It's 2025. The "year of the linux desktop" has been a meme for years. No one says it in earnest. No one is having init or DE wars. And while there is plenty of healthy discussion about flatpak and other alt forms of software distribution, this is exactly the kind of innovation and experimentation that leads to the usability improvements the author wants to see. Linux is doing just fine, and I'm glad there are multiple options to accomplish similar tasks.
dagmx · 1h ago
The /r/Linux Reddit very much exists contrary to your take, and you’ll see many commenters here also argue about whether it is the year of Linux on the desktop.
Never underestimate the identity association in enthusiast communities.
x0x0 · 51m ago
Linux becoming better than Windows to run games is the sort of thing that should actually scare Microsoft because it can lead to non-engineers installing linux because game go fast. The people spending a grand on gpus will put up with real hassles to that end.
ThrowawayR2 · 12m ago
Why would Microsoft be scared? They still own and set the future direction for the Windows APIs that those games are designed for, meaning that they're still in the driver's seat. Proton has to play an eternal game of catch up.
ZenoArrow · 1h ago
This article is full of nonsense. The Linux desktop push isn't failing because it has experiences and apps that are similar to Windows and macOS. Being able to run Windows apps on Linux is a benefit, not a failure. As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker. Competition is a reason why package management on Linux is far better than equivalents on Windows and macOS.
The main reason for Linux not taking off on the desktop is because most users don't care about what OS they run, they just want a computer that works. If the PC they buy comes with Windows out of the box, they're going to stick with that. Until you get manufacturers shipping PCs with Linux as the default OS, you're mainly going to see desktop Linux as an enthusiast-only option. It's no accident that one of the devices helping to spread Linux (the Steam Deck) comes with Linux as the default option.
notnullorvoid · 1m ago
Even more so users don't care about what kernel their OS is running, nor do they even know what a kernel is.
It's entirely possible for a large enough brand to ship a Linux based desktop OS to mass adoption. It has already been done once with ChromeOS.
Linux will never be the name users remember, and it's not meant to be.
takluyver · 52m ago
> As for religious wars over init systems, desktop environments and package managers, competition is making the options stronger, not weaker.
Competition can definitely improve things, but it's not universally positive. In particular, endless competition in parts of the operating system makes it hard to build anything on top of them. E.g. if you want to distribute an application for Linux, do you build a Flatpak, or a Snap? Or take a more traditionalist approach and make RPMs, DEBs, etc.? You either pick your favourite and leave out a large fraction of Linux users who disagree, or you have to do more than one of these. This is definitely a drag on the ecosystem.
I agree that most users don't care about the OS, though.
alt187 · 47m ago
If you build an application, The Right Way™ has always, and probably always will be a tarball. Leave to distributions the hassle to distribute your software.
TiredOfLife · 25m ago
> do you build a Flatpak, or a Snap?
.appimage
gjsman-1000 · 1h ago
> Being able to run Windows apps on Linux is a benefit, not a failure.
It is a massive moral failure though. It shows that after two decades of work, the Linux community has been unable to build a simple sane functional stable development environment better than Win32.
skydhash · 1h ago
Sane here is bearing a lot of weight. Developing on Linux is far easier than developing on Windows. I've never seen a windows project as simple as nq[0] or dwm[1].
A random macOS binary is more likely to run on another macOS install from anytime in the last half decade than a Linux binary on the same distribution.
Even Apple’s famously fast deprecation is like rock by comparison.
jrm4 · 50m ago
I'm not sure why you think this is a good metric; the space of "random Mac binaries" is far smaller. There's probably something to be said for this "curation," but you pay for it, both literally with money and in limited selection.
tjoff · 55m ago
... which is much less of a problem for Linux than closed source ecosystems.
gjsman-1000 · 54m ago
I don’t know; you don’t think having Win32 be the unofficial API is a problem?
It literally means Windows will always exist - as the preferred IDE and Reference Spec for the Linux desktop. It also means all evolution of Linux will be ironically constrained by Win32 compatibility requirements.
tjoff · 50m ago
It isn't and won't be. So no.
alt187 · 49m ago
Meh. It shows a good part of software (namely, games) is written for Windows, because the userbase is Windows, because Windows is the lion's share. And it shows people on Linux want that software to run. It's an admission, but not a moral failure.
