What stung before was that people were forced to use Windows because of lock-ins, software compatibility, etc. That doesn’t really exist any more. If there is one good thing about web apps, it’s that browsers are now the application run time and browsers are more cross platform than any software libraries that have come before it.
The only area I wish had a better story was the enterprise desktop space (like Windows domains or jamf on macOS) but currently I can’t justify allowing my team to run Linux because having its hard enough for small companies to manage a mixture of macOS and Windows fleets without adding a 3rd platform into the mix.
The danger that the history will repeat for browsers instead of OSs is real. The less market share for browsers other than Google Chrome or Chrome-based ones, the more likely it is, that we will be forced to use those because of incompatible web applications.
E.g. at work, using a Linux Computer, I switched to Chrome for Teams and Outlook, because of compatibility issues.
Source: https://techblog.willshouse.com/2012/01/03/most-common-user-...
What? This is very real and a key driver not to use Linux or Mac for millions of users. As soon as even a little performance is required webapps just can't compare. Look at anything graphics related especially 3d, CAD or video. You might be able to build shitty infographics for Instagram on Canva but real work still requires access to compute at the edge and most software providers in those spaces target Microsoft only.
I'd take every day a native app running locally over a web app. And I am a web developer.
Honestly, VSC is pretty decent due to all of the engineering MS put into it. Brackets and Atom both were way slower and had noticeable input lag, at least for me.
Other people have also looked into things like that: https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/
Personally, something like Notepad++ or Lazarus always felt the fastest to me.
Software like JetBrains IDEs, their Fleet editor, Visual Studio and even Visual Studio code all had noticeable hiccups but always seemed "fast enough". Even when the typing itself was okay, there'd be stuff like autocomplete delays/stuttering and refactoring slowdown, but nothing too annoying.
In contrast, Brackets, Atom, working through SSH, remote sessions through RDP/VNC or any device that lagged due to being underpowered always was annoying slow and disruptive.
Also, it runs on a $4 a month namecheap server.
Why is so fast? Because I came from the land of slow crms, and performance was my #1 goal. Instead of making it faster to develope, I made it faster for the end user.
Is that a worthwhile business goal? I don't know. But I know it's fast.
I propose that all the apps you use that you find good you assume are native, but possibly some of those are not.
You are still paying performance for using web apps, and even though your fingers don’t feel it as badly, your battery sure does.
This makes no sense. If webapps run without a loss in performance, then you don't need increased hardware performance in order to see the difference.
> [...] compared to native apps.
This simply isn't true. Run a well-designed webapp and a well-designed native app on the same platform. You'll see a difference in performance.
> you see more and more SPAs wrapped in a hybrid app still maintaining a 'native'look.
I'm still waiting to see even one example of this.
> Costs of developing webapps is dramatically lower.
True. But it comes at a cost to quality.
That's a funny conclusion to make. In the business world that still exists and even my kids are forced into the Microsoft eco-system by their school because the software they insist you run (for which perfectly good web alternatives exist) only runs on windows.
Everything you want to install has to be approved by Microsoft
Enterprises are moving to Workspace from 365. I hope they drive each other's prices to the bottom. :)
While I agree, it has to start somewhere. As a customer of both, I appreciate the competition from 1-2% per year[0] growth.
[0]https://blogs.gartner.com/craig-roth/2022/08/02/market-share...
We tried blowing Office 2013 away on everyone's machines after being told most users didn't think they needed it. Now, a few months later 90% of our users have asked for a 365 license.
What typically happens from what I can tell is that most businesses just end up having a mix of both 365 and Workspace.
Excel specifically seems to have the most attachment among our users.
I'm in that boat, but I don't especially mind. I run Windows because it allows me to run Fusion 360, but Windows Subsystem for Linux gives me a full Linux dev environment. A younger me would have got angry about it, but present me accepts that platform lock-in effects are very strong; fortunately for Linux, it dominates every new category of platform. I sincerely doubt that anyone will ever develop a new proprietary OS from scratch, because the business case for putting a pretty UI on Linux is overwhelming.
I'm not even necessarily blaming this on the performance difference, although that is a pertinent topic, but just the mental structure of something I'm using living in a browser tab rather than actually running on the computer.
For example WebGL 2.0 (2009 hardware), WebGPU (2015 hardware), any GPU capabilities after 2015? You ain't going to get them.
