I put Ubuntu on my year old Windows laptop and to my surprise, everything is just better. I mean better than Windows AND better than Linux ever was before when I used it previously. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some major manufacturers shipping PCs with Ubuntu pre-loaded in the coming years.
Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA
Submitted 2 months ago by herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
https://ostechnix.com/linux-reaches-5-desktop-market-share-in-usa/
Comments
markpaskal@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
kmacmartin@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I bought a Dell with Ubuntu preloaded in 2019. I think it should still be possible (It’s their “developer edition” models).
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
better than Linux ever was before
I did Linux on the desktop for 15 years. I was primarily Windows at home, Linux at work. With a job change, I took a detour through Mac for a couple of years, then WSL hit, and I ran Windows for quite a while.
I dropped back in, but only at home when Bookworm landed. I was playing Steam games with video acceleration right out of the gate. For a lot of people, it’s just going to work right out of the gate, and updates are just going to work. Now that a lot of shit’s going Electron, a lot of apps that had an edge in windows are now identical through their web interfaces.
If you’re not playing games with a lot of anti-cheat, using proprietary hardware or don’t need access to some windows-only apps (or you can put up with Wine), all the distros are up to the point where they operate just as you’d expect them to.
redwattlebird@lemmings.world 2 months ago
I’m just waiting for double digits so that the FiveM devs can’t ignore Linux gamers anymore and actually allow for GTAV online playability. I mean, you can run a server on Linux but can’t play? Dumb.
Bluewing@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Despite not being a gamer myself, Gamers are or should be a hotly contested demographic for Linux to chase and capture. And thanks to Steam, there is a shift happening as gaming gets easier.
NateNate60@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Agreed. Gamers are probably one of the demographics which are most likely to care about the enshittification of their operating system, while most other users who only want Microsoft Office and their Web browser could not care less. The former can be swayed to endure a small amount of temporary inconvenience to switch while the latter will not.
k0e3@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
This is the first news about Americans doing something smart in a little while. Great job!
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
The majority of Americans are educated, but they all happen to live in the same 5 or so cities
Teknikal@eviltoast.org 2 months ago
Should be 105 percent the way Microsoft treats it’s users.
nexguy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think the fastest way for Linux to spread is for there to be a cheap gross dirty disgusting commercial version pushed at bestbuy/walmart…etc where people can become familiar enough with it to switch to other distros and out still feel familiar.
enthusiasm_headquarters@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think the fastest way for linux to spread are a) a state-sponsored (totally open source) product that sees a free and open OS as part of a commitment to a free and open society. or 2) one of these fuckhead billionaires drops $200M or so into a trust, rather like the Poetry Foundation, which has the singular commitment to create an OS for people and to support it indefinitely.
I don’t think the answer to any of society’s ills is to get Wallmart involved.
bloooooort@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Im a long time Mac user but recently got a steamdeck. Desktop mode uses a version of kde and I really like it, if I had to switch from Mac I would definitely go with linux instead of windows. I think the steam deck will introduce a lot of people to linux.
compcube@lemy.lol 1 month ago
Do you think ChromeOS could fit that role? At least it shows that an alternative to Windows exists.
ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Google will merge Android and ChromeOS.
Bluewing@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I remember when Walmart sold boxed releases of RedHat and Mandrake. My first installs were fueled by $20 boxed releases at Walmart. I was so bummed when they stopped. But I could send away for Ubuntu releases on a CD for free.
kboy101222@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Just recently converted myself! It’s soooo much better than it used to be. I used Ubuntu as a daily driver several years ago, but I absolutely had to dual boot windows because getting any games running was a massive pain in the ass. Now I just slap a proton build on it and go on my merry way!
I’ve only had issues with some software that needs to attach itself to steam games, such as Archipelago, but I’ve been able to figure them all out so far!
dastanktal@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Wow. Thats amazing.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 month ago
I switched to mint like a month before PewDiePie lol
My main issue is that I kinda need actual Excel every so often because I require things like power query. I tried installing it using Wine, but it needs to authenticate with Microsofts servers, even the older versions.