Spivak · 57m ago
Huh? Does the mountain of software written for Linux to the point where Windows added Linux support to attract devs mean nothing?
Surely WSL is not a moral failure for Microsoft.
garciansmith · 1h ago
> The problem is that these are "wins" because they bring Linux closer to Windows or macOS.
I disagree that this is an issue. The main advantage of Linux for me is that I have choice (including using various desktop environments that the author is annoyed by; I used GNOME for years and eventually had too many problems with it so I switched to KDE), and those choices are not controlled by one entity which, in the case of Apple and Microsoft, view me only as a customer to extract money from.
donmcronald · 1h ago
One of my complaints with Gnome is that I can’t hand it to a normal person and let them use it because it’s not obvious how to use it. The entry point to everything looks like a horizontal scroll bar in the top left corner and basic actions take more clicks than Windows.
The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
I can “fix” Gnome in about 2m with extensions, but that doesn’t help when a new user loads it up for the first time and is hit with the unintuitive ideology of some nerds.
CharlesW · 1h ago
> The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
Absolutely. A commercial product can succeed while maintaining an auteur's vision, so long as that vision largely aligns with users' needs. In contrast, open-source projects are often not viewed through a "product" lens, to their detriment.
When this happens in open source, we get clunky and idiosyncratic (though sometimes lovable) software like GNOME and GIMP. When it happens in the commercial world, we get projects like Megalopolis.
cocoto · 51m ago
Gnome is way simpler to use than Windows. If you let grandma or a kid with no prior Desktop experience, I’m pretty sure they will find Gnome more intuitive. The problem is that it is too different for a Windows user, so the switching cost is high.
blueflow · 35m ago
Intuition is based on prior exposure. What exposure do i need to understand GNOME?
For example, how am i supposed to discover how to maximize a window?
skydhash · 1h ago
Using a computer take training. Look at a windows user switching to macOS. It's not intuitive for them either. GNOME is actually nice, even if it's less customizable than KDE.
donmcronald · 1h ago
MacOS has some really clunky stuff. I hate finder. I like Gnome once I add dash to dock, tray icons, and window manager tweaks. I’m just saying the defaults are a bad choice if they want adoption.
skydhash · 54m ago
I use GNOME without extensions. The default are fine by me.
But your use case is why GNOME have extensions. To alter the defaults and add stuff that they don't care about, but you do. In macOS, you have to basically reverse engineer and use private APIs.
extraisland · 56m ago
Totally agree. Dash To Dock + App Indicators seem like they should be part of Gnome. I end ups changing to the icons to Papirus as I prefer those. They make Gnome really nice to use.
bediger4000 · 25m ago
> I can’t hand it to a normal person and let them use it because it’s not obvious how to use it.
I'm not sure that means anything. Every time I have to help my kids or wife with a Windows problem, I'm perpetually plagued by how weird it is.
The only people who find Windows easy or obvious are already Windows users. And yes, the same can be said of Linux environments.
cosmic_cheese · 1h ago
Agree. In addition, I don’t believe that significant amounts of switching was ever going to happen without desktop Linux becoming more like its commercial counterparts. One has to remember that most computer users use computers as tools and don’t relish having to learn a whole new set of conventions.
There will always be more “Linuxy” out in the weeds desktops for people who want them. Most people who want that built their own setup anyway, making whatever the big DEs do more or less moot.
nancyminusone · 1h ago
Linux is already winning some important battles:
-no ads
-no tracking
-no vendor lock in
-no preinstalled or unremovable crapware
That's enough for me. Yes, it's not perfect, but you're simply allowed to say no.
TiredOfLife · 23m ago
> no preinstalled .. crapware
Every distro except arch is full of preinstalled crapware. Some like OpenSuse even have preinstalled crapware bundles where stuff you uninstall comes back after update
skydhash · 1h ago
Linux desktop has already arrived for me. All the apps and utilities I need is there, all installable via apt. It's not a Linux problem anymore when the hardware manufacturers won't support it.
