Why desktop Linux is finally growing in popularity | Hacker News Reader

Why desktop Linux is finally growing in popularity

zdnet.com

39 pointsCrankyBear40 comments

The main reason I use Linux is because it's the only platform that actually respects me as user. Whenever I use MacOS or Windows I can't help the feeling that I'm being "monetized".

Windows makes sense, but can you elaborate on macOS? To me macOS feels like it just gets out of the way. It'd be nice if it didn't come preinstalled with Apple's first party stuff like Music or whatever, but you tell those things to go away and they go away. Contrast with Windows where not only does it include third party trash, but truly extricating yourself involves changing registry things and fighting it the whole way.

Uh, you can't just make Apple's first-party apps go away. I have a Mac Mini for the express purpose of validating cross-platform code, and I've noticed that you can't delete a lot of the Apple software, be it Music, TV, or FaceTime. I have no use for any of them, but Apple forces them to stay on your Mac.

Normally we call this sort of stuff "bloatware."

Oh you're right, I thought you could delete them because you can delete the media creation apps (GarageBand, iMovie, etc.)

Have you ever tried to delete Chess?

But you don’t have to use them

Having to do a multi step dance to run a binary I downloaded with the intent to run (cause ya know it's a program) irks me to no end. SIP is a nightmare I have to fight to disable on every update, gatekeeper logs all my program launches and sends that data to apple. The list goes on and on. Essentially you can't use a Mac as a computer without learning multiple convoluted multi-step processes to do basic things like running a program and even then it's all being logged and sent to the mother ship in the name of "security."

I wholeheartedly agree with you, this drives me nuts.

Yeah, this is how you realize fanboyism is nuts. As much as I loved the openness of original Mac OS X and its straightforward management, modern macOS is a pain in the ass for so many "advanced" interactions that I think it is questionnable if it's worth the trouble (before talking about other costs).

It feels nostalgic but I kinda hate doing many things on macOS nowadays. If you don't need Mac only software, it's probably best to use something else considering the hardware costs.

I don't like how Apple/macOS chooses to degrade non-Apple-or-blessed-brands of devices from working well. e.g. Use of YPbPr for displays rather than RGB data, SBC codec for Bluetooth, and the like. Apple users are a means to an end.

Apple's just slicker at conning you.

It's actually more inflexible than Windows.

It only "gets out of the way" once you've been brainwashed into doing everything the way Apple thinks you should.

And surprise, surprise the "right way" involves not using anything where they don't get a cut.

you can't use whatever external monitor you have, because you need specific dpi ratio to make scaling works, otherwise blurry screen, because apple only do things for their hardware.

you can't charge keyboard/trackpad (and probably a lot of other stuff) with (some, or most) non-apple blessed chargers. i was unable to charge the trackpad fully, even in a week; had it constantly connected to charger, couldn't connect to mbp as the mbp had only usb-c ports. after few warranty replacements, someone asked me what charger i'm using, so i've tested the usb-c -> usb-a adapter and connected the trackpad/keyboard to the mbp. it charged fully, and the battery didn't died in few hours. after that i've returned/give away all apple-made accessories. fuck that hostility

> you need specific dpi ratio to make scaling works, otherwise blurry screen

And last time I checked, there were 4 (four) external monitors in the entire world that could render a Mac without blurriness. So the vast majority of people using a dock with their MacBook are looking at a blurry mess.

All because Apple didn't want to maintain subpixel antialiasing.

Yeah, this drives me nuts, this is insanely user hostile and greedy behavior at once. At the same time, they push you to buy their overpriced hardware (with limited availability/options) but if you dare buy not enough of it, they fuck you over with a reduced display quality even though they had a decently working solution before and it couldn't have costed that much to maintain.

I don't care for a laptop and their desktop offering is either absurdly overpriced (Studio Display) or way too underpowered for the price (iMac).

In a way, that makes it easier to not want anything from them, because nowadays on non-retina display, I actually prefer the font rendering coming out of Windows that whatever macOS is doing.

They actively removed (or refused to add) options that made common hardware (mouse) easy to use, that felt horrible.

Why do you say this about Windows? I was previously a macOS only user for a long time but now almost solely use Windows 11 because it mostly does what I tell it and that's it. You can set up the thing very easily to ignore pretty much all the Microsoft shenanigans and also configure it in a way that it knows you are an advanced user and won't bother you with the little things. I just restarted yesterday after a 16 days uptime and that's just because I felt like it, it was running just fine otherwise.

I really don't know why people have this opinion of modern Windows because that just doesn't match reality.

This. When I first started using Linux, I realized that the openess was not only about the source code, but that the whole system was open to my control without the need to write any code. Furthermore, there is a lot of free documentation out there that explains how to tweak parts of your system to make it truly mine.

> The main reason I use Linux is because it's the only platform that actually respects me as user.

Exactly this. And one things proprietary software nowadays sucks big is being economical with my attention and not wasting it. Imagine this: One day, I arrived at work, logged in to the Windows box, opened the web browser to read new mail messages about the thing we were furiously and deeply working and, and what I got next was some in-browser news advertisements from MSN about sexually abused teenagers. You can imagine how hard I cursed. Try to place your boss some yellow press front page over the keyboard while he/she is having their morning coffee, and see what happens.

Sounds like that has more to do with how you have your default ‘new tab’ page configured in your browser than with windows to me.

Those defaults are baked into the OS.

> The main reason I use Linux is because it's the only platform that actually respects me as user.

Well, maybe it does, but I can't get rid of the nagging feeling that it's respecting me in the same way a samurai warrior would bow at me, seconds before raising a sword and charging at me with its full might.

