The year of the Linux desktop didn't happen (unless you consider Android phones desktops), but Linux has been massively successful in other ways (servers, phones, embedded, IoT). If anything, the underlying OS matters less and less, since applications are steadily moving to the web (for better or worse).
Today, what operating system people choose to run on their desktop/laptop just isn't a terribly important question any longer in the scheme of things especially given that most live largely in their browser anyway.
You mean like ... in MS Edge?
Teams is better in its category at 16% but that's a case of Office 365 pulling in teams rather than the other way around. (The same way Google Workplace pulls in Meet.)
[1] https://mspoweruser.com/edge-november-2022-desktop-browser-m...
Teams is video conferencing software. It competes with Zoom, which is the category leader, Google Meet, Bluejeans, Webex, etc.
Software is packaged under APT, and whilst the package selection is markedly less than, say, Debian (roughly 70k distinct packages last I checked), there are now several thousand available packages, plus more available through Python, Ruby, Perl, and Node.js package managers (and probably others).
You're still subject to Android limitation:
- No general filesystem access outside Termux's and specifically-shared areas.
- Very limited file permissions options unless rooted.
- No privilege escalation unless you've rooted your device.
- Android's mysterious and quite frequently annoying app process management killing off sessions with no discernible rhyme or reason, let alone owner-based control.
But you'll get all the standard base shell utilities, scripting and programming environments, a selection of networking tools (which function again depends in part on whether your device is or isn't rooted), editors, and even a number of servers, though typically running on high-numbered (unprivileged) ports. There's also a slew of tools for interacting with Android itself, including clipboard, screen brightness, wifi, flashlight (if available), "toasts" (alerts/messages), and more.
Termux has long been the one Android app Which Does Not Precisely and Exactly Suck. It was the first app I found which made the OS vaguely useful to me rather than a captured walled-garden toy.
While desktop computing still has its value everything shifted and yeah fight from 1990s or 2000s does not matter anymore.
Of course this entire thing is inconsequential first world problem BS, but within that sphere the desktop Linux advocates certainly don’t deserve to take that W.
Maybe to clarify, by Linux I did not mean any people like "Linux advocates". What I wrote is about Linux as an idea of open kernel that won on its own.
At work it seems like developers don't care what the machine they are sitting at is as long as it has ssh and vscode with remote plugin and of course a browser.
Some domain specific tools don't work so well remotely and those people have whatever that software requires, sometimes as a VM but often on metal with a beefy workstation.
For generic office productivity I still see people using Microsoft.
Windows still rules the office, for now, but it's not gaining ground, and offices tend to move slowly, but steadily.
I create applications at work that run on Linux as well though most of those are bought as appliances. Some customers care that they run Linux but most don’t.
In fact, the environment I personally use to create applications is itself a commercial application running on Linux—-JetBrains Rider. I can answer for it at least why I do not use free alternatives and that is that I have more fun and get more done using Rider ( though truthfully I use the free ones too ).
I know a number of "normies" with no interest in computing that use Ubuntu because they trust it more than Microsoft. (Rightfully so)
Citation needed. Desperately.
I've been using Linux forever in one form or another. It was tough in the Windows XP days (which is the most superior Windows distro to this day), but after Windows 7 released Linux came into it's own. I've had no problems running it on all sorts of hardware and gaming on it has gotten better since proton.
People are just set in their ways. Mac-people will mock Linux because they're the kind of people that will pay $1500 over marginal cost for a few extra pixels and some more color depth. Windows people will mock Linux because...it's not Windows. M1 is not cool enough to justify the cost. Once Windows started calling home every time I click something on my desktop it became too much for me to bear.
The reason is as you stated. When grandma goes to buy a budget PC it comes loaded with Windows crap. Their market penetration is deep and their budget is nearly endless. Based on my experience with Windows 11 demos I think Windows 11 will finally push people to look elsewhere. Either Macs, or a out-of-the-box Linux system. Until Linux natively supports Excel, however, I don't think it'll ever reach widespread corporate adoption. Windows and OS X are both moron-friendly as you can tell by their userbase. That's important when you're trying to sell something. It'll always be "people who know" vs. "people who think they know".
The truth is, in the wider world, nobody cares about their operating system. They are all good enough and have been for a while. What matters is the same thing that has always mattered - applications.
but the community is allowed to be excited in growth, albeit small, right?