GNOME is nice, KDE is nice, and we have other options for people that don't like the two previous one. The issue we have now is walled garden, when some proprietary software won't support standards and even their own file format.
Glyptodon · 1h ago
This article is kind of old hat - it's basically been true that Linux is fine as a desktop OS for Grandma since some point circa 2010 +/- a few years. The big requirement is that Grandma just uses web browsers and other basic software from the OSS ecosystem, hardware was relatively compatible to begin with, and somebody does the OS upgrades for her every 3 years.
The real issue is that these kinds of "grandma" users maybe just don't use computers anymore. And the folks that do are joined at the hip to proprietary software like Photoshop or CAD programs or whatever else they care a lot about and don't want to relearn, and also make enough money that the costs are invisible. Or they're business computers and not using what's familiar (Windows) is a support cost.
From this perspective, gaming and specific hobbyists are basically the only feasible audiences for the Linux desktop unless people are very much pressured by software costs, or annoyed by proprietary software (DRM, lockdowns, upgrades, etc.) enough to switch their major activity to an open source option. In which case they awkward situation of "software works better on Linux, but won't try Linux until confirmed they like the not-totally-integrated-and-nice-on-windows-or-mac software running not on Linux."
I do think there ought to be more of a business case for Linux as a business OS as you should get reduced hardware and software and support costs, but there aren't actually a lot of people with the right experience and expertise to run a business off Linux as a desktop OS to begin with and so those savings can't be realized effectively.
That said, as computers get more locked down, I think there will be a bigger drive for power users who influence friends and family to switch.
Any case, my house has had year of the Linux Desktop ongoing since circa 2006.
blueflow · 1h ago
> While this could absolutely happen, the way that Linux as a whole has been developing over the years isn't always conducive to making the world's Windows and macOS users convert en masse.
Its the way Windows is developing that is driving this change. GNOME might be hardly usable but Microsoft managed to top that.
Edit: I retract the last sentence. I'm currently trying GNOME and its less usable than Windows.
No comments yet
extraisland · 48m ago
I feel like I could have read this article back in 2004. The main benefit is that you get to choose. The other two big operating systems don't really allow much choice.
> Meanwhile, the Linux community spends enormous energy on debates that rarely affect mainstream adoption. Consider the “init wars,” where systemd sparked endless flame wars (and memes) about the proper way to boot a Linux system.
This is almost in anything. We had play ground arguments over whether SEGA or Nintendo were better. Then Playstation vs N64 vs Saturn. There was Amiga vs Atari. BSD vs Linux. Vim vs Emacs. Ford vs Chevy.
floxy · 1h ago
>It would require coordination with hardware and software vendors, and some sort of coherent leadership
The year of Linux on desktop is not come=ing, because the year of anything on desktop is not coming, and hasn't been for maybe a decade. Every new mass-market thing runs either in the browser, or, more rarely, specifically on mobile phones. Or maybe it's a game, so it completely eclipses whatever platform experience. If not that, it's entrenched ancient desktop software, like Excel (turning 40 in a few weeks), which is also its own world.
The "desktop" itself, the underlying OS, is irrelevant to most users who are not hardcore pros, like, well, software developers.
graemep · 1h ago
> They don't care about Snap or Flatpack
They usually do not need to know - they just see a software centre which is app store like.
> they care that their favorite apps will work
That depends on app developers.
> that updates won't break anything (which Windows does all the time)
Already done
> and that they don't have to learn a list of text commands to make basic changes to their computers.
Already done.
k__ · 1h ago
The mother of my girlfriend installed Ubuntu this year.
She's 58 and a book keeper.
She even went so far and got some windows apps running with wine. All just with the help of a forum posts she found via a web search engine.
bee_rider · 57m ago
This desire for “year of Linux on the desktop” is always attributed to “Linux lovers,” and other nebulous fan voices. This article uses the word “win,” but as far as I can see the prize they are looking for is… a lot of additional non-technical desktop users? Why? What’s the goal here that actually benefits Linux or broader open source development?
g42gregory · 1h ago
In both Linux and Windows, websites, in any browser, look “washed out” and not pleasant to look at.
