Microsoft knows this, and they will do everything they can to prevent OEMs from shipping anything other than Windows. Apple of course, forget it. Their profit comes from leeching off FOSS and selling it, they would never allow distribution of it directly.
You're right and they effectively licensed XP to Asus for free for use on the Eee PC (which originally only shipped with Linux) when it was shaping up to be a hit.
This is a worthwhile watch if you're interested in this corner of computing history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVno8dlM3E
It was at the time mobiles were picking up momentum, and just before tablets arrived on the scene (the ipad launched 2010, the tablet focused Android 3 came out in 2011), and a lot of people migrated away from windows for their personal computing needs. There's also been MS's ultimately failed efforts for their own mobile platform. Besides the established huge momentum of gaming and professional/office usage it's difficult to see why consumers would move to windows, or what MS offers to prevent the momentum slowing and linux slowly chipping away at it.
Either way: people wanted what they knew, which was Windows, and they paid more for it. I wrote about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41431733
This is from a random contemporaneous TechCrunch article about the 2nd/3rd? gen offerings:
Eee PC 901 (Linux or Windows): $599 Eee PC 1000 (Linux or Windows): $699
https://techcrunch.com/2008/06/13/new-eee-pc-models-get-us-p...
I assume the Atom is faster(?) The XP machine felt slower though.
If you need a PC in 2025, you're probably a fair bit more knowledgeable than someone buying one in 2005. You're also almost certainly buying one online, possibly even directly from the manufacturer or builder, which means the seller can simply give you options and doesn't have to worry about competing for store shelf space.
Which, if you use Android, is ...Linux...
iOS is really just repackaged UINX.
NextStep was a shell over FreeBSD. MacOS X was an evolution of NextStep.
Some time ago, I wrote a network driver for iOS, and used BSD sockets, accessed via standard C. I remember using the BSD manual, to figure out how to use them.
The NS calls behave the same now, as they did, back when OSX was new, and, at that time, MacOS was definitely UINX. iOS is a direct descendant of MacOS.
iOS is arguably a subset, but whether it's Unix-like or not is a philosophical question depending on how you define the minimal set of features that'd make it one. It's certainly not Unix-like from the end user perspective.
What I mean is that I would have picked Android as quite a good example of how the technicality of running the Linux kernel under the hood means very little in terms of users being empowered, or anything of the sort.
However, folks that want that freedom, are a pretty small segment of the population, heavily represented in this community. Apple is a 3 trillion-dollar company, because most folks aren't like HN members.
In WA, every school has Microsoft smart boards and laptops running windows. Kids grow up using it and when they buy their own computers they aren’t going to choose a small boutique builder running an unfamiliar OS they won’t know how to use right away.
Apple has a lock on a lot of EDU as well, and the iPhone is so ubiquitous it’s an easy sell to get folk using other products
Those systems look beautiful but it’s a minority of people that will make a large purchase on something like this.
Most of the EDU software is trash, the incentives are all aligned to spend billions on acquiring the contract and close to zero on execution and most of these kids are traumatized from sitting in a classroom with some clueless dope at the front yelling at them to IPad IPad IPad algebra
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/scr/laptops/app...
> until laptops sold at Walmart or Best Buy start coming with Linux pre-installed as an option
If you want to see this, make sure your browser agent is broadcasting Linux[0]. Make sure you're using Steam in Linux.
But right now Steam has Linux at <3%[1]. It is more than OSX, but not enough. I do think above 5% and it'll start to be taken seriously, and 10% we'll start seeing moves. Linux doesn't need 90% of the marketshare to dramatically change the world. 10% is more than enough. Even 20% would be momentous and force both Microsoft and Apple to change strategies. Don't feel like there's no hope. Just because it is an unrealistic expectation today doesn't mean it will be tomorrow. And your actions today change the odds of what happens tomorrow. So don't give up.
You don't have to change the world overnight. But you do need to make steps in the right direction, even if small, to make the world move.
[0] You can even do this while using Windows! Hell, you can use Chrome and tell people you're using Firefox on Linux if you believe in those things but just are unwilling to make the switch yourself. The signaling still does something (it is better than nothing).
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
I think the overwhelming majority of this is Steam Deck usage. While that's certainly a feather in the cap for Linux, I don't think really counts toward Linux momentum as we're using the term here. Nobody is going to start investing in polished desktop Linux software because there are a lot of Steam Deck buyers.
> I think the overwhelming majority of this is Steam Deck usage
MOST POPULAR PERCENTAGE CHANGE
------------------------------------------------------
Linux 2.27% -0.06%
------------------------------------------------------
"Arch Linux" 64 bit 0.21% -0.02%
Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit 0.14% +0.02%
Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit 0.10% 0.00%
Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS 64 bit 0.10% 0.00%
"Manjaro Linux" 64 bit 0.06% 0.00%
"EndeavourOS Linux" 64 bit 0.06% 0.00%
Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) 64 bit 0.05% 0.00%
But important to note, there's only a 0.05 difference between Arch and Mint. It's important to note because
1) Arch is incredibly popular and we can't guarantee all users in the Arch category are SteamOS users
2) Mint is currently the most popular distro[1]
> Nobody is going to start investing in polished desktop Linux software because there are a lot of Steam Deck buyers.
[0] We can determine it to be true or false.
To get kids using it needs to do lots of cool shit easily
Windows could play games easily when Linux could not even use a USB mouse
The time is right to make Linux do cool shit easily with local generative models that help iteratively create games
Replace all the desktop legacy with some blank canvas and local models that draw on the canvas. Ship some baked in models to generate shells of games to iterate from, boom.
This is exactly the fear of big SaaS and why VCs outside a key handful are done with it.
Apple Silicon is a glimpse of local compute future. Fanless laptops running models that generate entire coherent universes like Marvel and Star Wars. (Don’t need giant models just dense enough to get 80% and let users “zoom and enhance” with their own input)
Show that potential with local models on Linux and it’s over. Three options then; government demands hardware is locked down to preserve Hollywood/gaming/media, open compute wins, or both sides destroy the world over it.
