Is 2024 the YEAR of the Linux Desktop?

25 thoughts on “Is 2024 the YEAR of the Linux Desktop?”

• This video exemplifies what is wrong with the Linux "community"

• With that many issues in Wayland and Nvidia, it is simply impossible for a Windows user to want to use Linux.

• Still miss decent VR support. That is the only reason why i am back to windows. While linux is stuck with such niche, Windows 10 gained a lot in customization and window managers. Crazy.

• The year of Linux desktop was 2006. Chrome OS and Android are also Linux.

  What is changed after that is it no one really don't care about desktop. Applications works from browser so it doesn't matter much. Interestingly people are willing to give up their privacy by choosing preinstalled Google or Microsoft so that proves it. If it can open browser, it is good enough.

• "It's not just that linux desktops are hard to use, they're actually getting worse and worse and worse. And in fact, the more effort that people are putting in to making these desktops 'usable', the worse and worse they are getting.
  […]
  The reason the year of the linux desktop is not going to happen, is not just because linux is unusable. It's because of these stupid desktop environments. The people designing them are trying to make them accessible by adding new layers of complication: new package managers, new freaking programs that are supposed to work better, which they're obviously not testing. They're just putting whatever the new shiny thing is on this operating system, creating a bunch of complications. […] All this stupid soyware, that just adds complication. It doesn't add functionality. It just makes things confusing and it's stupid, okay?
  […]
  People are mostly bothered by things getting in the way of what they should be able to do. They're not actually bothered that much by not being able to do something or not knowing how to do something. They're more bothered by knowing how to do something and having stupid arbitrary bugs come up in their face. And that is what all linux distributions are now doing."
  – Luke Smith, 2021

  This has aged like bourbon in charred oak barrel. And nowhere is the issue more obvious than in linux gaming. I don't mean the few games that run natively or have gotten a port (shout-out to the amazing folks over at OpenMW!), but the windows games running on compatibility layers. Everyone is praising Valve heaven-high for making gaming on linux viable, but it is currently in a worse state than it was at any point over the past two decades!

• Gaming has always been a hurdle to Linux adoption. SteamOS might finally be the distro that gets gamers to seriously use Linux.

• This morning I installed Nobara Linux on my laptop. It installed fine and then I installed updates and rebooted, and it wouldn't go into the desktop anymore. It just took me to the shell. That's when I knew 2024 was going to be the year of the Linux Desktop.

• Was going to comment but you just said it, the vast majority are living between work, consuming content and sleep. There's no energy left to invest into anything resulting not only in them suffering without nay push for change but actual stagnation in their life. Would also add how the education system has in a way made any self study or mental effirt look like an impossible shore or an endeavor that is never worth it. Many people would actually try to switch but cannot bring themselves to opening a search engine and fix whatever they might encounter, whereas for me I would sit and read an article or two to not only understand the problem but fix it in multiple scenarios and what causes it. Most people simply can't bring themselves to do mental work

• LOL ~ Not this again, surely? Must be New Year's Resolution time or something ~
  Ok, let's play. Are we looking better than we ever have before? Yes, we are.
  We used to be about 1/10 the size of GoogleOS / ChromeOS.
  That was about 1/10 the size of AppleOS,
  That was about 1/10 the size of WindoZe-OS.
  That's 3 orders of magnitude, a factor of a thousand.
  That's not the case any more. We're more like 1/2 the size or 1/3 the size of Chome.
  We're not like less than 1% of the desktop market any more, we're more like 4%.
  Now that doesn't mean we're about to blow past Windows in user numbers, but let's take some joy in how for 10 years or more we hovered around 1% of desktop users, often less than 1%. Today, we're closing in on 4% and we're starting to crowd Chrome users.

• The desktop itself is in decline. More and more people are going to mobile devices and cloud devices. In that regard, Linux is doing quite well. But i wouldn't put to much faith into the Desktop. Regardless of the OS. The Desktop PC form-factor is on it's way out.

• There are some geopolitical reasons why linux is going to see more adoption as well. Russia uses Astra linux and Deepin is based in china. Also with all of the chaos going on more dissidents will adopt linux for security reasons. Valve may be releasing a new model of steamdeck and maybe even a console(pc).

• jay is the only with the real anwer: people hate change

• Who cares anyway. Mine started in 2017.

• Talking about Linux computers for sale at retail big box stores: Does anybody here remember LINDOWS?
  Inexpensive Linux based computers for sale on the shelf at….. WALMART!
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWmvtdyXlTA

• As long as Ubuntu make people drop out of College, its never going to happen.

• Do windows users know it has a terminal too? Lol

• We need Linux prebuilds that are very cheap. i wish Linux was better in the late 90s and 2000s since there was a big demand for cheap desktop computers but windows 98 and 2000 and xp had very high system requirements for the time so computers had to be expensive .but Linux was way too glitchy and complicated back then now Linux is much better but a low end windows 11 pc is not very expensive. only people in 3rd world countries can't afford one but those people can get an affordable android phone instead .there are some thing you can't do with and android phone. but you can with desktop Linux so there maybe a small market of impoverished users who want a desktop experience but don't have great technical skills .

• Linux has been the year of the desktop for me for over 15 years.

• Wow, this is a great format for you. Well done. The content was spot on, it was much more than the normal year of the Linux desktop video

• Happy and Healthy New Year to you Tom and all the Switched to Linux viewers! Who's watching in 2024?

• SpaceX has launched 98 launches in 2023.

• Getting close, Last office system put in place was Windows 11. Not because it is the best, Not because software requires it, and not because it will save money in the long term.