But MacOS always gets it right: in any browser, the websites look “juicy” for the lack of a better word, and pleasant to look at.
Why can’t Linux fix this and render closer to MacOS?
Hopefully, without all the other “value added” stuff.
_fat_santa · 1h ago
I HIGHLY agree with this article and IMHO all the comments bashing Gnome just don't really get it. For all of it's faults, I still roll with Ubuntu/Gnome every day because it just freaking works, gets out of my way, gets the job done, and doesn't require a weekend of tweaking software to get everything working just right.
I don't care at all for the SystemD/whatever else flame wars. Sure if you work on these systems you probably care deeply about the differences but please realize that most of your end users do not give a shit. The same goes for the various packaging systems, I prefer to still use DEB's when I can but at the end of the day it really just comes down to how easily can I get the apps setup on my computer to get my work done, myself and most other users also don't really care.
What I care about are things like: why is multi monitor support still half assed? why does full screening my chrome window crash my monitor? why is it that half my installed apps don't conform to my theme? why is it that when I switch on X window manager instead of Wayland my wallpaper goes away?
But it seems that the folks that actually work on Linux don't care about these issues because when I ask why VSCode crashes my monitor, all I get is answers telling me to use vim or emacs, or when I complain why the themes look all janky all I get is: "well this wouldn't be an issue if you used <insert obscure window manager that requires a week's worth of configuration to get running and a steep learning curve>.
The vibe I get around these issues is that it's below most Linux developers as they are too busy arguing about some flag in the kernel or whether to use systemd or not. But those same people bitch and moan why "Year of the Linux Desktop" hasn't come yet. Figure out that these issues are not below you, they are the issues that people care about. Fix those issues and I'm positive that adoption will go up.
Sorry for the rant.
bee_rider · 46m ago
Most users who develop on Linux are not really Linux developers in the sense that we just write our own code and don’t contribute anything to the kernel, or to the userland programs that you were trying to use. The people who write the code you actually use are quite busy, so you usually just get random nobodies (myself included!) when you go online to chat about Linux. There’s some possibility that you might get help, because we happen to be using the same program, but that’s all there is to it.
If you want to know why VSCode is buggy, you will probably have to get into contact with Microsoft, I guess. I know this looks like some kind of smarmy sarcastic response, but it really is the truth; the rest of us really don’t know why they put bugs in there.
cosmic_cheese · 1h ago
Yeah the real problem is that the only thing that’s well tested is what devs use. It’s like the FOSS parallel to startups only testing on top of the line MacBook Pros and iPhones (“works on my machine”). As soon as you step outside those bounds, good luck.
_fat_santa · 1h ago
> Yeah the real problem is that the only thing that’s well tested is what devs use
I see this issue as well. A CLI setup with Emacs/VIM doing C/C++ development is very stable, because that's how the majority of linux devs interact with Linux.
What puts a bad taste in my mouth is when you mention issues outside of that setup, the usual response isn't "oh this is an issue we need to fix", it's "well your setup sucks, stop using VSCode/Gnome/Chrome/etc"
skydhash · 57m ago
Chrome and VSCode do suck. More developers there than the Linux kernel and they won't play nice with Wayland. Shame!
CommonGuy · 46m ago
Developing GUI applications for Linux is also a huge pain. Developers not familiar with Linux need to learn so many things...
What is X11, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, d-bus, application ids, portals, etc.
Then once you have a working application, users request having it distributed as .tar.gz, snap, flatpak, you name it. Then dependencies are missing on some Linux distribution or there are random bugs with Nvidia graphics cards.
Compare that to developing for Windows, where most things "just work"
pengwinhayden · 1h ago
> Article mischaracterizes the experience of running x64 apps on Windows on Arm, which is Rosetta 2-like at this point, but whatever
Where is the translation layer that lets me seamlessly run x64 apps on Linux on Arm?
It first complains that the Linux wins, such as running more games, etc are the wrong wins because they make Linux more like Windows.
And yet, later, it says the reason Windows for ARM failed is the apps users wanted not running for it, and what users really want is their stuff to just work. But that’s literally the stuff the author called the wrong kind of win at the beginning.