In an interview with IGN during Covid lockdown Gabe Newell was describing generative AI as an existential threat to content creators. It could be temporary as the next gen grows up with a new normal and doesn’t obsess about a career in digital design or web dev, yt video production. It could end humanity as existential dread settles in for millions stuck in some narrative about their existence that no longer holds economic value.
Interesting times.
> The way to make Linux takeover is get kids using it
> Windows could play games easily when Linux could not even use a USB mouse
Games? I'll give you that. But honestly, Steam has really made that almost a non-issue. Good guy steam! (their work has affected more than SteamOS)
> Replace all the desktop legacy with some blank canvas and local models
Models as in... LLMs or ML models? This seems like a great way to break things. I'd really encourage you to get these things to try to do what you're saying they should do.
> Apple Silicon is
> Show that potential with local models on Linux and it’s over.
> In an interview with IGN during Covid lockdown
Not for online gaming.
Btw, for some reason I can't view that image. Tried in 3 browsers on my phone...
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam "SteamOS Holo" 64 bit 33.78% -0.70%
"Arch Linux" 64 bit 9.45% -0.23%
Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit 6.41% +0.15%
Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit 6.20% +0.89%
Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit 4.62% +0.23%
Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS 64 bit 4.44% +0.26%
"Manjaro Linux" 64 bit 2.61% -0.05%
"EndeavourOS Linux" 64 bit 2.46% +0.06%
Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) 64 bit 2.27% -0.08%
Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS 64 bit 2.23% +0.02%
Other 25.54% -0.53%
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=linuxOur job often involves breaking down big problems into many little problems. So it should be clear that making little steps makes progress towards solving the big problems. It can be easy to feel like that progress isn't happening and it can be frustrating that it isn't happening fast enough. But our experience should also tell us that it all seems to quickly come together towards the end. There was never a magic leap, it was all the small steps put together.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
I think it’s very promising, if you believe in the potential of Linux on the desktop, that gaming used to be the standard “Linux doesn’t do what I need, so I stay on Windows” argument. Thanks to a lot of investment and hard work, particularly by Valve and others contributing to software like Wine/Proton, that is no longer the case. Many games work fine on Linux today, even among the big names. Some even have native versions. It mostly seems to be “anti-cheat” measures that are statistically indistinguishable from malware that still cause trouble.
Another potential sticking point for adoption by home users today is that few, if any, of the big streaming services work well on Linux. This also seems to come down at least partly to DRM. A cynic might suggest that this is because Linux will give a more appropriate response if a copy protection system tries to do invasive things that it has no business doing on someone else’s computer. In any case, it’s another significant barrier, but if we could get to the point where you could at least watch HD content like users of other platforms when you’re paying the same subscription fees, it’s another barrier that could fall.
This latter example is, of course, more than a little ironic given the subject of today’s discussion. But then the behaviour that the DRM system is being subverted to protect against by Signal probably wouldn’t fly for more than five minutes on Linux in the first place, so I don’t think Linux not enabling intrusive/abusive DRM is really the problem here…
> It mostly seems to be “anti-cheat” measures that are statistically indistinguishable from malware that still cause trouble.
If year of Linux doesn't arrive by choice, authoritarianism will force the issue one way or another.
- the built in bluetooth and wifi can't be used at the same time; for a while we mitigated this with a USB wifi module, but that eventually broke and so now bluetooth is just disabled.
- it's hard to figure out what apps and app data are shared between users. AFAICT there's one Steam install my kids are sharing, but each one installs their own copy of a game, which is terrible for disk usage.
- a bunch of games don't work, especially from non-steam sources like Epic and Itch.io. I've heard about the Heroic Launcher, and I will try it at some point, but it's just... one more fiddly thing to have to mess with.
- several Minecraft launchers / mod-managers have been tried, but I can't seem to keep my Microsoft account logged in on there, so I eventually just put my password on a sticky note so they could re-auth it whenever needed (fortunately I don't use it for anything else).
- unattended-upgrades pulled a new kernel and the thing just panicked on startup until I went into the grub menu to get the previous one and reverted.
- until 25.04 the power management story was terrible, the machine would chew through the whole (newly replaced) battery in less than an hour.
As a competent nerd I've been ~fine with all this, but it's honestly right on the edge of acceptable. I expect a normal person would immediately give up in the face of most of these— either give up in terms of ditching the machine/OS or give up as in accepting a limitation like it just doesn't play that game or I just can't use my earbuds.
If I forgot my charging cable at home, I could do a full day at the office with music and internet on battery.
Or another factor is that I think often the "new" batteries for old devices are in fact themselves old and have just been sitting around on shelves for years. Obviously that doesn't wear them as hard as actual cycling, but it's not nothing, particularly if they're allowed to discharge down to empty.
Some moron at Microsoft decided that if your password is serving its purpose and people aren't able to get in but that there are a bunch of attempts that you should need to reset your password. Because of this, I have to reset my password. Every. Time. I. Want. To. Play.
But that means multiple 2FA codes to both my non-mirosoft account email and to my phone. All in all, it usually takes about 7 or 8 minutes each time I want to play, which is an ABSURD amount of friction for an account I don't want to be using to play the game anyway, given when I bought it it was a Mojang account without all the associated, creepy TOS changes.
Don't be afraid to look around for ways to play without a legitimate account if you've paid. If that's the better experience, it is what it is.
Pi hole is a good example. Do all websites (and other services) still work perfectly but without ads, or am I going to have to endure sighing and eyerolling everytime someone asks me why their site isn't loading (again)?
You know, when you search for a thing you want to buy and google shopping shows a list of common stores on top of the search results like a bunch of little cards? Yep. Clicking one there causes a failure because that link is a google ad link. Same thing if you tab into "Shopping". All links are broken.
Otherwise, it's been 4 years and no other complaints at all.
