The year of the Linux desktop will never happen. A few things are at play, but most notably, games and proprietery software that relies on Windows. MS really cemmented their stand with all of this in the 90’s. While the *NIX wars were going on, they slowly swept the market away. This, and the fact that setting up things on a Windows install is in most cases, a lot easier than on Linux (at least knowledge wise). Next, Next, Next, Finish is a lot cheaper from an IT perspective than typing commands away in a terminal. They might pay for the licenses for the OS, but cosidering how cheap they are nowadays, that’s nothing compared to how more you’d have to spend on consulting and IT labor if you’re using Linux in your work environment. I’m not talking about IT or dev companies here, I’m talking about your every day Joe, a mechanic, a store, a marketing company, etc.
Games are much less of an issue nowadays, proton’s kinda taken the wind out of Microsoft’s sails on that one
The only hangup I think for anyone reasonably technical using it nowadays is Microsoft software intentionally being made incompatible which is always going to be the case unless/until Microsoft make a version of Windows that’s running a Linux kernel under the hood
Proton, Wine, Lutris, Bottles… that all takes a lot of playing with, something that your average Windows user is not prepared to do. Those may be a viable alternative for older games that don’t run on newer versions of Windows anyway, but for new titles, it’s a PITA to configure all of the above to just run, let alone configure them to have optimal performance, as they do in Windows.
My guess is, this will never happen. Apple do the same to MS products, NTFS being a perfect example. It’s protecting it’s user base and those things will never change IMO. MS won’t do it, neither will Apple. Windows might run a heavily modified Linux kernel in the future, but that will be it. Everything else, except the kernel will be closed source, which brings us again to the point I was trying to make, it’s still gonna be hard to switch everything over to Linux. MS just dominates the desktop market. Everything is compatible with Windows and they have their own dev platforms, not to mention server lines, AD, etc… things that are hard to replace in a production environment. People just wanna get their work done, none of them really care of what goes behind the scene. Not to mention the workflow, that will have to change as well, the tools included as well. Try and shift all of that to something that doesn’t have the Windows logo in the menu button. Trust me, I’ve tried, it’s hard as hell. Takes a lot of man hours and the pay is more or less the same as if I just did Windows installs on everything and just left people alone. If the pay was 2x or 3x the regular pay, yes, I would consider it again, but for a small percantage plus, no way.
In the end, everyone just shifted to Windows anyway. Users pushed management to revert back the decision stating “this just doesn’t work” (there were growing pains, but most things were smoothed out), and they did, they bought Windows licenses again and all my hard work was in vain. Now, I just recommend the easy approach. Everything will most probably work out of the box and it would require a lot less of my time spent on something that in the near future will be abandoned as a solution (meaning I have to put in work again to revert everything to the way it was for the same pay).
I’m not suggesting it can happen with current tech, but as an example look at the state of gaming on Linux now compared to 5 years ago. I remember trying years ago and it just being basically impossible without hours of tinkering and now virtually every steam game just launches on Linux with no fuss
Just using that as an example that Linux can absolutely become more mainstream, I’d argue distros like mint, elementary and pop are better for people who basically only use a browser for their day to day anyway (which is already demonstrated by Chromebooks)
I’m also not suggesting we convince people to switch in the same way nobody went round convincing people to use Windows in the first place, I think at the moment the onus is on companies like system76 and framework to ship their machines with Linux by default, a lot of them right now let you cut a hefty chunk of the price off for Linux because no license fees which I think is absolutely the way to do it
Yeah, have to be honest, gaming has gotten A LOT easier on Linux now. Thanks to Valve of course, Linus was right after all, Valve will save the Linux desktop.
Installing Linux on a personal laptop for just browsing or music, video, movies, whatever (older laptops that just struggled with Win10 on them), yes, and I have done that for some of my customers (those that asked for a recommendation or just said “do whatever, just get it working”). But, in large production environments with software that is absolutely tightly tied with AD and MS, no way. I have done it, but the man hours were just… too much… and the pay was a few percent over my regular salary. I know I bit more than I could chew as soon as I said yes, but I really wanted to try to get things working with Linux. It was a challenge, I have to admit that, I like challenges, lol 😂. But was it worth it? Absolutely not. Custom wine patches, custom this custom that… I had to make my own custom repo with patches just to get things working, mod code, add new strings to search in the patch script in newer releases… it was a nightmare to be honest. That is not a 1 man job. Still, even if I had help, it’s just not worth it. Hiring someone to do custom patches and maintain the repo vs. 1 or 2k USD to throw in Windows licenses… I mean, you get the idea. In the end, it’s just cheaper to buy the damn licenses 🤷.
IDK about sustem76, we don’t have that where I live. We do have lappys with Linux preinstalled, but as soon as someone buys one, they just ask me to install Windows on it 🤷. They’re cheaper cuz you don’t pay for the Windows license and afterwards I just use KMS38 on the Windows install 🤷.