Further, the author complains about the multiple DEs, init systems, etc and considers this fragmentation to be the cause of LOTD’s failure. And yet, getting rid of this would actually make Linux like Windows/Mac unlike adding compatibility for more games.
Finally, I think this is substantially wrong as well. The variety in Linux is what made it possible for Valve, for example, to put together the steam deck. They were able to choose the combination of different options in different areas they worked best for the Steam Deck’s use case. Further, Linux’s tremendous success on the server is also likely due to fragmentation. The fragmentation meant that several different companies could survive and flourish, such as SUSE, Ubuntu, RH, etc and each one of them could contribute different improvements that either helped the entire ecosystem or initially provided an advantage on their ecosystem which the competitors would need to come up with an answer for.
lordleft · 55m ago
I love Linux, and I use it daily for software development and gaming, but I am often exasperated by the Linux community. There's a strange combination of newbie-friendliness combined with gaslighting; if you're completely new, you'll get tons of enthusiastic help, but the moment you experience genuine frustration, you're castigated or told that your preferences are inherently wrong. I think that many hardcore Linux users don't get that some people will never grok the command line, or do not intrinsically enjoy tinkering with their OS. Luckily, I do, but I am hesitant to recommend a Linux box to just anyone.
jrm4 · 1h ago
One thing that I think this argument sorely misses is an honest discussion of how e.g. bad (or perhaps unliked) decisions get made that have big impacts here.
For example, count me in with those folks who think the "new" GNOME sucks. Now, maybe you disagree and that's fine -- but so often those discussions start and end with "Well it's open source and so because you're not making anything better you can't even talk."
No. Some big players put their thumb on the scale and had a vision and a direction for GNOME and what role it would or should play; someone thought it was a good idea to try to out Steve Jobs Steve Jobs.
THOSE moves need more discussion and transparency in order to REALLY talk about "the Linux Desktop."
pengwinhayden · 1h ago
Those moves are made by Red Hat, to benefit their enterprise customers, because enterprise customers are the ones who pay for Linux, their interests get top priority.
Shuttleworth did so much for desktop Linux by mailing us all free install CDs, but then users everywhere began to expect Linux to be free as in beer.
But until users are willing to pay for desktop Linux again, like some of us may remember, enterprise will always win out.
bluGill · 1h ago
Which is one reason a lot of people use kde which doesn't have anyone with their thumb on it.
donmcronald · 1h ago
Imagine if Windows got rid of or hid the start button, taskbar, tray icons, and window controls. Gnome is made for the devs that work on it more than the normal people that use it.
29athrowaway · 54m ago
Most of the uses for a casual computer user have been replaced by smartphones and tablets.
Then you have walled gardens like the Apple ecosystem where interoperability is superior among Apple products which cross sell each other. If you got an iPhone, now get the Apple Watch and a Macbook and all integrate well.
Then you have games, where consoles will give you a decent experience for less money.
Then you have professional users where the most common use case is office documents. This remains contentious but there are more alternatives now like web apps, MS Office clones like Libreoffice, Softmaker Office/FreeOffice, WPS Office.
Then you have specific desktop apps for specific OSes and there you are tied to an OS. This is one of the few legitimate uses for Windows I can think of.
Otherwise Linux is king.
zb3 · 1h ago
I don't even want linux to be mainstream.. this will inevitably lead to more for-profit enshittification of the ecosystem..
pengwinhayden · 1h ago
Some of us are old enough to remember Corel Linux. It was about as mainstream as Linux could have gotten.
It shipped with WordPerfect Office, which was still neck and neck with Microsoft Office at the time, including WordPerfect, Quattro, Corel Presentations, Corel Draw, all there.
It had migration tools to move Internet Explorer, Netscape, Outlook, mIRC, and ICQ settings, and Windows registry settings to Corel Linux.
It shipped with a Wine-based Windows application compatibility layer out of the box.
It lasted less than a year.
dsr_ · 1h ago
When your unique selling proposition is that you are just like Windows, but cheaper, you end up with a lot of customers who are expecting 100% Windows behavior.
For desktop Linux to be successful, it needs to be the cool different OS -- not the boring Windows that the accountants use, and not the MacOS that the art snobs and marketing hipsters use, but something appealing on its own merits.