> Do all websites (and other services) still work perfectly
> but without ads,
On a phone it's not a huge deal as you can just momentarily switch to data, click through, and then switch back. But it's more annoying on a computer where you have to figure out where that link was going to go and then get there by an organic path.
Overall absolutely worth the slight pain though.
I had a faulty keyboard on a thinkpad that was causing a lot of seemingly unrelated problems, like freezes or suspend not working. Replacing the keyboard resolved everything.
Try to switch them to luanti!
The keyboard has already been replaced once, though at the time I just bought whatever was cheapest on eBay, assuming they were all the same, and I think I did get a bit burned with a crappy knockoff— the keys are weirdly clicky and several feel like they're about to pop off at any moment; I have the LiteOn keyboard standing by which I'd like to try out, as that's the one that comes recommended most often online.
You plugged a chinese knockoff… there, found your problem.
Unfortunately most hardware is not done in a way to work properly when there's a bad device connected to the same BUS.
Anyway, I'm not going to fight for this, I'm just saying my "Linux desktop for non-technical users" experience in 2023-2025 timeframe was such that I don't know that I would do it again, and certainly would be extremely hesitant to recommend it to a household where no one is standing by with the willingness and aptitude required to tackle a boot-to-grub situation.
But the Raspberry Pi 500 (keyboard model) is even better and (literally and figuratively) a cool design. You get 8GB RAM, boot from NVME, Debian with Wayland (labwc), and the R.Pi community.
Neither of those user groups are the problem. The problem is the majority of computer users that have real practical skill born from computer use at school, work, while gaming, doing art, etc. They want to do enough with their computer to run up against technical obstacles, but
a) don't have the significant amount of prerequisite knowledge we take for granted to generalize what they know to other operating systems
b) don't have the subject matter interest to inspire them to get that knowledge
and those two things mean
c) view any extra steps required to do something on Linux (e.g. use wine to run software they've been using for a decade) as a needless hassle that prevents them from doing what they really want to do, rather than a satisfying problem to solve because configuring the computer is part of the fun.
So if they hadn't already given up on Linux, they might ask one of the bazillion "Hey I'm a bit of a noob here, but..." questions on reddit or whatnot only to receive a barrage of conceited responses by zealots who make it very clear how put-out they are by their question-- which they didn't have to read, let alone answer-- and how rude it was for them to not read entry 427 on the FAQ which leads to a page of resources that might have addressed part of their problem. If nothing else has already discouraged them from continuing, that sure will.
Unless someone with those users' needs at the forefront of their design practice Bluesky's Linux (some like pop os are making a solid effort), it will never ever work as a general-purpose desktop OS.
> They want to do enough with their computer to run up against technical obstacles,
> use wine to run software they've been using for a decade
If you mean games, I think Steam has got most of that covered. Proton hides in the background for most people.
But these users also happily will install engines for game modding and other things. Give what I see these people doing, Wine seems like child's play.
> only to receive a barrage of conceited responses by zealots
I really do mean it, things have changed a lot in the last 10 years. I'm sorry for those experiences. I hated them when they happened to me and I step in when I see them happening. It's the only way we can make change. But what you describe does not seem to be the state of things I see today, but it does describe the state of things I saw (and experienced) in the past.
I've been using Linux for nearly 30 years-- professionally and as a desktop OS-- and am also a UI designer. I've even used everything from AIX to Solaris and even HP-UX on an old phone switch. What I'm saying is coming from the usability designer focus on the experience of new users and the problems they have.
>They will solve those problems the exact same way they solve them on Windows: Google, StackOverflow, forums, GPTs, or whatever. There's even an advantage in Linux as there's a large number of highly technical users already doing exactly the same thing and will share knowledge.
The difference is they don't generally have those problems on Windows or MacOS. How many windows users encounter serious problems... say... updating their video card drivers.
> Wine for what? Word? I think most people will use the browser.
Trivializing the needs of non-technical end users while also trivializing the difficulty of adopting new tech paradigms is really at the root of the problem in FOSS usability, in general. Lots of people use adobe products, video editing software, games, random utilities for hardware peripherals, CAD software, industry-specific or worplace-specific programs... there are lots of things that users who sit between software developers and users that would be fine with a chromebook.
> d argue that the suggested distros were part of this response. The attitude you see on EndeavourOS, PopOS, or Ubuntu forums are very different.
For users that don't want to 'use a computer,' but want the computer to solve whatever problem they're having in the way they're used to solving it, that's already a nonstarter. I'd wager that no more than 10% of computer users have seriously researched a technical problem trying to troubleshoot it. I'd wager about 20% of that already small crowd has consulted formal software documentation. It's just not a natural process for most computer users. It would be great if people were more interested enough in how computers work, even superficially, but many are not. It's just the way it is. People don't need encouragement to try linux-- they need a fundamental shift if the way they approach computer usage-- as a complex tool rather than a flexible appliance. There's a gulf of requirements that aren't being met to bridge that gap for all but the lowest-level users.
Today's Linux support forums are nothing like this. You only get an angry response when you start out by whining about how Linux "can't" (doesn't, with your current understanding) do what you want, or doesn't behave exactly like what you're familiar with. You might get asked to pay attention to the forum rules and guidelines banner that tells you to use some inxi invocation or whatever to get your system info - and that will link to a fully detailed guide on how to do it, as well as how to format your post properly.
If anything, the Mint forums for example are too eager to assume you're a noob, and will suggest awkward foolproof approaches to everything that don't respect what you're trying to accomplish if it's a bit advanced.
Okay, the Arch forums will respond to you with just a link to the Wiki if you're asking something that's well covered in the wiki. That's supposed to be a hint to read one specific wiki page (and they told you which one); they won't waste breath on "how put-out they are by your question" because a) they aren't, and b) typing more words is the thing that would make them put out. The point is that if you can't make sense of the wiki, then you should ask something more specific. And if you don't know what a word means, you should look it up.
And if we're talking about "users that have real practical skill born from computer use at school, work, while gaming, doing art, etc." then they should be capable of those things.
