- NTSync coming in Kernel 6.11 for better Wine/Proton game performance and porting.
- Wine-Wayland last 4/5 parts left to be merged before end of 2024
- Wayland HDR/Game color protocol will be finished before end of 2024
- Nvidia 555/560 will be out for a perfect no stutter Nvidia performance
- KDE/Gnome reaching stability and usability with NO FKN ADS
- VR being usable
- More Wine development and more Games being ported
- Better LibreOffice/Word compatibility
- Windows 10 coming to EOL
- Improved Linux simplicity and support
- Web-native apps (Including Msft Office and Adobe)
- .Net cross platform (in VSCode or Jetbrains Rider)
What else am I missing?
Yeah, no, I’m sure it’s about to go from less than 10% market share to over 50% in one year. 🙃
You forgot “Recall”.
I wanted to make a wordplay here, but I couldn’t find one.
Anyway, a lot of people are worried about the OS remembering everything you are doing like it’s taking screenshots all the time.
For my part, that would be a big no-no.
Recall does things that weirdly, a malware would have done back in the day.
it’s currently opt-in rather than opt-out, fully on-device and won’t work on devices with weak NPUs (or on any which completely lack it)
unless it changes in the future it’s not that bad at the moment tbh…until a botched update or a bug sends everything to the cloud, MS makes an about face saying oops my bad, then say it was fixed.
Of course it’s on-device. Microsoft is doing all the processing on people’s PCs, rather than their own servers, where they’d have to pay for that computation.
Data still gets reported to MS afterwards.
It must communicate with Microsoft in a way, just by the fact the “AI” must not “hallucinates” by suggesting the user to jump from a bridge or to add Glue in his pizza…
“On-device” has to be a half-true at best. I’m having a hard time believing that the NPUs on these new ARM chips are powerful enough for it to be fully on-device. Even more-so with “approved” x86 chips. There has to be some data sharing between the client and server, similar to how Rabbit does their shit.
Look up TPUs, like a coral tensor. Extremely efficient at machine learning, only, and cheap. If NPUs use anything like a TPU, then it absolutely can do local “AI.” Then once the heavy lifting is done, then I’d imagine all that data is uploaded.
Any source regarding “VR being usable” on linux? The current development seems pretty stale and it doesn’t seem like that’s gonna change anytime soon, especially if you own any Oculus headsets that predates the quest. I do hope the rumors of valve making the deckard are true, but those are just rumors and should be taken with a grain of salt.
SteamVR 2.0 dropped a bit ago, though it didn’t do much for Linux users…
But it does point to something still happening with VR over at Valve.
Any source regarding “VR being usable” on linux?
I use VR with my Index almost every week on Linux. Filled to the brim with minor issues but definitely useable.
Still looking forward to a Deckard announcement, the Index is starting to show its age.
I mean… it just works? Since the Index is out it’s just been working basically. Not sure what else would be needed. Sure being able to use Quest headsets would be nice but unless Meta decides to open up, I don’t think it would happen. IMHO that’s a vendor problem, not the OS lacking support, sadly.
Wait, if Steam VR works on Linux for Index are Quest HMDs not usable through Steam Link? Or does that still need the Oculus software installed? I’m not actually sure.
AFAIK it’s Windows only https://www.meta.com/en-gb/help/quest/articles/headsets-and-accessories/oculus-link/requirements-quest-link/ so some things work, e.g adb so you can install APKs or use scrcpy but you can’t rendering on desktop via e.g SteamVR and use the Quest officially.
Quest Link yes, I was referring to the alternative Steam Link app that is available on Quest. That’s maintained by Valve (and honestly works better than the wireless version of Quest Link, IMO). I was wondering if that works as an alternative, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are still dependencies for controller inputs and head tracking that need Oculus software installed to work on the server side.
It’s definitely a vendor problem rather than an os problem. But it’s still a problem that the biggest manufacturer in the VR space has no support for Linux, hence i find it a bit farfetched to say VR is usable on Linux when the most popular hardware is not being supported by it’s vendor.
Though there are community efforts like Monado that looks pretty promising!