And, arguably, that's about where it is now: 70% boring, 15% commercial hipster, 15% indie.
lenerdenator · 1h ago
The way that happens is if you don't make the ethos of Linux mainstream.
It can't just be a means to an end; that's what happened to Android. You make it an expectation that everything on a given box be FLOSS.
nbngeorcjhe · 1h ago
tbh I can't see that ever happening, the average person is never going to care whether their software is free or not (or even know what that means)
deater · 1h ago
it's already happened. So many of the main contributors work for IBM, Microsoft, and Intel. It's extremely difficult to have your voice heard / patches accepted if you're just a hobbyist developer
I've gone to the extreme of writing my own OS because I got fed up with how corporate Linux has gotten
lawlessone · 1h ago
how?
bongodongobob · 1h ago
Ubuntu is a great example, paid security updates. Still in the process of moving my work servers over to Debian.
Never underestimate the identity association in enthusiast communities.
The main reason for Linux not taking off on the desktop is because most users don't care about what OS they run, they just want a computer that works. If the PC they buy comes with Windows out of the box, they're going to stick with that. Until you get manufacturers shipping PCs with Linux as the default OS, you're mainly going to see desktop Linux as an enthusiast-only option. It's no accident that one of the devices helping to spread Linux (the Steam Deck) comes with Linux as the default option.
It's entirely possible for a large enough brand to ship a Linux based desktop OS to mass adoption. It has already been done once with ChromeOS.
Linux will never be the name users remember, and it's not meant to be.
Competition can definitely improve things, but it's not universally positive. In particular, endless competition in parts of the operating system makes it hard to build anything on top of them. E.g. if you want to distribute an application for Linux, do you build a Flatpak, or a Snap? Or take a more traditionalist approach and make RPMs, DEBs, etc.? You either pick your favourite and leave out a large fraction of Linux users who disagree, or you have to do more than one of these. This is definitely a drag on the ecosystem.
I agree that most users don't care about the OS, though.
.appimage
It is a massive moral failure though. It shows that after two decades of work, the Linux community has been unable to build a simple sane functional stable development environment better than Win32.
[0]: https://git.vuxu.org/nq/
[1]: https://git.suckless.org/dwm/files.html
Even Apple’s famously fast deprecation is like rock by comparison.
It literally means Windows will always exist - as the preferred IDE and Reference Spec for the Linux desktop. It also means all evolution of Linux will be ironically constrained by Win32 compatibility requirements.
Surely WSL is not a moral failure for Microsoft.
I disagree that this is an issue. The main advantage of Linux for me is that I have choice (including using various desktop environments that the author is annoyed by; I used GNOME for years and eventually had too many problems with it so I switched to KDE), and those choices are not controlled by one entity which, in the case of Apple and Microsoft, view me only as a customer to extract money from.
The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
I can “fix” Gnome in about 2m with extensions, but that doesn’t help when a new user loads it up for the first time and is hit with the unintuitive ideology of some nerds.
Absolutely. A commercial product can succeed while maintaining an auteur's vision, so long as that vision largely aligns with users' needs. In contrast, open-source projects are often not viewed through a "product" lens, to their detriment.
When this happens in open source, we get clunky and idiosyncratic (though sometimes lovable) software like GNOME and GIMP. When it happens in the commercial world, we get projects like Megalopolis.
For example, how am i supposed to discover how to maximize a window?
But your use case is why GNOME have extensions. To alter the defaults and add stuff that they don't care about, but you do. In macOS, you have to basically reverse engineer and use private APIs.
I'm not sure that means anything. Every time I have to help my kids or wife with a Windows problem, I'm perpetually plagued by how weird it is.
The only people who find Windows easy or obvious are already Windows users. And yes, the same can be said of Linux environments.
There will always be more “Linuxy” out in the weeds desktops for people who want them. Most people who want that built their own setup anyway, making whatever the big DEs do more or less moot.
-no ads
-no tracking
-no vendor lock in
-no preinstalled or unremovable crapware
That's enough for me. Yes, it's not perfect, but you're simply allowed to say no.