Back when I was developing said "real practical skill", being assessed as having that "real practical skill" entailed understanding that far fewer people seem to have nowadays. I don't just mean things like poring through manpages or reasoning about command pipelines. Nowadays it seems that people can be perceived as computer literate without things like having a working mental model of a "file" or a "path".
It honestly wouldn't have occurred to me that this is feasible - my mental model of a "Raspberry Pi" is basically what the first-gen models were. But apparently it's been a while now, and their newest models use an ARM Cortex-A76 CPU, which is actually pretty respectable - only a bit behind my 2014 desktop, from the numbers I can find. Absolutely capable of running a web browser on modern Linux.
They average user needs to be able to turn on the machine and have it boot, log in, use a web browser, connect Bluetooth devices, and print stuff. Linux desktops are more than capable of that sort of thing with zero additional training.
This weekend, I actually booted an old Windows XP machine that I've had sitting in a closet, and was astonished at just how...clunky Windows XP felt to me. It's not that it was hard, but it really helped highlight to me just how actually-usable Linux desktops have become.
Is it? You can get an M1 MacBook Air at Walmart for $699 now. That's more than many of the bottom-of-the-barrel Windows machines out there, but it's not an unreasonable price at all. It'll keep away the lowest-end users, but most of those users 1) are not going to care about the security issues, because they don't know anything about computers beyond base utility, and 2) have mostly switched to doing everything on their phone/tablet, and aren't as big of the computer demographic these days anyway.
But software development (for both OS and applications) is continuing in parallel with hardware improvements, so there's a strong implicit demand of you to also continue upgrading, at least if you need to interoperate with any other computer in the world.
For most people that just browse the web, write some stuff and do their email, 8 GB is still enough.
So which is it? lol.
And FYI 8GB is more than enough for a casual desktop/laptop user, at least on the M series macs. I used my wife’s M1 macbook air with 8GB of ram for a week while my new laptop was shipping in the mail. Even if I pushed it with 1 or 2 heavy apps, such as IntelliJ IDE (java development), it performs pretty well, albeit with some paging to disk on large projects. Barely noticeable and the system remained very responsive. For casual usage (zoom, google docs, gmail, instagram) it didn’t fill up the ram.
Are these things in contradiction? A web browser can very easily use more than 8GB of RAM by itself.
> Barely noticeable and the system remained very responsive.
"It's fine to run out of ram and start swapping because the SSD is fast."
Wearing out the soldered SSD isn't fine.
The problem is that there’s no alternative in the Mac world for people who don’t want the fastest option any more. Moving from the 16GB MacBook Air to the 32GB is a mandatory CPU/GPU upgrade and there’s no way to only buy one of the two if you don’t need the other.
No it isn't, Apple uses ordinary LPDDR5. The higher end models achieve higher bandwidth in the same way as HEDT PCs: By using more memory channels. The base M1 in that MacBook Air doesn't even do that, it has the same memory bandwidth as dual channel DDR5 PCs.
SSD wear is a concern, but they aren’t using low-end components so you’re looking at 5+ years of daily usage. I used an 8GB M1 for years and when I upgraded to an M3 there was no indication of SSD wear either in measured performance or the diagnostic counters.
Sure, it's physically possible to use a machine with 8GB of RAM without running out. If all you do is open some terminals and a single-digit number of browser tabs to well-behaved websites, 8GB is an ocean.
But that use case is the exception, not the rule. Worse, ordinary people don't know what causes it. If you're a developer and your machine is sluggish, you know enough to realize it's because it's swapping, and in turn to know that it's swapping because you opened up some ultra-high-res NASA images in an image viewer and forgot to close them, or because you have the tab open for that awful news website that will suck up 20GB of RAM all by itself with its ridiculous JS, or simply because you have 10 different apps running.
For most people, all they know is that their computer is slow -- which it wouldn't be if it had an adequate amount of RAM.
Meanwhile, because they don't know what causes it, they don't know what to do about it, so they just suffer through it. Which has the machine continuously swapping, which is what wears out the SSD.
The OS shouldn't be swapping hot pages when there's lots of things sitting around not doing much.
If your SSD is near its max-capacity, then any extra wear has a bad affect on its longevity. But modern SSD’s handle excess writes very well if they are not near capacity.
A few extra GB written to disk daily is a drop in the bucket in an SSD’d TBW rating, no??
I’d say for a casual user with low storage needs, it’s perfectly fine. Otherwise it’s a bad idea imo.
The problem with swapping is that SSDs are fast. If you have 8GB of RAM and manage to pick up any workload with a 10GB working set size, you're short 2GB, so the OS will have to put 2GB on the SSD. But your working set is 10GB and now only 8GB is in RAM, so it needs that 2GB back immediately. To do that it has to swap out some other 2GB, which it also needs to have back immediately. The result is that your SSD is the bottleneck and ends up maxed out doing writes.
NVMe SSDs will do something like 4GB/sec. Not a few GB a day, a few GB a second. A 256GB consumer SSD that can handle 100 full drive writes over its lifetime can thereby hit its lifetime wear rating in just two hours. Under ordinary storage use that doesn't happen because you're not maxing out the drive for hours on end -- after all, if you were storing ordinary data, writing at 4GB/s would cause the drive to be completely full after only 64 seconds.
But swap is deleting stuff and overwriting it and deleting it again. In a pathological case it could burn out a brand new drive in an afternoon and in more realistic cases could plausibly do it over a few months.
I'd imagine modern systems wouldn't bother deleting a page in pagefile unless modified, but I don't actually know. Why would one bother deleting pages from the page file unless you have to? After all, if you're swapping a lot, there's a good chance that page will be evicted again and need to be copied back anyways. Leaving it there gives a chance you don't have to actually rewrite the page, assuming it was unmodified. You then also don't have to spend the time doing deletes on all those unmodified pages.
Obviously, your percentage of modified pages to unmodified pages during swapping would be highly dependent on workload. But I imagine a good number of workloads have a lot of stuff in RAM that are somewhat static.