I mean if the vendor specifically decides NOT to support Linux AND there are viable alternative that do, e.g Valve Index, that run IMHO some of the best content, i.e Half-life:Alyx, then IMHO popularity is indeed important but it does show it’s not an OS problem.
I was trying to read your post but I’m distracted by the algorithmic theft you used for the image. Learn to draw or don’t post
Dethrones? No. Not in the sense it will overtake Windows in numbers.
Grows its gamer ‘market share’? Absolutely.
- Windows 11 getting Copilot+ Recall
And a shit-ton of ads.
And the kitchen sink
Oh wait that’s the next KDE release
What else am I missing?
The fact that 90% of people don’t give a shit about ads, privacy or their operating system in general. They want a machine to open a browser, that’s it. If Windows comes pre-installed, they’ll use Windows.
The only realistic chance we’ve got is that MS shoots itself in the foot once more by all that Recall crap and businesses drop Windows. But that’s a long shot.
Then people move to Mac.
I find most people don’t know of the alternatives but they are open to change as they are unhappy with current options that they are aware of. I’ve talked with a few people that were surprisingly open to to trying Linux. They didn’t know how easy it is to use and install but jumped on the opportunity as they were unhappy with Windows.
Changing to Linux means, people…:
- need to have an understanding of operating systems, so they can think about alternatives
- need to be aware of the actual alternative
- need to be willing to learn something new
- need to be willing to leave some applications or games behind
- need to choose a Linux distribution
- need the technical ability and understanding to actually download, flash and boot from boot system, install it and setup initial, such as root password and such
These are basic and trivial stuff for us, but most normies don’t have this understanding and interest to go this far. And then it depends if they are happy and stay. Even if every PC manufacturer and distributor would offere the same PC with Windows and Linux, most would just choose Windows (probably). This is the current reality.
Mostly yes but there’s one other option that simplifies the whole thing: Chromebooks. They’re actually pretty decent for someone who doesn’t need much beyond a browser, a mail client, and a basic office suite.
Sure, they’re tied to Google with all that entails but they can be a real option for someone like a senior who relies on relatives for tech support.
Something I’ve never checked for but…are there any linux installers that run from within windows? Shrink the windows partition, create a linux partition, populate it, install grub, and tell the user to reboot and choose linux? I think general lack of good ext4 fs support in windows might make things difficult, but you don’t actually need to do that part from within windows. There could be a second installer that’s triggered the first time they boot from grub.
I feel like a well supported installer like that would dramatically lower the barrier to entry. It could make dual booting windows a breeze for anyone who knows how to run an installer and reboot, which is what people actually want.
This sounds awesome idea. Not sure if there is a technical reason why this could not be done. On the other hand, Windows already has WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux, is it still called like that?). All antivirus programs would probably go nuts. Windows itself is a restricted system and some things need to be done before booting into Windows. I assume if it was possible, then this would have been done before. At least I never heard about this. The best way is to have a preinstalled Linux on hardware.
Q4OS has an installer like that, but you have to change the boot order after installation, I don’t think it uses grub.
Such a hard agree. My wife won’t even let me install Linux, which takes out the more technical aspects of the above.
She’s just comfortable on Windows. Most people don’t want to learn something new and even fewer actually care about privacy.
Edit: Us Linux users assume that if Windows gets bad enough people will switch to Linux, when we all should face facts that normies will much sooner switch to Mac.
that normies will much sooner switch to Mac.
Rich normies.
Sure, for the mac pro line with specs that us nerds care about.
I think some of those M1 mac airs are really affordable now though. For casual use it would be a good device for a tech illiterate person.
Or a mini.
I have an M2 mini I use for iOS builds, cheap enough for me to buy and stick in the rack to use for remote builds. I got that a year ago for $600ish iirc.
Yeah man. Apple still screws people when it comes to ram and storage options of course, but the base products are actually pretty good for the money.
Until something breaks, or doesn’t have a GUI. The average user seeing a terminal means they will abandon it. And even if they are willing to handle a terminal to fix an issue, the toxic community members that flock to be the first to respond condescendingly to new users will turn them away permanently.
Linux communities have some of the most helpful users, but they also have people worse than a League of Legends game. And all it takes is one of them to turn the average person away forever.
