Linux in 2024 – Charting its Own Path to Innovation

46 thoughts on “Linux in 2024 – Charting its Own Path to Innovation”

• I hate how windows changes the gui every release and is so slow and bloated, never liked windows since windows 2, which was a bad copy of gem and/or apple

• I feel like you've massively undersold how much additional value you can get out of old hardware from using Linux. I have a bunch of old hardware I've resurrected for various reasons and in has been fantastic for that. This is especially true if you use a lightweight DE like LXQt. I have a minimal Debian install with a manually installed Openbox window manager and it's very fast and smooth for the tasks given to it. Saying that, there is value in putting a new SSD in old hardware.

• The freedom to decide what gets installed on my system it's the reason why I prefer GNU/Linux. Though, lately I find myself distro hopping, also another reason why I like Linux is performance; currently, I'm running Q4OS at the moment, by the way, I'm trying it on my laptop. My laptop is rather old of course, it's a Lenovo Ideapad N580, dual core Intel B960, not a good CPU but for what I need it it still for running and trying Linux, as DJ Ware says, I'm pushing my limit.

• I recently switched, but the lack of printer support worries me because I aim to print for a home business. I don't see that changing so I can't throw out my windows just yet.

• I just use whatever operational system that comes fitted inside the cromputer im ordered to operate

• I'm in the process of switching to Linux on a gradual basis. (Dual Boot.) What is more important is that it supports many of the typical progs and apps that people use on a daily basis and that includes me!

• I started with Slackware V. 4.00 in June 28. 1997, (I bought the book with the CD in the back) now using MX LINUX and very happy.
  I have created almost 100. Bash script files that I use frequently. I have never taken any computer classes. I use LibreOffice, gimp and audacity all day long. I use thunderbird for E-mail and I brows with FireFox. I vacuum out my CPU cooling system every six months.
  Ron W4BIN

• Lmao what? Old hardware is perfectly capable and for most tasks the difference will be immaterial. I run decade-old xeons in some servers and brand new ryzen in others and for the most part there is no difference in user experience. This is across dozens of machines… the main differences I notice between machines are if the machine has an optane disk or not, and if it has a recent gpu for decoding videos lol

• "Just what I always wanted, automated bloatware" 🤣🤣🤣

• Refurbished Dell Optiplex minis works perfect with Linux. I use a 5050 Optiplex mini. Every distro I tried on it, installed without problems. Even with Secure Boot enabled, except for Pop OS of course. It never ceases to amaze me that after a storm you don't have power anymore. This never happens in the Netherlands.

• If you are worried about old disk failure, just replace your disks on a clock. What makes sense for you? Seven years? Or just do proper backups and replace the disk if it fails.

• Linux is a fad. We will all soon be converting to Temple OS, as God intended.

• The next thing we'll need is Linux for cars to get rid of all that tracking garbage that nobody would knowingly consent to.

• Great topic and the way it was presented. Feels like a campfire chat. Thank you DJ.

• Some of us must put up with Windows because we have no choice: it has imposed on us an employer…

• FREE software is only for anyone with spare FREE time. The most annoying thing is when a program/library suddenly disappears/is replaced. E.g., the legacy "cal" is recently replaced with "ncal".

  Windows is still valid to find out if there is a hardware problem. E.g., when Linux freezes, hangs, or is in an audio loop. If that also happens in Windows, it means a hardware problem. Otherwise, it is a Linux problem.

  Sometimes, "the community" recommends conflicting suggestions. E.g., for the audio loop problem above, some recommend increasing "vm.swappiness", and some recommend decreasing it. Both suggestions do not make sense since there is plenty of memory available and zero swap activity.

  Therefore, do not use FREE software if you don't have FREE time.

• Hey @DJ Ware you mention macOS and windows having had their day. Would you categorize the BSD family of UNIX operating systems that way. I’m a fan but I’ll be the first to admit it seems like they are falling behind Linux in hardware and features.

• Amen. You know, it is funny. When I first got into Linux in the early 00's circa 2004-2005, the IRC channels and forums and USENET groups were awash with the old UNIX grey beards yelling at everyone about stuff (usually due to a lack of POSIX compliance in Linux lol). Linux has been the UNIX standard and flag bearer for long enough now that we have Linux grey beards like this wonderful gentleman speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. I hope one day I can be a Linux grey beard too and have the authority to rant and yell about how stupid non-Linux-like systems are 🙂

• I got my new catchphrase:
  'what's the cost?'
  'nothing but your time'

• Proprietary driver do work on linux, but kernel updates may break 'em. This is usually handled by the distro packagers. This is why nvidia eventually released their driver code.

