Year of the Linux desktop let’s goooooooo!
3% is insanely high for those of us who remember the early 2000s. I am loving this.
3% is insane.
I am not a “year of linux” huffer. The majority of the population doesn’t even know what a filesystem is, much less (for example) how to get to the BIOS setting they need to even install linux.
But 3% is absolutely a threshold for “viral social spread” amongst those that can.
It’s like damn look how good the general Linux desktop got with barely any general consumer adoption for about 30 years. Imagine what it could get around ~10%. 20 years ago Mac’s were only around 5%. I love gaming on Linux but my main thought is how this is the trojan horse that brings users and some funding and developer attention to open source applications. Kdenlive needs love. Ardour needs love. Darktable. Get them all the Blender treatment someday
I think it really depends on your definition of what counts as year of Linux. Will Linux usage ever beat Windows or Mac? Of course not. But it can definitely get popular enough that companies have to think really hard about whether they need to support Linux or not. And meanwhile, Linux isn’t going to get popular overnight (or in a year, for that matter). So do you consider the year of the Linux to be the end of growth? Middle of growth? Or beginning of growth?
For me, I think year of the Linux desktop already passed in 2021, with the launch of the steam deck (where I’m defining year of Linux to be the point where Linux usage picks up and will hopefully end at a point where companies have to take Linux seriously)
I consider the “year of linux” when OEMs ship it in laptops and desktops, in volume.
In other words, it’s when I see several linux laptops in Best Buy.
Sadly, we might ‘miss’ that window. It seems like regular folks are moving to tablets, phones, and Android PCs for home use. Business will be stuck on Windows forever. So it appears the future we’re barreling to is iOS/Android for the masses, laptops (mostly) as pure workplace machines, and then the PC gaming sector essentially depreciating Windows and migrating to (in delicious irony) Windows APIs on linux.
Linux use on steam has also passed mac use. The three most popular mac versions are still used by more than the 3 most popular linux versions, but the total for macs is under 3%.
And for me personally, I didn’t even have to give anything of value up to make the switch. I kept my old windows machine in a running condition as a backup, but I think I’m about ready to start retiring that machine entirely, at least as a windows machine.
0.15% in a month
that’s 1.8% in a year if it stays so, but it’s gonna get faster
year of the Linux desktop soon
I’m part of that 0.15%. I had been dual booting Windows for years and finally made the full switch with win10 EOL
It’s okay openSUSE Tumbleweed. I still stan for you. ;P
openSUSE is GOAT.
I’m a CachyOS shill, and I’d recommend Tumbleweed to anyone. It’s criminal that folks use stuff like Ubuntu or Manjaro over it.
I chuckled when I saw Manjaro of all things on there, and not my beloved OS of choice! lol
For real, though, openSUSE is truly something to rave about, as far as I am concerned! :)
Now that zypper has been pulled into the modern age with parallel & faster downloading, the only complaint remaining I have for it is the installer itself
I kind of liked the installer, but that is because I am a huge Fallout fan and liked the black with green theme you could use when I installed it about a year ago… I am but a simple person… lol :P
Really wanna try a perma switch from Fedora just cuz they include a nice grub theme lmao.
Plus I like that its proper rolling instead of staged releases.
Even though I think it’s generally frowned upon to use, I use GRUB Customizer from the Discover Store, and change the theme to a Fallout style one, if that would be easier for you to use!
I’ve had one or two hiccups when updating openSUSE Tumbleweed. Once was just a normal update, back then I was doing it weekly since I basically only game on my desktop, but it completely broke my graphics for whatever reason. I have an NVIDIA GPU, so I attribute it to that.
Luckily, Tumbleweed has that snapper component, and I used it for the first time. Absolutely amazing I could just run that and then be back in a working state at the shake of a lambs tail. I just started updating monthly after that, and so far, no hiccups!
I feel like the number of “I switched to Linux” videos on YouTube have exploded recently, although it might just be some algorithm thing.
All of the major gaming youtubers have made at least a couple videos featuring Linux over the last couple months, which is definitely a big change from the windows-only (except sometimes servers) content of years past.
I think there is a real change in people’s mind . Windows is at it worst since forever. Just this month 2 people in my inner circle just ask me how can they Make the switch and which distro should they use for their needs. Those 2 were hardcore Windows fan and gamer.
I also had a friend ask how to install Linux or where to buy a computer that has it preinstalled. It’s getting out there.
I like how all Arch based distros are in “quotes” by the way.
Right? It’s oozing with sarcasm, like—ArCh LiNuX
lmao
I think it’s because they’re including steam os which is an Arch derivative.
I am waiting for SteamOS Desktop to be released before switching. I want the support of an 800lb corporate gorilla, that prioritizes gaming. I use mods and play niche games, so I need a Linux that balances casual users while allowing for some power user stuff.
I already know about Bazzite and Cachy, but again, I want the support of a focused giant who won’t die or change hands.
I’ve been gaming on Arch (btw) since 2013 and only had minor issues I could resolve with a bit of googling.
Things have only gotten better over the years. Steam will just work on pretty much any distro as it has its own runtime.
I don’t do just Steam. As said before, I sometimes use mods or play niche games, such as ones that require Japanese locale, Windows v3.1, GOG games, and so forth. While I am not a true power user, my needs definitely go beyond Steam alone. I had tried out Mint a year ago, Hero, Lutris, Mini Galaxy, and so forth failed to work smoothly with my games.
