After all of the frustration I experienced getting Windows 11 setup in a way that was comfortable for me to use I'm ready to switch to Linux the next time I need to reinstall a operating system. So glad that SteamDeck is making Linux gaming viable. Now we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same driver support Windows gets.
I've been a linux desktop user for a long time now (~25 years?). I generally don't talk about it, as it's not a suitable environment for a lot of people. So I'm always surprised when I stumble upon somebody using it. Just recently I took a Google Cloud training course and the instructor used it as his daily driver. Not only was this impressive to see "out in the wild" but it was nice to see all the tools needed to lead a remote training course worked in his setup. He had a webcam working great (even focused/panned on him as he moved). He had a powerpoint/slideshow going. He had zoom/teleconferencing software working. And it all worked through the course. There was never 10-20 minute pause because something wasn't working right. Having this level of viability and operability is something I never expected to see.
This comment is a bit odd to me since I don't think those basic things you mention have been difficult to get working on most distros for quite a while now.
These threads always seem to oscillate back and forth between "It's 2024 and you can't get Peripheral X working with Linux!" and "Peripheral X's have worked for 20 years now!"
That probably means that it works for some people, but not all. So if you want to use peripheral X, maybe you get lucky and you have just the right versions of hardware and software, and it works. Or maybe you're unlucky, and it doesn't work, and you can spend months trying to get it work. It's just not how I want to spend my time.
It's just that some people check the Linux compatibility before the hardware purchase, while others rely on pure luck.
That's pretty much impossible. In a sibling thread I explained that even if a machine is Ubuntu certified, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's compatible in real world.
Assembled PCs tend to be more compatible (because of more standard components), but on the othe hand each individual component doesn't receive the coverage (testing) as laptops. There was no way for me to know that my mobo's sleep is broken on Linux, even if the previous mobos from the same producer had good compatibility.
In a sibling thread I explained that even if a machine is Ubuntu certified, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's compatible in real world.
I've never even heard of Ubuntu certification. I instead search for people who are using the product I wish to buy with Linux, and see what they say about its compatibility. This always works. So it is not pretty much impossible.
I'd imagine that the Linux users who report success are probably more selective when it comes to hardware. It's been my primary OS for 25+ years and I've seldom faced compatibility issues, but I also do my research and buy accordingly.
Cunningham's law in action. The first camp are asking how to get it to work.
Weirdly, by compatibility is better on Linux than on Windows.
On Windows, on a clean install, I need to install the drivers from WU to get audio working, etc. And then I need to open Intel website to get the latest Bluetooth driver, go to Dell to get the latest wifi, as on Windows Update's these are not the latest.
And even after all of this, some of the drivers on Linux is better maintained, because the support for old Intel GPUs on Windows is very short. Meanwhile, on Linux, I get Vulkan support, and all recent drivers on my Broadwell. Video perf is way better on Linux here.
I mean, Ubuntu did break screen sharing for a while 2 years ago [1]
[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/1407494/screen-share-not-wor...
It depends on which day of the week it is.
Ok a bit flippant, but I've been running KDE on my NUC as a secondary desktop for years now. Most of the time it works fairly well, but then suddenly something breaks or needs tweaking. And when it does it's often not trivial for a non-geek to handle.
That said, if they can get Krdp working properly, I'll almost certainly switch to KDE as my main driver, and demote Windows to my secondary.
I'm always befuddled by comments like this. I have been daily driving Linux (arch,btw) for quite a while, and I have never once had a driver issue, even with NVIDIA graphics cards. The only times I run into issues is when I am trying to run games with anti-cheat, but even that is being worked on by Valve. Linux mostly just works in my experience, I don't see where the idea comes from that its a huge blocker, minus the lack of specialized software.
Friend of mine got a new laptop which i recommended without looking closely on the specs, as it was listed as supported on ubuntu a lenovo yoga x 11 gen I think.
Found out afterwards that the version with windows preinstalled(that the friend bought, because of the cheap windows licence that maybe needed) comes with a special mipi camera from intel with ipu6 out-of-tree driver that only supports specific kernels and specific distros and while there are packages for ubuntu I couldn't get it to work.
Linux works if you don't buy the wrong hardware, windows works on any bought hardware.
I'm not against linux and I use it and most of the time it works out of the box, but this "most of the time" will bite you when you stop looking at specific reviews and driver support and just buy a laptop.
but this "most of the time" will bite you when you stop looking at specific reviews and driver support and just buy a laptop.
I've never once looked at reviews. The only time I've been bitten in the last 20 years was when given a MBP for work (the intel model with butterfly keys).
There's definitely edge cases out there. But these days they're exactly that: edge cases.
I said that linux mostly works out of the box, but your "edge cases" where in this case:
All lenovo yoga x1 models from the 8. gen onwards with windows preinstalled e.g. over 2 years
All lenovo carbon x1 models from the 10. gen onwards with windows preinstalled e.g. over 3 years
I'm pretty sure it also affects all newer hp and dell models since at least ~2023
It's great that your choice of laptops are never the ones that are broken, but then again, I never said linux never works.
Even if you set aside the webcam problem, the lenovo laptops who where always called out for their good linux support had problems:
The 2016 yoga x1 model couldn't get to sleep (s3i problem which many laptops had) and if it good back from sleep it need a special command to reconnect trackpad and trackpoint.
There where some special patches to make it work and after about a year it worked, still not a possibility for non technical people
The 2016 thinkpad x1 carbon gen. 6 model sometimes needs a special command to reconnect the trackpad and trackpoint, think that got fixed after ~3 years.
Neither of theses devices have a working fingerprint sensor, I can't even think of one that works with linux
Neither of these devices had a supported mobile (lte) modem, as the built in modem wasn't supported and you can't change it because the bios has only whitelisted the preinstalled model.
The new s3i sleep modus also made it impossible for linux laptops to sleep for about a year until it was fixed.
Did all of this get better over time?
Yes
Will every big new hardware thing still mean that some linux things are broken for some time?
Yes
Again, linux works for most of the hardware most of the time, but this will bite you when you expect certain things or devices to work.
I'm a hardcore Linux user, and most of my machines always had some driver issues.
The laptop I'm writing from needs my mobile phone as wifi bridge, because the Linux driver is poorly written, and it causes extremely poor signal quality. I also can't workaround tearing that plagues the whole desktop environment.
My other laptop has issues with the speakers that will never be fixed. And another one or two issues that I can't remember.
I wanted to buy a certain Lenovo laptop that is officially Ubuntu certified. Lenovo doesn't offer the OEM Ubuntu that they used for the certification though, and the vanilla version doesn't work (I've stopped checking after an year or so).
My desktop has a wake from suspend problem.
To be fair though, I have no doubt that if one chooses a certain machine (laptop) based on Linux compatibility, they will be happy - but it implies a certain sacrifice upfront.
I had this issue with my Lenovo laptop that shipped with Ubuntu and some Broadcom piece of rubbish wifi that also broke the crap out of sleep mode.
The solution was to buy a $40 Intel Wifi card and swap it out. I haven't thought about Wifi since, it "just works".
I have used Linux desktop for around two decades on my laptops and never had any issues with drivers or anything else. Various distributions have worked very well out of box with different models of laptops and PCs.
"It works perfectly" statements are invariably false.
For starters, Bluetooth has been broken on Linux until recent times (a couple of years, probably, maybe less), because of the piece of crap that Bluez is. In some Ubuntu distros, Bluetooth may still have some broken functionality (I remember examining the configfiles).
Ubuntu's hibernation was broken last time I've checked, because the setup was setting a 2 GiB swapfile, which is not enough for the RAM of modern machines. My last installation, last week, still set the same size.
So there you go.
It's 2024 and we're suprised by a webcam working. It makes me a bit sad somehow.
I cannot even remember the last time I plugged in a web cam and it didn't work on Linux. Just yesterday I borrowed a USB inspection camera from a friend in order to help me run a new ethernet line to my shop. The kit came with a "WIFI dongle" that you are supposed to use with your phone and some random app, but instead I just plugged it into my laptop, fired up Cheese and it came up immediately.
External webcams are no problem, agreed.
New-ish laptops with intel tiger lake procesors use MIPI cameras with ipu6 and don't work out of the box or only on specific kernel/distro combos.
There are efforts to mainline the driver and it is better than 2 years ago but still a big step backwards[1]
To Intel's credit ipu6 packs a ton a ton a ton of super advanced capabilities in. Having a good video pipeline is a huge edge. That it took a while for upstreaming to get really into gear on Linux does not super astound me. This feels like a place where we need to expect the open source world to have to find its purchase first before traction forward can really start.
This was a super shitty experience though. It really felt unplanned & chaotic. Hopefully some of the kernel architecture carved out for ipu6 is good & useful for running other video pipelines.
Most webcammers don't knowingly think heavily on color science, but ideally our devices can.
While true, cameras in Linux are a bit of a hassle. Trying to get one webcam in two applications at the same time, cropping or rotating the camera in one app but not another, etc.
This is getting better/fixed with pipewire though.
We owe Apple here.
The lack of device drivers for iOS means that manufacturers had to start getting serious about ensuring their devices follow USB class specifications, because otherwise they will not work on an iPad.
Linux (which has USB class drivers) has only benefitted from this.
Yeah, 20ish years ago I remember having to compile alsa drivers, network drivers, cups drivers, etc. I can honestly see why some left and never came back.
That hasn't been the case for a long time now. I can't remember the last time I plugged something in that didn't work. My home setup is a minipc with wireless kb and mouse on a unified USB receiver, hdmi to a large monitor, bluetooth speaker, wireless printer, and USB webcam with mic.
I didn't have to do a single thing. It all just works. And it has for years, through various distro hopping.
Sorry to be a downer but a cloud instructor is still a techie. I'd be way more impressed with a lawyer or an accountant using it but I've never seen one so far.
fwiw; I worked in a company that was kind of a Linux pioneer back in the 90s. We ran Linux for everyone. The accountant ran a VM for his accouting software, but except that everything was Linux. And once set up, it worked very well, for techies and non-technical alike.
If you get past installation and initial setup, using Linux in a desktop role isn't really challenging if you've got access to support.
I don’t believe lawyers can live without ms office
It used to be that they couldn't live without Word Perfect.
Funny how that changed.
I sometimes work with lawyers and doctors. As a Linux user I always need to have a macbook around for when I need MS Word.
Having this level of viability and operability is something I never expected to see.
It’s unexpected even in the case of techies.
I felt taken back before mid-2000 reading this comment. I mean it's been easily 15 years since those very basic things really just works on all the major Linux distributions.
I recently tried Linux Mint, initially Cinnamon, then installed KDE Plasma. In the former fractional scaling was badly broken. In the latter, I couldn't control screen brightness.
Overall almost everything worked but not all things. And I'm used to working through technical hiccups and being patient. But ultimately there's no guarantee "Linux" will be fully functional on your unique hardware setup, and it's still challenging to choose distribution, windows manager, desktop environment, etc and there's no way to know which combo is best for your hardware without a lot of time consuming trial and error.
My mother-in-law remarried about 5 years ago. Her husband used to operate some oven cleaning business pre retirement, not exactly “techie”
He uses linux, has done for years, he just wants something that works.
I've been a linux desktop user for a long time now (~25 years?). I generally don't talk about it, as it's not a suitable environment for a lot of people.