  If my understanding is correct the rest of their proprietary will eventually works once the nvidia kernel code matures

• I am bashing Windows – it's proprietary trash for self-entitled gamers that hates you and your privacy.

• the reason i switched from windows to linux is because back in 2019 , i was playing a game with my friends and we were almost going to win but suddenly Windows update came causing my game to minimize and by the time i returned back in the game , its all over …

  Will never forget that day ( and the game was CSGO )

  almost 4 years using linux now , no regrets till this day

• I use Windows and Linux. I've never had a Windows update that forced me to reboot. Sure, it will tell me that I should reboot to finish installing updates, but I'm never forcibly kicked off for updates to install. I use Windows 11.

  I also use Linux, and if you haven't configured your system properly, kernel updates tend to mess with existing kernel modules. In the past, kernel upgrades on ArchLinux rendered the system unusable afterward. It's either the graphics or sound drivers break due to not having been recompiled against the new kernel. Thankfully, over the years, I've switched most of my kernel modules to DKMS, and I have an update hook that automatically recompiles them. However, even this is not always enough to have a completely working system after Linux kernel updates. I can't go into too much detail, but the gist of it is that you have to be somewhat of a wizard on a distro like ArchLinux to have a working system after a kernel upgrade.

  In light of that, I prefer the way Windows handles these important system upgrades. It's just less stressful, and I don't have to be an expert in Windows architecture to manage updates.

• Remember when Apple released a new version of OS-X with a blank administrator password, and never asked you to change it?

• Although I really like Linux, with this discussion I think we kind of need to qualify what we mean by "Linux OS", at least for some of the points like "Tracking what you do", "Automatic bloat" and "Annoying updates". The reason I say this is because technically Android OS and ChromeOS are Linux operating systems, yet they perform a lot of intrusive activity on the user and lock you out of a number of permissions by default.

  I've heard people say that Android and ChromeOS "Not real Linux OS'es" even though they use the Linux kernel. But that then begs the questions, what is a "Linux Desktop"?
  If it is not the kernel that defines something as a Linux OS it would have to be something else that defines it as a Linux OS.

  Is it the form factor? I've heard people say that using a smartphone or tablet to do something isn't really using a computer, but I've known people who only use an android based tablet to do all of their work. Heck, there was a while when I was using a Blackberry phone to type up my university papers (god that keyboard was great!)

  Is it the user-land, particularly ones that use primarily GNU utilities? In that case we can exclude ChromeOS and Android, but also things like Alpine Linux. It it the design principles and commitment to end user freedom/customization? In that case we could also include non-Linux systems like FreeBSD or OpenBSD.

  I suppose you could try to define it by the community and the ethos & design principles it supports, but even within the community there is a lot of diversity – one only need look at the recent controversy over RedHat to see that, not to mention the endless collection of forks.

  The reason I think we need these definitions of what counts as a "Linux Desktop" is that there is so much diversity. You'll often see Linux evangelists brag that Linux is the most successful OS ever, pointing out that majority of computers and super computers use Linux, but the former includes cellphones & servers while the latter is so different from what would be used by the average techie that it is basically a different machine. It would be like saying that an old Ford Pinto is the same as the latest Formula-1 race car just because they both use internal combustion engines.

  Getting my father to install Ubuntu on an old laptop was fairly straight forward, but I can't imagine walking him through installing Arch. He'd get overwhelmed even using the command line based archinstall utility.

  I think without the clear definition of what we mean by Linux Desktop or LinuxOS we can't clearly describe what we like about "Linux" as a whole, instead it will just become a our favorite design principles and utilities, and just saying what we don't like about other systems.

• I DELETED (moved out of) windows in 2004, when Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog) came. Since then I was on Linux exclusively till 2015, then I moved to MacOS (all home computers). But I am using Linux on daily basis in my home lab and also at work. I don't miss ANYTHING from windows, at all. I simply don't play any games. Everything else MacOS is more than enough for me. And for any kind of servers I don't find anything better than Linux.

• This is granddad I never had

• There are ways to install proprietary drivers in Linux even though they're not in the kernel.

• I use Linux because it's faster, more secure, free & it doesn't crash like Windows!