But the student has no choice
I don't think a win for Chromebooks counts as a win for Linux, except in maybe the most narrowly technical sense.
Its honestly quite interesting seeing new users from that perspective.
So in practice, no, it's not very useful. Most students are still forced to use a web browser and nothing more, else they run the risk of getting in trouble for hacking their Chromebook.
Tangent: That being said, it's hilarious how much worse the schools are at locking down Windows computers. As far as I can tell, they just bought a few commercial solutions, set them up on the Chromebooks, and paid no attention to the Windows computers. The BIOS isn't even locked. They're only restricted at the network level.
A loss for the school, but definitely a win for our education
I'm forced to use it at work. :(
One important reality, though, is that "forced" is a sticky word here. Anyone sufficiently anti-FAANG and tech-savvy enough will find a workaround, so the constraints are far less than most dominant forces across the lens of history.
But yes, I'm always surprised how many people buy things introduced to them in ads.
No they don't. There aren't any schools nearby that do not force Windows on the students and I can have my whole house on Linux it doesn't matter: if you want to participate in highschool around here then Windows it is. My personal views of MS, their crimes past and present are worth absolutely nothing. I would not be surprised if you dig deep enough that you'll find some level of corruption but even that doesn't help me, it would just lead to a long and drawn out court case the outcome of which will likely be resolved long after my kids are out of school.
So, I have no choice other than to take my kids out of school and that too - rightly so - isn't an option.
It's more than a little bit ridiculous too because there isn't anything in the highschool curriculum that per-se would require access to a windows computer. But they make it so that it just simply doesn't work otherwise, starting from windows native applications for the agenda and messaging system and ending with sending documents in proprietary formats.
But the lack of driver support still does. Linux on a modern laptop is just full of headaches. I mean, https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryzen7-7840u this is typical: GNOME doesn't work, graphical glitches... In my own experience, operating MFC devices over several years is a nightmare, Bluetooth is problematic as well, some proprietary VPNs do not have Linux clients which might not be Linux's fault but if I can't log in I can't work.
Life is too short for this, sorry. Windows + WSL is the way. The right tool for the right job, Windows for drivers, WSL for, well, everything else.
So, they took a cutting edge Windows PC, slapped Linux on it, and it didn't work well.
How well did OSX do when they tried it? Clearly, OSX isn't ready for the desktop! No wonder nobody runs it!
Modern computers are complex enough that they can work well with Windows, OSX, or Linux, but they don't work well with more than one of them (unless the designers work really hard). See, for example, how to reboot: https://mjg59.livejournal.com/137313.html
If you want to run Linux on a computer, buy it preinstalled, with support. Anything else is an exercise in chasing down small glitches, as you describe. (This happens for Windows too! The difference is that the laptop vendor has a team of people (the system integration team) to fix the issues, either by modifying drivers, modifying the firmware, or having the ODM change the hardware. If you slap Linux on some random bit of Windows kit, you get to be the system integration team, but with only one of three avenues open to you to fix the glitches. And that only halfway, since you cant get the OEM or ODM to give you the time of day. And that's assuming you're a proficient kernel hacker.)
Slapping Linux on a Windows box is a mug's game. The only way to win is not to play.
It's about the hardware's support of the OS (see the firmware discussion above).
It's also about your support experience as a customer (do you have to reinstall Windows before the OEM will give you the time of day, let alone fix the hardware glitch you're hitting)
Many printers, especially the MFC ones, support Linux. For instance, Brother has drivers: https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/52188/~...
WRT corporations, they can do what they like with their own hardware and software. And yes, a lot are short-sighted. Most won't be using Mac any time soon, because they've locked themselves in quite effectively.
it's possible of course, but invariably breaks, especially if you need to install any single third party thing.
i hate flatpak etc but it really makes u think about why people are putting effort into fat packages for desktop stuff
That was the case in 1999 too. The Linux on the Desktop dream wasn't about removing choice, but about MORE people making the choice to run Linux.
Also, market share translates to support, resources available, people and companies working there, drivers, and so on. Personal choice to use X doesn't magically offer those.
But I can't use the OS I like. I can't go in a store, pick a laptop I like, and get it with an OS I like. I can get it with an OS I don't like; and gamble that I can install on it an OS that I do like. It would have been very different if Linux market share on the desktop were in double digits.