… And then something happens and they want you to install Windows again.
As much as I like Linux, compared to Windows and Mac OS it’s high maintenance. Once in a while, things will bork themselves. And you need to have at least a rough understanding of what’s happening to fix it.
Also (and that’s not a Linux problem per se) people seem to think if Windows breaks, MS or they themselves are at fault, if Linux breaks, that weird nerd and his hacker stuff are at fault.
I have to disagree, at least in my experience.
Windows causes more problems, both for my mum and myself.Her only purpose of a PC is basically to open a web browser, answer some mails and plug in a USB from time to time. For her, Mint never made one single problem, except when the hard drive failed.
She really liked the “boringness” and the old Windows charme.And for me, Linux never made any big troubles in general. When I used Tumbleweed, there were a few papercuts (e.g. graphical glitches, program freezes, etc.) due to the bleeding edge, but nothing major.
And since I use Fedora Atomic, I completely forget that I use an OS in general. I never have to update anything, I can’t break my stuff, etc…
It’s the most “boring” and user friendly OS I’ve used, even more than MacOS and Windows. Only Android/ iOS are better in that regard.But I’ve never seen my OS just borking itself. If that should ever happen, I can easily roll back in a second and it will work again.
And you need to have at least a rough understanding of what’s happening to fix it.
If you can fix Windows (which made way more problems after updates for me) then fixing Linux is way easier. And if you’re an average person, then you go to a local repair shop and say “My PC broke” and they reinstall Windows for you.
Without fail, every Linux installation I had destroyed itself after a while.
Be it a full boot partition, some weird driver compatibility, etc, etc.
My Windows installations (granted, all work laptops) never destroyed themselves. Yes, some bugs here and there, but it worked well enough for home usage. You can’t discount that.
Okay, but understand that from for example my point of view, your perception appears really skewed because my GNU/Linux installations have never “destroyed [themselves] after a while”. Respectfully, I think that you project your Linux failures unto the entire ecosystem, based on issues that were unique to you.
I’ve got the complete opposite to you. I’m in a household of 3 gaming desktops and 3 laptops, plus family who need help. I’ve been daily driving Linux for about a decade now and keep duel boot around just for Adobe products.
On all these machines, Linux hs been rock solid and never had issues that wasn’t user caused. Windows on the other hand drives me crazy with how much it fucks out. I have next to no control over it. It updates when it wants. I have no control over what’s updated. I hate the gods damn ads (and that’s on Windows 10) despite running de-crappifying software. I hate how many errors it has and how long it takes t troubleshoot them. I hate that if the system borks itself enough, it’s faster and less insanity inducing to just reinstall the whole os than try and fix it. I hate that Windows just gets progressively slower and laggier over time whereas my 6 year running Arch install was as fast as the day I installed it.
Without fail, every Linux installation I had destroyed itself after a while.
User-induced trauma, poor distros.
The fact those poor distros exist means yet another hurdle for the average user to switch to Linux
It’s true. I only use applications. The OS is a thing in the background that needs to get setup fast so I click an application and now I’m using my computer. I spend more time in my BIOS than I do the back of my OS.
Whichever OS does that best will always be the most popular.
Businesses that already use Windows with all of the heavily integrated business-related stuff from Microsoft (AD, Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, etc.) won’t change that just because a feature that most likely can be disabled via GPO.
Business versions of Windows either won’t have recall or the domain controllers will be able to enforce a rule against it.
Yes, but there are things that absolutely drove be crazy in Windows. When you switch to Korean, it would default to Latin characters, and you have to switch to Korean characters. Which is fine if you always use the Korean layout and just toggle between Latin and Korean characters, like most Koreans.
But I am actually learning Korean and I speak more than one other language. When I switch to Chinese I expect it to type in Chinese. When I switch to Korean, I expect it to type in Korean.
The most bullshit thing about Windows is if the default behavior doesn’t suit you, there’s no way to change it. You’re stuck with how Windows works because it’s batteries included.
Linux is about on-par with windows xp/7 as it stands, and it has been for a while. The reason people haven’t switched is OEM and software support.
There’s absolutely zero reason to expect Linux mass adoption as it is NOT happening anytime soon. What can happen instead is increased market share to something like 10% and even that is super optimistic from a long time user perspective.