The year of the Linux desktop will never happen. A few things are at play, but most notably, games and proprietery software that relies on Windows. MS really cemmented their stand with all of this in the 90’s. While the *NIX wars were going on, they slowly swept the market away. This, and the fact that setting up things on a Windows install is in most cases, a lot easier than on Linux (at least knowledge wise). Next, Next, Next, Finish is a lot cheaper from an IT perspective than typing commands away in a terminal. They might pay for the licenses for the OS, but cosidering how cheap they are nowadays, that’s nothing compared to how more you’d have to spend on consulting and IT labor if you’re using Linux in your work environment. I’m not talking about IT or dev companies here, I’m talking about your every day Joe, a mechanic, a store, a marketing company, etc.
Games are much less of an issue nowadays, proton’s kinda taken the wind out of Microsoft’s sails on that one
The only hangup I think for anyone reasonably technical using it nowadays is Microsoft software intentionally being made incompatible which is always going to be the case unless/until Microsoft make a version of Windows that’s running a Linux kernel under the hood
Proton, Wine, Lutris, Bottles… that all takes a lot of playing with, something that your average Windows user is not prepared to do. Those may be a viable alternative for older games that don’t run on newer versions of Windows anyway, but for new titles, it’s a PITA to configure all of the above to just run, let alone configure them to have optimal performance, as they do in Windows.
My guess is, this will never happen. Apple do the same to MS products, NTFS being a perfect example. It’s protecting it’s user base and those things will never change IMO. MS won’t do it, neither will Apple. Windows might run a heavily modified Linux kernel in the future, but that will be it. Everything else, except the kernel will be closed source, which brings us again to the point I was trying to make, it’s still gonna be hard to switch everything over to Linux. MS just dominates the desktop market. Everything is compatible with Windows and they have their own dev platforms, not to mention server lines, AD, etc… things that are hard to replace in a production environment. People just wanna get their work done, none of them really care of what goes behind the scene. Not to mention the workflow, that will have to change as well, the tools included as well. Try and shift all of that to something that doesn’t have the Windows logo in the menu button. Trust me, I’ve tried, it’s hard as hell. Takes a lot of man hours and the pay is more or less the same as if I just did Windows installs on everything and just left people alone. If the pay was 2x or 3x the regular pay, yes, I would consider it again, but for a small percantage plus, no way.
In the end, everyone just shifted to Windows anyway. Users pushed management to revert back the decision stating “this just doesn’t work” (there were growing pains, but most things were smoothed out), and they did, they bought Windows licenses again and all my hard work was in vain. Now, I just recommend the easy approach. Everything will most probably work out of the box and it would require a lot less of my time spent on something that in the near future will be abandoned as a solution (meaning I have to put in work again to revert everything to the way it was for the same pay).
I’m not suggesting it can happen with current tech, but as an example look at the state of gaming on Linux now compared to 5 years ago. I remember trying years ago and it just being basically impossible without hours of tinkering and now virtually every steam game just launches on Linux with no fuss
Just using that as an example that Linux can absolutely become more mainstream, I’d argue distros like mint, elementary and pop are better for people who basically only use a browser for their day to day anyway (which is already demonstrated by Chromebooks)
I’m also not suggesting we convince people to switch in the same way nobody went round convincing people to use Windows in the first place, I think at the moment the onus is on companies like system76 and framework to ship their machines with Linux by default, a lot of them right now let you cut a hefty chunk of the price off for Linux because no license fees which I think is absolutely the way to do it
Yeah, have to be honest, gaming has gotten A LOT easier on Linux now. Thanks to Valve of course, Linus was right after all, Valve will save the Linux desktop.
Installing Linux on a personal laptop for just browsing or music, video, movies, whatever (older laptops that just struggled with Win10 on them), yes, and I have done that for some of my customers (those that asked for a recommendation or just said “do whatever, just get it working”). But, in large production environments with software that is absolutely tightly tied with AD and MS, no way. I have done it, but the man hours were just… too much… and the pay was a few percent over my regular salary. I know I bit more than I could chew as soon as I said yes, but I really wanted to try to get things working with Linux. It was a challenge, I have to admit that, I like challenges, lol 😂. But was it worth it? Absolutely not. Custom wine patches, custom this custom that… I had to make my own custom repo with patches just to get things working, mod code, add new strings to search in the patch script in newer releases… it was a nightmare to be honest. That is not a 1 man job. Still, even if I had help, it’s just not worth it. Hiring someone to do custom patches and maintain the repo vs. 1 or 2k USD to throw in Windows licenses… I mean, you get the idea. In the end, it’s just cheaper to buy the damn licenses 🤷.
IDK about sustem76, we don’t have that where I live. We do have lappys with Linux preinstalled, but as soon as someone buys one, they just ask me to install Windows on it 🤷. They’re cheaper cuz you don’t pay for the Windows license and afterwards I just use KMS38 on the Windows install 🤷.
System76 are the people who make Pop! They make laptops designed to run Linux that come with pop preinstalled