Though even outside of that you'd be surprised where people have unknowingly used Linux. ATMs, Point-Of-Sale, Infotainment (Planes/Cars), public transit, arcades, etc. I'd estimate that a majority of people have had some interaction with a Linux-based system.
> I will give $1000 to anyone who is willing to give their parent who doesn't know jack about computers Linux and tell them "figure it out." None of them will be able to do it.
One of my grandparents runs Ubuntu and they're able to handle their email and documents just fine. Arguably better than the others who run macOS/Windows. You can find plenty of similar anecdotes online; if all you need is a browser and possibly basic word processing it's not all that different.
This is what I call the "Granma case". Considering the uses case is very well defined and the possibility of using exotic hardware and services and basically never needing to install any software; this is the situation where linux shines the brightest. My mom has being using linux having 0 idea what it was and needed 0 assistance to browse the web, access social networks, see photographs and videos and listen to music. That's all she does and any modern linux is much better than windows for this specific use case. No need to care about anti-virus, degrading performance, malware, advertisements... it is perfect for that.
Also things don't randomly move around so much between upgrades like they do on commercial OS's.
Android. I'd say a huge percentage of computing device users have Linux in their pocket and quite literally touch linux on regular basis.
> I will give $1000 to anyone who is willing to give their parent who doesn't know jack about computers Linux and tell them "figure it out." None of them will be able to do it.
I've done this, 10 years ago with my aging Mom and Dad and it worked well. Stock Kubuntu works closely enough to Windows, Chrome and Firefox are identical, the built in photo manager and video players just worked, and it put an end to malware and viruses. Please donate the $1000 to a local food bank, please. I do not what the check.
Two weeks ago, my son and I re-purposed a three year old cryptocoin mining desktop into a gaming machine. We loaded it up with Kubuntu and Steam and ... well, I thought I'd have to install Windows. No problems. Proton lived up to the hype.
I'm not part of the group that downvoted you, but why would the only people touching Linux be CS majors? I'm not a CS major and I think most people I know that voluntarily use Linux on a daily basis isn't neither.
As someone who taught in an accounting school where awareness of Linux was higher than you state, I can tell you this is false.
Give it up already, face the fact that Linux is more popular and well-known than you want it to be, for whichever reason.
Android is a Linux distribution it is the #1 phone OS (73% market share this year). ChromeOS is a Linux distribution and is the leading OS by market share in K-12 schools. Both are cheap and easy. In ChromeOS's case, they are easier for both administrators to manage and users. I'm also sure the students using Chromebooks have not completed their CS degrees yet, but one can hope.
Linux community likes to pat themselves on the back thanks to Android and ChromeOS using the Linux kernel, yet they are oblivious to the fact that Linux syscalls aren't part of the official stable API, only certain ChromeOS models do run Linux (a yet another guest OS, WSL style), and then what GNU/Linux gets are Electron apps.
I'm not sure you could pull any random Linux user and have them truly understand Excel either.
As a Linux user who did not major in business, I bet your odds with Linux users would be markedly worse than with business majors on this one, hahaha
people mentioning android have forgotten that android hides many parts of linux. and manufacturers make sure your device hardware works well with the operating system.
other have mentioned relatives who are using linux on desktop. that they are doing limited activities such as browsing and emails. that's fair but the story of how they discovered linux would be the most interesting one.
which brings me to op's cs majors point. so many things have changed that we should not dismiss the claim but think about it.
do happenstances of the past still present themselves to people today. i discovered linux through a pc magazine back in the late 90s. pc magazines back then offered young people like myself at the time a way to try new things on the computer. and i did try everything.
what is the equivalent of that nowadays?
My father is tech illiterate enough that he manually searches and navigates to the unemployment website each week rather than figure out bookmarks.
He's been on an Ubuntu laptop a friend gave him since late last year. I kept expecting to have to walk him through it, but it hasn't happened yet.
How about we show some compassion and take time to help people around things, especially when they are people we care about and things we care about as well?
the NT native kernel API is also undocumented
Also, contrary to Windows, since Android 7, applications that link to undocumented APIs get terminated as security measure.
Ask the termux guys how much fun they are having by refusing to acknowledge the fact that they have to use JNI and not Linux syscalls for their stuff.
"undocumented" has nothing to do with it
there is a sandbox, syscalls are checked by seccomp and those not explicitly permitted will result in termination of the application
it doesn't care where the syscall comes from, be that libc, golang style, or calling svc #0 yourself
additionally: the kernel is open source... there are no "undocumented" syscalls
this also has nothing to do with the original point
Something that termux guys are having some issues to swallow, regarless of Linux being the kernel, it is not allowed to do what they want, wrapping Java APIs via JNI is the only allowed way.
Not even in the slightest. Linux marketshare is still insignificant to even Chromebooks. This is just the echo chamber that is HN that thinks Linux is bigger than it is. Remove all CS majors in the world and I'd wager the amount of people who've touched Linux is less than .01%
Edit: I love how HN downvotes because someone gives them a reality check on their beloved Linux. I will give $1000 to anyone who is willing to give their parent who doesn't know jack about computers Linux and tell them "figure it out." None of them will be able to do it.