I know that phrase is the most beaten dead horse around at this point but the year of the Linux desktop is going to be different depending on what your requirements are.
If you just need to browse the web, it’s been there for over a decade. Same for most dev work.
For gaming, it’s already there for most titles. Pretty much everything I try works now unless it has anticheat. It’s been in a pretty good state for 2 or 3 years now at least.
For media creation and specialized software, it’s not there yet. The big stuff like adobe will probably never get ported and the free alternatives vary wildly in quality. Blender is awesome. GIMP is not. There’s also issues like lacking color management and iffy HDR support.
I do wonder about that, Gen Z and Alpha are less tech savvy than millennials, so there’s non zero odds that it doesn’t work out because Linux isn’t easily accessible in the tablet/phone space yet.
Mobile Linux is a thing, though I think it would take governments mandating unlocked/user-unlockable bootloaders to gain literally Any market share. It would also probably take a compatibility layer for running Android apps similar to Wine in desktop Linux, but Android already runs a Linux kernel, so projects like Waydroid are most of the way there already by just running Android inside a container.
I think we need rock-solid Wayland before we can expect TYLD. So I’m feeling 2026 minimum, then add a couple for some padding; so 2028 realistically. Think of how far we’ve come in 5 years, then imagine 5 years more.
If Nvidia’s consumer GPU market share dropped a bit too, that’d help.
Why do you think that Wayland is necessary for adoption?
In my opinion it is the missing hardware drivers, compatability issues and “getting your hands dirty” while constantly tweaking stuff.
Yeah it got better over the years, but most people want things to just work.
Wayland is necessary because Wayland will be necessary in the near future, if it was next year then that would put a lot of people who don’t know about X.Org and Wayland through a major shift which could rock-the-boat a bit too much and cause them to go back to Windows for the “just works” experience.
Look, I just finally tried steam on Linux and the game booted up. I am absolutely amazed as I thought I’d never see that day. Also windows is somehow just getting worse and worse. It’s like they just want an entire ad platform. They lost me at this point. I have 0 need for any ms products again and that’s a great feeling.
Yeah people often forget the sheer amount of quality checks and testing that windows updates go through. Sure it might do annoying things like changing your default browser but it never truly breaks.
There’s also the fact that Windows native antivirus is so good that installing antivirus software is actually a downgrade. On Linux meanwhile you gotta run third party antivirus.
Hmm. My partner’s Linux machine is perfectly stable and has been for a decade. I administer it for them, but that’s just running updates and distribution upgrades every now and then
My server takes more effort, as distribution upgrades sometimes break stuff, for example the mailing list manager I have used for a long time became deprecated and was disabled on the recent LTS upgrade
My laptop running Ubuntu from the factory is perfectly fine, I’ll probably make it less stable by moving it to Debian
Once steam covers 90% of games windows becomes irrelevant.
So what you’re saying is, 2024 will be the year of Linux on the desktop?
I know that phrase is the most beaten dead horse around at this point but the year of the Linux desktop is going to be different depending on what your requirements are.
If you just need to browse the web, it’s been there for over a decade. Same for most dev work.
For gaming, it’s already there for most titles. Pretty much everything I try works now unless it has anticheat. It’s been in a pretty good state for 2 or 3 years now at least.
For media creation and specialized software, it’s not there yet. The big stuff like adobe will probably never get ported and the free alternatives vary wildly in quality. Blender is awesome. GIMP is not. There’s also issues like lacking color management and iffy HDR support.
I do wonder about that, Gen Z and Alpha are less tech savvy than millennials, so there’s non zero odds that it doesn’t work out because Linux isn’t easily accessible in the tablet/phone space yet.
And no android doesn’t count
Mobile Linux is a thing, though I think it would take governments mandating unlocked/user-unlockable bootloaders to gain literally Any market share. It would also probably take a compatibility layer for running Android apps similar to Wine in desktop Linux, but Android already runs a Linux kernel, so projects like Waydroid are most of the way there already by just running Android inside a container.
They are also less wealthy than X and millennial were at first computer purchase age. GNU/Linux is cheap
The OS is but the hardware ya gotta install it on could be another story, especially with gaming distros becoming more and more common
Sure for gaming you want a pretty expensive machine, but for a user who wants web and email a used low end laptop will perform great
I think we need rock-solid Wayland before we can expect TYLD. So I’m feeling 2026 minimum, then add a couple for some padding; so 2028 realistically. Think of how far we’ve come in 5 years, then imagine 5 years more.
If Nvidia’s consumer GPU market share dropped a bit too, that’d help.
Why do you think that Wayland is necessary for adoption? In my opinion it is the missing hardware drivers, compatability issues and “getting your hands dirty” while constantly tweaking stuff. Yeah it got better over the years, but most people want things to just work.
Wayland is necessary because Wayland will be necessary in the near future, if it was next year then that would put a lot of people who don’t know about X.Org and Wayland through a major shift which could rock-the-boat a bit too much and cause them to go back to Windows for the “just works” experience.
Look, I just finally tried steam on Linux and the game booted up. I am absolutely amazed as I thought I’d never see that day. Also windows is somehow just getting worse and worse. It’s like they just want an entire ad platform. They lost me at this point. I have 0 need for any ms products again and that’s a great feeling.
but WHY is it necessary??
But which distro though?
yes he did and if it doesn’t happen we can shame him for all eternety, but i’m right with you there buddy: 2024 lets gooooooo!
it already is irrelevant for many people
As long as many important games fall into that 10% many gamers won’t consider Linux.
Not to mention Adobe/Office/CAD suites that will prevent others from switching.
And finally most pcs are sold with windows preinstalled and the vast majority of people don’t even know that other OS even exist.
Also a lot of high end medical equipment. Some stuff will only work/communicate with Windows XP, even today, for instance.
For gamers-only maybe lmao
E: and people willing to spend several hours a month wondering why their OS broke again
If you don’t tinker like the usual Linux user your os won’t break more often than windows
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As I said, not more often than windows
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Yeah people often forget the sheer amount of quality checks and testing that windows updates go through. Sure it might do annoying things like changing your default browser but it never truly breaks.
There’s also the fact that Windows native antivirus is so good that installing antivirus software is actually a downgrade. On Linux meanwhile you gotta run third party antivirus.
Windows updates break my clock… Idk about this claim that it doesn’t break stuff.
This comment is a prime example of a drowning man trying to pull up by the straw
In my experience windows just breaks as often. Depending on hardware and software used.
Yes it might be better for windows 11 I haven’t run that yet. And windows 10 almost never broke either so it is maybe better now
It literally almost never happens for windows yet Linux is generally most famous by this one thing
Hmm. My partner’s Linux machine is perfectly stable and has been for a decade. I administer it for them, but that’s just running updates and distribution upgrades every now and then
My server takes more effort, as distribution upgrades sometimes break stuff, for example the mailing list manager I have used for a long time became deprecated and was disabled on the recent LTS upgrade
My laptop running Ubuntu from the factory is perfectly fine, I’ll probably make it less stable by moving it to Debian
If you stick to Ubuntu you usually don’t have that problem IMHO.