It’s been good for the average PC user for like 5 years. Pretty much when Google Docs became pretty ubiquitous from elementary school through university. Then also stuff like turbotax becoming something people use through a website rather than a application they buy a disc for from the store. Steam Deck was when Proton maturity reached a point where it became suitable for most gamers. Steam games on Android is the next mainstream frontier to pull users away from Windows. Now the main barrier to me is improving prosumer software/making open source alternatives competitive like how Blender became. Pretty much need people to get away from Adobe and FL Studio/etc
I would argue Linux has been “good enough” for 25 years, but only upgraded to “fine” and then “good” and then “great” more recently.
Edit: But to your point, anyone brave enough to drop an Ubuntu Live CD into their system 25 21 years ago often had a surprisingly smooth path and could already do critical stuff like email or writing a document. (But there were many more exceptions, edge cases, and work arounds, back then.)
Edit: But to your point, anyone brave enough to drop an Ubuntu Live CD into their system 25 years ago often had a surprisingly smooth path and could already do critical stuff like email or writing a document. (But there were many more exceptions, edge cases, and work arounds, back then.)
Anyone dropping an Ubungu Live CD into their system 25 years ago in January 2001 must have been a time traveller, since the first release of Ubuntu was only out in October 2004, only available as an install CD, and there wasn’t an Ubuntu Live CD until the first test release of an Ubuntu Live CD in June 2006.
I remember when Live CDs first became a thing. I thought, for sure, now, everybody will be able to switch to Linux, without fear, able to try it first, before installing to their hard drive.
Hah!
Here we are 20 calendar years later, ~ and sure, it’s probably around 10x the size of userbase of desktop GNU+Linux, rising past 5% market share, but it’s hardly “The Year Of The Linux Desktop” Like I thought was coming in 2007, especially when the next increment of bloat and abuse that is Win7 came along. … Maybe for sure now that Win11’s taking screenshots every 10 seconds and calling home, and all the adverts in your operating system interface and further nerfed capabilities and annoying babying and and and… Just how many abuses can Microsoft keep getting away with and people will still keep using it!? Now you need to buy hyper inflated new hardware too?? It’s almost like they’re trying their hardest to sluff off their userbase, but people keep staying for the punishment of the intentional enshitifications.
My first Live CD was actually Puppy Linux and it was surprisingly nice, for the time.
I did have one of the mail order only Ubuntu Live CDs. I wish I had kept it. I bet they are kind of rare, because I recall prominent instructions on it for how to make a copy for a friend.
I showed my uncle a bunch of different distros… I thought for sure he’d go for Scientific Linux. But nope. He took to puppy. And has been daily driving it for well over a decade.
It’s been good for the average PC user for like 5 years. Pretty much when Google Docs became pretty ubiquitous from elementary school through university. Then also stuff like turbotax becoming something people use through a website rather than a application they buy a disc for from the store. Steam Deck was when Proton maturity reached a point where it became suitable for most gamers. Steam games on Android is the next mainstream frontier to pull users away from Windows. Now the main barrier to me is improving prosumer software/making open source alternatives competitive like how Blender became. Pretty much need people to get away from Adobe and FL Studio/etc
IFTFY
I would argue Linux has been “good enough” for 25 years, but only upgraded to “fine” and then “good” and then “great” more recently.
Edit: But to your point, anyone brave enough to drop an Ubuntu Live CD into their system
2521 years ago often had a surprisingly smooth path and could already do critical stuff like email or writing a document. (But there were many more exceptions, edge cases, and work arounds, back then.)Anyone dropping an Ubungu Live CD into their system 25 years ago in January 2001 must have been a time traveller, since the first release of Ubuntu was only out in October 2004, only available as an install CD, and there wasn’t an Ubuntu Live CD until the first test release of an Ubuntu Live CD in June 2006.
I remember when Live CDs first became a thing. I thought, for sure, now, everybody will be able to switch to Linux, without fear, able to try it first, before installing to their hard drive.
Hah!
Here we are 20 calendar years later, ~ and sure, it’s probably around 10x the size of userbase of desktop GNU+Linux, rising past 5% market share, but it’s hardly “The Year Of The Linux Desktop” Like I thought was coming in 2007, especially when the next increment of bloat and abuse that is Win7 came along. … Maybe for sure now that Win11’s taking screenshots every 10 seconds and calling home, and all the adverts in your operating system interface and further nerfed capabilities and annoying babying and and and… Just how many abuses can Microsoft keep getting away with and people will still keep using it!? Now you need to buy hyper inflated new hardware too?? It’s almost like they’re trying their hardest to sluff off their userbase, but people keep staying for the punishment of the intentional enshitifications.
My first Live CD was actually Puppy Linux and it was surprisingly nice, for the time.
I did have one of the mail order only Ubuntu Live CDs. I wish I had kept it. I bet they are kind of rare, because I recall prominent instructions on it for how to make a copy for a friend.
I showed my uncle a bunch of different distros… I thought for sure he’d go for Scientific Linux. But nope. He took to puppy. And has been daily driving it for well over a decade.