Threeme2189@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You can spin up a virtual machine running Tiny10 and install office on that. Should work fine.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I switched over to EndeavourOS around the same time. I relegated my old windows install to a virtual image, which I boot into for specific games and Excel. 10/10 recommend.
eugenia@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Have you tried OnlyOffice? It has better compatibility with MS formats than LibreOffice.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 month ago
OnlyOffice is worse (and not because of the security breach implications), but because it misses the Ctrl+D shortcut (copies the cell above to the current cell). Which is something I use A LOT for data entry.
the_q@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Linux is freedom. It’s imperfect, fun and yours. It teaches you while helping you do your computing, creative and fun tasks. If you’re even the least but curious I encourage you to try it out.
Sar@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The journey of Linux has been one of slow but steady progress, accelerating in recent years. It took eight years to go from 1% to 2% (by April 2021), then just 2.2 years to reach 3% (June 2023), and a mere 0.7 years to hit 4% (February 2024). Now, here we are, at over 5% in the USA! This exponential growth suggests that we’re on a promising upward trend.
The article was written this month, so it’s conveniently ignoring the fact that the rise from 4% to 5% took 18 months. That’s actually a huge slowdown in uptake, not an acceleration.
But I’m glad it’s at 5%, even if it’s only in the US. Now let’s get there globally, and keep it going…
Bluewing@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Thanks to Trump, there appears to be some initiatives in Europe for governments to switch to open source. It seems they want to try and get out of relying on US companies for their technology. That would make a large jump in the user base.
They have tried before, and not had the best luck in dropping US vendors. Things seem to run out of steam at some point and they switch back. It will be interesting to see if things stick more this time.
I’m pulling for them to succeed.
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
OS reveal perty and it’s a penguin.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
That still seems high to me but actually checking the StatCounter website… it has more or less been steady at 5-ish% for three years?
RedPandaRaider@feddit.org 1 month ago
I will mainly switch to Linux whenever I feel ready for the headache of setting it up for the first time. Already got another M.2 SSD to run it alongside my existing Win 10 for anything that doesn’t run on Linux.
MiDaBa@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
It really depends on your hardware. I have a Dell XPS with an 11th gen Intel i5 that I’m running Fedora (Gnome desktop environment) on and it was rock solid from minute one. Things to check:
- Make sure your network card is supported. Intel network cards are some of the better choices for open source compatibility. On most laptops this can be swapped out if necessary.
- Camera
- Touchpad
- Fingerprint sensor
- Sound driver
- Any niche functions or modules. Think things like a secondary display on the keyboard, speciality ports etc.
Support is much better now than in the past and remember you don’t need everything to work to have a good time. My fingerprint sensor doesn’t work but it didn’t work well under windows so no big loss for me.
- You can always use a live bootable USB drive to test your hardware without having to commit to anything. This will tell you a lot about the experience you might have after installation. Heck, if you’re board you can try this right now and it won’t touch your current hard drive or operating system.
brennesel@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
It’s so much easier than I had anticipated. Funnily enough, the most complicated thing was organizing a 16Gb USB stick to boot because I only had 20 year old ones with 4Gb. On a newly purchased bare AMD PC, I was able to set everything up after work and play games with my buddies the same evening.
I opted for Bazzite and everything ran right out of the box without any additional hardware drivers: gaming mouse, wifi, wireless PS4 controller, printer, NAS, Android phone. The game libraries from Steam, Epic, gog etc. can all be easily connected via Lutris and so far all the games I’ve tried have run. For programs that are only offered for other distributions, I have installed BoxBuddy, where you can create Distroboxes. For most Windows native programs Wine just works.
RedPandaRaider@feddit.org 1 month ago
In theory it’s always easy, but in reality there will always be some major issue. I’ve tried switching to Ubuntu twice many years ago and there was always something that didn’t work. One time it even bricked my Windows install.
Currently before actually installing it, I’ve installed Pop OS in a virtual machine. I wish I had the screenshot, but entering 4 different commands to try and install VLC player and getting an error that the command is unknown each time is degrading. A lot of the first results for installing software on Linux has commands or repositories that don’t work and you have to keep looking. It was the command on the official VLC website that didn’t work for me…
LucidNightmare@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I started running openSUSE Tumbleweed full time at the beginning of this year!
I truly must thank the folks at Steam/Proton, GE-Proton, and wemod-launcher on GitHub for allowing me to play my games exactly like I did on Windows. I can’t stress to anyone who isn’t playing on Linux just how good it really is (for me, at least)!