They presumably use TRIM/UNMAP on SSDs when they're done with it because you'd otherwise have pages in the pagefile which are unused but the SSD can't erase to reallocate. Also, to keep track of whether a page has been modified after it has been swapped back in, memory writes would have to generate page faults just to allow the OS to mark the page as dirty, which is slow.
> Obviously, your percentage of modified pages to unmodified pages during swapping would be highly dependent on workload. But I imagine a good number of workloads have a lot of stuff in RAM that are somewhat static.
Memory reads still cause swap writes because a page has to be evicted in order to make room in RAM for the one being swapped back in, even if neither is being modified.
Also consider what would happen if pages were kept in the pagefile even after being swapped back in. You have 64GB of RAM and a 64.2GB working set. If pagefile pages are reused after being swapped back in, your pagefile is 0.2GB. If pages are left in the pagefile after being swapped back in, after one pass over the working set your pagefile is 64.2GB.
> Also consider what would happen if pages were kept in the pagefile even after being swapped back in
In Windows, the pagefile doesn't grow and shrink based on you reading and writing pages. The pagefile.sys is usually a fixed size managed by the OS, and it will usually be several gigs in size even if you have say 100MB of "active" pages in the pagefile. On this Windows machine I use right now, the pagefile is set to ~25GB. pagefile.sys is this size regardless of if there's only 5MB of active pages in it or 20GB of pages in it. The pagefile.sys is the size it is until I go and modify the setting.
In Linux, swap is often a dedicated partition. It isn't going to shrink or grow based on its usage. And generally, a swapfile cannot be dynamically shrunk while online.
In fact, while there is an option to enable discards on swapon, it seems it doesn't always actually increase performance. I've been seeing a lot of debate with a lot of suggestions to not enable it.
https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/swapon.8.html
> memory writes would have to generate page faults just to allow the OS to mark the page as dirty
The OS already knows the page is dirty and would need to be rewritten to properly swap out the page. It wouldn't have to always go to update the page in the swap/pagefile immediately on being marked dirty, only when it wants to swap out that page. In Windows, it reports this memory as "Modified", with the description of "memory whose contents must be written to disk before it can be used for another purpose". Meaning, it knows these pages are dirty, but it hasn't bothered touching the pagefile.sys yet to sync the page, largely because it doesn't have to as my machine still has plenty of free memory.
> Memory reads still cause swap writes because a page has to be evicted in order to make room in RAM for the one being swapped back in
Assuming it always deletes when a page gets read in. If both pages have previously been swapped, the page isn't dirty, and it doesn't just automatically delete on paging back in, it wouldn't have to do a write. Once again, significantly increasing performance. This is precisely why you wouldn't want to immediately delete the page from swap, because if the page is going to go back and forth between active memory and swap you might as well just leave it there.
You're also assuming that reading the page back into memory from swap inherently means another page has to be moving to swap. But this isn't always true; maybe some page was swapped out during a period of memory pressure, but now the system has more available memory. In this case (which probably happens often), reading that page back wouldn't require pages moving to swap.
Reading more about swap, it sounds like modern Linux uses an LRU caching strategy for memory pages in the swap cache. It doesn't explicitly go around deleting pages from swap unless it is going to reuse the page, or one has enabled discard=pages.
https://www.kernel.org/doc/gorman/html/understand/understand...
> When the reference count to the page finally reaches 0, the page is eligible to be dropped from the page cache and the swap map count will have the count of the number of PTEs the on-disk slot belongs to so that the slot will not be freed prematurely. It is laundered and finally dropped with the same LRU aging and logic described in Chapter 10.
> Which on that MacBook Air is soldered.
Some way to make it ridiculously low friction for existing hardware owners to get into Linux. Like, less friction than downloading an ISO, mounting it, and installing it on your computer.
Or make computers come with it when people buy them. (This is still vanishingly rare.)
**
As a power user... I still have a few issues, some that might be common, and some that might be quite rare/unique to me. For example, post-concussion I really can't stand low refresh rates, and screen brightness is important to me. During my last 2-month Linux experiment, I had issues with controlling those things which was a mix of hardware, drivers, Linux kernel, GPU modes, etc. These sort of issues seem to be less and less common in Linux, and I'm optimistic, but I also am hesitant to sacrifice my own health to make a switch away from Windows. (Mental health aside.)
And some games still don't work right, at least not on launch. Which can make me sad as someone who plays games socially.
As a photographer, I bought and use DxO PhotoLab. I've compared alternatives, and I like it much better. It doesn't mean I couldn't use darktable but I definitely don't like it anywhere near as much. (And no, DxO does not support Linux.)
Fwiw, you can get it preinstalled on System 76, makers of Pop. I'm a bit surprised Framework doesn't do it. But this seems easy to expand
**
I'm not much of a gamer but will play some AAA and a handful of indie games. Occasional issues like Steam not loading the GUI (right click menu bar and directly open library fixes), and occasionally sync issues because VPN, or minor like needing to launch a game twice. But FWIW, past 3 years I've never needed to touch proton. I'm really hoping SteamOS gets a broader release soon. I'm not sure if I can help much here but I do know graphics cards which might help?
I'll definitely agree UI/UX in many apps needs major improvements. I've seen a trend in the right direction though. Alongside the same improvements in OS. We need people to realize that your backend doesn't matter if people can't use it. Design is hard. The magic is the interaction between awesome backend and awesome design. I think this philosophy is growing. Hopefully. Momentum appears to be building
Linux Mint w/ KDE for most of the two month period.
Nowadays like 95% of my gaming is Digital Board Games on Steam which I'm mostly quite sure would run fine on Linux. Anno 1800 was one of the rare instances of LAN multiplayer which is rare in games these days and poorly supported.
When I'm really active sometimes as a group we'll start a new Survival game together, and it's nice when you can be involved. Games like Valheim run awesome on Linux, and I had no issues with Conan, ARK, etc. Occasionally a game isn't supported and that's when it's a bummer.