I have certainly heard it said that Linux as a desktop operating system is an utter mess or completely unusable.
> You ask a normie "what's your opinion of Windows 10?" and they'll have one, good or bad.
The "normies" I know do not have an opinion on Windows 10. Many do not even distinguish between Windows and Word. They have a computer, they know how to get some of their shit done with it. But they don't have a concept of "operating system", let alone an opinion on any one of them.
Some have an opinion on Android vs iPhone, but more often than not it's the quality of the camera they point to, rather than any feature of the operating system.
That said, I agree with your Interpretation of what "the year of Linux on the desktop" means and the fact that it hasn't happened.
I don't care if anyone else does or dosen't use it
Different people have different needs, for mine, Linux has made a better desktop than Windows or macOS for many years now.
True “normies”, my mom for instance or most of my wife's colleagues, have no idea on which version of Windows their computer is running, let alone have an opinion on the specific version they are using. They don't even know what an operating system is.
People who do know about the different versions of Windows aren't “normies”, they are people who are somewhat tech savy but not nerd enough to try Linux (which most of them have heard about somehow, often from their nerd friend) because it sounds scary and time consuming (installing an entire operating system, wiping your entire Windows including the drivers that comes pre-installed is rightfully scary for most people).
“Linux on the desktop” for the masses cannot exist until it ships with the computer you buy without knowing it. Like Chromebooks for instance.
The fact that the vast majority of consumers don't have any awareness at all that Linux is a simple, widely-available desktop is evidence of the opposite: that the public hasn't decided against Linux, and that the sky is the limit for growth.
i.e. If electric cars had 2% of the market, and 90% of people hadn't even heard of electric cars, the first approximation of the potential market for electric cars as they are is 20%. You'd refine that based on comparing characteristics of the 10% who had heard of them to the 90% who hadn't, but 20% is good enough for a napkin.
With 1) the slow decline in quality and growth of data mining and ads in Windows and MacOS, 2) the ending of Moore's Law, meaning that the development of at least single-threaded software is slower than it used to be, allowing FOSS to catch up where it is behind, 3) greater compatibility and shared software than ever between Windows, MacOS, and Linux through various subsystems, VMs and containers, and 4) the movement of a lot of software to the web, I believe that desktop Linux could take over at any time (or never.)
Windows could just pull another Vista at the same time Apple disables some functionality as a business strategy. Or they could both get cancelled due to major personalities associated with the brands also being associated with politics and the media; Bill Gates obviously, but Jobs' widow owns the Atlantic. Both, neither, or anything else could happen while the Linux desktop was in really good shape and compatible with most of the software that people use.
Chromebooks are at around 10-20% of laptop sales, running Android (based on Linux)
The year of the linux desktop is the year when the only ones left using desktops are linux nerds. The only desktop in my house has run Slackware for years, because the wife and kid have never had a desktop.
The real battle these days is BSD vs Linux, aka iOS vs Android. Linux is winning globally, but the domestic kids are still huge on their Fischer Price phones.
Are you claiming that W10 autoupgrades to W11, if you have automatic OS updates enabled? Doesn't seem right to me.
I have Windows 10 with automatic updates enabled, and it hasn't tried installing Windows 11 even once. There is an option for manually triggering the upgrade to W11 in update settings, but I haven't clicked it.
... they'll tell you that they really like their now iPhone.
Most normal people don't know what Windows is. Maybe they'll find the sticker on their Laptop, but that's about it.
But what everyone knows from work is Word and Excel. And as long as they don't work well on a Linux desktop, Linux feels "broken" to them. Similarly, A LOT of people are stuck having to handle PSD and AI files. Good luck getting the Adobe suite running on Linux. But as long as all of their life's creative work is being held hostile in Adobe-proprietary file formats, they surely won't jump ship.
Does anybody say this? I've always interpreted the phrase "year of Linux on the desktop" to mean a year when people who wouldn't list "computers" among their personal interests were noticeably using it on their desktops. That still hasn't happened. There are a lot of "year of the -" things I've seen come, when things that were used by professionals and nerds entered common usage and parlance, like burning a CD or installing Firefox (granted those have come and now gone).
You ask a normie "what's your opinion of Windows 10?" and they'll have one, good or bad. You ask a normie what their opinion of Linux is and most of them won't even know the word, let alone have one. That's why it isn't and may never be "the year of Linux on the desktop".