harder and harder to shell out Macbook money when I know that a used Lenovo with Ubuntu will get the job done.
Apple isn't really playing in the desktop market and has been phoning it in with the Mac Mini and Pro for some time. Usually developers talking about Macs are talking about MacBook Pros.
You're not wrong, I am one of those devs. I was always happy to play with other OS, but when it came to desktop - Mac was the obvious choice, and that would still be my choice 10 years ago both because of linux ease-of-entry back then and my skills and patience.
After 10.6 I refused to upgrade because of <rant>!@£$%^</rant> and gradually got comfortable with a transition to a minimal tiling based desktop on Linux.
Now i'm so much happier, dev is simple and using my computer is so much more relaxing without having to fend off a continuous barrage of "upgrades".
10.6.8 was the best Mac OS ever. Since then I've felt increasingly uncomfortable with the heavy-handed, paternalistic direction Apple has been taking their OS; it just doesn't feel like home anymore. I believe in personal computers as tools of personal empowerment; it's my machine, not Apple's. I really resent being told what I can and can't do with it, and I neither need nor want an itunes account.
I've been using Macs since 1985 and spent the first half of my career developing Mac software exclusively, but I've also been using Linux since... hmm... 1998. Macs always used to come first, but at some point a couple of years ago I noticed that I'd gradually, without really meaning to, started spending virtually all my time in Linux instead. I still have a Mac mini on my desk at home, and it's nice enough, but when it eventually dies I doubt I'll bother to replace it. Everything I want to do works just fine in Linux.
>Since then I've felt increasingly uncomfortable with the heavy-handed, paternalistic direction Apple has been taking their OS; it just doesn't feel like home anymore
I have exactly the same feeling, I also had some fake nostalgic experience with Mac OS Classic / System6 etc (of which my age gives me no right to be). Everything up to and including 10.6.8 for any quirks they may have had, all felt like an OS that the user was truly in charge of, while still having a friendly, slick and minimal UI...
But now, instead of using an OS it feels like using a website shop or an iPhone, it feels like the OS is in charge of the user, and users are expected to need to be told what to do. I suppose it's inevitable, Apple aren't really a computer company any more.
The statistics here show a noticeable drop for Windows between July and August. It's not clear what these numbers really represent. Chrome might be part of it. Also, the general slowing of the PC market in general. Linux doesn't have to grow very fast if the others are declining. In the future, it will the year of the Linux desktop because no one else will be using desktops.
I have a cheap Windows 10 laptop for occasional use when I'm out of town, and I really only use it for browsing. That turd has completely frustrated me with its low resolution and slow response to things that should be instant. Booting seems to take forever for example. I've been researching Chromebooks and this afternoon I'll buy one that will be better in every way and cheaper.
If I were buying a Chromebook today I'd get either a Samsung Chromebook Pro or an ASUS Chromebook Flip C302CA
(probably the latter). I often travel with the smaller Asus Chromebook but it's been in need of a hardware upgrade for a while.
I looked at those, but my wife thought I was crazy for looking at $400+ Chromebooks when much cheaper ones were available. She was right, as long as I was willing to pass on the convertible form factor. I just picked up the Acer Chromebook 14 from Costco for $260. It has a nice IPS display with decent resolution, and the rest of it looks good as well.
I don't actually use the convertible form factor on my Asus much--really only when I'm not traveling without a dedicated tablet for some reason. It makes for a somewhat heavy and awkward tablet. I like the specs and looks of those higher-end models but you're right that they're pushing into laptop range with their pricing.
Non solid state storage likely explains most or all of the difference in responsiveness. SSD and high-resolution Windows laptops do exist, but they are priced about the same as MacBooks.
>social media around win10 and wsl generally seem positive.
You must live in a special bubble then, because w10 was so horrible we still hear moaning about it in the sysadmin community. For me, it was the straw that broke the camels back I needed to completely remove myself from MS's horrible, user-patronizing ecosystem.
I feel sorry for all the businesses that are trapped in it. I refuse to support it anymore though.
My hope is for people that manage friends and family systems to start putting easy linux distros on instead of Windows. The malware ecosystem alone is a good enough reason to do so.
As for WSL... I'm just amazed at how many people have forgotten the three E's and the MS of the 90's. MS is not to be trusted.