For the brightness, hard to say what's wrong without more details. But I hope someone pointed you towards xrandr, which would allow you to manually set the brightness and help determine if it was just a bad setting (edit to /sys/). But could be a kernel issue too. Which sounds a lot scarier than it actually is.
I'll admit, fractional scaling sucks every time I've used it. There are some settings that can help, like letting applications control their setting instead of system. But I don't have enough experience with this, but can confirm it can be frustrating. (xrandr can help here too btw)
The booting is super weird. But that's also something I would have definitely been able to help with. It can seem like black magic at first but it eventually makes sense. Just most people don't bother learning because it usually isn't an issue (my friend and I had a dumb competition to get the fastest boot... We each got under 3s cold and under 2s warm. It was silly, but learned a lot)
Re Steam: I haven't had to do this in a while, but sometimes changing the proton version can make a world of difference. I haven't tried those games though so I can't speak from direct experience.
I will say, I'm not a fan of Mint. I do think Pop and Endeavour are better entry ways. So if you ever try it again, I'd recommend one of those. I'll also say that laptops tend to be a bit more finicky than desktops, especially around display issues. Things are worlds better than they used to be but it is definitely an uphill battle. Lots of variance and not enough resources dedicated to tackling the problems. Hopefully the continued momentum makes this completely a thing of the past. (Battery issues are also a common issue with laptops. In particular putting mobile GPUs into their hibernate state. NVIDIA hasn't been the kindest here...)
It's a bit like the Fediverse. I'm quite happy now, on Hachyderm.io, but it took some trial and error, and the median social media user is ill prepared to go out, select a Fediverse home, and begin piecing things together.
But back to Linux. It's hard to know which distribution, and why you'd select it, when you don't know about Linux. Coming from Windows, it was "Home" or "Pro" (once upon a time). Linux is... though you might not know it, Debian or Fedora, and then a dozen or two varieties off those branches, and then the Window Manager, and then the desktop.
I know nothing about Endeavour, but I've heard of Pop, and I thought it was a thin layer on top of Ubuntu? Not sure why Mint is so different? It's Ubuntu-based too? This adventure actually started with Nobara, which is "marketed" if there is such a thing, as being good for gaming. But I actually had no good experiences with it at all. And did some research and Mint seemed very friendly (and largely was!) But I didn't like Cinnamon much. Anyway, my point is... distribution can have a huge impact on overall experience, but it's very hard to decide on distribution without knowing a lot more about Linux. That pre-education is much more investment than most Windows users would want to make.
EDIT: Oof, I found EndeavorOS on Kagi and... the home page loads, and it says "Mercury Neo with Linux 6.13.7 and Arch mirror ranking bug fix"
I know a few of those words. What am I looking at? I think Linux needs a marketing team!
> "Mercury Neo with Linux 6.13.7 and Arch mirror ranking bug fix"
I am not affliated with them, I am a customer and I like their products.
I bought a new one from them this year, still incredible hardware.
My only issue with them, which is a big one, is that they ship only from USA. So as EU customer I have to pay VAT on top!
(also not affiliated with them, just want to support good products/company)
I think the Windows and MacOS brands have become lifestyle choices. Windows is the "gamer" and "corporate" choice. MacOS is the "student" and "luxury" choice. Linux is the "hacker" choice (they use Arch, by the way). Like iOS vs Android, Xbox vs PlayStation, Toyota vs BMW, and all other brand tribalisms, it seems like most people are emotionally drawn to one or another.
The problem is that the Play store and Linux environments on ChromeOS are both run in VMs.
On a machine with good specs, this is perfectly fine. But when cheaper ChromeOS devices ship with 4GB of RAM, older mediatek APUs, and emmc instead of SSDs, it's just an outright bad experience.
If Google starts pushing Android Desktop as a replacement for ChromeOS, I think that could be interesting. Being able to run the Play store without the overhead of a VM will make Android potentially a much better experience than ChromeOS.
I think the VMs are fine on the type of machines most people would buy for Windows/macOS. Chromebooks go exceptionally low-spec on the low-end to the point that I'd say their lowest-spec machines probably aren't direct competition for Windows laptops, wouldn't you agree?
This is mostly just venting, but if the “please take my money” pathways of MS’s most popular product work this badly, I don’t even want to think about ever going back to Windows.
Me
*gestures broadly at everyone*
Could have happened 5 years ago. Could have happened 5 years before that. But it won't ever happen if the techy people that have the capabilities of making it happen are too busy self-righteously laughing about how it hasn't happened yet. Luckily that doesn't stop progress, but it sure doesn't let it get to the speed it could.
Meanwhile, I hope you're happy with the state of things. You have every right to point and laugh if you are happy with the direction Microsoft, Apple, and Google have led us. But if you aren't, it isn't too late to make efforts to change those directions.
If we're going to reference the past, let's not hyper-fixate on every failed "call to arms" while ignoring how future they were trying to fight actually happened...
I doubt it. Common people can't interpret GUI and discover features unlike developers who'd prefer dynamic "intuitive" interfaces. They rely more on dumb fixed rote memorization.
Most recent example of failure of this approach is Windows Settings app. Not only a lot of configuration panes started to mimic old Control Panel in both features layouts, even verbiages, many had become a mere shortcut links to old Control Panel applets.
My point is that it's not like there's an objectively good way to do this. That people just get used to doing things one way or another. And frankly, with Linux you can copy those same structures and that's what I mean by "skin". You really can make it feel a lot like Windows or OSX and that really reduces the dissonance.
There is nothing too expensive about an M series mac mini.
Come on. You can still think they're great while admitting they're over priced. Those aren't in contention.
I agree it’s overpriced, and it bugs me too. But i still recommend mac’s to my less tech savvy family and friends. Why? I’m not interested in being their tech support, and also, it’s trivial to buy a portable 2TB thunderbolt 4 SSD for $200-$300, if the need arises in the future. In fact an external SSD is even easier to replace/upgrade than an internal ssd (generally speaking). i think we’re losing sight of the topic here. CASUAL USERS :)
> your typical casual user needs 2TB of local storage (outside the cloud)? that’s news to me.