That's a strange point to make. The whole point of this users changing their minds, and deciding that they prefer Linux.
> I can’t justify allowing my team to run Linux
So it's not about choice then?
And let's not even get started about work.
And high quality image editing is possible, though it's probably done differently from whatever you're used to. There are plenty of graphic artists making their work on Linux and bragging about it.
So "doesn't even remotely come close" is either a lie or a display of your ignorance.
I use Linux because it works for me and makes my life easier, is free/open and because I don't have to deal with Windows.
But in the most important ways - software availability and reliability - it is much worse.
But lutris as it stands now breaks everything almost every time I use it. I had steam unlaunchable for over a week because of something lutris was doing implicitly. Now running steam directly off the CLI seems to be working for 90% of the games I play (which isn't a very long list).
Only thing I doubt I will be able to figure out is stuff like fortnite or anything that uses easy-anti-cheat (since their devs give a fuck about linux and effectively believe we are all hackers trying to ruin their game).
That's all I got, don't bother with Lutris unless you have an insane amount of time to debug which component is missing.
"Windowsification" is a admittedly vague concept, but tends to cover software that is gratuitously different, not a team player in the bazaar, prone to making land grabs through "embrace and extend", and reluctant to offer configuration options that conflict with its "opinionated" stances.
As an aside, I'm really sick of the systemd / "random pile of shell scripts" false dichotomy. It's trivial to turn a python script into a system service with runit, too. Simple, stable, and focused.
All the UX work is being done in the steam client itself and is not exclusive to the Steam Deck. In fact, the SteamOS ui is now available 1:1 in the good old PC Steam client, replacing the old Big Picture mode.
The only thing that doesn’t comes directly with Steam is Gamescope (but you can install it yourself easily).
Other than that, the SteamOS is just an Arch Linux with Steam installed, KDE and a Steam wallpaper.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/discussion...
I'm trying really hard to come up with a scenario where optimizing the desktop experience for the average user is a bad thing.
For example, what keeps me on Windows (and WSL2) at the moment is that the freesync/variable refresh rate technology doesn't always behave as you would expect it to be, resulting in games that stutter, frame dip and eat inputs. Gnome devs have a branch pending final tests for vrr for months. KDE on Wayland is the best for what I'm asking atm but even that has its problems during gameplay.
And let's not forget the pains Nvidia's drivers cause compared to AMD on Linux for desktop. I built my desktop using AMD GPU and CPU specifically for Linux to play nice, and yet it doesn't for the only 2 games I play during my downtime. It's just sad.
Again, maybe I'm a sore loser, but it definitely feels like a lot of software is becoming increasingly hostile to me, personally because it's being optimized for a presumed average user. I have no beef with this average user and it's globally a totally correct optimization to make stuff work for them as well as possible, but it means that software makes tradeoffs that are inconvenient for me personally.
The most common use case is streamlined by removing options that clutter up the settings menu or banishing the buttons I press a lot into some tertiary menu, or niche features I rely on become unsupported and then get removed (of course with forced auto-updates, because the average user experience is improved by them) to free up developer bandwidth for the core features. And then I end up using a different off-brand window manager with the serial numbers filed off that barely works in general, but works for my specific 'workflow" exactly like I want it.
Of course, at the same time I also benefit from general improvements targeting the average user. It's only about the tradeoffs.
It's a bad thing if you're not an average user, because software aimed at the "average user" tends to be a pain in the butt for the non-average user. I would point to Windows, the entire web browser space, etc., as examples of this.
And it's not just about the average user. It's also about the compromises needed to make a product suitable for mass production. I already see the effects of that on Linux, in the form of things like systemd, snaps, flatpack, etc.
They currently have around 20% market share (as Internet servers - much higher inside business LANs), which is a very nice chunk. And I'm sure encourages them to keep working on it.
Frankly the tooling for MS server keeps it in the hunt - they really understand the concept of making things easier to use.
Extremely big doubts about this. How would anyone even know? All the hyperscale datacenters built by FAANG must be 99.9% Linux, and those DCs alone would probably be enough to make 20% impossible to hit for windows.
(Scroll down to servers)
Incidentally this is public facing Internet servers. The % -inside- enterprises us much much higher.
Tools like Active Directory allow you to scale enterprise operations, which is important for companies that have hundreds-of-thousands of desktops etc.