My path was windows->linux->mac. I lasted about nine months on linux, and then switch to a mac because it was "a nice nix that works with my phone". My next computer will run linux. My phone doesn't need a computer any more, and my computer needs more than the 16gb of ram that my 2011 MBP and 2016 MBP both max out at.
This is entirely due to other devices, like chromebooks being counted in the tally. Linux desktops/laptops are definitely not gaining that much compared to Macs. Outside our little microcosm on HN, the general public isn't leaving their Macs for Linux.
As of about a month ago I'm officially Windows free. I have an iMac for desktop and had a 2012 MBP for laptop (that dual booted Windows via Bootcamp). A torrential downpour that soak my backpack ended up destroying that MBP so I bought a used Dell Precision workstation (that came with Windows 10) and put Fedora 26 on it. I don't miss Windows at all. I can play my games on my Mac and while I'm a professional C# dev, I'm working on migrating away from that stack so it isn't like I'm any worse off.
Edit: One thing that I do wish was on Linux is Microsoft Office. I'm working on a book (which I will need Windows for, so I'll have to run it in a VM until I finish the book) but being able to use the Word on Linux would make things so much easier.
Yes. I'm bound to Word because that is what the publisher uses and has their templates in. If it was self publish then I would've been using Latex (or maybe even markdown) the whole time.
I question the reliability of these statistics. Look in particular back 1 year (before the default view) at April 2016. In that month Windows was < 90% and the Mac was nearing 10%. Is there really such a large variability? Regarding other comments on Windows, it's all about where your starting point is. If your starting point is April 2016 then Windows is actually up.
Further I would like to see ChromeOS separated into its own category. Are we going to start counting Android running on a laptop as "Desktop Linux?" Do we care about the kernel or the userland?
Linux is ready for a lot of people. Inset my parents up with Ubuntu six months ago and they like it. Not super tech savvy, they can wait word docs, email, and browse the web. All their purchase price went to hardware and none to Microsoft!
Have Ubuntu quit making a separate partition for /boot on install by default? In my experience, this was the reason most non tech savvy people quit using linux a decade ago.
The symptom was always the same : "I can't upgrade anymore". And the reason was always the same : like 20 different kernels in /boot, which has no more free space and was breaking upgrade process for any package.
EDIT : sorry to have to ask that, by the way : I'm on kde neon myself, but I always make my own partition scheme, so I can't answer that question.
The separate /boot partition is partially a leftover and partly a method of increasing the likely-hood of the install working on a larger group of hardware. Older machine bios'es often had a hard size limit of where on disk they could read boot data. Having /boot be a small partition at the start of the disk meant a greater likely-hood that the new install would boot properly.
Newer Linux boot loaders have largely eliminated the need, but old compatibility items everywhere tend to stay stuck well beyond the point where they ceased actually being necessary anymore (partially due to the "if it is not broke, don't fix it" mindset).
But the problem you describe is not a failure of having /boot be a small separate partition. It is a failure of the upgrade scripts not cleaning up old, no longer used, kernel files.
Most Linux distributions do that by default today, Ubuntu included.
It is definitely one of those things where the default case has been made to cover everything and has gotten really complicated.
But the upgrade tool really should be smart enough to clean up the oldest kernels when /boot gets full. That's pretty sad if they haven't fixed that yet.
My mom has been using Linux as her desktop OS without issue for over 10 years, and it makes the hardware last a lot longer (Win10 now has dynamically compressed memory, but for a long time this was a feature that was only available on Linux, and helped a lot). If you just need a web browser (Firefox and/or Chrome), office suite (LibreOffice), and basic scanning and photo editing (GIMP), Linux is completely adequate.
I myself had an easy time adjusting, and I'm planning to give my grandma either a Debian or a Linux Mint system with Cinnamon once it's finally time for a new laptop.
It's curious how a "supported" OS like Windows 7 mysteriously only runs on old hardware and cannot be bought anymore. You'd almost think they're trying to force you to upgrade.
Except the whole not running any normal software they see in day to day use. Older folks are definitely not going to understand why their version of Office 2016 isn't installing on their "Linux machine" their grandson setup for them. I went down this route before with my own, and it ends in either installing Windows, or getting a Mac/iPad.
I am an older folk. You know, we've been using computers since the seventies. Not only do I know why Office 2016 doesn't work, I know quite well why it doesn't work. I also know how my hardware works, quite well. If I need to, I'm even comfortably modifying much of my software. I even know why, and how, to compile a custom kernel.