• Linux on old machines is great value! Why should I throw away my computer every three years or so? Just replace the failing components with a modestly-specced substitute and you'll still have a system good enough for office work, browsing the internet, writing code, etc., just like it was when it was new. Windows has a major update every six months, approximately, and they target an average system spec about six months newer, so my budget laptop which ran early Windows 10 pretty smoothly was way under the minimum recommended specs for Windows 10 by the time Windows 11 came out. Somewhere along the way the expectation was that I should be running the OS out of an SSD, so the system got horribly unoptimized for spinning rust. The system was always choking on storage bandwith, even with no user applications open. Linux mint, which is hardly a performance-optimized distro, solved that right quick.

• I have a history of putting Linux on Apple hardware.

  I had a brand new 1998 iMac but became frustrated by the constant crashing of it's OS (System 7). On my previous computer (Macintosh SE) I had installed a variant of Minix and had enjoyed tinkering with it so when I learned about Linux (Linux PPC) I installed it on my iMac. Fast forward to the present, I now have a MacBook Pro and have recently installed Asahi/Fedora Linux. When Asahi leaves alpha I'm going to replace MacOS permanently.

  There are several advantages in doing this:
  1. No corporate tracking, spying etc…
  2. A fully secure and open environment.
  3. The hardware actually works better under Linux.
  4. Feels good to stick it to Apple – bwa ha ha ha 🙂

  Needless to say all of my P.C.s run linux as well…

  Thanks D.J. for this video!

  P.S. I do wear glasses, but you wouldn't catch me dead wearing bell-bottoms!

• There are apps which are better on Linux, Remmina (remote desktop) is far better (has better features – you can have tabbed interface for multiple remote computers) than MSTSC (rdp) and that's why I run Ubuntu 22.04.3 on my main desktop. Also, I just updated my laptop to Win11 and discovered that I can no longer move my taskbar to the left side of the screen (vertical). You are now locked into the taskbar being on the bottom of your screen. Why, MS? Why?
  I used Windows from Win3.0 through Win10 (30 years) but switched to Linux about 4 years ago.

• #Windows is CANCER! You CUT IT OUT, not play with it. It makes you sick.

• I switched from Windows 7 to Linux some years ago and I never looked back. It is fantastic what you can do with Linux. When I was using Windows I really had no clue about the OS. With Linux I am mastering more and more. My first encounter with an OS other than Windows was in '92 on a Sun workstation (Solaris) at uni but I didn't give it much thought because I studied chemistry.

• I moved to Linux because I was getting tired of Microsoft removing or hiding features that were previously there. In hindsight, it feels like they stop caring about power users with Windows 10, and 11 is really a mess.
  2 full years only on Linux at home and I can't see moving myself moving back. Knowing what my system does, what is upgraded and when I want it to is such a change.
  Moving from EOS to Arch to OpenSUSE TW I think I've found my distro 🙂

• In 2013 I bought three HDD WD, one died in the first months, the other two are still in use with more than 30,000 hours of operation, SMART is ok, but they knock quite hard.
  I know it's reckless to use them but I have backups, on one of these ancient drives😅

• Well Linux on the desktop, was never a main goal, just a feature. Benifits of GNU does help but the freedom to use the kernel in what "form" you like, is its big draw.

• Que distribucion de linux usa como su estacion de trabajo

• Just dealt with the windows update thing, had to stop something I was doing to let windows update have it's reboot and I'm so tired of it. I don't mind rebooting, I do mind stopping what I'm doing to do it. And that's on my second machine that I run windows on pretty much just for office, I had to do some work on an excel spreadsheet for someone.

• But Linux is more user friendly: you write text to it to convince it do do everything the user way. Windows doesn't do this, but note how the latest Windows version is adapting to text usage in its active menu system. The problem with claiming that Windows is more user friendly is a fuzzy definition of user friendliness that presumes that the users are stupid and need menues for everything, cannot be trusted to change too much in the system, and that they are all "office people that does everything the right way." In essence this false "user friendliness" narrative is more like an ideology than a measurement of stress levels.

• thank you for your work!

• Windows had it's day? Which day was that? I always thought that was the demo that comes with a new computer. Of course that is replaced with a real OS as soon as the system gets home. I have told my house hold that I will only IT Linux. They can have whatever they want on their machine…. I have never seen windows last more than a week… even with no breakage.

• I know you are not trying to bash Microsoft, but go right ahead, as with Linux as an example, they have no valid excuse!

• Great stuff as usual. I think you summed up what motivates Linux users so well:
  "It's about embracing an operating system that values user control, customization, and community"

• FreeBSD can run most Linux binaries, Linux can not execute a single BSD binary! Beastie makes Tux crap his pants👿🐧💩

• A great overview on Linux. Thanks DJ!

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