Same: I was already using Debian 1.1 (1.1, not 11) on the desktop or something like that.
But why not talk about it? I switched both my wife (she's very OK with tech) and my mother-in-law (she's not good with tech) to desktop Linux.
If my mother-in-law can use Linux, everybody can. Most people nowadays only need one app: a browser and Linux is totally for that use case, which is about 99% of all users' out there's usecase.
I switched to linux desktop about 2.5 years ago.
TBH, I'm ready to go back to windows.
The way I put it, driving a car with a driver's seat that looks like 747 cockpit is pretty cool and definitely very powerful. And it has auto-pilot if you just want the basics.
But man, if you want to do more than the absolute basics, a regular Toyota corolla drivers seat is _way_ more accommodating and intuitive. You don't need to spend a year studying the machine to use it fluidly.
Linux is cool, the idea incredible, but man, searching for guides that tell you to turn cryptic knobs, flick unlabeled switches, and push seemingly random buttons just to get the window to roll down has become too taxing for me. Especially when half the time it doesn't even work.
I want a GUI, .exe's, and hover text on options. There is a reason every consumer grade linux/unix OS hides the terminal (android, iOS, macOS).
You practically described how I feel every time I run into an issue on windows and have to resort to editing undocumented registry keys.
And that happens how often? Once a year? On Linux, that’s more like one a day. Once a week if you’re lucky.
Can you be specific? I like to tinker with my config so am not the comparison point, but my partner, two young daughters and my mother are all on Linux and neither do I help them, nor do they use the terminal.
My mother switched to Linux several years ago and the amount of questions I receive are less than when she used Windows, mainly because if she encounters issues it's much easier for her to find a solution herself.
Linux is great for grandmas and linux junkies.
If all you do is check email and watch youtube, it works excellent. Its when you are someone in the middle that it becomes a huge PITA.
I'd agree with that, my sense is there would be a lot of benefit from adding GUIs that bridge the gap and show what they're doing. So instead of firing up a text editor to reach into the depths of /etc or googling the huge breadth of guides that essentially have "copy this into the terminal and pipe into grep" to get information sometimes without providing context. Another aspect to this is setting up guardrails on what is being done, and feedback on limits, which could increase confidence in using the system instead of treating it as something that will shatter at the slightest wrong touch or an appliance.
Exactly. I’m someone who can fix his broken Linux install because the driver update broke something again or because the display scaling is fucked again or because the game won’t launch on Steam or because wayland crashed again or because the application is missing some weird dependency, but I really, really don’t want to. I want to use my computer to do my work. I don’t want to work on my computer.
Can you elaborate on what exactly you're doing with Linux that's causing that? I use Arch daily (programming, gaming, web browsing, etc), and the last time I had to do anything more complicated than `sudo pacman -Syu` to configure my system was over a year ago.
I think honestly PEBCAK.
I use an AMD GPU. When I installed windows, windows kept insisting to downgrade my drivers. I looked it up and the official solution on Microsoft was a regedit to disable auto updates for GPU drivers.
This actually happens pretty often when I’m using windows as a power user.
On Linux, I’ve setup endeavourOS once (and by setup I mean installed it, and then installed Flatpak for the rest of my applications). I run yay every once in a while and everything works.
I have no idea what you are talking about, I've used fedora for over a year now and aside from some tweaking, which I explicitly did myself, I've never had to go into some weird configs to change anything.
It just works
Meh if you’re not picky about the way your desktop looks/acts then you can install it and run __aslongas__ linux has the software you need. If you use office/play games all day long linux probably isn’t for you because it simply doesn’t have the the software you want to run which is the most important thing for people. That isn’t the fault of linux it’s just a market fact. Linux has everything I need and 80-90% of the games I play install easily via steam. I mean I know I’m giving up a little, but it’s just games. I prefer to have a stable system that isn’t spying on me 24/7 and trying to insert ads between myself and my very prodigious computer time.
Or worse, the knobs don't exist because Daddy knows what's best for you, and you can't have the source to implement those knobs yourself either.
Can you outline what things you were messing with? I am a long time linux user, and I haven't configured my computer on the command line in years. Everything works, so there is no need to change much. Last time was 3 years ago, when I really wanted an pipewire ahead of time, and so I spent some time installing and configuring it. That was indeed painful.
Otherwise, I fight with python on the command line, but you do that on Windows and Macos as well.
Just recently I got the urge to play dwarf fortress again. For the first time on Linux too.
Of course you need to run dwarf therapist, a 3rd party program, alongside the game to manage your dwarves. Dwarf therapist hooks into dwarf fortress to load data about your game in real time.
Of course, as I have come to normally expect, it didn't work. It could not find the active game session, despite the game running.
So you get on the linux answer machine (google) and start looking for those cryptic codes to painfully ctrl+shift+v (note: cannot have ctrl+v like every other interface on earth) and offer up to the emotionless terminal god with the hope that things work after submitting those magic characters (no response or confirmation, you just try to do the thing you want to do again to see if it worked).
This time around it was "ptrace_scope" settings. What is that? I have no fucking idea, I just want to use dwarf therapist.
https://github.com/Dwarf-Therapist/Dwarf-Therapist/blob/mast...
So I follow those steps to make a permanent adjustment, including getting this thing called "libcap2-bin" (again, no idea what that is, could be installing a botnet for all i know). And as I have come to expect, it doesn't work.
So instead now I have to run a terminal command (i have it saved in a text file on my desktop) everytime i turn on the PC to disable ptrace so I can run dwarf therapist.
Compare this to windows:
Download dwarf therapist.
Run it.
Works first time.
It's just such a classic linux experience.
So... you are complaining that a software that hacks into another software on linux needs more effort to work compared to windows? I think that's a completely reasonable outcome in this case. Care to give a different one? Look, I'm completely aware of linux shortcomings and deal with them constantly, but I also think it's a far cry from how hard it used to be 15 years ago, or even 5 years ago! Maybe you are making things harder for yourself trying to run games on a "too stable" system like Debian or and old Ubuntu LTS? Usually people recommend more bleeding edge stuff for this like a Fedora or Arch based distro. There has been a bit of an upheaval in linux world lately, things are changing constantly and being on the bleeding edge isn't as bloody as it used to be. In exchange, you get better support for apps, which is the key thing lacking in linux since... forever.
Anyway, I also have my linux bullshit story of the day. I've been playing Nintendo Switch games on the Yuzu emulator for over two years now but things took an unexpected turn when Nintendo sued the Yuzu devs and took over the project, being hostile to anyone trying to fork it or even host it anywhere. If you are a windows user you can just keep using your installation and whatever "setup.exe" to keep reinstalling it because it's a stable api/abi system (until maybe windows 12 comes and breaks stuff). On a "unstable" linux distro, your yuzu installation is now constantly bit rotting away due to libraries apis and abis changing over time as the system updates. So now occasionally when I try opening yuzu and I'm greeted with... absolutely nothing (why linux DEs have such a hard time showing generic error messages when an app crash or exits ungracefully? That would be great feedback to the user, anyway, I digress).
Obviously normal/noob linux user would already be helplessly stuck, but I carry on. Running yuzu on the terminal reveals the error message, A library is missing. Running ldd on it reveals even more libraries missing. The rotting is on. I now have to run some commands to find which library pertains to which package (it's not always obvious) and find a way to get an old package containing it. Hopefully, Arch based distros have this nifty tool "dowgnrade" that lets you downgrade or download old packages. Now I have to extract all relevant libraries and put them together on some directory. I then have to run yuzu with special env vars such as LIB_PATH= LIBS= to make it load such libraries. To my demise it's not over yet, some libraries are loaded as dependencies of other libraries, which were not previously present, so ldd couldn't possibly find them. I have to repeat all steps again until all dependencies are met.
Finally, I can play some fucking Zelda. But by now I'm too tired, and it's too late. Maybe I should just have remained a Windows user 18 years ago after all. But before those intrusive toughs can complete, I think about all the bullshit people have to put up when using Windows, honestly, Linux bullshit is worth it.
Why not use the AppImage or Flatpak version of Yuzu if you want stable libraries.
I don't even remember yuzu having non AppImage releases, if you used AUR you could have just rebuilt the package instead of complaining about manually trying to find the right libraries.
A "normal user" wouldn't be using Arch Linux , building their own packages. They would just use the AppImage or the Flatpak.
I'm aware of the AppImage and Flatpak, but those vanished before I could maybe switch to them. The AUR scripts I have are broken and many of the repos they depend on vanished too. And then any attempt by anyone to revive it is met by Nintendo's iron fists, or people don't upload unofficial fixed versions because of fear.
So it sits on my machine as "legacy software" and the point of my post was to show that linux isn't very friendly with legacy software, it wants the software you have to be on a "treadmill", always updated, sourced from a repo somewhere, where someone can take care of these problems for you, where as on Windows thats less rough and usually old software just keeps on working.
getting this thing called "libcap2-bin" (again, no idea what that is, could be installing a botnet for all i know)
If you get it via a package manager (like apt or dnf), it's almost guaranteed to not be malware unless some nation-actor is out to get you.
Funnily enough, this is something that Windows never solved (store is garbage and incomplete, winget is powerless and incomplete) and remains a prime vector for malware after all these years, despite a bunch of bandaids that are ultimately useless.
winget seems like a minimum effort to say they have something that seems like a package manager, from what I can tell it's a big index that either hooks into the msstore, or points to a regular installer with a version number that usually runs in silent mode.
Packaging like linux has had for decades would seem like a huge uplift for windows if they could do it, especially if it could be done with modern approaches to isolation.
The 'funny' thing here is that you've run afoul of security restrictions, apparently dwarf therapist hooks into dwarf fortress as a debugger (=ptrace) to mess around with its interna. Why it does that is beyond me, there are better ways to achieve similar things (e.g. LD_PRELOAD).
This (hopefully) doesn't hold in the general case, but for this very specific instance the classic Windows experience of it "works first time" seems intimately tied to the fact that it is a less secure OS.
This is a Dwarf-Therapist thing, not a Linux thing.
I mean, how well does it run on iOS? (It won't)
You didnt mention which distro.
Are you using outdated Linux? (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint)
Or modern linux? (Fedora)
Too many people fell for Ubuntu's Free CD marketing 20 years ago and repeat a prayer that its 'sTaBlE'. Its not stable, Outdated linux is garbage.
Since switching to Fedora, I install RPM fusion + Nivida and never touch the terminal. I don't use app managers either, I just havent had a reason to use either app managers or the terminal in the last 1.5 years.
Are you using outdated Linux? (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint)
Or modern linux? (Fedora)
Citation needed. As an application developer, I'm seeing interest and activity on Fedora and Ubuntu decrease, and Debian and Mint increase.
(I'll agree with Ubuntu being a "trap", though not really for any reason related to stability.)
100% agree with this.
From my perspective, Linux only works for people if you give a fuck about Linux and make it part of your core being. Some of us give a fuck about solving the problem, not the tool.
There is nothing more frustrating when I'm told "have you used Linux on the desktop". I literally use it on the server, have done everything down to writing kernel modules, have brought up startups and piles of infrastructure on it for 25 years but fuck no, it isn't going to the desktop because it doesn't solve any problems there, only creating new ones.