I don't believe 256GB is sufficient for the typical casual user. Apple knows it too. But $200 to upgrade FROM 256GB TO 512GB is, as you asked "too expensive".
It is "too expensive" BECAUSE comparable off-the-shelf hardware is significantly less AND has better performance. We're also talking about a level of performance most people will not notice the difference between.
I cannot find a 512GB NVMe drive that is PCIe 5.0, but here is a 1Tb one that costs $170[0]. They key point here being that you get twice the storage for 85% the price OF UPGRADING. That drive suggests it gets 14.7GBps reads and 13.3GBps writes while this Reddit user shows their Mac Mini M4 gets UNDER 3GBps for both read and write[1]. It definitely would go higher with the 512 variant because those disks are suffering from the same issue that the M2 Air suffered from... but that doesn't change the price that you pay more for less. You pay more for SIGNIFICANTLY less.
> I think we’re losing sight of the topic here. CASUAL USERS :)
P.S. iPhones won't capitalize a singular "i", as would be the proper grammatical usage.
P.S.S. External drives aren't just annoying, they're slower too.
[0] https://www.newegg.com/samsung-1tb-9100-pro-nvme-2-0/p/N82E1...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/macmini/comments/1gmxrzc/base_m4_ma...
On literally what metric? Even if you do the most naive comparison of compute and storage, Apple now comes out ahead much of the time, to say nothing of differences around quality, display, controls, etc.
From what I see, Apple has launched private cloud compute with better privacy safeguards than any other big tech firm. In fact, their personal assistant is the worst one because it is so dumb.
They don’t seem to make money from your data because, as you say, they have already made huge margins on hardware and apps.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43047952
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43003230
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014588
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/04/10/apple-makes-it-re...
https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil...
> They don’t seem to make money from your data
It's changing:
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/19/apple-now-directly-sell...
And finally:
Apple's Software Quality Crisis (eliseomartelli.it)
1196 points by ajdude 79 days ago | 1213 comments
(I'm definitely in a tribe too. But I hope my comments here, and elsewhere, show that I'm more than willing to criticize the tribes I affiliate with)
EndeavourOS preferred over Manjaro.
But even then back in the day I remember Windows applications that would partition and install a Linux distro for dual boot from within Windows.
The core issues existed in 2005 still exist in exact form: how do you make money for the software devs on Linux, how to bring good closed-source software support for decades. If Linux cannot solve those two problems, it will not replace Windows. I think, without changing the software architecture to look more Windows-like, the latter problem cannot be feasibly solved.
Anyway, I wonder to what distribution should I switch to.
There definitely can be some hurdles depending on what your goals are. If you're mainly browser user, don't stress. If gamer, go PopOS (if want to be a bit more, EndeavourOS is a good recommend).
If you do want to learn linux, then I actually suggest doing things "the hard way". That is installing Arch (fastest newbie I've seen is install on the 4th attempt) and try living in the terminal. The failures lead to a lot of learning. But it is a good way to learn because it forces you to get your hands dirty and makes you quick to not be afraid because well... you will have already experienced fucking up and it is less scary once you have haha. It's one of those things where you don't feel like you're making progress but boy do you learn fast this way.
But this of course is not what everyone should do! I just wanted to offer the advice in case you or anyone does. I am being serious about it being the hard way. But it pays off.
You or I can use Linux, because we're the same type of people who visit Hacker News. It's also completely possible to get your great-grandma on Linux, since the web browsers work the same and you can install the specific apps they need to use and they'll never care about anything else. But the middle user is working in an office exchanging Microsoft Office documents all day, making video calls through Teams, and using one out of a zillion business apps developed specifically for Windows.
We need more free and good projects, and the problem is, that costs time, and in between Richard Stallman's heyday and now, the rent's quadrupled.
Other types of usecases have gone very Linux-friendly recently (e.g video games thanks to Valve).
It's not bad for me. "Bad" is subjective.
Sure, it's not a good fit for "normal people". But as long as it's not targetting "normal people", I don't see how this is a problem.
Apple would have had near 100% OS market share if they’d have tossed their hardware restrictions.
Has?
I actually recovered a laptop my family was using to launch firefox by installing linux on it (soldered ram went bad, linux is the only OS I could use to tell it to skip the bad blocks through kernel command line) but I hold no illusion about its level of "user experience". Just look at the comments in this recent thread [2]. And as a power user I am baffled by some of the choices at the kernel level (which I mentioned in that thread) and others closer to the user by distros (ubuntu and snaps, name an iconic duo), or things like flatpak not being close to ready and still shoved down user's throats...
I spent years when I was younger submitting bug reports for the papercuts I noticed - some ignored for years, some closed and forgotten forever when some project decided to move on from bugzilla - and I have no more time or energy to continue doing so. The maintainers after all write the code, I'm just a user and get no voice :)
I've been reading about the "year of linux" for years now, it's a meme for a reason. People that are not "prosumer" will keep using the preinstalled OS even if it's garbage - assuming they buy a laptop or desktop at all - and the prosumer will probably keep an OSX or a Windows machine close by anyway. Linux is usable as a browser kiosk sure but there is still plenty of friction on everything else. Enshittification will continue, and possibly infect also linux.
> "Adding a skin" is not easy and making the experience somewhat coherent is extremely hard
Quick Google
- 3 free Linux distros that look and feel like Windows: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2532994/3-free-linux-distros-that-look-and-feel-like-windows.html
- 5 Linux Distributions That are Inspired by the Look and Feel of macOS: https://itsfoss.com/macos-like-linux-distros/
> soldered ram went bad, linux is the only OS I could use to tell it to skip the bad blocks through kernel command line
I don't deny that there are problems with Linux, nor that things need to improve to get better mass appeal. But I do think you should look at your own words. They're highly technical. And we should not forget how this would compare when discussing Windows or OSX. That's the choice! It's that these conversations of "Linux sucks" are not just complaints about Linux, they are also suggestions of using Windows or OSX. The context of our conversation is about choosing between these systems, not the existence of problems.
