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.
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.