Despite the downvotes, I agree with you: I only care about getting the thing done. I don't want the OS to matter. I don't want it to be part of my identity. I don't want to think about the OS at all. Whereas most people using Linux are like: "whatever, once you read all the man pages and understand how the process isolation model works and find the right Discord chats to ask your question and know which packages to download and pick correctly from the 743 different distributions and make sure all hardware you buy is Linux-compatible and configure your kernel to sudo dev/null/ then you really don't have to jump down to the console more than once every few weeks" ... sorry, it's still currently much easier to unplug the internet when you first install Windows, edit a few regex keys to disable some ads, and then tell that popup "later" every few weeks. While the latter is infuriating, it takes two orders of magnitude less upfront mental load.
TBH, I'm ready to go back to windows.
I'm ready to go back to Windows 7. But between Windows 11 (or 12 or whatever), ios ("macos"), and Linux, it's not so simple anymore. It's just bad options all around.
Without knowing what distro you use it is impossible to derive any meaning from your post.
I've found Pop!_OS to be completely boring in a good way, though I do think there are some rough edges that are inherent to Linux as a sort of hacker first OS, if that makes sense. I also buy Corollas or at least cross shop them when looking for a car.
You can't be using KDE Plasma then.
I don't even know how to access the KDE Plasma help because it is just so easy to use.
I am writing this on a $500 ASUS Vivobook that came with Windows 11. The hardest thing was making the KDE thumb drive because Windows kept giving me a blue screen of death.
Once installed everything just works.
I have had a lot of luck using the Plasma desktop environment (on Arch). Super customizable, to the level of hyper specificity you've described (down to the pixel, sometimes), and is mostly intuitive how to make these customizations.
My local machine basically looks/runs like Windows 10, but with the KDE Plasma logo in the corner instead of Microsoft Windows.
I have a similar setup using Cosmic on Pop_OS!
I had a very old HP laptop. I installed Ubuntu 20.04, no problems. Laptop board died. I bought a mini pc, different CPU and GPU. I moved Ubunuty SSD from HP laptop to mini pc as it was, and it worked. Without doing anything all was running: wifi, gpu, bluetooth (even better than corporate Win11 laptop). I run Steam and I was playing just like before my old games. Magic.
Bought $2k laptop Acer Predator Helios Neo 16. Windows 11 doesn't install at all (can't see the hard drive). Win10 installed but touchpad doesn't work (even after drivers install), network didn't work (neither ethernet nor wifi) without external USB stick, and so on. After internet connection and installing all updates touchpad and dynamics still don't work.
Pop OS works near-perfectly.
Today I learned there's a laptop out there with a mouthful of a name like that.
Their official network drivers are called Killer and are very malware-looking ("unknown developer" blocked by windows). It's unbelievable. Looks like some weird spyware junk too.
Intel acquired Killer in early 2020, the drivers are definitely signed. You may have loaded legitimate malware.
From acer.com? Search for acer predator helios neo 16 (PHN-16-71)
Looks like this https://imgur.com/xelfxZB
This one? https://www.acer.com/us-en/support/product-support/Predator_...
The drivers are definitely signed by Intel e.g. https://i.imgur.com/yMr1bD5.png
No idea then. Maybe it's something to do with Windows 10, but it definitely was showing me tons of "software blocked" and "unknown developer" warnings.
Further tangent, but I remember seeing Killer NIC's booth at ComicCon in 2007 with that very cool, very pointy heatsink (I assume that is what it was, anyway...?).
https://pcper.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/a3d4-card-front...
Yeah with the wired stuff back in the day it was a little wild in that their idea was basically put a mini PC on a card which offloads work. Never really turned out that beneficial for gaming but it was at least unique. Then later in their life they just started OEMing Intel and Qualcomm NICs and sticking a driver layer for overcomplicate QoS which wasn't even offloaded anymore. The good news was if you just use the base driver it means you more or less end up with a standard e.g. Intel NIC though.
I would be embarrassed to own something with a stupid name.
"Hey so what laptop did you buy?"
"Well I went for the ACER MEATGRINDER Z980 JUGULAR MOSH RAZOR in the end. The keyboard is 100% sRGB!"
Loads better than it being "Acer ZXGT423LV" which is the trend with smartphones and many other devices today. I'll happily take an "embarrassing" name over that mess.
Eh, knowing tech companies, we will end up with the worst of both Acer Spectral MeatGrinder RPG Bazooka 16 ZXGT423LV-2024 Which should be unique enough, but then they just reuse the name and only change the code part
I write this as I look at an ROG Zephyrus G16 (2023) GU630HE (Last part is important, I think I had to check if it was the model with one of the RAM slots soldered)
Where did you manage to get one of those without Windows pre-installed? I was looking at one to replace my outdated Predator, and was hoping to save the ~$100 on the license.
In Ukraine. So.. it depends on how much do you want it haha https://rozetka.com.ua/ua/acer-nhqlveu00a/p416822133/
The shipping might end up being more than the Windows license, haha. Thanks though!
Doesn't it come with Windows 11 preinstalled?
Mine came with no OS. I need Linux primarily, but still Windows occasionally for Mission Planner and other Windows-only apps. So I've installed a second M.2 disk and had this terrible experience with Windows installation afterwards.
Last time I got myself a new laptop (2 years ago), I just removed the SSD (with Linux on it) from the old one and put it in the new one. (It was larger than the included one anyway, I had previously upgraded it.)
…it simply booted and continued working as before. No driver reinstall, no reconfiguring things. I don't remember but I don't think I even had to muck with BIOS/UEFI boot settings or anything.
Downside: a year later the SSD died ;D (possibly age/use related, it was 5~6 years old at that point)
If Linux kills SSDs in 5-6 years then it's not a good sign.
I had a similar issue trying to do a Windows reinstall on a Dell laptop. The cause was due to the default setup of Intel RST for the storage. The suggested fix was injecting the RST drivers into the Windows installer. I couldn't get that to work and ended up installing it in a VM then cloning the VM hard-drive onto the laptop's via Clonezilla. Unfortunately it was for work so just using Linux wasn't an option.
Same experience with the new 2024 Zephyrus G16 and the latest official Win 11 image. Crazy. I had to inject drivers into the boot image using nlite.
I'm a macOS user but would be interested in getting a linux desktop, I've heard Linux Mint or PopOS are pretty good just from a ease of use perspective? I've used Ubuntu in the past and had all sorts of display graphics driver problems.
I know it's an impossible question, but nonetheless, what's the best distro to use for someone who just wants a useable desktop?
Fedora is a good desktop and if you have Centos/RHEL experience your muscle memory can be useful.
Fedora strikes a good balance between stability and being up-to-date and secure. It's also the recommended distribution by Privacy Guides: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/
I really, really want to migrate from macOS to Fedora on my M1 MBA but Asahi isn't completely there yet.
Seconded. I can also just recommend Fedora.
I was looking around a while last year and those two are the exact ones I landed on, with a slight lean towards Pop!_OS due to the team behind it striving for maximum "out-of-the-box" usability.
Linux Mint has a special place in my heart as it was the first distro I used back in my high school computer science class and it holds up exceptionally well today. It's also community driven compared to Pop!_OS which is developed by System76.
I never had any trouble using Ubuntu, but I tried Mint for a project (I needed to import video over Firewire, and apparently, the kernel support for this has been removed) and Mint worked great for this project. I was so impressed I kept Mint installed because everything just worked.
I had a pretty good experience with Manjaro and KDE. KDE Plasma 6 in particular feels very nice, though nothing is as polished as macOS.
I'd avoid outdated linux (Debian-family like Mint). Try Fedora.
I ended up moving to Linux Mint in 2018, as I need a new laptop and was annoyed that the current generation of Mac laptops didn't come with any USB ports. It's been my daily driver since, and I've been pretty happy with it in general.
You should be able to try either distro with a live usb which will give you an indication if anything will break immediately on your system.
Depends on your experience level and willingness to tinker. The bad news is that in my experience, you always end up opening a terminal and fiddling with configuration files no matter what distribution you use. The good news is that if you are OK doing that, you don't actually need that much from your distribution other than the useful trick of keeping itself up to date.
Ubuntu is alright. But you trade off up to date software for stability. And the bi-annual upgrades to the latest LTS are a bit of a PITA and don't always go that smoothly. And you end up running older kernel and whatever else was current around the time they freeze their LTS version. So, for something that is supposed to be user friendly and stable, it actually ends up having a lot of issues and not being all that stable over time.
If you want to get the best possible experience with graphics, you basically need the latest kernels, drivers, fixes, etc. as soon as they get released. Ubuntu doesn't deliver that because you get stuck on either the yearly or LTS release.
These days I prefer rolling release style distributions. It's just less hassle in the end and not really less stable for me. The opposite actually in my experience. You could go with Debian testing, fedora, and a few other options. But I ended up using Manjaro which is based on arch linux. My reason is simple: the SteamDeck uses a distribution that is based on arch linux. I wanted to run steam on my laptop. So, I figured that using what Valve themselves seem to actively support and invest in makes a whole lot of sense. I've not been disappointed with this so far (three years and counting).
Installing games is easy. Getting things like Gnome, Steam, etc installed via pac is easy. And I can install whatever via snap, flatpak, or native arch packages. More importantly, everything stays up to date and fresh. After three years I have no need to reinstall my laptop because it's fine. Every once in a while I need to deal with some minor issues after some update for which the solution usually is a Google search away. But other than that, Manjaro has been rock solid for me. And besides, I've never used a Linux distribution in 30 years that didn't have that issue.
If you want to avoid all driver issues you should probably be asking about a hardware/OS combo, not just one or the other.
But over the last few years I haven't had significant problems.
I've used Ubuntu in the past and had all sorts of display graphics driver problems.
Were you by any chance using Nvidia graphics hardware?
If you play games, you'll likely have the best overall experience with AMD graphics. (Assuming the GPU model isn't too new; it can take some months for the drivers to catch up to new models.) Most desktop distros will have everything you need; no need to go downloading drivers from vendors or turning to third party software repositories.
If you don't play games, either AMD or Intel graphics ought to be good.
Nvidia drivers can be made to work well with most games, and certain distros make the setup easy, but they come with baggage and hassles. They're huge, and they have a long history of integrating poorly with the OS overall. The problems they caused me outside of games were part of what drove me to stop buying their hardware.
I think a lot of stock gets put into distros for driver issues, but a huge factor is the hardware you're running on.
Some distros like popOS intentially bundle drivers for newer graphics cards and the like, but that aside, if you don't have really hardcore requirements, picking decent hardware that's a few years old will probably smooth out your journey a lot, regardless of which distro you pick.
If you're coming from macOS you might be happy to pay a premium for a purpose built machine as well (I have a System 76 laptop which has served me really well for a good 5 years or so now with no sign of slowing down)
As an aside, Linux Mint, PopOS and Ubuntu (the three you mentioned) are all great choices for a reliable, stable desktop.
Linux Mint is an outstanding project, like you said focused on stability and ease of use. It's been my daily driver for over a decade!
I’ve been daily driving popos for about 5 years. I’m not an admin by any stretch and it’s worked great. Upgrades and everything mostly flawless. I came from a 13” MacBook Pro (2015), it took a little adjustment but it’s been great overall. The good thing about POP is that we’ve found ububtu software works on it.