Just git gud.

I'd argue that it's not just Steam's support for Linux via Proton that's pushed some gamers to Linux. It's also that the Steam Deck ships with Linux, providing an example of how Linux just works nowadays.

(Yes, I know, Linux still has its fair share of problems, but today's Linux is very stable and generally user-friendly.)

I think it also helps that Microsoft is no longer as actively hostile to Linux. In the early days of desktop Linux they seemed to be releasing some new development kit, protocol, or framework that would directly exclude Linux users.

https://www.channelfutures.com/connectivity/the-halloween-do...

Recently, Microsoft has been supporting Linux more since they created Azure and Office365. In addition, if they were going to support Kubernetes on Windows they had to have Linux VMs unless they wanted to try and compete with their own containerization system.

I think Microsoft has realized they can make more money by changing their monetization strategy and using Linux to assist in that. Essentially, I think Windows 10 and it's OS as a service model was the dawn of the Linux desktop operating system.

Spoiler: Microsoft keeps turning Windows 11 into a steaming pile that's more and more hostile to power-users, or even people who simply want to get work done. Windows 7 remains the apex of non-server Windows.

> While some Linux purists dislike containerized application installation programs such as Flatpak, Snap, and AppImage, developers love them. Why? They make it simple to write applications for Linux that don't need to be tuned just right for all the numerous Linux distributions.

The good thing is that for end users, Guix and Nix (as package managers) do cover exactly the same set of features - but both are much friendlier to developers than containerized apps. And of course they are truly FLOSS and "open source" in that stuff is built from source and that sources are readily available to the users. This matters, since this makes the software more friendly: It is user-friendly because it is written by the users, in difference to a party which has other things as their top priority.

It’s better for users potentially too. Their program works in 10 years

This article is based on StatCounter, and I would like to see evidence that StatCounter data is reliable. Their historical data is all over the place and probably includes a lot of bot activity. I would be surprised if Linux desktop usage share is above ChromeOS. Statista reports that it is not.

I could see desktop Linux being higher than ChromeOS if what's being tracked is activity at websites that ChromeOS' target audience wouldn't often visit - which to your point, leads to the question of what the denominator is (all "desktop computing" form factor devices, all devices that browse the internet, are devices restricted to an intranet included, etc.)

Not long before malware becomes more prevalent on Linux now that more people are using it. But Linux is not some magic bullet that stops all malware, you have to practice good opsec and harden your environment too. How to do this is outside the scope of my comment. If you are concerned though there are these resources:

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https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html

Actually I'd argue that Linux is a magic bullet that stops ... most malware.

The problem I see with OSX and Windows is they don't have a unified package manager, which encourages users to go find it, often from a random website. Being commercially driven Apple and Microsoft have much weaker open source communities. Why would someone write a screen saver for Apple or Windows? Why would they give it away free? Why would they pay apple for the privileged of writing an OSX program and hosting it on their app store?

Take a security naive user, sit them in front of a Linux box, and they are likely to meet most of their needs with apt/yum/dnf install <foo> or using any of numerous GUIs to do the same. There's MUCH less of the install random package or shudder browser plugin from a random site in the linux world.

Similarly it seems that generally Chrome OS is more secure than windows or OSX, mostly because even though you can install apps, they have a more limited sandbox.

I’ve been amazed at how much better Ubuntu has gotten lately. I was impressed that it has a GUI firmware updater that is nicer than the one from Dell.

The main reason I use Linux is because it's the only platform that's actually usable.

You install it, get the software you need, and off you go. No account bullshit, no license annoyances, no telemetry. When something breaks i can fix it. If I want to do something a bit more advanced nothing stops me. I can use the windowing environment i like the best.

In a few words: I can install it and just do my stuff.

Desktop Linux has just gotten progressively easier to use over the years. Since Microsoft's plan for Windows is all about maintaining legacy support, it's kludgy by necessity and will continue down that path until Microsoft decides to break compatibility. So it's only natural that we've started to hit an inflection point.

More discussion a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576200

And earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39600172

Good Lord. This from ZDNet. (I always wondered what ever happened to ZDNet since their heyday as a Microsoft Rah-Rah company in the 1990s.)

Those same people who used to a call Linux "The Upstart Operating System" in a derogatory manner. I guess the boot's on the other foot now, boys.

The article talks about market share, but doesn't talk about the size of the market.

If the size of the desktop market shrank (e.g. because people who used to use a windows desktop at home now use a tablet and phone) then the Linux market share could rise even if no more people actually used it.

Pretty cool how Linux has snuck in to so many places (Android, Chrome OS, Windows Subsystem for Linux, MacOS) even without being the OS directly.

Sure, desktop use is still a low number. But the desktop in today's world is just a niche market, where Windows has a good share.

In the rest of the computing world, Linux is miles ahead as the major player: The internet's infrastructure is 90-odd percent Linux; the mobile phone world is about 80 percent Linux (Android, Harmony, etc); the smart household-appliance world (you know, the smart fridges, dishwashers, washing machines, microwaves, etc) is almost 100 percent Linux.

In the totality of things, the desktop world is a miserable few percent. Almost negligible actually.

Incidentally, ZDNet's "fragmentation" excuse is bullshit. Just like "fragmentation of brands" on the roads is why nobody buys cars.

just wait until i ship my game as a bootable linux image.

reboot to play is the future. who cares about the os, just boot into the app.

windows is somewhat usable with hellzerg/optimizer if you flip all the toggles and also disable updates.

i play fortnite on windows then reboot and write code on linux. it will be a good day when i can stop using windows. using an os that i can’t safely update feels bad.

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