Every distro except arch is full of preinstalled crapware. Some like OpenSuse even have preinstalled crapware bundles where stuff you uninstall comes back after update
GNOME is nice, KDE is nice, and we have other options for people that don't like the two previous one. The issue we have now is walled garden, when some proprietary software won't support standards and even their own file format.
The real issue is that these kinds of "grandma" users maybe just don't use computers anymore. And the folks that do are joined at the hip to proprietary software like Photoshop or CAD programs or whatever else they care a lot about and don't want to relearn, and also make enough money that the costs are invisible. Or they're business computers and not using what's familiar (Windows) is a support cost.
From this perspective, gaming and specific hobbyists are basically the only feasible audiences for the Linux desktop unless people are very much pressured by software costs, or annoyed by proprietary software (DRM, lockdowns, upgrades, etc.) enough to switch their major activity to an open source option. In which case they awkward situation of "software works better on Linux, but won't try Linux until confirmed they like the not-totally-integrated-and-nice-on-windows-or-mac software running not on Linux."
I do think there ought to be more of a business case for Linux as a business OS as you should get reduced hardware and software and support costs, but there aren't actually a lot of people with the right experience and expertise to run a business off Linux as a desktop OS to begin with and so those savings can't be realized effectively.
That said, as computers get more locked down, I think there will be a bigger drive for power users who influence friends and family to switch.
Any case, my house has had year of the Linux Desktop ongoing since circa 2006.
Its the way Windows is developing that is driving this change. GNOME might be hardly usable but Microsoft managed to top that.
Edit: I retract the last sentence. I'm currently trying GNOME and its less usable than Windows.
No comments yet
> Meanwhile, the Linux community spends enormous energy on debates that rarely affect mainstream adoption. Consider the “init wars,” where systemd sparked endless flame wars (and memes) about the proper way to boot a Linux system.
This is almost in anything. We had play ground arguments over whether SEGA or Nintendo were better. Then Playstation vs N64 vs Saturn. There was Amiga vs Atari. BSD vs Linux. Vim vs Emacs. Ford vs Chevy.
Time for a Cathedral and the Bazaar refresher?
https://web.archive.org/web/20250307173133/https://www.catb....
No comments yet
The "desktop" itself, the underlying OS, is irrelevant to most users who are not hardcore pros, like, well, software developers.
They usually do not need to know - they just see a software centre which is app store like.
> they care that their favorite apps will work
That depends on app developers.
> that updates won't break anything (which Windows does all the time)
Already done
> and that they don't have to learn a list of text commands to make basic changes to their computers.
Already done.
She's 58 and a book keeper.
She even went so far and got some windows apps running with wine. All just with the help of a forum posts she found via a web search engine.
But MacOS always gets it right: in any browser, the websites look “juicy” for the lack of a better word, and pleasant to look at.
Why can’t Linux fix this and render closer to MacOS?
Hopefully, without all the other “value added” stuff.
I don't care at all for the SystemD/whatever else flame wars. Sure if you work on these systems you probably care deeply about the differences but please realize that most of your end users do not give a shit. The same goes for the various packaging systems, I prefer to still use DEB's when I can but at the end of the day it really just comes down to how easily can I get the apps setup on my computer to get my work done, myself and most other users also don't really care.
What I care about are things like: why is multi monitor support still half assed? why does full screening my chrome window crash my monitor? why is it that half my installed apps don't conform to my theme? why is it that when I switch on X window manager instead of Wayland my wallpaper goes away?
But it seems that the folks that actually work on Linux don't care about these issues because when I ask why VSCode crashes my monitor, all I get is answers telling me to use vim or emacs, or when I complain why the themes look all janky all I get is: "well this wouldn't be an issue if you used <insert obscure window manager that requires a week's worth of configuration to get running and a steep learning curve>.
The vibe I get around these issues is that it's below most Linux developers as they are too busy arguing about some flag in the kernel or whether to use systemd or not. But those same people bitch and moan why "Year of the Linux Desktop" hasn't come yet. Figure out that these issues are not below you, they are the issues that people care about. Fix those issues and I'm positive that adoption will go up.