We ended up installing popos on our work Linux (Ubuntu)dell because we had trouble installing the nvidia drivers for the card we got.
I had one hiccup 4 years ago where it wouldn’t upgrade to the next version because I did some out of band install. (It was a usb to hdmi adapter…) It was a little to get it sorted but I never ended up with a unbootable system..
I don’t like the PopOS name though..
Get a cheap used laptop for ~$300 and run linux on it, you will be surprised at how much value you can’t get out of that. I use it as a dev machine, although I only do embedded work and some web work on it. I still drive with my Mac, but I use the linux laptop over tigervnc and it work fine over ethernet. I would suggest looking at pop_os or mint. Both are stable LTS users but do seem to keep up with drivers and kernels reasonably close to “newish”
Fedora
Linux seems to be stealing more market share from OSX than Windows: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide.
Windows is shipping with its own Linux already, so it's getting harder to complain about Windows.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
There are ads everywhere on Windows. And onedrive hijacks your filesystem.
Even at my fortune 20 company I see: "DNC RATINGS COMPARED TO RNC" clickbait crap. I'm amazed my company lets that garbage through. Probably because we have legacy software + some corruption with purchasing. Sharepoint... really?
No one was ever fired for hiring MS, etc.
I don’t use or plan to use Windows outside of VMs. But I think WSL made a difference to a lot of developers.
Mostly to those that never heard of Virtual Box or VMware Worstation.
It's a first party, better integrated solution. Makes a difference
Could you explain what you mean in your first paragraph? In what sense does Windows ship with Linux?
OP is talking about WSL.
I've seen some technical documentation, such as readmes for source code, that assumes the user is on a Windows laptop running WSL. At this point in time if I see anything mentioning Ubuntu I just assume it's written with WSL/Azure in mind.
OSX has become a bloated pig of an operating system, and it's not that great as a unix system.
It's so strange. I'm an android user myself but majority of my dev friends are iPhone users. I can't see them switching because they of Apple ecosystem - mainly iMessage. So I'm really curious what's driving people from OSX to Linux
I was a long time Mac user and developer (iOS and macOS) that switched back to Linux after about ten years of using macOS.
The main reasons were mainly getting tired/frustrated at how hostile Apple has been to developers and users. Apple has been slowly turning macOS into iOS, from the UI to slowly trying to lock down the OS. There is also the Apple upgrade treadmill where they force you to upgrade your hardware through planned obsolescence.
I'd want to know a lot more about why macOS dropped ~5% in one month, why unknown doubled in ~1 year, why ChromeOS has more than 50% variance between halves of the school year, how ChromeOS had more users in the middle of summer '23 than the middle of spring '24, and more before I'd make any bold conclusions on how much what is changing and from where.
Two Unix systems and one is increasingly infuriating professionals.
Having switched back to Linux after many years, even looking at Mac OS feels like poverty now. Not because of the UX or hardware but because of the company behind it.
Feels like poverty?
They can't afford more mouse buttons?
Linux seems to be the only OS that makes good use of the middle mouse button, unfortunately many mice are not designed for that kind of wear on the button, so this is always the first to break :(
That'll be the "next big thing" they'll gushing about on stage: an incredible new mouse with TWO (2!) buttons! Of course, it'll be a $600 upgrade...
Maybe the thought of buying one brings up mental images of going broke?
Decent hardware that Linux is happy with is definitely much cheaper than a decent MacBook.
Poverty is not quite the right word. "Sterility" is the word I would use. My linux machine is a complex, fiddly beast, which I treat like a bonsai tree. My mac, however, gives me "dead mall vibes" in comparison. It's not all bad, I get more work done. But it certainly does not feel "alive" in the same way my linux machines feel.
The "alive" point hits the nail on the head for me, and covers the full system health spectrum - my underspec'd homelab/project laptop certainly feels alive, in the sense that only things that are alive can cough up blood.
Yeah that’s a better way to put it. I meant “poverty” in a somewhat spiritual sense, like a lack of aliveness that you’re talking about. It is weird to talk about operating systems this way I guess, but it is how it feels.
That seems like a bit of an emotionally driven non sequitur, to say the least!
Semi-relevant but a few years old, a 2021 VFX industry survery found that around 60% of workstations run Linux, and that number is expected to continue growing.
What's interesting to me is that VFX and game dev are kind of similar in terms of software and expertise, but game devs predominantly use Windows. I wonder why that is?
Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15b-4GMTSEE9tyqeQdBfy_LZnxQI...
Because the games have to run on windows
And both Unreal and Unity both mostly only work on Windows. (Linux support very sketchy)
VFX and game dev are kind of similar in terms of software and expertise, but game devs predominantly use Windows. I wonder why that is?
The deliverable of a VFX project is a video file or an artifact that goes into a video file (no complex dependency on Windows) whereas most games need to be able to run on Windows.
I don't think that's it. Games also need to run on consoles, mobile phones, and sometimes web browsers. Cross platform development isn't a new concept in game development, and all major commercial game engines work on Linux (well, they do today at least)
Most software used in the VFX industry does officially support Linux, and a lot of those tools are also used in game dev. Maybe Unity and Unreal's Linux support hasn't been great, and that's the only reason?
I guess it's easier to get into gamedev than VFX as an indie, and if you have little/no technical background then there's a good chance you're on Windows or Mac when you start looking up Unity/Unreal/etc tutorials, and then you just stick with what you know.
Because VFX was mostly UNIX thanks to SGI, and then moved on into Linux.
They also don't have any issues with FOSS religion, they will gladly use proprietary drivers and UNIX software on GNU/Linux.
The market is on Windows and the engine/tools target Windows first. Visual Studio, Maya, Adobe, etc have dominated historically. Jetbrains and Blender have gained ground but run well on Windows.
I'm not even sure you can deploy to an Xbox or Playstation from Linux/Mac officially but I haven't tried this gen.
With WSL and containers etc, getting something on Linux from a Windows machine is way easier than the other way around so there's really no driving force towards Linux.
But I'm also very confused by your link. Do you mean the visual effects industry or whoever uses this VFXPlatform project that added Windows and Mac support much later?
I believe it's the other way around: V-Ray explicitly advertises that you can avoid those expensive Windows licenses for your render farm by using Linux. And Houdini and its Mantra renderer run natively on Linux since forever. As does Renderman, the Pixar in-house engine.
If Pixar was forced to use Windows on their render farm, they'd be looking at a roughly $24mio !!! licensing bill. That's a VERY strong incentive to use Linux as much as possible.
1) If you want to sell your game, you go where the users are buying: Windows.
2) Visual Studio still offers a second-to-none developer experience. If you're targeting Windows exclusively (which you are in PC gamedev), Visual Studio is pretty much a must.
I get the impression that career Windows C++ programmers, and especially game programmers, tend to really like Visual Studio. Especially IntelliSense and the debugger. To the extent that equivalents exist on Linux, the consensus seems to be that they require way too much setup for a UX that isn't nearly as good (I vaguely recall one statement along the lines of "like going back to the 80s, and not in a good way").
Nearly 6%, really. Only misreported due to a certain browser not including 'Linux' in its user-agent string.
Which browser?
Chrome.
Chromium at least does include "Linux" in its user agent string.
I'll take your word for it, but the source code suggests not on all Linux distributions:
https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/2594d9f12f00ecdfbc...
Fair enough, it reports a different string for ChromeOS. But as you can see in the OP, ChromeOS has been listed separately at 1.41%.
Right, exactly what I said in the very first comment:
Nearly 6% [4.45 + 1.41], really. Only misreported due to a certain browser [Chrome/Chromium] not including 'Linux' in its user-agent string.
I get
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36C'mon Adobe. Release CC for Linux. Bless a DE or ship your own. Linux's market share will only increase and your suite should be pretty platform abstracted by now, anyway.
If Google is paying Apple effectively not to make its own search engine, I would not be surprised if Apple and/or Microsoft were paying Adobe not to port CC to Linux.
I don’t think we need a conspiracy theory. Most likely they don’t bother with 5% market share, most of which probably have strong feelings about closed source in general and Adobe in specific.
But if/when Linux reaches 10/15% that may change.
Wasn't Mac OS less than or around 5% for a long time after the 90s? If they thought that was sustainable, maybe Linux should be close by now? Of course there are many other things to also take in account, so who knows.
Most apps started on the Mac, so there was no porting needed. Also, most professionals had Macs, so Adobe had a 50/50 revenue split between Macs and Windows, even though there was a huge market share difference.
Didn't they buy then bury Corel?
No, but why would that matter?
As a user of 27" 4k monitors, the terrible 150% DPI scaling has been a dealbreaker for Linux desktop for me for years. Every so often I will go out and search to see if it's any better, and I always find people insisting that it works "perfectly" now, and then I will go and try to replicate what they did only to find out that "perfectly" means something very different to Linux desktop users who clearly have never used MacOS or even Windows with fractional DPI scaling.
I'm typing this from a Debian system with dual 27" 4k monitors. Why do you need 150% DPI scaling at all? It works just fine for me without it. Just set your font sizes larger if they're too small.
You can't be serious. That approach has so many downsides you can't list them in a hackernews comment. For example, icons will not be scaled in your method. So any app like audacity where tons of icons are the primary visual component are completely unusable. Not to mention icons on the taskbar look garbage. And not to mention...
You get the idea
For example, icons will not be scaled in your method. ... Not to mention icons on the taskbar look garbage
Yes, they are. It works fine. I'm using KDE fwiw. Icon scaling is one of the easily-configured features, especially on the taskbar. (The icons are all SVG, so why would you want to do anything other than native scaling?) Everything I use it for works fine. Maybe you should try it out.
As a 4k monitor user, I think KDE has DPI scaling on par with MacOS.
Seconded; while the occasional legacy program might have issues, I'm happily doing 4K with scaling in KDE with Wayland.
How do you configure 150% scaling on MacOS? Doing it in Settings > Displays makes everything blurry in my experience.
Statcounter's "stats" are garbage, and should not be reported on. They're computed from untrustworthy information generated from a skewed and undisclosed sample, and processed with an unknown methodology. All that's published is aggregate data that's so coarse that it's impossible to actually reason about what's happening and what's driving the changes to the number.
But fairly regularly their stats are either so volatile or so absurd that it's obvious they have no relationship with reality. Like when they reporter Windows 8.1 climbing from 0.1% to 6% market share in the US in late 2023.
One could easily come up with half a dozen other explanations for this Linux desktop market share number that are as plausible as the hypothesis of significant growth in desktop Linux usage.
Though I agree that Statcounter's stats are garbage, their methodology is somewhat known. They have connections to supposedly 3 million websites that run their script, that script records each hit, and the end stats say 4.45% of desktop hits come from Linux.
It's unclear what sites they, but I doubt it's a representative sample. Even if it is, like one person figuring out which site was tracked setting up a refresh script could be enough to meaningfully damage the data.
We know the methodology by which they collect the data, which is why we can tell it's a skewed sample. We don't know how they process it.
It's not possible to reliably determine the operating system from just the user-agent. You could try to enrich the UA data with other signals, but all of those avenues are either being closed off by the browsers as fingerprinting vectors or are going to have trouble distinguishing Linux and Android.