These older folks built the very things you used. As for the "definitely not going to understand" bit, there's a not insignificant chance that I understand it better than you.
Ok? And there's "a lot" of people in wheelchairs who mountainclimb... from the perspective of the 5 people who do.
It's immature word games at best, and insecure egoism at worst, to act this way in the face of overwhelming rhetorical truth. The vast majority of "old" people had zero use for the tech as we know it in their daily lives for most of their lives. As such, most of them have no idea what is going on.
Again, anecdotal. You're an "older folk", talking on Hacker News. If I asked most older folk, or most any folk in general. They wouldn't have a clue about anything of what you just typed. I deal with end users all day. Most don't know copy and paste exist, or shift select, or how to add a printer automatically, or how to get to anything that isn't a silly mapped drive, or how to get to an internal website without a shortcut on their desktop, or "where did the internet go?" because the blue e isn't there. The vast majority of people, even ones who have been working on computers their entire life, are absolutely, undoubtedly clueless.
You may wish to edit your previous statement so that it doesn't say definitely. Even the missus is comfortable in Linux-land. She's not technical, even a little.
She's definitely technical, way more than the layman, if she's comfortable managing ANY desktop computer. Vast majority of people I interact with sit down, barely remember their own login password, and launch a single web app from a shortcut on their desktop. Outside of that, there is zero understanding.
I'm going to ask that you read this. It's potentially long. Please, do read this. It may very well change your views. I don't normally try to change views, but this is a time when I think I may be able to do so - as I can give some information.
I suspect you're colored by your biases but I'm not an expert in the soft sciences. I'm not sure who you consider old people, but many of us have been using computers since we actually had to make computers do what we needed - often with programming for our own specific needs.
I'm working really hard to be polite. I'm kinda tired of the generic statements about old people and the assumption that we're not technically competent.
Now, I'd like to take a moment to say that we both may have different ideas about what is, and isn't, old. Frankly, I consider anyone over 55 years of age to be old. (I'm well past that, if you're curious.)
We designed your Internet, wrote the programming languages that power your computer, determined the state of individual electrons so that we could make a CPU as you know it, and wrote the very mathematics that you base your works on today.
On top of that, we weren't unique - but stood on the shoulders of giants.
I'm going to reveal a bit about myself - if you don't mind. Do you travel? If so, you're probably doing so (albeit by extension) based on my work. I'm a mathematician and if you've ever dealt with traffic that's modeled (be it pedestrian or vehicular) there's a good chance that it was based on, or advanced by, my work.
That's right... Every day you drive to work, you're relying on my work. Specifically, I hold a Ph.D. because I advanced the art of mathematics in regards to working from the initial state - and assuming imperfect knowledge. If you've heard of chaos theory, I built based on that.
Now... To get back on topic, I hated computers. I hated them because I had to make them do what I wanted - I had to develop a means to use this calculating machine as I wanted. They didn't have stuff like downloads at your nearest URL.
You made a comment about the missus. She's a soft science major who worked for humanitarian goals. She's not even remotely technical, and not even more than a layman. It's not my fault that you've assumed the position where they're appliances and decided everyone who is old is unable to understand them. You're wrong.
That's pretty strong, for me. In short, you're wrong. I don't care who the "vast majority of people" are that you interact with. We call that selection bias, and probably more. I interact with (and I'm VERY much retired) people who used to work for DEC - designing and physically building modems. They are in their late 70s.
If the vast majority of old people you interact with are incapable of a bare minimal level of understanding, pick new people to interact with. I went to university with some of the founders of what you call open source - and my first attempt at BASIC was a fine example of open source programming.
I'm not special. I'm not unique. I pretty much HATED computers and only programmed because I had to. I only learned to understand because I needed to. There are millions of us.
Again, you're WRONG. We "older folk" may actually not only understand the technology, we understand why it is the way it is. To make a generic statement about all older folks, more so with a "certainly," is... Well, I have no way to put this? It's ignorant. You can pick one of two paths. I will leave that to you.
Very insightful, thanks. It's indeed time to realize that present day old people are actually those who built computers, not the ones who saw their kids tinker with them.
Also, being 35, I must say that I find retired people way more deep into technology, especially internet, than my generation. It's very common I talk with previous school friends and they say they don't have any social profile on the internet. The reverse is true for retired people, it's rare I hear them saying they don't have a least a facebook profile. But here too, I guess it could be "just the people I see".