I have beaten at least 10 games while on Linux. Games like: Metaphor: Refantazio, Persona 3 Reloaded, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Mass Effect Legendary Edition (all three games), Oblivion Remastered, and recently System Shock (Remake). Just to name a few off the top of my head!
I still have a Windows SSD dedicated to anything I MUST use on there (mainly modding games, logging back into openSUSE, then pulling those files straight from the Windows SSD onto my openSUSE SSD, fucking love that!), but that is mostly being unused because I found the wonders of QEMU/KVM Virtual Machine Manager. I use the VM to sideload apps onto my iPhone, for save editing, or for testing a Windows only app before trying to run it with Bottles or something else.
Logging into Linux feels like home, while logging onto Windows feels like someone else’s home. :P
Dani551@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Never expected to see a shoutout for my project on here. Thanks, glad it has helped you.
AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Which is your project?
As an aside, your comment has hit me in a surprisingly profound way. I think it’s because it can be too easy to forget about the people behind the software we use. This is especially the case with proprietary software from big companies, but it can also happen with open source or smaller projects from individual devs. I think that it arises in part from thinking about software as a product, which neglects the messy relationality of how things are actually made, maintained and used.
It’s sweet to see such a serendipitous exchange of appreciation. It makes the world feel smaller, but in a good way.
LucidNightmare@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Hey, Dani! I don’t have a lot of time to play games like I used to, so you and the others who have worked on wemod-launcher are a LIFE SAVER! I can’t tell you how cool it is to see the developer here, and actually saw my comment.
Every time I get done playing a game, and WeMod asks the “How was it?” prompt, I also always shout the project out through that, just in case someone sees it and they want to help or make the switch over to Linux. :)
dubyakay@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
How do you side load apps onto iPhone?
LucidNightmare@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I use a program called Sideloadly!
Obviously, just be careful on what you install, as with anything else! :-]
AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I share your enthusiasm. I wanted to learn Linux because so much scientific computing in my field relies on it, but when I dual booted, it was too easy to just retreat to Windows as the path of least resistance. I decided to fully make the switch to Linux as an attempt to force myself to learn stuff, but the big thing that held me back was nervousness about gaming.
Turns out that this fear was completely unfounded, and I have been utterly astounded at how easy gaming on Linux was. It wasn’t completely pain free, and there were a couple times that I needed to tinker somewhat, but it was no more difficult or frequent than I needed to do similar stuff on Windows.
I get what you mean about logging on feeling like home. Besides the scientific computing, a big part of what pushed me to Linux was how ambiently icked out I felt by using Windows — it didn’t feel like mine. Running Windows feels like renting a home from a landlord who doesn’t respect your boundaries and just comes in to make changes while you’re sleeping. Like, it’s not even about whether those changes are good or bad, but how weird it feels to constantly be reminded that this home is not truly yours.
LucidNightmare@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
What field are you in, if you don’t mind a stranger asking?
I wish I could have an interesting backstory to why I wanted to switch to Linux, but mine is much more simple! I just saw how well the SteamDeck was running some of the games I was throwing on it, and was pretty impressed! So, I pulled a spare SSD out of one of my old laptops, chucked it into the desktop, and started the install for openSUSE Tumbleweed because I had heard it was “one of the most stable distros” and was sold since I have always messed my Linux installs up! (I was also dual booting on the same laptop I pulled the SSD from, so that could have been a lot of the issues I had)
Gaming is definitely more simple once you acclimate to the new OS you are using. It was like when I used a Mac for the first time, and didn’t find it very good to use, but now I can get on one and do a lot more things now that I understand the system a little better! If I need to look something up, I just always add openSUSE Tumbleweed, and generally find what I need.
I used some tools (ChrisTitusTech, and StartAllBack mainly) to make Windows bearable, but never liked not having the control over MY system. It is definitely weird when I am on Windows. I usually check to see if that nasty Recall system somehow installed itself on there, or something similar. Heebie jeebies!
lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com 2 months ago
REVOLUTION
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Year of the Linux desktop
Fedditor385@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If it was simple and easy to install and play games on Linux as is on Windows, I would have switched over a decade ago.
DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
The biggest weakness is multiplayer games with aggressive anti-cheat. So those are the types of games you play, continue to stay away from Linux.
But for most games on Linux, it is just install and play now through a platform like Steam. I haven’t run into a game that I want to play that doesn’t basically “just work”.
ClassyHatter@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Pretty much this. If you have bought games from GOG or Epic, you can use Heroic Launcher to install and play them.
There has been some talking that Microsoft might remove third-party applications, like anti-cheats, away from the kernel. If that happens some day, it would probably help Linux gamers with some of those multiplayer games. But, there are already many multiplayer games that work just fine on Linux.
ano_ba_to@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
I installed Bazzite last month, installed my games on Steam and I just played all my games. Cyberpunk, RDR2, Cities Skylines, Divinity Original Sin 2, no additional setup involved, no turning off the wi-fi just to create a local account. I was ready to reinstall Windows if it got too difficult. I got rid of Mint too. I thought I’d need it as people say it’s easier.
herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
It has been very easy with Steam and GoG for a few yeara now. DXVK kicks ass.
wampus@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Yup. Lack of game support is a big roadblock – having just one or two friends on linux makes finding games your group can play together a real headache.
Another weird-ish hiccup, is the lack of good/cheap/trustworthy tax software. Installing windows once a year to do taxes is bonkers. Some solve it by having a VM that runs windows that they only use for taxes, but that isn’t really a fix. You’d still be a microbitch.
jnod4@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I have Linux on my “gaming” pc and I just stopped gaming, I have like four hours of uninterrupted leisure a month and they’re spent in terminals trying to troubleshoot games
drspawndisaster@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You’re not doing it right, friend.
commander@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Pretty certain the rate of increase will accelerate over years. Even moreso outside of the USA. Good news for getting more attention to other open source software not just the kernel and core OS utils.
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Ubuntu 10.10 was my first linux. Though 11.04 was released soon after my switch.
My first experience with 10.10 was as a virtual machine on my school issued Dell Latitude D505 laptop with Windows XP, a dual core 32-bit processor and 512 megs of RAM. And boy, let me tell you, it ran like shit. But I knew that it was because I was virtualizing it and didn’t hold that against it.
I can’t remember what it was called, but I eventually installed this OS on my flash drive that was meant to be eco-friendly for old devices. It had a very green wallpaper. And just used that instead of ever booting into windows by changing the boot order and leaving the flash drive plugged in at all times.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I couldn’t find it is in the article, is this new purchases, or how is this measured. If a computer ships with windows and I install mint on it, how do they know where that tally goes?
dangrousperson@feddit.org 1 month ago
The stats are from StatCounter which has this in their FAQ:
What methodology is used to calculate Statcounter Global Stats? Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 1.5 million sites globally. These sites cover various activities and geographic locations. Every month, we record billions of page views to these sites. For each page view, we analyse the browser/operating system/screen resolution used and we establish if the page view is from a mobile device.
So it’s the percentage if web traffic (to sites that use this analytics service)
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Ah so that should be pretty accurate then, because the amount of users spoofing their OS is likely fairly low, and I would assume would mostly be Linux users as well, meaning it wouldn’t sell the data as being higher than it is, but rather possibly lower.
Bluewing@lemmy.world 1 month ago
My first guess is the author is aggregating the numbers from either the distros download data directly or they are getting the numbers from some place like Distro Watch. You can even get a crude sense of the increase in new users if you hang out in a distro help forum. I check the r/Fedora sub on reddit a few times a week, (I run Fedora 42 BTW), and there has been enough of an increase in new users posting “OMG, I just ditched Windows and look at my shiny new Gnome/KDE desktop!” to be annoying to some people. It can be hard to find those posts from people looking for help with a problem sometimes.
What no one can say is just how long those shiny new users will stick with Linux or run back to Windows at a later date. My gut feeling is, if half of this new 5% sticks it’s a major, major victory for all the distros.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 month ago
A lot of it kicks back to companies as well. If every time someone interviews for a new job they are telling users they need to run their programs or even just the application for the interview from a Windows machine it pressures users into going back. I always see shit like that for stuff that is even just browser based. I prefer not to install zoom, teams, and such and just open in the browser, but ive run into companies saying their typing tests and other pre employment material only run on Windows. It’s usually false, as I never actually have needed it to install Windows, but it sows doubt in people who don’t want to take chances when they are already in a potentially tight spot.
itisileclerk@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I still use windows because of Visual Studio. I used to use Mac OSX because of XCode and I honestly don’t understand people today who still use Windows or Mac for anything other than Development.