Likewise we know they do some filtering of bot traffic, but not the details of how or even the proportion of traffic they're filtering out (which would at least allow us to reason about the quality of that filtering).
How many people actually change their operating system user agent though—especially to linux? it’s gotta be less than 1%
I'm one of thosr who have, Microsoft office webapps love to misbehave with Linux useragents! I know Linux friends who spoof useragents for privacy reasons as well!
It's not that normal users are doing it in significant numbers. It's that other stakeholders are.
For example browser makers do that. Safari on iPads claims in the UA to be OS X on Intel, not iOS on ARM.
Another common use is for bots that are trying to hide they are bots. That might be malicious scrapers, non-malicious scrapers probing for whether changing the UA also changes the page content, or benign bots like software running phishing checks against links sent in chats or emails. It's not enough for these bots to just hide who they are, they want to look like a real browser.
We don't know how they process it.
I don't think they do. 4.45% of hits from UA's set to desktop report Linux. There's no more processing done. That'd explain why some random countries end up reporting a huge number of Linux users or the seemingly random spikes and drops the data shows.
Likewise we know they do some filtering of bot traffic,
Do we? Could it not be ignoring certain UA's that report as bots, like cURL or google crawler?
You seem to think they must be doing something to justify their data, but as we don't know what they're doing the results are trash.
I think they don't do anything to justify their trash data. I've seen no reason to give them any credit.
Linux on desktop is just a solid workhorse. My 13+ years laptop is chugging along happily with Ubuntu and my Windows8 10+ years beefed up desktop takes 10 minutes to start and 5 minutes to open a browser and basically a broken mess of security holes.
What about the 6-monthly and 2-yearly forced upgrades? How are you faring with those?
forced? how?
I imagine they mean security support, but are overlooking LTS somehow
Appart from LTS most distros still support the n-1 release until the n+1 is released so in reality you can always do a double upgrade once a year.
But ultimately it is a moot point as major distro upgrades are barely different than the regular security upgrades. There are just more packages upgraded at once.
It's not forced, but it's a trivial upgrade if you have a basic setup. I also have a desktop where I do some hobby AI development and once in a blue moon, Nvidia drivers would break the system because of kernel upgrades.
The beauty of this decades long race is that the end game is still ambiguous. The Windows desktop trends towards being a thin client for opaque cloud services, which means at some point the Linux desktop proposition will be quite dramatically different, with its emphasis on local, private, open source etc.
In any case, for power users the Linux desktop is already a formidable platform.
What part of Windows 11 is thin? Ads in the Start menu?
Who mentioned Windows 11? Ever heard of Windows 365 and "cloud pc"?
I didn't think that was a thing folks used, or want to use.
There’s already a massive gap between Windows and macOS. Though I feel like that gap between Windows and Linux is nominal.
I do think that Apple will continue to piss off engineers enough that over time Ubuntu or another mainstream distribution on a high quality laptop will be a popular choice for a plurality of developers.
The highest share seems to be in India with 16.21% Linux. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india
I wonder whether that's real or a mirage caused by Linux servers masquerading as desktops.
India is rather poor, Windows screams for new hardware (and Windows 11 just obsoleted perfectly fine hardware that's still plenty fast).
I've always assumed the sites they track lead to some serious small sample biases in certain countries. It's an Irish company, so I'd guess most of their sites are European language based and wouldn't be surprised if there's a high amount of tech sites.
For example, it wouldn't be that surprising if they got data from HN, or a similar site. What portion of Indian desktop hits to this site do you think report using Linux?
Statcounter data is based on website visits. It is very unlikely that any significant fraction of them are being used for browsing web, or even have a graphical interface with web browser installed for doing it.
I think Windows 10 was the best desktop experience. There was a period when OSX was nice. Linux is doable but it’s always 80% there (speaking strictly in terms of DE). Things break more often than I’d like. Not a problem if you do everything in terminal.
Windows has a lot more jank these days than the average Linux desktop.
11 is horrible. Windows 10 was GOAT for awhile right after they released WSL2. If you can give me Windows 10 environment with Debian as the base, that’d be perfect.
And then when Windows 12 comes out you'll be saying Windows 11 was the GOAT right? I thought Windows 7 was the GOAT!
I'm the person with the unpopular opinion that I would take Windows 11 over 10 any day.
Windows 10 has too much in the UI that still feels like a bridge between old and new.
They both run the same apps, so to me all the nitpicks and philosophical problems people have don't really matter much to me. I haven't found anything in Windows 11 that "doesn't work" or is even mildly annoying and it has a bunch of new stuff that's genuinely useful.
Like, it finally has screen capture utilities that don't frustrate me to use when compared to macOS. A bunch of little basic UI stuff like that where I feel it's an improvement. The Windows Shell is a major improvement. The notifications/quick settings area makes a lot more sense now.
Windows 11 remembers where your windows were when you undock from a second monitor. Little stuff like that where it was just slightly more frustrating to use than my Mac.
Windows 10 is also more poorly aware/optimized of modern hardware than a lot of people realize. It is an old os now. Things like automatic HDR in games just isn't there. (Really, gaming is an area where Windows 11's new features are quite clearly worth the upgrade)
Without knowing the methodology that StatCounter is using, the numbers themselves aren't especially meaningful, although a consistent upward trend in those numbers could be showing something real.
In any case, ChromeOS is also Linux, so tack that on there as well, along with whatever portion of that 7% "unknown" that you think is reasonable (which could be a relatively large portion, depending on methodology).
(Also, the bar chart shown in the article is messed up because they're charting the value of each item averaged over the previous year.)
ChromeOS uses the Linux kernel in a browser based userspace, and offers a VM for running GNU/Linux as guest OSes, isn't quite the same as being GNU/Linux, otherwise Windows with WSL is also Linux.
For numbers I did like to see absolute numbers. While I have no doubt that people are switching to Linux, but an increasing number of people are also just giving up on computers in favour of just using their phones for everything. Some of the increase in percentage Linux is seeing could also be due to Windows and Mac users dropping having a computer in general.
That's not to say that people aren't switching, I see no reason to get a new Mac next time I'm replacing my laptop. My work will be done more easily on Linux at this point.
It could also be showing that the market is consolidating towards big tech and that only those wanting to stay with their independent statistics provider are still with StatCounter. In turn, the users of services with such morals could be more likely to be Linux distribution users.
I don't have data better than StatCounter, but if we're thinking of methodology and whether it could be accurate, this is a possibility to take into account
The optimist in me wants to not leave unmentioned that Linux is more accessible than ever and information easier to come by while Windows has never been shittier (which old Windows version shipped with tracking and ads?) and macOS is still priced and protected the way it always has been: much easier to dual or live boot Mint. Come for the freedom and stay for the ease of use. It's no coincidence that Microsoft made it very easy to use Linux software within Windows now (obviously without contributing the inverse mechanism, that'd be stupid): people want it. I really hope there's more truth to this than to the first paragraph
Is it including or excluding the SteamDeck users?
Most Steam Deck users aren't browsing with it
IIRC StatCounter's numbers are based on browser user-agent strings. I'm guessing most Steam Deck users are mostly using it for games as opposed to one web browsing, so probably not.
I’m surprised about the amount of negativity in the comments here. I’ve been running PopOS on a few different machines for the last 4 years or so. It’s been almost seamless. I can’t think of the last time I even considered booting into windows - in fact I recently wiped my dual boot partition because I needed the disk space.
I’m not really a desktop power user - I don’t even bother changing the wallpaper usually.
I think it’s just so much easier now - almost every app is a web app. The stuff I run locally - development tools mainly - all have Linux versions.
I’ve heard good things about popos, will ditch my windows partition and give it a try!
+1 for PopOS as a daily driver and have barely used Windows at home in the last 5 years (outside of my work computer at least).
I love being free of Microsoft and Windows (and Aople and Facebook for that matter, but they're beside the point). On the way to minimising Google as well.
Across the week, I go between Linux, MacOS and Windows - my work issued device runs MacOS and my personal desktop PC dual boots Windows and Linux. I am biased towards Linux because I like it but it's far from perfect.
UX is a passion of mine and something I'm a little pedantic about and while Linux has made strides, it still has a long way to go in this department though it's _so close_ and constantly getting better.
Gnome and KDE all have their little inconsistencies and/or lack of functionality. Individually they are minor but together they make it feel unpolished or incomplete.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of things that I feel could be improved - don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it constantly - nit picking is my way of finding areas to improve it so I can recommend it in earnest to friends looking for a bit of OS strange.
Some things that I think could be improved;
===
- Gnome; has an incomplete file manager, though generally no file manager available on MacOS or Linux beats the one on Windows 7 or 10.
- Gnome; Window snapping doesn't always work for Chrome and in general window snapping needs some love.
- Gnome,KDE; While Chrome has its own style on all platforms, it somehow feels less congruent to Linux desktops than it does to MacOS and Windows - plus you can't drag tabs off the window in Wayland Chrome.
- KDE; Password keychain stuff. Feels like this needs to be native to Linux and not the DE.
- KDE; (minor) If you have a high refresh screen, KDE will use 60hz for workspace transition animations but 144hz for everything else.
- Gnome; Window decorations on Gnome are overly padded which makes the interface feel unpolished and somewhat clumsy compared to the tight fonts and spacing you see on Windows and MacOS. I assume this is because Gnome aspire to make a play for a mobile OS one day in the future?
- Gnome; The Gnome/libadwaita guidelines prefer a application menu design that is obscured from view resulting in too many clicks - I think this is also related to their mobile play. I believe that Cosmic gets this right.
- Linux; Please fix application installations. Flatpak is kind of okay but I constantly have issues with it so I tend to avoid it. I really love MacOS's "Foo.app" "executable folder" concept. It feels similar to AppImage but I don't think that's going to win the packaging wars any time soon.
- Fedora 40 + AMD GPU; This is my configuration but it might affect other distros/hardware - Steam doesn't launch from the icon right now. You must install Steam then launch it from the terminal.
===
There are lots of areas for improvement but regardless - every new release of Gnome and KDE gets better and better.
Steam has helped put Linux gaming on the map, that combined with the poor experience of Windows 11 has encouraged IT savvy people & gamers to genuinely consider running a Linux desktop for the first time.
Also the Cosmic desktop is shaping up to be a real strong contender in the Linux DE space and I am excited to see what happens there.
It's an exciting time to be watching the desktop computing space and I am hopeful that the additional attention Linux is getting will continue to push investment into polishing the desktop experience.
Gnome and KDE all have their little inconsistencies and/or lack of functionality. Individually they are minor but together they make it feel unpolished or incomplete.
I've been thinking the exactly same thing about Windows for several decades now.
Gnome and KDE all have their little inconsistencies and/or lack of functionality. Individually they are minor but together they make it feel unpolished or incomplete.
Fair, but for how many years now has Windows continued to have a legacy and "modern" way of accessing the OS's settings?
As a Linux desktop user, I installed windows in a VM to use an application that is not available for Linux (a printer app made by a vendor was available only for Windows and macOS).
Awful! Slow, bloated, my files by default were uploaded to Microsoft (and the setting is easily reversed with updates if turned off), lots of advertisement everywhere I click, edge is slow, …
Glad to be a Linux user! The quality of open source software is frankly very high. The only limitation is that some drivers or software are not made for Linux.