Regarding how old people are seen, I wonder if there is not something larger at play. When I was a teenager in the 90', I was seeing old people as physically weak and mentally tired, and thought it was just the way it is. This summer, I went to the birthday of a friend's mother, and was shocked when I discovered she turned 70. And then, I realized her husband, their brothers and sisters etc were all about the same age. And here is why I was shocked : they were doing great. Actually, really great compared to what I remembered about that age, to the point it couldn't be just me growing older and having a more nuanced vision (like: most of the 90' 70ers were handicapped in a way or an other, almost none in the ones I saw at that birthday). And then, it stroke me : people in their 70 during the 90' were people who fought WWII.
Could it be that we tend to see older people as less potent just because we were used to old people who had been greatly diminished by a massive and painful conflict?
And did you have the same feeling with them than I had with 90' old people? That is, seeing most of them sick or handicapped to the point they could not achieve much?
Obviously, this would not be proof : even if we accept the hypothesis that present day old people are indeed more capable than past ones, and it's not just an interpretation from me, for all we know it can be just healthcare progress or easier lifestyle. It would be interesting to find out how old people were seen before world wars, if they did any better than their children who fought them. The fact that such event could have lifelong impact does not seem far fetched, though, it could be an interesting hypothesis to test. If anything, it could help prevent preconception against old people who did not go through such events.
Again, regardless of any age, the subset of people familiar with computers is exceedingly small. Yes, there are people in every age bracket who are computer wizards. The majority of people are clueless. I know you're completely hung up on the age thing, because I mentioned "older folk", but I would also argue a greater percentage of "older folk", compared to "younger folk" don't know anything about computers. This will obviously shift, as the computer generation turns into "older folk". Suggesting that any reasonable percentage of people around, before the proliferation of the personal computer, are adept to using them, is just silly.
I get it, you know computers, other people know computers. Most people don't. That's the only point I was making. Thank you for your work in traffic modeling. The rest of the humans on Earth(I've traveled most of it for business), generally can only handle checking their email, if it's already been setup for them.
Neither does yours. You're getting off topic, this is about using/managing/setting up Linux as a desktop. Not checking Gmail. Moving on from this topic, have a good one.
I have migrated my parents from a slow laptop (windows XP) to a miniPC with ubuntu gnome. It was easy to say that there were less differences between their old "word" and open office than between their old "word" and the new one with the ribbon. It is 4 years ago. The main used applications are Chrome, thunderbird, microsoft powerpoint viewer (using wine) and the default video and picture viewers. They receive many mails per days containing powerpoint files (probably like many old people). The powerpoint viewer is free and works very well (slow start) on ubuntu. You just need to spend some time for file associations.
See, all of that setup, and configuration. For what? Just to have your grandparents running Linux? Trust me, I attempted this multiple times, no one wants to deal with it if something goes wrong, or setting up special configs, or using an emulation layer just to view a powerpoint. I applaud your patience, but I've got better things to do. With that said, I dropped an iMac on my fathers lap ten years ago, and without any instruction, both of my parents were up and running, and they used Windows their entire life.
And think of how many people worked on everything related to Linux and how many tried their best to use it, all because of their hatred of Microsoft. And for what?
I switched my gaming desktop over to Linux this year because I just couldn't stand Win10 any more. Ubuntu is, if anything, less stable and less user-friendly than when I left it nearly a decade ago (8.04 or 8.10 was when I got fed up and left, I think, mostly over Pulseaudio ruining everything), but Win10's just intolerable. I mean, 8 was bad, but this is another level of garbage. I've been a user of almost every desktop Windows since 3.1 (only exception: ME), plus a couple of the server/workstation versions (NT4, 2K), but 10 finally got me to drop it.
If the Mac Mini gets an update and external video card enclosures stop costing as much as an entire mid-tier video card and/or manage to convince me I won't have to replace them every 2-3 years to keep up, I'll probably go that way. Until then, it's Linux.
> Ubuntu is, if anything, less stable and less user-friendly than when I left it nearly a decade ago (8.04 or 8.10 was when I got fed up and left, I think, mostly over Pulseaudio ruining everything), but Win10's just intolerable.
Give Debian a shot. Given that Ubuntu is based on Debian, plus some decisions of dubious worth, Debian is basically all the good parts of Ubuntu and none of the bad.