Nowadays it’s super simple, with Lutris or another launcher. But you can still make Steam launch those too, with Proton.
What games require JP locale? Do you mean hentai games ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)?
Asian games, both perverse and standard. Translation patches don’t necessarily make the internal workings of a game able to run on English locale. As to specific games, I don’t recall at the moment - I play too many.
‘won’t die’ ? I mean Gabe is great, but I don’t think he’s immortal.
Granted. I really hope he is raising a protege to take the helm when the time comes, or divides up the Steam Kingdom and lets the best folk win.
I respect that. Tho do remember this is opensource instead of a traditional system.
Any improvement to steamos will improve bazzite and any improvement to bazzite will improve steamos.
Which is good. It is just that I don’t have much patience for troubleshooting, I prefer to just game or work. For me, I would stick to Windows if it weren’t for Microsoft likely being a bad actor.
I have doubts that Valve will officially support SteamOS on anything but their own hardware (and maybe some partners’), in which case unless you plan on buying a Steam Machine you’re going to be stuck for a very, very long time.
Valve said they want SteamOS to work on every PC. My guess is, they will release a more PC friendly version some time soonish after Steam Machine releases.
should be a market for ‘old’ hardware with linux. just drop them in a web browser and most can’t tell the difference. like a chromebook. win11 is just pushing people to buy new hardware. let em. other reasons to upgrade hardware
It was gaming all along guys
This vacation I finally decided to ditch Win for EndeavourOS, it has its quirks sometimes, but I can mostly play without issues, so refreshing to not rely on M$
EndeavourOS is nice. I’ve been using it for 10 months.
Only issue I had was that my windows dual boot messed up the booting. Plenty of tutorials about fixing it tho, so wasn’t too hard
Why would you run Ubuntu core? Are they only running steam?
this is steam as snap package, just like how they count flatpak steam
I was wondering who’s gaming on their thermostat.
i’m presuming people are using a just enough os (JEOS) distro to install a gui of their choice and steam and not much else.
That makes sense. Pure gaming machine
I have one machine where I run steam as a headless instance as I just use it for remoteplay to the TV.
Oh shit, that’s smart
To add another layer, I actually run it as a container - Steam Headless
Definitely envious of them. I can’t get a stable system and I’m convinced wayland+nvidia are the culprit.
Firefox randomly crashes, steam randomly crashes, CS2 randomly crashes, plasma desktop randomly freezes (requires hardware button reset), haruna randomly crashes. I’ve never had a more unstable system. I’m greeted with 3 notifications of some process crashing at every boot.
I’d love to fully switch, but I cant have a system where things randomly crash like that. All this on latest Fedora KDE and I’m fairly certain I have everything needed installed from the driver side of things. On two year old hardware.
Its such a different experience from running a headless debian system.I have been running Bazzite (with KDE) and an Nvidia GPU (RTX 3070) for almost 6 months and I have not had any issues.
Everything worked with no additional tweaks. I was playing Dead Space (2023) almost half an hour after installing the OS, it was amazing. If you have the time, you should give it a try, I highly recommend it.
I couldn’t get Fedora working well with Nvidia. Bazzite worked for me out of the box. Bazzite is just Fedora with some out of the box configurations, so it must be possible to make Fedora work with Nvidia. I am just not capable of making it work.
I am happy with Bazzite though.
I’ll think about it, but I’ll need to adjust my perspectives a little lol. I’m not a fan of immutable systems because I’m not a fan of containerized applications.
I’m sorry to hear that! I’ve been having good experiences with Wayland + NVIDIA on both Ubuntu 25.10 and EndeavourOS (whatever version is the latest). There are minor annoyances, but nothing as dire as what you’re describing.
I may need to look at other distros a bit, but KDE is non negotiable for me. I hope its not plasma that’s the problem.
I’ve been on Kubuntu with a RTX gpu for the past year. No crashes, no problems. For the April release I swapped to Wayland and it also works fine. I think Wayland has better gui scaling and multi monitor support too.
Wayland has better gui scaling and multi monitor support too
Linux mint has left the chat
Maybe kde is the problem? I use Wayland + Nvidia and before xorg. I never liked kde it was always buggy for me so I haven’t used it for many years but when I did was it xorg + Nvidia on Manjaro. But since I went with other DEs have I never had any problems.
Same, I use KDE as my desktop environment with Wayland as well.
Please try memtest86. I had issues that almost looked like this.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll try it and see if there’s anything wrong there, though I don’t expect it since windows works fine.
I found this grub option https://askubuntu.com/a/1227581
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash memtest=4"not sure if it helps, it’s not as thorough as Memtest86+
Did a memtest today, no issues. I did discover, through seeing slow RAM speed in memtest, that XMP was disabled. Doubt it was the cause of any harm, but I enabled it back and I’ll keep on testing.
Looks like we got a newer kernel in fedora today/yesterday. I keep on hoping one magic update will fix it all!
I don’t know what I’m doing, I just installed some Arch thing and so far everythings worked - although my hdd is sluggish compared to my old windows install.
I recommend investing in an nvme for os installs and use the HDD as data storage.
Just use Xorg. Wayland is notorious for Nvidia issues.
One in a while there is an issue with CS2 for me too, but it’s usually because of fullscreen/windowed mode and the window manager being aggressive. Try turning it off/on with launch parameters.
