Linux surpasses 5% market share on US desktops for the first time

[Karel]

Linux's momentum is largely driven by user dissatisfaction with Microsoft's ecosystem

https://www.techspot.com/news/108701-linux-surpasses-5-market-share-us-desktops-first.html

[SiliconWizard]

Yep. The bad thing is that now that it's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, MS is likely to "fight back" with a vengeance, and I'm not sure I want to see what they're going to come up with.
 

[Karel]

Linux has over 6% of the desktop market? Yes, you read that right - here's how

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-has-over-6-of-the-desktop-market-yes-you-read-that-right-heres-how/

[nctnico]

Yep. The bad thing is that now that it's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, MS is likely to "fight back" with a vengeance, and I'm not sure I want to see what they're going to come up with.
 

Windows XP reloaded    Everything Microsoft has done to Windows since Windows XP, made Windows worse.

[Karel]

Statcounter - Desktop Operating System Market Share North America

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/north-america

[Zero999]

Does MS really care? I thought they stopped making money from consumer Windows desktop users long a go. It doesn't appear to be business users, which is their main Windows revenue scream.

[dferyance]

Microsoft has been actively making Windows worse in many ways. But Linux desktop is horrible. I've tried. I've tried several times. Linux desktop is all about breaking change. Install a Linux distro and everything seems fine. Until you need to upgrade. From glibc issues, gcc upgrades, wayland not being backwards compatible, desktop environments keep changing, config file format changes. Its a mess!

Linux desktop is probably good enough if you use a web browser or only software from your distro's package manager, or maybe use it only for Windows applications. But as a desktop os, it's made no progress.

[DiTBho]

Haiku@amd64 0.005%
Haiku@riscv 0.00000002%

[themadhippy]

desktop environments keep changing,

do wot? my desktop looks almost the same as when i first installed linux about 20 year ago,yea the buggers changed it thinking they knew better,but a few magic incantation restored the calmness

[Analog Kid]

Windows XP reloaded    Everything Microsoft has done to Windows since Windows XP, made Windows worse.

Like most sweeping generalizations, that's in no way completely true.
Yes, they've fucked up a lot of things since then, but most of them are in the user interface, not the underlying OS (kernel, services, etc.).
The Windows I use (7--I refuse to go farther than that) is at least as stable as XP if not more so.

Anything beyond 7 has, to me, an abominable user interface up with which I will not put.

[nctnico]

desktop environments keep changing,

do wot? my desktop looks almost the same as when i first installed linux about 20 year ago,yea the buggers changed it thinking they knew better,but a few magic incantation restored the calmness

Indeed. It is a matter of choosing a distro not made by 'latest & greatest' maniacs which change everything at a whim and selecting the same desktop environment you where using during the upgrade process (but this should remain the same; at least it is for Debian).

The  biggest pitfall coming from Windows is expecting Linux to be something similar.

[DiTBho]

PopOS by system76 is a GNU/Linux distro with a nice (custom made) wm and desk.

Not too bad.

[abeyer]

Haiku@riscv 0.00000002%

So, that's you? Only DiTBho could be so masochistic 

[dferyance]

my desktop looks almost the same as when i first installed linux about 20 year ago

I wish I could go back to Gnome 2 with Compiz. I had things the way I liked it and that was before Gnome and KDE decided that computers should be like phones. The only way I know to go back to that is to run an old Linux distro. Modern distros don't have anything like this. Maybe I could hack it, but it would be way harder than changing settings or installing something. Even if I could, would "modern" Linux software even work with that? Very unlikely.

[brucehoult]

my desktop looks almost the same as when i first installed linux about 20 year ago

I wish I could go back to Gnome 2 with Compiz. I had things the way I liked it and that was before Gnome and KDE decided that computers should be like phones. The only way I know to go back to that is to run an old Linux distro. Modern distros don't have anything like this. Maybe I could hack it, but it would be way harder than changing settings or installing something. Even if I could, would "modern" Linux software even work with that? Very unlikely.

The easiest way to not have cruft:

1) install Ubuntu server (or Fedora server, or ..) that has no GUI.

2) install twm or fvwm2 or fluxbox or LightDM or xfce or nextspace or whatever your preferred 25 year old desktop is. Most are just an "apt get" away.

[golden_labels]

Disclaimer: the post is highly subjective.

The important question: is it good news, bad news, or irrelevant?

The good thing is that the platform can no longer be seen as niche. It can’t be ignored or its users seen as a bunch weirdos troubling “normal people” with their “silly demands.” Which also means more disturbance to the market. Great. It gives more opportunity for ideological exposure too.

But it’s not all shiny. It’s also a land to be colonized and conquered. As it becomes less obscure and more accessible, as venturing into it becomes easier and less risky, there is a deluge of people seeking opportunities. It’s an old story, repeated over and over through centuries. The value of the penguin is not in the kernel or system services. Not anymore. It is in the ecosystem and the community. If that is destroyed, Linux based systems would be no better than Windows. If you don’t get it, let me remind you: Android is Linux in technical sense.

Or, perhaps, it’s irrelevant? Yet another case of journalists quoting numbers without the proper, deeper context and no insight into what they really mean?

[nctnico]

my desktop looks almost the same as when i first installed linux about 20 year ago

I wish I could go back to Gnome 2 with Compiz. I had things the way I liked it and that was before Gnome and KDE decided that computers should be like phones. The only way I know to go back to that is to run an old Linux distro.

No, choose classic Gnome while logging in.

[Karel]

"What do you anticipate Microsoft will do next?"

