Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

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Is anybody seriously running linux on their desktop anymore outside of hobbyism?

Okay, I joke, I know several people who run linux on their desktop.

It seems like something that you grow out of, though. I use a mac, and most of the people I know who /really/ know [1]linux do too. In fact, the person I know who "knows linux" the most inside and out runs an ancient PPC macbook. I think he said he installed Ubuntu on his machine at work, though.

The reason for this is that we all run linux* on our servers. My primary machine is a VPS from linode which runs gentoo linux, and has for a very long time. The aforementioned PPC macbook guy doesn't really have a primary machine anymore. He is getting into power electronics, and is more likely to be sitting at an oscilloscope than a laptop.

Lately, my hobby box has been a raspberry pi which I'm looking to make it into a telepresence robot for our lab. Interestingly, live streaming video from a linux machine doesn't quite seem like a "solved" problem yet. It's lots of twiddling ffmpeg to make things work; things still aren't "plug and play".

This is cool, by the way, it feels like the first time I stayed up all night installing gentoo.

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I guess that for my peer group, linux was something that felt really revolutionary and new and important 10 years ago. We were battling against the big bad microsoft, THIS was going to be the year of the linux desktop! (No, MOM! You have to install Suse! It's totally easy let me show you!).

Then...we won.

Linux is just a tool for me. Like a hammer. When I want to use it, I pick it up and use it. It doesn't feel revolutionary and important anymore because it just feels /obvious/.

[1]: It's a bit silly to say "linux". I'm generally not specifically using any of the features of the linux kernel. Most of what I'm doing could easily be replicated on a *BSD system. Although this whole "gnu plus linux" debate thing is a bit silly. When I say "linux" people know what I mean. Sorry, Stallman :(

I have used linux as my desktop for the last 7 years. Started around 13 or 14 and went from there. Luckily when I played loads of games the ones I liked ran on linux as they were both java based. That is basically the only thing that might have held me back.

My brother, who I don't consider a tech person, switched over to linux after seeing me run it for years and needing a faster OS for an old laptop. He now uses it even on his newer machines. Along with my brother I have had a few other family members ask about maybe switching their computers to linux.

With more devices based on linux such as ultrabooks (chrome os) it looks like more companies will be writing drivers for linux; one of the larger issues with linux. With Valve moving to linux we have seen huge improvements in graphics card drivers which is awesome, and hopefully more game companies will start working on linux ports.

The big question though, is whether or not linux moving to consumer type interfaces is a good thing. See gnome 3, unity, etc. making things easier to use on the surface, but at the same time removing lots of the configurability and power that many linux users enjoy.

> The big question though, is whether or not linux moving to consumer type interfaces is a good thing. See gnome 3, unity, etc. making things easier to use on the surface, but at the same time removing lots of the configurability and power that many linux users enjoy.

Here is a good review of shifts in ideas behind various Linux DEs:

http://www.datamation.com/open-source/experimentation-vs.-tr...

I agree with the author that KDE made the wisest choice not to narrow options and to embrace various form factors with different design approaches (instead of lumping it all together into one mobile style UI).

I'm guessing it's mainly developers who don't want to/can't afford to use Macs.

I know that at the low end it's sometimes installed on computers which are given to very tech unsavvy people who don't need anything outside of a browser and can't seem to touch a Windows PC without acquiring 300 viruses.

CERN and some other Universities, French Police service, Munich &c. Quite a few places using a Linux based desktop for office and stuff, probably a lot of Web bases business applications. Android based desktops might take some of that away I suppose.

I don' think Android is appropriate for the desktop. It's way inferior in comparison with regular Linux (i.e. GNU/Linux with glibc and etc.) and there simply is no point in using it that way. Probably the other way around - conventional Linux will make more inroads in the mobile sphere in the near future.

Uh, yeah. My whole family runs linux on the desktop almost exclusively. I'm the only one who ever boots into Windows and it's only because that's the only way I can get into my company's system when working from home.

If you aren't already, you should definitely try running Windows inside Virtualbox. The only reason I boot into Windows these days is for games.

Many people run Linux on the desktop these days. And commonly cited numbers like 1% are way off (too low).

On the contrary to how you described it - when people grow out of Mac OSX and Windows, they start using Linux on the desktop.

What makes you think 1% is too low (assuming we don't count android)? Remember that 1% is still a shit load of people.

And of course if you are at all involved in tech you probably don't have a really representative sample.

I didn't mean Android.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_adoption#Measuring_deskto...

From that it looks like a variety of models have all reached conclusions of 1-2%.

I can't think of a strong reason to suggest that it would be higher. The argument is made on that page is that it is strong in places like China, though my understanding is that is not correct. Plenty of PCs in china may sell with Linux (or freeDOS) but my understanding is that they are always ubiquitously flattened and replaced with pirate Windows.

The point was, that those models aren't comprehensive. So using that number is not better than using higher estimation. In reality - exact numbers are hard to come up with, but you can conclude that 1% is underestimation using indirect methods.

What indirect methods show that as an underestimation?

Evaluating the skew in the web counters. Again - it's not a clear proof. Rather it's a reason not to take web counters like a proof.

Ok, but then there's no reason to suspect it would necessarily be higher rather than lower.

Another anecdote for you: I'm posting this from Debian running on an iMac. (I gave OS X a good try for about a month when my work got these boxes, but I'm far more efficient with Linux.)

I have been running debian as my desktop OS for the last decade. What do you think I am missing out on?

Linux desktops and Linux workstations are pretty common for certain classes of scientists and engineers. I work with a lot of folks at national labs and big engineering companies who run Linux exclusively on all their systems.

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