I know it's a minor detail but the other day I was using Windows for something and I was amazed by how sluggish even task manager felt.
What blows me away is how poor printers still work. On a bare Debian laptop, I just walk up to it and it prints via USB with no configuration needed. Network printers I think auto-discover reliably as well, but it has been a few years since I've done that (we have a tendency to not trust printers at our small security firm so we don't hook them up to the network)
At least they've solved that you had to wait 2 minutes anymore when plugging your mouse into a different USB port before it finds the driver from Windows Update again
I think the more people that have to suffer with windows 11, the more they will turn to Linux. To the average user, Linux is still a clunky, disjointed operating system, but despite its flaws it's vastly better than Windows 11.
Every OS now is clunky and disjointed in some way. But only one of them has ads on the desktop.
I switched to desktop Linux about a year ago. Fedora Sway Spin. I have done a major version upgrade without issue. None of the buttons moved. Nothing broke. Just business as usual. No complaints about the OS itself. The final straw was a Steam game that wouldn’t launch on Windows 10 but worked in Steam/Proton. I haven’t booted Windows since.
Fedora woke me up to how Fedora is the best.
I'm not even going to say Linux, because people confuse it with Ubuntu/Debian/Mint GARBAGE. Never use that later crap for desktop. Its so outdated and buggy. You are using the terminal on a daily basis to get basic features working, if your hardware works at all.
Fedora is so good, I feel offended I didn't know about it until now. I am bitter against M$ and bitter against Canonical.
Moved to Linux Mint a few months ago and 90% of the Steam games I play work the same (or better) which surprised me. Dev experience is way better and I haven't had to tinker with much at all, Bluetooth controllers connect just fine and no more bloat + spying by default.
I had the same experience about 5 years ago.
How much of this is due to non-technical users simply using phones and tablets instead of laptops and other devices with "desktop" OSes?
So you're saying there could be a constant number of Linux desktop users who are a larger percentage of a shrinking market. I suppose anything is possible.
I don’t trust these stats at all. I’d like to see a breakdown by user agent.
It makes much more sense to me that ChromeOS is becoming more common than that everyday users are switching to Linux.
It makes much more sense to me that ChromeOS is becoming more common than that everyday users are switching to Linux.
It's not necessary for anyone to switch to Linux to see this behavior. These are shares. I'm actually not surprised by these numbers because I've noticed Windows users use their desktops less, instead doing more with other devices. I wouldn't be surprised to see the number rise to 20% or more in the next few years even if there's no pickup in folks moving to Linux on the desktop.
Atomic Linuxes really are the gateway for regular people to use Linux.
I've been using Linux since the 90s and I never really would recommend Linux to anyone unless there were very special circumstances.
But today I'd gladly recommend for example Fedora Atomic, I haven't tried other atomic Linux distros but the key feature is being able to revert back to a previous state in the boot manager.
No software will ever be perfect, but once an issue happens a non-technical user must be able to easily revert back to a functional state so they can proceed with their work and life. Otherwise the OS is worthless to them.
And sure you've been able to do this with BTRFS and snapshots but Fedora Atomic is the first time I've personally seen a distro come with this feature out of box, while also being very modern and easy to use.
Just the other day I did an ostree upgrade and after rebooting Firefox couldn't play videos, Steam wouldn't even start. I just wanted to get on with my day so I simply rebooted into the previous commit. An end-user is given time and breathing room to wait for the issue to be resolved and try another update.
I've been using UWF on Windows. It essentially resets all changes on reboot so that every reboot is back to a clean state.
But I'll take a look at Fedora Atomic. What you describe sounds promising.
I moved to Linux for a few months (currently on EndeavourOS, but just distro hopping...). The main reasons for me was because of how the latest updates on Windows 11 has been very horrible.
Windows had only one OK consumer mail app, the inbox Mail apps, and they killed and replaced with Outlook Web App basically.
File Explorer got super awful, unstable, slow...
A ton of native things getting replaced by web apps... And each web app using their own Webview2, instead of at least using a shared webview between the apps (that's how W8 and W10 worked).
The result for this is that to show a simple weather info on taskbar, it literally needs a webview. Yes, the temperature thing on taskbar uses webview. If you are low on resources, the system just can't handle all of that.
Meanwhile on Gnome here, although with some issues, none comes close to that, and the design has been very consistent as well.
I don't know why this is always in the news. %4.45 is still very small. Linux came out 34 years ago. That's an ion in computer years. Linux desktop is in too many flavors. MacOS is one MacOS. whatever the latest. Windows 11 is Windows 11. Not many flavors of it.
I feel like Linux people are cheering for a tiny number. They'll take whatever desktop market share they can. 10 years from now maybe it will be 6%. Well... big f*king hurray! Open the champagne bottles!
This is all silly.
I used to run Linux on my desktop as a teenager, but now as a middle aged man I just want to sit down after work, boot up my computer, click the icon of my favourite game and relax for a bit.
And for that, I prefer Windows. I have stopped caring about my distro, my window manager, my desktop environment, the package manager I use. Even my wallpaper is just the default Windows 11 one.
Ho, hum. Linux has been on my desktop for 23 years.
Nice news, slow and steady grows in the past decade :)
Regarding the article...
While Linux's growth is noteworthy, it's important to view it in the context of the overall desktop operating system market:
Windows remains dominant with a 72.08% market share
macOS holds steady at 14.92%
Chrome OS trails at 1.41%
Linux's 4.45% puts it firmly in fourth place, ahead of Chrome OS but still well behind the market leaders.
Uhm what? And some people claim LLMs are great at summarizing data...
In case you're wondering if it's real growth, or just noise:
2009: 0.69
2012: 0.85
2015: 1.5
2018: 1.69
2021: 2.38
2024: 4.54
It only took 30 years, time to update growing projections for the next 30 to come.
It will be beating the 10% mark?
With modern hardware it's also completely viable to have a Windows VM idling in the background on a Linux desktop to run things like MS Office. Local RDP performance (with FreeRDP/etc.) is excellent and suitable for business or dev work that doesn't require accelerated graphics. You can have shared directories, a shared clipboard, and so forth.
Good. Linux desktop is the future.
I wonder if more people are using linux as a desktop or generally, people are using less desktop devices with the rise of phones and tablets. What i mean is, before even old people and the normal users would need desktop and they would prefer windows and mac, but now i feel like they are generally less probe to use desktops and dont need them so that might be contributing to the sudden market share rise of linux maybe? U know what i mean?
I remember playing with GNU/Linux since 2005 due to frustrations with the Windows XP and, eventually, Windows Vista. I think it was around 2007 I commited to it, thanks to a "beginning Ubuntu" book that came with the recent release distro CD.
Since then, I have only used GNU/Linux, trying different distros. In the end I kinda settled down with Debian but open to others like Guix.
However, my recent laptop which I've had for 3 years now, came with Windows 10. About a year or so ago it just upgraded itself to Windows 11. I don't mind it but there are just ** on it I don't care for. If I want it, I will install it. Even when I remove it, it comes back on the taskbar, etc.
I am only on Windows due to my current job - but as I am close to resignation... it wont be long before I backup important data, wipe the hard drive, and install debian.
I honestly think GNU/Linux as a desktop is far superior that Windows 11. I guess it all depends what you use a PC/laptop for. If you are stuck in a world of Microsoft products, such as Office.. I get it. It can be hard to break away what you are familiar with and, in some ways, some Micrsoft products dont really have close alternatives.
For me as a programmer, I pretty much have everything I need and my wife who use her laptop as a general user, had no complaints, either.
Honestly, since the rise of Steam on Linux and complaints on Windows 11 -- I am not suprised the market share for linux is rising.
Finally, 2024 will be the year of the Linux desktop!
On a serious note there seems to be an interesting lesson here about what sort of products just don’t seem to work in a non-commercial open source model. Specifically, simple user friendly UIs for non-power users seem to require financial incentives and competition.
Linux Desktop got so much better in recent years but it also stayed the same. If you’re trying to be productive and not just switching between editor and terminal windows there are still endless frustrations that never end.
Year of the Linux desktop
"As awareness of data privacy issues grows, more users are turning to open-source alternatives like Linux"
I'd love to see Linux for mobile devices just because of that reason. Old school "what happens on device, stays on device"
I kind of wonder or suspect that user agents are being misidentified. I have heard that sometimes Android gets identified as Linux. (which I guess is actually not wrong, but you get the point...)
"Linux's 4.45% puts it firmly in fourth place,"
I don't think it makes sense to count "unknown" as being in third place…
FreeBSD at 0.01%. There are dozens of us! :)
This is the year of the Linux desktop
I used Linux first as a 14 year old kid in the 90s who found Win$ows to become slow overtime and we couldn't afford a new computer. Fell in love with Linux instantly given the customization and efficiency. Not needing things like an AntiVirus was huge. I haven't looked back at all and its likely what drove me into CS. Sometimes constraints are a good thing. We had a few courses in Undergrad (outdated of course) that required students to run things like LAMP server and GCC and there was a good culture of running Ubuntu and other distros. I would have done 30+ installs for my classmates and ran into all sorts of issues with laptop drivers, overheating etc. Things are probably better on that front now with compatible hardware, (I only buy linux compatible hardware so I'm not sure).I really wish to see more widespread adoption especially in developing countries.
I am done with windows after issues with the quality of windows updates (even security updates!), dark patterns everywhere, pushy anti competitive nudges to Microsoft products, copilot privacy issues, and things like ads in the start menu. I want to use Linux but the main issue for me is battery life of common Linux laptops, especially since standby doesn’t work reliably.
I recently migrated from Windows to Linux. I bought a new machine with Windows 11 Pro preinstalled and it was a cesspool of Microsoft ads for their services coming from within the OS and preinstalled apps. It was happening so often, and affecting my productivity while annoying the heck out of me, that I decided Windows is hindering more than it's helping; I bit the bullet and installed Linux for the first time.
Fast forward and I've been on Linux for more than 6 months now and, while it's not all roses, my overall experience has been far better than Windows 11. I still remote into a Windows machine regularly for things that I have not yet migrated to Linux and, while it's a familiar space, it's no longer a space I want to be in.
Linux can win the desktop by just sitting still while Windows makes itself more and more awful and user-hostile.
Sadly I'm moving back to Windows by the end of the month due to the lack of audio production software, the only area where WINE, virtual machines with USB passthrough fail..
I'll still use Linux VMs for various services while my host is Windows and I'll develop in WSL but it's sad that a creative niche like audio production has practically no players in the Linux scene, I'm talking Native Instruments, Spitfire, EastWest, Dorico, even MuseScore with its MuseHub do not run under NixOS for example. Quite a shame.
Linux is getting better all the time and Windows is getting worse all the time. We'll definitely make it to 5% eventually.
The year of the Linux desktop?
I hope adoption of Linux accelerates.
Windows has become incredibly anti-user. I built a new PC recently. No internet because the latest version of the Windows 11 installer didn't have a realtek Wifi driver on it. This driver was present in the Windows 10 installer.
If I didn't know the work around, I would not have been able to install the OS.
Ok, so I got the OS installed, and was greeted with an OS with 4 different UI styles glued together from W7 on up. Keep in mind, the OS in its entirety has UI elements dating back to Windows 3.1.