Sorry for the rant.
If you want to know why VSCode is buggy, you will probably have to get into contact with Microsoft, I guess. I know this looks like some kind of smarmy sarcastic response, but it really is the truth; the rest of us really don’t know why they put bugs in there.
I see this issue as well. A CLI setup with Emacs/VIM doing C/C++ development is very stable, because that's how the majority of linux devs interact with Linux.
What puts a bad taste in my mouth is when you mention issues outside of that setup, the usual response isn't "oh this is an issue we need to fix", it's "well your setup sucks, stop using VSCode/Gnome/Chrome/etc"
What is X11, Wayland, GNOME, KDE, d-bus, application ids, portals, etc.
Then once you have a working application, users request having it distributed as .tar.gz, snap, flatpak, you name it. Then dependencies are missing on some Linux distribution or there are random bugs with Nvidia graphics cards.
Compare that to developing for Windows, where most things "just work"
Where is the translation layer that lets me seamlessly run x64 apps on Linux on Arm?
It first complains that the Linux wins, such as running more games, etc are the wrong wins because they make Linux more like Windows.
And yet, later, it says the reason Windows for ARM failed is the apps users wanted not running for it, and what users really want is their stuff to just work. But that’s literally the stuff the author called the wrong kind of win at the beginning.
Further, the author complains about the multiple DEs, init systems, etc and considers this fragmentation to be the cause of LOTD’s failure. And yet, getting rid of this would actually make Linux like Windows/Mac unlike adding compatibility for more games.
Finally, I think this is substantially wrong as well. The variety in Linux is what made it possible for Valve, for example, to put together the steam deck. They were able to choose the combination of different options in different areas they worked best for the Steam Deck’s use case. Further, Linux’s tremendous success on the server is also likely due to fragmentation. The fragmentation meant that several different companies could survive and flourish, such as SUSE, Ubuntu, RH, etc and each one of them could contribute different improvements that either helped the entire ecosystem or initially provided an advantage on their ecosystem which the competitors would need to come up with an answer for.
For example, count me in with those folks who think the "new" GNOME sucks. Now, maybe you disagree and that's fine -- but so often those discussions start and end with "Well it's open source and so because you're not making anything better you can't even talk."
No. Some big players put their thumb on the scale and had a vision and a direction for GNOME and what role it would or should play; someone thought it was a good idea to try to out Steve Jobs Steve Jobs.
THOSE moves need more discussion and transparency in order to REALLY talk about "the Linux Desktop."
Shuttleworth did so much for desktop Linux by mailing us all free install CDs, but then users everywhere began to expect Linux to be free as in beer.
But until users are willing to pay for desktop Linux again, like some of us may remember, enterprise will always win out.
Then you have walled gardens like the Apple ecosystem where interoperability is superior among Apple products which cross sell each other. If you got an iPhone, now get the Apple Watch and a Macbook and all integrate well.
Then you have games, where consoles will give you a decent experience for less money.
Then you have professional users where the most common use case is office documents. This remains contentious but there are more alternatives now like web apps, MS Office clones like Libreoffice, Softmaker Office/FreeOffice, WPS Office.
Then you have specific desktop apps for specific OSes and there you are tied to an OS. This is one of the few legitimate uses for Windows I can think of.
Otherwise Linux is king.
It shipped with WordPerfect Office, which was still neck and neck with Microsoft Office at the time, including WordPerfect, Quattro, Corel Presentations, Corel Draw, all there.
It had migration tools to move Internet Explorer, Netscape, Outlook, mIRC, and ICQ settings, and Windows registry settings to Corel Linux.
It shipped with a Wine-based Windows application compatibility layer out of the box.
It lasted less than a year.
For desktop Linux to be successful, it needs to be the cool different OS -- not the boring Windows that the accountants use, and not the MacOS that the art snobs and marketing hipsters use, but something appealing on its own merits.
And, arguably, that's about where it is now: 70% boring, 15% commercial hipster, 15% indie.
It can't just be a means to an end; that's what happened to Android. You make it an expectation that everything on a given box be FLOSS.
I've gone to the extreme of writing my own OS because I got fed up with how corporate Linux has gotten