I want to be very clear
Linux is a dumpster fire.
This does not mean Windows isn't!
This does not mean OSX isn't!
These arguments become equivalent to: "You don't want to eat that, the chef sneezed in it. Here, eat this cake instead. The chef only took a shit in it."
Idk about you, but give the choice, I'd rather take the sneeze than the shit. I'd (strongly) prefer neither, but frankly that isn't an option now, is it?
And let's be honest, if you want to get more resources to put out more fires, the only way that's going to happen is if there are more users.
Web browser + maybe some printing? Throw on Linux Mint + Firefox + uBlock origin, hook up a compatible printer via usb cable, and call it a day.
That's what I did for my 65 year old relatives, and it's been maintenance free.
Just keep in mind that widespread Linux adoption means it will lose something special it has had from being relatively small on the desktop. This would be another Eternal September ... including a massive influx of entitled users and all that.
Because of that effect, I think there needs to be one or more for-profit Linux OS vendors prepared to absorb all the support and feedback needs (and contribute upstream, of course), and OEMs should only use it/them for anyone besides "advanced users and developers" or similar verbage.
SteamOS maybe?
Enterprises is where the money is, that is also why a company like Cisco do not make consumer devices
If they could work with system 76 or something maybe yeah
The reason people buy RHEL is because you can get support for any problems. Consumers are not gonna get that so they might as well just run CentOS Stream for example.
> This would be another Eternal September ... including a massive influx of entitled users and all that.
Jokes aside, I'm not too worried considering the plethora of distros. There's always been a range of them that target different subgroups. Which I think is where a lot of the magic comes from. Realistically, the kernel is about making an environment that everyone can build on top of. You can't make a product that meets the needs or desires of everyone, but you can certainly build environments which can be transformed to meet any needs. (Actually, I think that's the magic of programming and something we kinda lost sight of. Too focused on making "products" instead of environments)
Not sure.
I don't want people who want Windows to come to Linux because Windows has become a spyware. The result will be a bunch of entitled users asking for Linux to look more like Windows.
Anyone who has maintained an open source project knows how consumers of open source suck. "Your free project that you develop in your free time sucks" or "I won't make you the honour to use your project if you don't spend 2 weeks adding this feature I want". A mass influx of Windows people who want Windows-without-the-spyware would probably make this worse for Linux.
"I want BSplayer, how do I make it work?", and no other player will ever be good enough as BSplayer. And sometimes it's not even a good piece of software, but some stupid windows only thing that not even windows users use anymore.
Many of my friends don't even have a computer: they do everything on their phone. If they could plug their phone to a dock station for the few times they need a keyboard and a bigger screen, they would be fine.
Samsung DeX does this, and I think similar solutions or workarounds are available for other manufacturers via USB-DP Alt Mode and BT for input devices.
I don't know anyone who uses it, though, and can't vouch for practicality.
If it's only the Samsung thing, probably developers don't care? Also it feels like Google may make Workspace work on wide Android screens (for their XR stuff).
The year of desktop Linux on the other hand? It will never happen. It is a value like ∞ that you can never reach.
We could get to 30% in just 60 years!
> We could get to 30% in just 60 years!
I know it's a running joke, but we had a decade (+) of Linux in many other consumer use cases, such as smartphones. The problem is that if you're selling a consumer computing platform, you're subject to the same exact incentives as Microsoft. You want to be Microsoft! You want their revenue, their profit margins, their nice offices, their talented engineers.
Android is Linux, but your typical Android phone ships with invasive AI features, has a locked bootloader, a variety of components that collect data about you... and unless you jump through hoops, it only lets you install apps from the company store.
Out of curiosity, have you had any experience managing 100s or 1000s of users/workstations?
As someone who spends time using MacOS, Windows, and Linux ... even if you managed to make them look pixel perfect identical, everyone would notice something is off immediately. MacOS, Windows, and Linux desktop environments all feel distinctly different.
MacOS feels like you're waist deep in the shallow end of the pool trying to run. You feel like you're being held back in terms of speed but never out of control. Window max/min is easy, want to resize a window? That'll be 5 minutes of your life you'll never get back.
Windows is like an overeager dog, it's fast and nimble but don't blink or you'll loose your mouse cursor. Max/min/resize? Sure it's effortlessly easy right up until your mouse hits a zone and then it snaps the window exactly how you didn't want.
Linux gives you the freedom to do whatever you want, and that's exactly what every single app developer has done with their app experience. Will a click of the scroll wheel move at light speed or a glacial crawl? You never know, but what you can count on is that it will be entirely different if you use a touch pad. Want to resize a window? The mouse cursor might change to the resize icon, but damned if it doesn't activate the window beneath when you try to click and drag.
M4 Minis are like, $500.
It's fun, every time somebody sends me an exploit or dropper I am eager to click on the attachments to find out how it works. And after seeing what it does I just reset the filesystem snapshots back to the lsst step.
And for newbies to Linux I'd heavily recommend trying out KDE as a desktop environment. They're are really nicely integrated, even phone sync and other shenanigans work out of the box.
Windows has turned itself into spyware. Apple is too expensive and going the same way.
Meanwhile the user experience of Linux has dramatically increased. Put on a good skin and most people wouldn't notice the difference. You don't need to reply that you can, I know you can. You're on HN. But most people just use their computer for the browser and most people can't tell Chrome from Firefox. Most people get their lockin by their tech friend or child. Really, Microsoft's only lockin remains Office.
It won't be a complete shift but the signs of growing userbase is there. Would be a huge win for open source! If you haven't tried Linux in a few years try giving something like PopOS a go or if you want to say you use Arch then try EndeavourOS. Both are very stable, latter slightly less.
Edit: enfuse was right, I should have suggested EndeavourOS instead of Manjaro.