Still no WIFI drivers which I had to hunt down and wait because the OEM's website was spittling out corrupt data for a while.
WIFI up, Windows update missed a bunch of drivers. Installed them manually.
After about 45 minutes, finally got the OS ready to install apps. Basic apps. Office, dev stuff, photo stuff. This took over an hour, what with Windows updates, and all.
I also put the latest copy of Fedora on my laptop. No internet connection needed. Typed in username, passcode. Installed in about 10 minutes. WIFI working out of the box. One reboot later, I had a fully functioning OS that came with everything I needed. 20 minutes total, perhaps.
Microsoft has completely thrown away any notion of usability while Linux is accelerating towards it.
I still can't quite wrap my head around requiring internet to install the OS while also not providing a means to access the internet via WIFI.
And then of course there are all the other issues surrounding the OS that has been talked about at length here.
Finally, Windows 11 is a buggy, slow, unresponsive mess of an OS, and it makes using Windows 10 feel like a breath of fresh air due to its comparative responsiveness and lack of bugs. Keyword is comparative. Windows 10 is still a corpulent waddling pig of a sloppily glued together OS.
I wonder just how much of this has been driven by third-party vendors dropping Windows 7 users. I know it's not zero, because I helped a die-hard Windows 7 user switch to Linux specifically due to the Steam deadline. It's easy to chalk that kind of stubbornness up to a generic "fear of change", but in his case I think he very specifically loathed the direction Microsoft took with 8/10/11.
We're already there: AMD has first class upstream Linux support!
I played steam games for ten hours on 6.11-rc3 last week with zero problems, on a very old userland (Debian bullseye). The amdgpu driver was built-in, not a module.
We organized a LAN PARTY (oh my, what a flashback) in 2005 in our student hostel, where we played CS / Half Life on wine, under Linux.
I thought we were already there, 19years ago
I'm not using Wine, it's all native. That's the big deal for me: it took zero effort from me, it Just Works.
Yes you are :). You just no longer have to set it up yourself. Steam runs Proton (their own WINE fork/distribution) under the hood for windows games.
Well sure, but the point is it's done for me, and more importantly, actually tested by the developer in many cases.
Developers don't care, they target Windows as usual, and let Valve do the needful.
Some game developers do test under Proton. Saying that because I'm in the discord server(s) for a few, and they mention stuff they're working on/support/etc over time.
Likewise, some do write GNU/Linux games, yet that wasn't in a number relevant enough to keep the original SteamOS going as businesses, until translation of Windows APIs was added.
Yeah that part is lovely. Having steam games “just work” for the most part is absolutely phenomenal.
Sure, I didn't want to belittle your experience at all. It's great that vendors think about Linux as first class citizens on desktop , too.
My understanding though, is that most of "steam games" are still windows binaries + wine + patches (proton, etc). It's well hidden behind a nice GUI, but the tech couldn't exist without the legacy of pure old wine.
Hahaha not belittling at all, I'm just old enough that "running X with Wine" means "spending hours upon hours pulling your hair out until X barely works" to me. Getting it for free feels like cheating :)
Well, if this is steam, isn't it proton, which is wine underneath?
I'm not discounting your experiences at all, btw. My 11 year old has been using Ubuntu as his main gaming rig, and the NVidia drivers work incredibly well and Steam games just work. It's still mind boggling to me that it works so well.
And, I no longer have to troubleshoot removing Windows virii from his computer.
UT2k4 supporting Linux was so progressive back then
Will we ever get UT2k2X?
There was a UT reboot, but as the other poster mentioned, when Fortnite eventually took off, they removed everyone from the project around May 2017.
Website is still up, but only partially functional. Check out the character design for Samael.
https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/en-US/
https://www.youtube.com/unrealtournament
Yeah, I guess I was always holding out some futile hope that they may reboot it at some point.
I don't see Epic making anything that will take players away from their golden goose.
Fortunately UT2k4 is still fun and plays well, even on an ancient PC, and looks decent enough.
I’ve heard there’s still some folks on some self-hosted servers playing it, maybe I’ll have to look into that.
That was back when I still believed, eventually I decided running Windows with Virtual Box/VMWare or macOS UNIX, was less of an headache.
Just a couple of months ago, yet another motherboard where UEFI and Linux distributions don't get along without some gimmicks.
Now ask yourself the same question but only for iGPU/dGPU compute API support from AMD on Linux and I do not think that you or anyone will come to the same conclusion on Linux!
And really Valve/Linux Community is more responsible for AMD's Opensource Radeon drivers and Gaming performance on Linux than AMD is!
Even Intel has better Blender 3D iGPU/dGPU Accelerated Cycles rendering support for Intel's ARC/Earlier iGPUs and dGPU hardware(Via OneAPI/Level-0) and iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux. And so really one must first consider what Linux Opensource applications need proper iGPU/dGPU compute API support so they do not have to use the slow and power hungry CPU rendering/whatever fallback instead.
And Blender 3D used to support OpenCL as the iGPU/dGPU compute API for AMD and Intel Graphics but even back then AMD's OpenCL component was not easy to get installed and working on Linux. And Linux/MESA had the old clover OpenCL implementation in the MESA drivers but that was not kept updated for OpenCL feature set support! And even with the newer Rusticl OpenCL Implementation in MESA that's just been created is that Rusticl/OpenCL implementation been fully enabled in any Ubuntu versions or Ubuntu derivatives currently?
Look at support for AMD's ROCm/HIP in Linux and for Consumer/Client iGPUs and dGPUs and that's rather limited and Polaris dGPUs have long since been dropped form the ROCm/HIP support matrix and Vega iGPU/dGPUs are on borrowed time for ROCm/HIP support.
So be careful there giving too much credit to AMD's iGPU/dGPU efforts on Linux as there's more to that story. And Look at Blender 3D where that works with Nvidia's CUDA and Works with Apple's Metal and iGPU compute API support there and dGPUs as well.
And I'm on Linux Mint and never going back to Windows but all my older AMD iGPU/dGPU hardware has never been properly supported for Blender 3D's iGPU/dGPU accelerated Cycles rendering. Intel's got better iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux but for ARM Based Processors Apple's the only choice there for proper Blender 3D iGPU support and no mention of Blender 3D iGPU accelerated Cycles rendering support for Qualcomm's Adreno X1 iGPUs on the Snapdragon X Elite SOC based laptops or Mini Desktop PC(Coming soon for consumers).
I don't care about any of that: I just want to be able to play video games without running Windows. I'm very happy with the status quo on amdgpu.
Sure, as long as you don’t mind hdmi 2.1 being busted because AMD blindly assumed that hdmi would open-source it for them.
Imagine spending the money for a premium laptop and the hdmi port being just permanently busted because it has an AMD apu inside, lol.
Even worse… AMD has settled on rdna 3.5 as their forever architecture for APUs (like Vega before it) so this isn’t going away anytime soon even if it’s fixed in rdna4. Same problem with av1 encoding - the bugs are present in rdna3.5 and won’t be fixed until rdna4 at earliest, and AMD won’t put rdna4 in APUs because it’s got raytracing, so these bugs are just gonna stick around forever. It’ll be probably 3 years until they launch APUs with rdna4.5 or rdna5 or whatever the next forever architecture is.
So anyone who wants plex transcoding is best advised to stay away as well. And that’s the problem - with Radeon you’ve always had to start listing off all the people who shouldn’t buy the product, and if you don’t use any of those things it’s great. (well, decent… except for x y and z…)
There are few things in the world I care less about than HDMI 2.1. Oh God, I can only run my 4K monitor at 60hz, how will I ever survive!?
Hardware transcoding is unnecessary, I don't care if it works and I never will.
That's not AMD's fault and there's nothing AMD can do here outside of releasing a proprietary driver. Which they used to do. It sucked and caused a lot of confusion and problems.
Creators can spend their life savings on Nvidia hardware, we're just here to play games.
Professional creators wont switch to linux bucause of Adobe.
Which is an extremely questionable business decision, probably driven by statistics like desktop market share.
But the resources need for driver development are negligible and Linux does run on most computers worldwide, so the behavior of many hardware manufacturers is quite puzzling from a business and technology standpoint.
Can confirm. Playing Elden Ring on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Just installed the Steam flatpak, enabled proton, installed the game, works just as well if not better than my Windows install. Nothing extra to install gpu driver wise this is practically vanilla OpenSUSE install with Steam really the only extra thing, playing online with multiplayer summons, etc.
Interesting that multiplayer works well, I thought anti cheat guards would prevent this in many games running on Proton.
Easy Anti cheat for Elden Ring works. No clue about other games.
There's also the fun approach which Valve had for 10 years in CSGO until CS2 release. They just didn't run anticheat on Linux clients meaning an opensource cheat was absolutely undetected for years.
over 50% of multiplayer games with anticheat work and the ones that don't are doing it deliberately. see areweanticheatyet.com
NVIDIAs latest Linux driver is open source (they were kinda forced to because of data center usage of GPUs and GPL requirements for kernel extensions)
It’s a matter of time.
Until it's part of the upstream kernel like AMD's driver, it doesn't count. Throwing a tarball over the wall and calling that open source is a joke.
I strongly believe that AMD's driver is superior because the open source process makes it better. NVIDIA does not participate in that process.
They have an optional open-source kernel module. It's still pretty far away from being upstreamed and their userspace driver is still fully closed source
Is there a significant difference between built in and loadable module?
Aside from source availability and maybe the risk of version mismatch, I mean.
I was trying to make it clear it was built as part of the kernel source, not as an external module.
There are some subtle arguable advantages, for example on x86 static kernel text sits on 2MB hugepages while module text sits on 4K pages from vmalloc.
The kernel on my gaming machine is actually built without loadable module support at all. It's a static binary with only the exact necessary set of drivers turned on.
Yes, the Nvidia proprietary driver has a kernel module that must be installed separately from the kernel. Most distros that focus on desktop usage and/or gaming handle this for you in a relatively simple way, but even with that, if you use a cutting-edge kernel you'll often end up with an unbootable system due to the kernel updating before the nvidia kernel module does. If you need nvidia on Linux, either use the (much worse, but rapidly improving) open source drivers or a distro that uses consistently supported kernels like Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop!_OS
Bought an AMD GPU as my most recent graphics card for this reason. I was able to play just about all my Windows games without issue, except for multiplayer games that rely on anticheat that does not run on Linux.
When Win10 goes out of support I'll probably be using Linux as my daily driver for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad Valve put in the work.
It really hasn't got it still unfortunately. Been waiting for hot-unplug support for years, eGPU gaming is still not viable on Linux https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1081
I had similar feelings about Windows 11, but I recently found the Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC build, and it works perfectly for me.
Debloated and no ads. You do have to do a little bit of troubleshooting, install extra components (e.g. to install the Microsoft store), etc., but it was significantly easier than debloating a regular Windows 11 install.
https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links
Why would I want to roll the dice with Windows install media from a third-party site instead of just using Linux (and possibly making it work better?)
You can verify the integrity of the files yourself. They provide instructions.
https://massgrave.dev/genuine-installation-media#verify-auth...
I want a PC that can play games without hassle. I love Linux, computing, and complexity, but sometimes I want something that just works consistently.
Linux has gotten better over the years, especially as far as compatibility goes, but it's still _much_ harder to use than Windows.