  Windows desktops is what most people are using and everybody knows how to use them, and if it breaks everybody knows how to get them fixed. Using a new operating system in conjunction with business is like a marriage somebody needs to keep the system up to date etc. With Linux the number of people who can maintain the system is limited. Of course, many people are moving away from Windows is growing, Windows only had a small victory based on planned breakage, and many know how to fix broken windows.

  People who are using Chromebooks keep saying they have never had a problem with their systems. It has moved the needle away from Windows. Can not use chromeOS in the office because Its connection to printer / scanners is not reliable, (requires a reinstall of the scanner). Maybe I should not say anything, but if Linux has applications running and chromeOS has an unplanned shutdown, the Linux partition is not happy, most of the time changing the size of the partition will fix it. If it does not! Having a chromeOS folding shared for user data is helpful, (an alternative to making a copy of the Linux home directory using ChromeOS) as it would not be affected by a remove/install Linux on ChromeOS. A bash file can reinstall all Linux applications.

  Sad to think Windows won because of breakage planning. But, it speaks to how weakly Windows is holding onto the desktop. Ya, people don't know how to unbreak Linux because unless you install applications incorrectly it does not break. The office does not have anybody named Sid. The office system is not a system to install applications on because Windows will slow down and break, then those applications need to be uninstalled. Everybody knows how to do that. If an update breaks windows, windows need to be reinstalled, everyone knows how to do that.

  It is a tragically sad state of affairs; But, I am going to put Linux on the older Windows 10 system, which slowed to a crawl only because of update bloat … but Linux will run circles around Windows 11 with the required software, and Office applications, (everything needed is open source) — Microsoft will update windows 11 to death and then I'll swap the windows out for the Linux system while the Windows 11 is being fixed. I'm certain once they get used to not waiting for the OS to load, or waiting for a reboot, Linux will be the OS, and nobody will want a new Windows 12 system. Cause if Linux is not broken nothing needs to be fixed.

  Linux could have better support for printers/scanners … Office workflow is printing and scanning documents and then emailing them with some creation and editing of office documents. Having the scanner stop working if the connection is lost and then replugged in is an interruption to the workflow (while someone is waiting). On Windows this is a reboot … Linux could improve the recovery, hopefully, no reboot (I get told too many times about needing to reboot) or reinstalling the scanner. Reinstalling the scanner is a deal breaker, don't want everybody trying to do that; (I'll be the one doing that while customer is waiting, rather avoid that).

  After the office has Linux, and nobody is calling me because Windows is acting up … I guess I'll need to make a more attractive or customized desktop and a custom distro, cause the systems will be working fine. Likely they wont want to touch it — cause it is still working.

• There's one of the big reason missing: a lot 3rd party application software is still missing from Linux. In combination with non-techies who just want their system to work as they know it, which leads to a bunch of small problems. The UI works different, feature XY isn't supported yet or doesn't work as well, or plainly different. Even software that has a Linux port doesn't necessarily work as well, for example TeamViewer is frequently crashing on my machine, and although it's the newest version, it looks like it hasn't changed within the past 5 years.

  I'm a full-time Linux user with very less free time, when I tried to get into music production 2 years ago, I soon gave up on it because this field is so dominated by Windows and Mac, that it's hard to find good VSTs that work well on Linux.

• You're really good at imitating cows 🐮 👍🏻

• What does "Year of the Linux Desktop" mean ? 10% market share ? 1st place in market share ? 80% market share ?

  Anyway, I do have a couple points to make
  1. The first point made in this video … how to put it nicely …. is just stupid. It's like a driver in a race speaks with his team mates "ok, this lap you might take the lead" "oh, I don't know if I can, have I ever took the lead?". The fact that you weren't in the lead before has nothing NOTHING to do with the ability to now take the lead. Waste of time of an argument, really

  2. With the rest of the points I agree. Basically, even with the many recent improvements and with the sure-to-come improvements of 2024, it's still not guaranteed to be a trouble-less seamless transition for a random person. So it boils down to the fact that for many people, it just doesn't provide enough benefits for them to be worth the hassle. For most people Windows works good enough to not be something to lose sleep over it. Until Linux provides much bigger benefits, it will only see a slow, gradual adoption, and that means it's still years away from being the most used OS in the desktop space.

  If an average Joe goes to a shop (online or not) and buys a new laptop, we have the following
  – Windows preinstalled, so Linux being free (as in free beer) or easy to install provides 0 benefit in this case
  – the hardware is new, so Windows will run well and fast (ok, some exceptions if you go very low end) – Linux being better/faster in CPU tasks and using less RAM will have a minor benefit here
  – the average Joe doesn't care about privacy (it uses Chrome too, proof of how much it cares) so Linux being much more privacy-friendly will provide basically 0 benefits here
  – Windows is known by the average Joe and he has no fear that any hardware or software will not work with Windows. Linux here would be a net, substantial negative here
  – Windows will be annoying to use at times because of automatic updates and stupid notifications or something hard/unintuitive to configure – Linux here will slightly by better. But let's not kid ourselves, Linux has problems too. When did Windows users have to care or find how to enable screen sharing ? Let me tell you – never

  Summing the above, the benefits are few and small, while the downsides are significant.

  Until Linux can do something big/mainstream and Window (and Apple) cannot, or until Linux can do something mainstream MUCH MUCH better (like 50% higher FPS in at least several popular games), then it will still have just a slow raise in adoption, at best. Besides tinkerers, people with low end hardware will slowly start using Linux, because for them the benefits will be bigger (for them, getting 50% better performance might be common)

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