Agreed re. Windows 10. I have a Windows 10 laptop for use with software & websites which don't work on Linux (as an aside: websites that don't work on Linux: how is this even a thing in 2017?), and it's just appallingly bad. I have to wonder if the people behind its UI have ever actually used it. This isn't an issue of unfamiliarity with Windows metaphors on my part: although I'm primarily a Linux user, I've been using Windows secondarily since the 90s, and Windows 10 is essentially unusable, at least on a laptop without a mouse.
> Give Debian a shot. Given that Ubuntu is based on Debian, plus some decisions of dubious worth, Debian is basically all the good parts of Ubuntu and none of the bad.
Debian and Gentoo were my main distros before I went to Ubuntu for its sensible defaults (c'mon early 2000s Debian, obviously I don't want Galleon or whatever, I want Firefox, and so on for basically every other Debian default program) and pretty good just-worksitude, but maybe I do need to give Debian another shot. If Ubuntu 17.10 isn't a big improvement (Wayland is finally a thing now I guess? Mostly-vanilla Gnome as the default DE again which is obviously the right move assuming they're not willing to jump onboard with one of the retro-Gnome DEs, so maybe it'll be good?) I might visit my old friend Debian.
> Agreed re. Windows 10. I have a Windows 10 laptop for use with software & websites which don't work on Linux (as an aside: websites that don't work on Linux: how is this even a thing in 2017?), and it's just appallingly bad. I have to wonder if the people behind its UI have ever actually used it. This isn't an issue of unfamiliarity with Windows metaphors on my part: although I'm primarily a Linux user, I've been using Windows secondarily since the 90s, and Windows 10 is essentially unusable, at least on a laptop without a mouse.
Yep. I ditched Windows on my home desktop, but I have a Surface3 at work I have to use for certain testing. I don't know how people can be productive on it. The Surface3 itself is pretty bad (I was kind of excited to try it because I know the Surface line has a lot of positive buzz, but am now very confused where all that came from) but the hardware plus Win10 is a total disaster. Just, wow. And like you've I've spend a lot of time over a lot of years in Windows, so that's not the problem. Every time I use it any desire to go back to Win10 on my desktop vanishes.
My notebook with Arch is my favorite. The reason: I can run the system without any desktop environment. I use just i3 as my window manager. Can't do this neither with Windows nor macOS.
Tiling WMs are just too good to pass up. In some ways I prefer my workflow on my 13" laptop with arch/bspwm to my massive dual monitor windows setup at work. As soon as you get used to it you wonder how you ever used a laptop without it.
It is strange that I have the opposite experience. When a problem occurs in Linux, the investigation is like a trip in the unknown. At the end, the problem is clearly identified and definitively solved and I have improved my knowledge about the system. When the same occurs in windows, I have to reinstall random software or drivers until it works. No clue if it will fail again soon. Nothing learned about what was the bug that has caused this problem.
My experience is somewhat similar. I dual boot Antergos and Windows 10 on my Thinkpad X230. I find Windows 10 to be almost as fast and zippy as Linux now. I understand all the hate it gets regarding privacy concerns and being a closed system. But if you are ready to put up with them, it is a fine operating system. I see a huge improvement in Windows 10 when it comes to stability and performance issues.
Linux Desktop is definitely gaining more users. Personally, I didn't start really using Desktop Linux until Ubuntu 16.04. Now I use Ubuntu at work and Manjaro at home.
All of that bump can be accounted for by back-to-school Chromebook purchases. That gives ChromeOS what is still a very low penetration, but perhaps as much as a third of "desktop" Linux, and a very high growth rate. I could see it outpacing legacy Linux distros in a year and challenging Mac OS in three years. Fast changes in a market that barely budges year to year.
Are there really more than half as many Linux desktop users as Mac users? If so, it's heartening our share increasing, even if's still tiny.
FreeBSD and OpenBSD are pretty great OSs too. I wonder if their share isn't so tiny because BSD enthusiasts have an easy option of running a Mac and still have access to BSD tools under the hood.
I started to abandon Mac around 10.6 and ended up on Linux unintentionally.
I tried really really hard to like FreeBSD, and I did like it... It's not just a server OS it's true! but omg the hardware support, that made me truly appreciate that the common denominator of an Desktop OS being useable: is hardware support...
it doesn't matter how amazing the OS is abstractly, you need drivers to appreciate it.
I even started going down the road of submitting driver patches, and I am no OS programmer. That's how dedicated I was to making it work - but there's just too much to do.