In any event your estimate of 99.9% is unlikely. AWS offers Windows based EC2 instances, and one presumes they're not doing that for 0.01% of the market. Azure will likely have an even higher %.
From the data though, not just guessing, I'd say it's about 20% overall.
I can believe private enterprise usage is higher, but I imagine FAANG and similar companies also have quite a lot non public Linux servers. Not trying to rebut your overall point, but I'm not sure the total non public % is much different.
We know that all the top 25 websites are 100% Linux and represent a lot of servers each.
Also a whole lot of that cited report seems to be misidentified. The top Windows site other than Microsoft properties listed is nih.gov, which looks like Drupal on Linux behind Akamai GHost -- all Linux.
I do accept that Windows is probably about 20-25% of server instances and slowly contracting. But public facing webservers and the infrastructure that directly supports them? Nothing close to this.
What stings me a bit is that Microsoft is the dominant player on the desktop and then they are so little about making the making it a good and consistent experience. Windows 95 was never amazing, but they put the work in and gave us the impression that they at least tried. Now it's 2023 and my desktop has ads, tracking and UI elements that are 30 years old, because they could never be arsed to update them.
No, not really.
You can't make things smooth and flexible at the same time, it takes too much effort. You can't support a ton of varied hardware and make everything work smoothly in every case; it again would take non-viable amounts of work.
You can have a pretty smooth desktop Linux experience if you pick a large mainstream distro, pick reliable, well-supported mainstream hardware, and pick a polished desktop environment such as KDE or that Gnome variant of Pop OS.
But if you want to tweak things, you've got to tweak things.
It feels a little bonkers that in 2023, Flatpak or something like it isn’t the default way software is installed. That calculator you just installed should not have access to your camera or microphone or file system. That weather app may need your location, but you should be able to grant access to sensitive resources always, never, or only after asking.
Or maybe Fuchsia, when it's ready for desktop.
Depending on how you define "desktop" i would argue that Linux has a very big presence on the desktop. Considering the "new desktop" is a smartphone, and Android is based on Linux, that alone would account for a very large desktop presence.
Unfortunately there is no real “transmission” between the two, pretty much only the kernel is shared, absolutely nothing in userspace. Hell, it is ridiculously difficult to even run/emulate android on a normal linux distro.
Which is a shame, because while android’s model is far from perfect, it is definitely eons ahead of the traditional linux userspace, especially on the security front.
Despite the lack of any exponential moonshots in marketshare, compatibility layers like Wine and Wine derivatives, as well as platform agnostic package management tools, have made Linux desktops much more pleasant to use compared to just 4-5 years ago. This has allowed me to almost completely de-Windows my computer usage without abandoning Windows-only applications.
I do try to shill Linux to friends from time to time as a casual tease. Haven't had much success in that regard but it's not a concrete goal of mine. Despite having all gone to the same STEM program that required Linux environments for most courses, I'm the only one using it as a daily driver outside of work among the 15-20 people I still regularly contact.
Not even a slight itch.
What do I care how many people use the thing I do? The only thing that matters to me is how good the toys I get to use are.
> See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling.
A lot more people eat fast food that gourmet food. I wonder if the people who can afford gourmet food feel like weaklings because of that. My guess is: No they don't.
Perception matters :)
There is a lot we can learn from a creature whose life purpose is eating shit all day, every day.
No. In fact, as a Linux user, I'm happy that Linux doesn't have a major share of the desktop. If it did, then I think it would have a terrible (to me) effect on the direction of Linux development, because it would be more tempting to aim for the most common denominator, and we already have good options for the most common denominator.
NOO IT DOESN'T!!
Love the can of worms you opened with that comment. It does sting, because the desktop market is optimized for proprietary software. Open source, even if superior, is always behind on a hill that is upwards both ways. Proprietary firmware, drivers, patents, vendor lock-in, etc., have become very high walls.
For the average person, they don't care what a window manager is or pulse/alsa/jack or whatever. They just want a singular consistent experience that "just works", whatever software they install, whatever hardware they plug in. And the Linux community is obsessed with the complete opposite of this.
Apparently a lot of the systemd pushback was because it was making everything "too similar and compatible with each other". Now isn't that just laughable; that's what most people want!
You can conquer the world, dominate every space and yet there's thus little voice inside saying "but you're not good enough. See over there, in that one space, you're a weakling. "
Welcome to the human condition.