I am not saying “This is the Year of the Linux Desktop”. That said, things languished below 2% for decades and now it has doubled in just over a year. With the state of Linux Gaming, I could see that happening again.
Also, if ChromeOS continues to converge, you could consider it a Linux distro at some point and it also has about 4% share.
Linux could exceed 10% share this year and be a clear second after Windows.
That leaves me wondering, what percentage do we have to hit before it really is “The Year of the Linux Desktop”. I have never had to wonder that before ( I mean, it obviously was not 3% ). Having to ask is a milestone in itself.
I’ve never been a Linux guy but recently I’ve switched to Pop!OS on my laptop and bought a Steam Deck. Other than a few teething issues with the laptop I’ve had a great experience and I wouldn’t consider myself ridiculously tech savvy. I’d absolutely consider switching my gaming PC over but my worry is loss of performance and being unable to use my game pass games. I’d be super happy if I could switch my PC over in the next couple of years.
Game pass is the one problem with no great solution in sight… But not great doesn’t mean none. If you have an Xbox you can play them on the pc streamed over your Lan, and you can also stream games directly from the web as well.
Again, not great solutions, but it is unlikely we will see Xbox game pass running on Linux. I think MS will do anything and everything to prevent that.
Then there’s the not-solution of running a windows vm. You aren’t ditching windows with that entirely and, at least from what I understand, you’ll need a second graphics card to dedicate to the vm to get “bare metal” performance.
I wouldn’t say ChromeOS can be clarified as Linux for the sake of this number. While it of course is bases on the kernel, it still is in the hands of one company and definitely not free software. While we may talk about ChromiumOS, I would differentiate here for the sake of control over your OS.
I think you raise an interesting point. I haven’t considered Red Hat Linux, but according to my definition this shouldn’t be Linux then…
I still don’t think I feel fully comfortable calling it Linux, because a lot of stuff is watered down. Years ago I used Cloudready, and even though it was based on ChromeOS it used Flathub. I think for me that made a huge difference, because then I could install Steam, LibreOffice, Zoom and Firefox on my ChromiumOS laptop, without having to go through a Linux emulator. I still want to knoe why Google didn’t use this functionality in mainstream ChromeOS.
In the current version of ChromeOS, as far as I know, either you sideload Linux or Google completely controls all app stores. For me that is a fundamental conflict with the promise of freedom and user control that Linux gives - with a simple sudo you can be lord of the world. I think your comment made me realize that that ChromeOS cannot be called not Linux, because it clearly has similarities. But Red Hat doesn’t control your way of getting new apps. For me that is a major difference. Ultimately one could raise a point that MacOS is also Linux, because it uses Darwin - and so I think we need to use different definitions than just a pure “we share same technical basis”.
I think you have raised an excellent point, which also led me to reconsider my thoughts. Truly, when you argue with my definition, a Fedora workstation in an enterprise where an end user cannot install apps shouldn’t be considered Linux, because the end user isn’t able to install apps on it. A few of the points you raised (e.g. LXD) I haven’t even known existed. But I e.g. use Fedora Silverblue, and with Toolbox you can emulate a Ubuntu distro. Should then Silverblue be not considered a Linux distro because it doesn’t offer installing native packages by itself? That would be a risky argument to make.
So in the end, I thank you for the points you raised. You have led me to reconsider the topic. I especially didn’t knew that Crostini was based on a Linux stack, I always thought that it was a side-loaded emulator which “replaced” ChromeOS - which even isn’t logical, as I now see. So thank you, I learned something new from today and will pay more attention to see ChromeOS not as something distinct from Linux, but just as a distro with a “Google-y touch” on it. Especially now with ChromeFlex, where you can install it on every PC with a processor => toaster, it has truly become a Linux distro.
year of the linux desktop is based on how many third party apps are there, not how many people use it imo. they correlate and impact one another but arent the same
Adobe looks at Linux market share and thinks, “Hmm, we could make some money from this,” and ports Photoshop, After Effects, and inDesign to Linux
Or:
Adobe looks at ChromeOS and thinks, “Hmm, we could make some money from this,” and ports all their programs to the web except After Effects because that involves massively extending web protocols again to support all the codecs and improving performance.