I know if you are super careful you can buy hardware for *BSD but even then it's unlikely you will get support for everything in the BSDs, Linux just has support for so much out of popularity, and in a closed hardware world unfortunately that is what makes a Desktop OS usable (without even getting into DE/WM stuff).
> FreeBSD and OpenBSD are pretty great OSs too. I wonder if their share isn't so tiny because BSD enthusiasts have an easy option of running a Mac and still have access to BSD tools under the hood.
Yea and the driver situation for laptops on FreeBSD doesn't help. I've never had problems installing FreeBSD on server or desktop hardware, but on laptops either the wifi doesn't work or suspend and resume doesn't work, or of course both. But this reflects the goals FreeBSD so one shouldn't really be that surprised.
Well, i can only account for the machines that i have, of course.. Most Business Laptops come with Intel Chipsets (Wifi, Ethernet, Graphics, etc.) throughout and at least these should be working fine.
>For many of us, particularly among HN users, it's been the year of the Linux desktop for a long while.
True, "The year of the Linux Desktop" is completely subjective :P For me it was around 2014.
Q: "What was your year of the Linux desktop?"
Now that would be an interesting statistic, more telling than some single number via collecting user-agent strings. To be clear "Your year" is when you go full Linux as your primary desktop.
Interesting, looking at their past data windows had a 5% drop in market share over the last 10 years (~95.5%>%90.5%) which is much larger than I was expecting.
I've been a "Linux user" since 1998, but never have used it as my primary desktop. I recently tried going to Linux on an XPS 15 (with 4k display). I plugin into multiple monitors at home an work: 2 1920x1080, 1 2560x1440, and one 4k. I tried multiple distros, and even both Gnome and KDE Plasma. I'm sure given enough time I could have made it work, but eventually I had throw in the towel and go back to my MBP.
One less user, as I've switched to macOS. Unix under the hood, working software/hardware with no or little fuss, sudo port ... works with all the free software I could want and the rest generally compiles relatively easily), and I can buy devices at a store and they 'just work.' Kernel is open source, and the rest is 'good enough'. I'd use linux for embedded, but as a desktop, not anymore.
Microsoft make more money from Android than their awful Windows phones.
Personally worked on SCADA systems for powers stations but never on windows, all DEC-Unix and Linux in fact how I got into linux in '97.
My kids both nearly teenagers have known only Linux and Apple (except Windows at schools*).
I recall also how many of those years were hailed as 'Year of the Linux Desktop'.
Also 'Linux' desktop - please people don't forget all the work by unsung heroes on e.g. KDE and Gnome apps, package managers, Drake installers, Compiz and Beryl, getting winmodems working, nvidia drivers, goddamn pulseaudio,... you get my drift.
Worth noting this is international. The share in a poor country where the additional cost of Windows matters paints a much different picture than the share would in the US, for example. (drilling down to country requires an expensive upgrade)
When my 5 year old MacBook Air dies, and it doesn't look like I will have a replacement in the price range, I will go for a really lightweight laptop (I hope there'll be one like Air and similarly priced) and install ElementaryOS[0] on it.
My needs are simple - sleek, lightweight ~13 inch laptop with normal computing needs for movie, music etc and little bit of coding in Vim (or some other text editor) and all.
Linux Desktop has indeed come a long way since 2006 (that was when I introduced to them).
makes sense. as majority of the population moves away from desktops, windows and mac will lose market share. the hardcore Linux users that aren't going anywhere
will gain market share.
No visible bump in data, just slow growth from 1.55% in Q3 2015 through 2.00% in Q3 2016 to 2.40% in Q3 2017.
So oversimplifying a bit it means about 4 converts per 1k citizens annualy.
Having a Linux desktop is a no brainer. Linux laptops, on the other hand... Has anyone had a good experience with a Linux laptop? As soon as that's possible I'd happily ditch MacOS
I've had various Lenovo T series laptops at home and at work for over 10 years, either running Linux only, or as Linux/Windows switch-boot systems. The only reason I've ever had windows on any of those laptops is to run embedded development tools required by employers. The Linux part of the experience has been largely smooth and painless. Before purchasing, make sure that the video and wifi are well supported by Linux and meet the needs of your application, but I've found with most Lenovo's the laptops hit all the checkboxes for me.
I'm not trying to shill for Lenovo, there are certainly other quality laptops out there. I happen to like the pointing device and keyboard and general build quality, and I try not to spend a lot of time over-optimizing my purchases with a lot of research.