If there was an alternative to Visual Studio for Linux I wouldn’t think twice.
realitista@lemmy.world 1 month ago
People who use windows or Mac for anything but development do so for the same reasons as you, they are locked into some features. For example, at home I need a local music library manager with local sync to my phone music app and smart playlists. Mac is still the only platform with this.
At work I need MS exchange integration and all the features of native office. Even the Mac version isn’t good enough for my workflow.
My only hope would be to turn to emulators or something like that, but at that point I’m not really running Linux anyway. I’m just running something else in a container inside Linux.
Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
MPD works pretty well for the music thing, and, I don’t know if this is would be an option for you, but I programmed my own smart-paylist-generator in rust as a hobby project to get control of my 500Gb (around 10,000 100% legally acquired tracks cough, cough) library. The additional control over the algo meant I got something that works waaaay better than pretty much anything else I’ve tried (including Spotify suggestions, etc. — the only thing I still use is Bandcamp for new artist suggestions); if you have the time, I highly recommend a homemade solution like that. It is a lot of work though.
RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The only thing I really miss about visual studio is the automatic profiler. Everything else just felt archaic, bloated, slow, and unintuitive. Adding one line in cmake often does the same thing as clicking through five submenus which never once got updated since 2012.
domi@lemmy.secnd.me 1 month ago
If it’s for C#, I’m doing pretty well with VSCode/VSCodium on Linux.
WPF and Forms does not work but I also have a Rider license from work which I use occasionally to maintain one of our old WPF applications, which we converted to Avalonia XPF. It works great and we now also have a Mac and Linux version.
eodur@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Without knowing what you are working on in Visual Studio, I would suggest checking out Jetbrains IDEs. I’ve used Rider for .NET quite successfully, and most of their other IDEs. I havent spent nearly as much time with CLion, but its supposed to be good. I haven’t used VS since like 2015, so I really don’t know how they compare these days. But I also haven’t missed it.
herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Visual Studio is a relic of the past. Does anyone still use it?
nailbar@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
This question is a comment to its answer 🤔
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
In short, you want a .Net developement platform for Linux? And i assume something like VScode is not enough? The thing with .exe compilers in Linux ususally using Mingw/Msys2 because MS having their own proprietary compiler thing?
alexalbedo@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
I ran my first distro in 2009 and had to switch back to PC when I got to college. Finally got around to switching back over earlier this year when my computer wasn’t eligible to upgrade to windows 11. It’s wild how much easier it is to get things up and running now, my 70 year old dad could probably do it and that was not the case the first time around.
Zink@programming.dev 1 month ago
I made the full work + home switch last year. I don’t know which experience is more improved over Windows: Installing the OS or Updating the OS.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I’ve actually been using Bazzite-gnome-nvidia image on my main desktop for the past few weeks and I have to say it’s very slick.
My main issue with it is with scaling disabled everything seems slightly big or spaced out in comparison to when I ran windows? I’ve read up and it maybe has something to do with the default fractional scaling but I checked and I’m at 100%.
Other than that I’m very happy with it!
xeekei@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I’ve been using Linux since 2006, and been gaming on it exclusively since maybe 2018? Seen reports it’s even kicking Win 11’s ass now performance-wise. Yall are just mean.
sommerset@thelemmy.club 1 month ago
Everything is online.
Who even needs to run local apps anymore?Bytemeister@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m helping!
Just put Mint on my 2-in-1! So far so good, except my volume buttons don’t work, and I have to manually toggle the on screen keyboard for text entry if I detactch the keyboard cover.
But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If I could just go one day on Lemmy without hearing about Linux… nothing has turned me off Linux more than you guys not shutting up about it.
KiwiTB@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I doubt this is the case. Number is likely biased by SteanDecks and AI crawlers/Agents. It would be nice however.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 2 months ago
If it’s anything like browsers that’s about the level were a platform is hard to ignore.