I am not saying “This is the Year of the Linux Desktop”. That said, things languished below 2% for decades and now it has doubled in just over a year. With the state of Linux Gaming, I could see that happening again.
Also, if ChromeOS continues to converge, you could consider it a Linux distro at some point and it also has about 4% share.
Linux could exceed 10% share this year and be a clear second after Windows.
That leaves me wondering, what percentage do we have to hit before it really is “The Year of the Linux Desktop”. I have never had to wonder that before ( I mean, it obviously was not 3% ). Having to ask is a milestone in itself.
I’ve never been a Linux guy but recently I’ve switched to Pop!OS on my laptop and bought a Steam Deck. Other than a few teething issues with the laptop I’ve had a great experience and I wouldn’t consider myself ridiculously tech savvy. I’d absolutely consider switching my gaming PC over but my worry is loss of performance and being unable to use my game pass games. I’d be super happy if I could switch my PC over in the next couple of years.
Game pass is the one problem with no great solution in sight… But not great doesn’t mean none. If you have an Xbox you can play them on the pc streamed over your Lan, and you can also stream games directly from the web as well.
Again, not great solutions, but it is unlikely we will see Xbox game pass running on Linux. I think MS will do anything and everything to prevent that.
Then there’s the not-solution of running a windows vm. You aren’t ditching windows with that entirely and, at least from what I understand, you’ll need a second graphics card to dedicate to the vm to get “bare metal” performance.
Just finish out the gaming PCs life and evaluate a Linux one for the next buy.
I wouldn’t say ChromeOS can be clarified as Linux for the sake of this number. While it of course is bases on the kernel, it still is in the hands of one company and definitely not free software. While we may talk about ChromiumOS, I would differentiate here for the sake of control over your OS.
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I think you raise an interesting point. I haven’t considered Red Hat Linux, but according to my definition this shouldn’t be Linux then… I still don’t think I feel fully comfortable calling it Linux, because a lot of stuff is watered down. Years ago I used Cloudready, and even though it was based on ChromeOS it used Flathub. I think for me that made a huge difference, because then I could install Steam, LibreOffice, Zoom and Firefox on my ChromiumOS laptop, without having to go through a Linux emulator. I still want to knoe why Google didn’t use this functionality in mainstream ChromeOS.
In the current version of ChromeOS, as far as I know, either you sideload Linux or Google completely controls all app stores. For me that is a fundamental conflict with the promise of freedom and user control that Linux gives - with a simple sudo you can be lord of the world. I think your comment made me realize that that ChromeOS cannot be called not Linux, because it clearly has similarities. But Red Hat doesn’t control your way of getting new apps. For me that is a major difference. Ultimately one could raise a point that MacOS is also Linux, because it uses Darwin - and so I think we need to use different definitions than just a pure “we share same technical basis”.
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I think you have raised an excellent point, which also led me to reconsider my thoughts. Truly, when you argue with my definition, a Fedora workstation in an enterprise where an end user cannot install apps shouldn’t be considered Linux, because the end user isn’t able to install apps on it. A few of the points you raised (e.g. LXD) I haven’t even known existed. But I e.g. use Fedora Silverblue, and with Toolbox you can emulate a Ubuntu distro. Should then Silverblue be not considered a Linux distro because it doesn’t offer installing native packages by itself? That would be a risky argument to make. So in the end, I thank you for the points you raised. You have led me to reconsider the topic. I especially didn’t knew that Crostini was based on a Linux stack, I always thought that it was a side-loaded emulator which “replaced” ChromeOS - which even isn’t logical, as I now see. So thank you, I learned something new from today and will pay more attention to see ChromeOS not as something distinct from Linux, but just as a distro with a “Google-y touch” on it. Especially now with ChromeFlex, where you can install it on every PC with a processor => toaster, it has truly become a Linux distro.
year of the linux desktop is based on how many third party apps are there, not how many people use it imo. they correlate and impact one another but arent the same
The equation for YotLD is simple for me:
Or:
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So you’d think, but why else would Adobe bother developing a web version of Photoshop? Good to know, though.
Obviously it defeats piracy, but that argument doesn’t make sense if Adobe is still shipping a native version of Photoshop.