So, yes, I've had great experiences with Linux laptops.
The biggest trouble I had with my current T was due to me buying it immediately after launch, and it took some months before the usual distros started working with wifi and 3g modem without hickups.
I do not understand this remark. Linux is being used on laptops by many developers. Whenever I go to free software developer meetings, all I see is people running Linux on laptops.
Our perceptions are completely reversed. I avoid Linux on a desktop PC because my desktop PCs have all been powerful enough for gaming and large enough for a good GPU.
While my laptops have been strictly for work/hobby. So for me Linux on an IBM (now lenovo) laptop has been flawless for over 12 years now. In the beginning it was actually FreeBSD but I didn't feel like going into specifics.
I've run linux on various different laptops (samsung, asus, toshiba, etc) and generally they are functional with a few niggling issues that often get resolved over the subsequent year or two.
Thinkpad's though seem to give close to perfect results "out of the box".
My 2015 Macbook Pro Retina works pretty well with Kubuntu 17.04. Only problem was HiDPI support, but I just set the resolution at 1920x1200 instead of 2560xsomething and called it a day. 0 hardware issues, and much much faster than osx or Windows
I have a Mythlogic/Clevo laptop running Mint that works quite wel, though I admit that it wasn't until Mint 18 that an annoying bug in the trackpad was cleared up. Other than that it is fine.
The usual suspects: Dell XPS, System 76, some people say good things about lenovo, etc. I personally have Google Pixel LS running vanilla Ubuntu, no problems.
It's funny how it is ready for grandmothers and devs, but everyone in between will struggle with the commandline or 3rd party software at some point...
Seems so. But I meant more privacy on a local machine basis. That is, someone would really need to dig through the filesystem to find browsing information, rather than just looking at the standard locations.
I recognize it's a weak privacy measure, but in my situation it gives me a mostly private browser on a shared user account.
Private browsing wouldn't save any browsing information, which is something I want. Also, using another profile would reveal that the profile exists in the first place. Using the WSL is much more hidden.
Well, unfortunately, the dominant version of Windows of that time (2009), Windows XP (released in 2001) still has twice the market share of the entire desktop install base of Linux.
The point that the source for that article was making is that FOSS will kill proprietary software, not that necessarily that Linux will (near term) kill Windows. One only needs to look at Microsoft's open source push (e.g. https://github.com/Azure, https://github.com/Microsoft) to see that that article's larger prediction is coming true.
It hasn't killed proprietary software at all though; if anything the average person interacts with more proprietary software per day than ever before. It's just than now it's all behind a web interface. It's notable that the Linux stats are being boosted significantly by Chromebooks. Ask RMS what he thinks of Chromebooks…
Weirdly an entire generation of developers have managed to convince themselves that by working on proprietary web apps they are somehow fighting the good fight on the side of FOSS.
Linux is very close to perfect as a "decision support and design" workstation. Tool performance, ubiquity, interoperability and stability are the big targets there. We have to name as a goal data and media asset durability and tool compatibility over years or decades.
Linux has virtues that end up conflicting. An occupational hazard of Linux as a tool and OS innovation platform are disruptions, disappointments, instability and dropped balls.
Other people are goofing off without enduring responsibility for a large user base. We confuse design criteria we inherit from the commercial world. Easy to use, easy to remember, easy to diagnose problems and "quick to getting going" are not the same always compatible design targets. The Window Manager wars took up tons of Linux desktop attention. Gaming is naturally an arena for hardware churn and 1-upmanship.
I have great hope for Linux desktop stability with government deployments and thus a global tug for stability against rushing breaking changes. The Linux platform and package manager contents are remarkable achievements.
Did I make a mistake? Is it unfashionable to be for well documented, reliable and stable Linux And OSS tools? I like old and new programming languages too. Those are not so incompatible. Is there a thematic disatisfaction I am missing?
I do have to say, though it took 10 years longer than I thought it would, the combination of hardware standardization in consumer laptops and maturity of Linux kernel has meant that, in the last few years, Linux has "just worked" more often than not (and WAY more often than it used to). I recently upgraded from a Lenovo X220 to a 4th-generation Lenovo X1 Carbon, and installed Ubuntu GNOME 17.04. Didn't need to tweak a single thing about the hardware. Everything just worked.
That said, I did hit a weird GPU bug[1] that reminded me that no matter how good Linux on the desktop has gotten, there's always something. :-/
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video...