I dispute that notion
I was a Windows user from 95 all the way to 10. Yearly formats with fresh installs were a constant through the whole time.
Ever since I switched to Linux things are surprisingly stable. My laptop is running as well as my fresh install from more than 2 years ago.
If you installed your favorite distro on the average person's computer then they would likely not have a positive experience.
Care to elaborate why? Everything the average person uses in 2024 is browser based. As long as Chrome is there, they won't notice any difference.
Word Excel Outlook PowerPoint
Writer Calc Thunderbird T̶u̶x̶ ̶P̶a̶i̶n̶t̶ Impress
So a set of barely maintained applications that cannot support modern Hidpi screens that are shipped with almost every midrange laptop (except Thunderbird which is the only passable app in comparison to its alternative).
The rendering of the Office file formats by the LibreOffice is dogshit. Feature parity is a rounding error. LiberOffice UX is completely from last century. There is so many little UX things that MS added which are so out of the league (like live content update from Office 2007!) for LibreOffice and its outdated codebase.
The Office alone can maybe replaced partially in Linux-compatible environments. However the MS Office-integrated prosumer software ecosystem is the thing that keeps people on Windows. Unless Linux people redesign the whole ecosystem to be as accommodating to closed source app ecosystem and find a time machine to replace all the existing Windows ecosystem, nothing will change.
All of it doesn't matter for the average user this subthread is talking about.
You're right to some extent, which is why Chromebooks are fairly popular.
But, if we're talking desktops, I suspect most desktop users want much more than just a browser. Either for gaming, office use, creative use, etc.
I just got off the phone from my aunt who was filling forms in with Adobe Reader, editing word documents sent from her solicitor.
No it's not all in a browser. That's a shitty assumption and one that should not be forced upon anyone.
I always wonder how many people have been fucked over by a helpful relative giving them a Linux install with a browser and telling them to get on with it ...
Honestly, I'm a huge fan of Chromebooks for this reason. They are secure, easy to setup, and generally have really good battery life.
The keyboards are really bad for a developer, though. Otherwise, I might use them a bit more.
I installed Fedora on laptops of few mine friends during last years. All of them are using it till today.
One of them was really sceptical, but after while said "I though linux is more for nerds and more different than Win." Well, she is just casual user of browser, few chat apps, Kodi and occasionally libre office, but still positive with change.
However while I use linux on server and laptop, I cannot use it on workstation beacuse of Adobe that I need for professional work.
Do you provide support when they ran into issues? IMO there are a lot of variables here that boil down to Windows (and macOS) having the benefit of familiarity, widespread use, and more consistency.
Your experience with Linux will heavily depend on your experience with computers, distro, hardware (e.g. due to obscure driver issues), and workload.
Your experience with macOS/Windows will be fairly consistent. There are still driver issues with Windows, but they're less common than Linux.
Ok, another anecdote than - don't remember the last time I had to reformat/reinstall (though do remember one "reset") on multiple computers
I don't know if you see the irony of stating how difficult Linux is to use just after telling which hoops to jump to make Windows usable. Modern Linux requires way less than that.
I try desktop Linux out at least 1-2 times a year for a month or two. Every time I'm left disappointed.
I disagree. I use Linux mainly because it's just simpler than Windows. MS went on a pretty dark path in recent years with anti-user behavior, dark patterns etc.
The caveat is that I don't play games on my computers. For gaming, Windows is still the best choice.
I agree, which is why I'm suggesting the LTSC build which fix the issues you're describing.
The average person, though, still would prefer regular Windows 11 over your favorite Linux distro.
For managing SQL Server and other enterprise grade infrastructure and resource planning. And at least for now, many many other Windows based multi platform development tools that aren't yet practical on Linux desktop. Although, progress is being made in that direction, which is great to see.
How do you know you can trust massgravel?
I commented this below. They provide verification steps: https://massgrave.dev/genuine-installation-media#verify-auth...
I thought about going down this route, but decided not to; if Microsoft is purposefully making it challenging to make Windows usable, why should I devote resources trying to fight it?
For me, simply because I was tired of the shortcomings of Linux. I wanted something closer to a gaming console vs spending a week to get Ethernet over Thunderbolt working.
Ah you'll spend all that time trying to get Linux to do all that and then it'll hit a wall somewhere and 1-2 apps you really need won't work so you'll be ready to switch back to Windows 11 the next time you need to reinstall an operating system.
They all suck the same. In different ways.
I've been on Mint for 2 years. Never looked back.
I never hit that wall you speak of. Has been so amazing I donate 20 bucks every year to the project, just because I feel it has no right being at the same time free and that good.
Congratulations.
That did not work for me. Once in the last 25 years of trying apart from a small bit between 2003-2004 when Fedora worked.
It always has...
Apart from the bit where it didn't like the fractional scaling that still doesn't work properly, the power management issues, the absolutely terrible inconsistent user experience, the poor photo management and editing applications, the non-existent support for working with other people via the apps that they use etc etc.
It works for a narrow group of vocal people who use it for specific tasks but generic and usable, it is not.
I get that you strongly prefer Windows, and that's fine, but this part...
really? That would make sense as an argument for MacOS, but Windows is an absolute dumpster fire when it comes to consistent UX.
I use a Mac for ref. Windows is fine.
I've shared this before but in recent years (basically Win8+) it's actually been the opposite. I've had to help companies set up Linux systems running wine because they have better compatibility with ancient "must have" applications.
These days for 90% of users, the only "must have" application is a web browser anyways.
It works until you need Excel. I have yet to find a business which doesn't use Excel in some capacity. As in proper Excel, not somewhat dubious compatibility Excel (LibreOffice).
I'd still argue large swathes of things we take for granted on other platforms don't exist or don't work either.
Most of my office uses Excel for the web because it seems more responsive than the Win32 version.
I guess they are using only basic stuff, given how behind Microsoft 365 is from the native counterparts in features.
To be honest, probably. The vast majority of users don't need the advanced features of excel. I've seen people be awed by pivot tables. I'm sure some people need those extra features, but I'm guessing vloopup is about as fancy as it gets.
Eh, it depends on what you're using it for. I switched to Linux around six years ago and am quite happy about it. It's not all rainbows and sunshine of course, but at this point I much prefer it to the alternatives.
If Microsoft and Apple weren't continually making their platforms worse I might switch back to one, but they have been continuously going in the wrong direction for many years now, while Linux keeps getting incrementally better.
I actually booted up an old Windows 7 PC the other day and had forgotten how clean and nice the UX was. An OS like that is not bad, but Windows 11?! Good lord, I want nothing to do with it and would much rather deal with some occasional rough edges in Linux.
There are entire companies and institutions that operate exclusively or almost exclusively with Linux on the desktop.
Google, Facebook, Valve, Red Hat, the French Gendarmerie, the Munich city hall...
I contend that if they can do it, others can too.
You run the best OS for productivity as a base and virtualize other systems you need.
Naive question: Most of ML workload in a datacenter runs on Linux, for which I assume there's good driver support. Why do we say that Nvidia does not have enough driver support on linux?
It's a long story.
Nvidia has provided pretty-good datacenter/CUDA support on Linux for a long time, now. The problem is desktop Linux. Nvidia wanted to focus on supporting the old x11 desktop server at a time when most distros were switching to Wayland as a replacement. Nvidia tried to fix the issue by giving Linux devs a proprietary render API to develop Wayland support on, but it was largely rejected since it required writing a lot of platform-specific code. For a few years, the only way to properly accelerate Wayland on Nvidia hardware was to use the reverse-engineered Nouveau drivers that broke most desktop software - a catch-22 for Nvidia users that wanted a more updated desktop experience.
Very recently, a few things started changing. For one, Nvidia started to shuffle around their proprietary GPU code to make their hardware more open and modular. For two, starting with 510-series drivers and continuing through 535 and 555, Nvidia has started to make Wayland support a priority. In the long-term this should resolve the issue of Nvidia GPUs requiring special workarounds to support modern desktops.
Ah, did you mean that supporting GPGPU for CUDA workload is quite different from support GPU for graphics (or for all the GPU functions)?
They are pretty distinct. Having good CUDA drivers didn't mean raster graphics were accelerated well, and for a while the bulk of Nvidia's efforts were focused on a depreciated backend.
The good news is that those days are mostly behind us, with the more recent Nvidia drivers. Guess the crypto/AI boom helped them find the cash to hire better Linux devs.
The latest NVIDIA driver is open source
It's a reasonable but naive question. There's a big difference between Nvidia offering driver/CUDA support for DC hardware vs providing driver support for desktop/gaming gear. There's also a big difference between the quality & consistency of driver support for desktop GPUs between Nvidia & AMD.
It's the very same driver. And one big selling point of NVIDIA has always been that you could run CUDA on your consumer card too - unlike AMD where their compute stack of the day would only run on a select few cards of the last generation.
It is mostly the same but the support that the DCs are getting are completely different. Nvidia can and does give them slightly tweaked drivers. Data centers ship a set of enterprise distros with tightly managed set of software that's been vetted. Since there are no binary guarantees in Linux, anything can happen with consumer hardware.
Source: once worked as an student system admin in my university HPC center.
As far as i know, Nvidia drivers are not stable enough. When a driver crashes in a data center the computer might reboot and continue the operation after some minutes. When a player plays a game and the graphic card crashes, he might readily switch to Windows.
I really don't think I can say enough good things about the Steam Deck. If you haven't seen it, they have even supported the device helping people install Windows on it.
I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past. Given time, I'm sure they will do more in the future. Today, though, they are such a breath of fresh air for the support they have shown.
Link: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BA...
Oh man, what did they do in the past? I have Valve on my very short list of "good companies". Go ahead and rip off that band-aid: what are you referring to?
They never released Half Life 3.
But any day now.
They did though. Alyx is HL3.
Worst I know of, is that they were among the early movers on loot boxes. That said, my understanding is that their were not the same as the ones people grew to hate? I don't actually know the details that heavily.
The government in Australia literally had to take Valve to court to make them honour software warranties.
In response, Valve seems to have had a tantrum and won't release things like the Steam Deck here. I guess they're afraid they might need to honour the warranty for those too. ;)
I'd wager that adding "I am aware that XYZ has done some shady stuff in the past" when praising any XYZ is starting to become a common defensive hygiene in internet forums generally, just to preempt that inevitable somebody who is "absolutely outraged" and wants to ruin your day because you could ever like XYZ.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Steam still has Linux at only 2%, but agreed, I've been playing most Windows games fine through Proton
Are you playing Cyberpunk or Alan Wake 2?
No
There’s definitely been a sea change in efforts to provide a better UX when it comes to gaming. When steamos released, it seems to motivate scattered efforts to start congregating together in a more coherent way. See also:
https://bazzite.gg/
https://chimeraos.org/
Serious PC gaming requires mod managers, which are all written for Windows AFAIK
The new Nexus Mods App is cross-platform https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/NexusMods.App
https://youtu.be/OF_5EKNX0Eg?si=fFi2L2k2J6TvTRtc
The above would be Linus Torvalds saying
What frustrated you?
This comment would almost make sense 20 years ago (too)!
What about using rufus with preset settings like not have to use a Microsoft Account and so on? Just drop a Windows iso in it and it will make a nice Windows copy out of it.
with vulkan I do actually have some hope of this happening.