Microsoft will switch to Linux and keep selling their software on top of Linux. And it will cost the Windows users as much as before.
At the same time will the Linux community get face-stomped by hordes of Windows users, all trying to learn everything there is to
learn about Linux and in record-breaking time.
Some long-time Linux supporters will switch to Microsoft in a heart beat like cold-hearted back-stabbers, while others die
the slow death of the White Knight in the most epic drama the Linux community has ever seen, before the Linux
community itself disappears and we will all have turned into "the new Windows user".

Once it's all done and over, and Microsoft has taken over Linux with its hordes of Windows users, will you either be the
new slave of the Microsoft empire or you will have found refuge under a tiny bridge, just next to the one where all the
FreeBSD trolls live, and where you'll then be telling tales of Linux's past.

[Analog Kid]

"What do you anticipate Microsoft will do next?"

Microsoft will switch to Linux and keep selling their software on top of Linux.

What??? How do you figure that?
I don't see that happening at all.

[DiTBho]

Haiku@riscv 0.00000002%

So, that's you? Only DiTBho could be so masochistic 

Yup, but when Linux-v1 and then v2 came out, there were very few users, just a few dozen in the world.
Haiku is keeping getting better, so Tomorrow (5 years in the future?)... who knows ...
Those who complain about the Linux desktop can't complain about the Haiku desktop.
At least because there's only one, and multimedia works flawlessly!

[themadhippy]

No, choose classic Gnome while logging in.

Dont  you need to utter a spell at the command line first to get some  missing bits,flashback rings a bell

[abeyer]

Haiku is keeping getting better, so Tomorrow (5 years in the future?)... who knows ...

I'm (mostly) kidding... Haiku actually does look interesting in its own way, and I was always fond of the old Be stuff. Actually got to play with one of the hobbit prototypes once. (that would be the fun stat: what's the BeOS/Hobbit marketshare?  )

[abeyer]

I wish I could go back to Gnome 2 with Compiz.

cinnamon has been my preferred option for a while now... it seems to keep up with just enough of the new stuff to maintain easy compatibility, but with a feel and interface like gnome 2.

[radiolistener]

Like most sweeping generalizations, that's in no way completely true.
Yes, they've fucked up a lot of things since then, but most of them are in the user interface, not the underlying OS (kernel, services, etc.).
The Windows I use (7--I refuse to go farther than that) is at least as stable as XP if not more so.

Anything beyond 7 has, to me, an abominable user interface up with which I will not put.

I’d say this is only partially accurate. While Win7 did receive years of patches and its kernel became reasonably stable, it arguably never reached the same level of streamlined reliability as XP after its own service packs. One key drawback of Win7 compared to XP is the proliferation of background services, increased system bloat from telemetry components, and the always-active Defender, which acts independently of user control. Audio API also took a step back in terms of flexibility and performance. Also Win7 eats much more memory for the same tasks.

That said, Windows 7 does have real advantages: much better support for multicore CPUs and 64-bit operation, which XP simply didn’t offer back in its prime. Driver availability is another reason many users had to move to 7, as certain hardware lacks XP-compatible drivers.

Still performance-wise, XP often delivered slightly better FPS and fewer frame drops in gaming, although it was limited to DirectX 9, restricting some graphical effects. Since Vista, the Windows kernel has increasingly suffered from what I’d call systemic bloat - much like a host increasingly burdened by parasites - with telemetry and Defender components deeply embedded and hard to fully remove.

[coppercone2]

yes I think its when people realized you need to register your account and then you get pop ups.

It starts to feel like your PC is infested with malware the way windows works now. I think M$ jumped the shark. And its all like threat based (everything is supposedly for your safety). I think they got hit hard by yes men in the 'product testing' phase and they have a very unrealisitic view of the relationship that a normal person has with a computer. I am pretty sure they just got answers from focus groups/testers that the marketing person wanted to hear. Yes yes, we love everything you came up with ,please give me a raise.

I think it reached that point where the company has a unrealistically stupid model of the user. It kind of starts like a joke in product companies, when they start to joke alot about how they exploit the dumbness of the customer to make profit with some engineering decision. It usually is something marginally clever and there is a small number of clueless people that they got appeal from. And then it gets completely overblown, takes center stage, they run with it and they make a product that makes peoples jaw drop (the bad kind). I think they managed that. As soon as a engineer  starts talking about how dumb customers are, you might as well hold up a sign that says "hey, we might have a nice paying position for con artists in my department!"

I will put it this way, its getting EASY to find linux users IRL in random places. They trust it because android phones worked so well for so long and M$ got progressively more annoying. So it becomes very easy to dump windows. It's not even a big jump because... well you have been using a android for like 20 years right?


Thats like a flavor of engineering hire now, the ones that sound like a 20 year old Sigmund freud that can psychoanalyze this supposed dumb customer for 30 minutes strait and proposes like 20 completely unrealistic engineering features that all have major cruxes, all that relate to advertising and databases.. and also seems ethically dubious from even the most cursive analysis  (and he has a totally unrealistic view about how practical it is to make complex things out of big data sets, like that its guaranteed, not that you are dealing with uncertain noisy random crap ? You get those when your engineers start talking about seeing the customer as like a mentally stunted bovine.


They always seem to think all data is good data, that data is easy to filter, understand and process into useful things. But its not. Actually they are often just growing a peppercorn dry, very expensive to squeeze fruit to supposedly make gallons of juice from. And it makes the relationship between marketing and engineering awful, assuming you have more then 1 normally marginally ethical, respectable and responsible engineer/scientists working in R&D/Eng. The conflict always exists in some form, but when things get out of hand.... the cooperation becomes comical.