The focus should mainly go to relatively technical users that can at least manage basic stuff and not mass market consumers. It’s good when people try Linux, yes, but it’s even better when they find it useful, it does what they need and they keep using it, not just trying and go back to a primarily supported OS that’s maybe invasive but “at least it works”.
Desktop computing is transitioning from mainstream to niche. Increasingly, “normal” computing is phone, tablet, and web. Normal people increasingly use desktops as big screens for the web.
Linux is a great platform for people to access their applications on the web. It is a good option at this point to give to your aging parents to grand parents the next time you have to setup a computer for them.
The other people buying desktops are buying them for things like gaming or dev. These are more technical audiences as you suggest. Gamers are a certain kind of technical though. We are almost at the point with Linux that gaming could go mainstream. I think it already makes a good ( perhaps the best ) dev platform.
Where Linux is worst is probably “technical” Windows users as these are the desktop people that are going to have specific needs and organizations that Linux may not meet. Part of the problem with Linux is that this is the group it has been targeting. That has led to a lot of desktop complexity.
Don’t get me wrong. I am one of the people taking advantage of and contributing to the diversity and complexity of the Linux desktop. That is not helping it make the jump to mainstream desktop users though.
The future of computing is not computers. Computers, by and large, are trending down. There is already mass adoption of Linux. Android. Steam decks.
Computers with keyboards and mice are increasingly obsolete. Fighting for market share there is like trying to become the biggest vendor of sailing boats in the steamer era.
PC computers were already replaced for different use cases so yes, the market shrunk, but they will stay relevant for many others for a long time. Simple tasks can easily be achieved with super convenient rectangles that are effectively computers with different input methods, but they just won’t cut it for anything more complex like 3D modeling, CAD, video editing etc. 30 years ago it was impressive when PCs could hold a large collection of digital music with instantaneous access to all of it. Now it’s just plain irrelevant, as basically all music known to human can be accessed from anywhere with just a handy rectangle. But then even relatively simple tasks like doing taxes is a daunting task on a smartphone, and only a tiny bit more convenient on a tablet.
Of course at some point computers with completely different input and output methods can put all we know today into obsolescence, but I think we’re not even close. Some may say that VR headsets will be the thing, but personally I don’t believe so. While having virtual 3D viewport is fun and games, people seem to ignore what it takes away. Simple things like being able to see the same thing on a screen by multiple people without some video sinks between headsets or ability to interact with things without having to wear helmet or putting anything on (however lightweight it is), would be gone. Don’t get me wrong, they can certainly have their place and things they’re really good or the best at, but it’s just not going to easily replace more traditional input methods. More likely something like holographic displays paired with motion sensors recognizing body movement or some shit
You are missing the “GNU slash”,
GNU/Linux dethrones Windows
BusyBox/Linux dethrones ur dad
Let me interject for a moment …
Why? There a non gnu linux distros
It’s called “Android”.
Well that is one yes. There are more than just one
As a new Linux, the hardest time that i have had with it, has been with my hard discs, and having software recognize them or save data on them. Its been a mess to find them on different file explorers and file pickers. I know that longtime users will explain the logic to it, but it is not intuitive. Also understanding root drive, root access and root user. Still not 100% sure i understand it. Things need to get simpler and more self explanatory for Linux to replace windows.
I’m a Linux dinosaur user since mid 00’s and I confirm that despite huge efforts to make it as seamless as possible, it still sucks today. The problem is that you even have different file pickers (that’s what xdg-desktop-portal tries to mitigate but some applications will do it the traditional way by including toolkit library and filepicker from it, or they will even implement their own), there’s a great freedom to how drives can be mounted and multiple systems to manage drive mounts. It’s managed by gvfs or kio or something else, the behavior is a little differently every time. There are attempts to handle all automatic mounts in /run/media and while most distros conform to that, some won’t.
What I would recommend is to
- create your own mountpoints for your internal drives that you don’t expect to change too frequently. It’s done in /etc/fstab. If you’re on KDE, the Partition Manager app can help with setting mount points.
- your primary desktop file manager (like Dolphin, Nautilus or Caja) probably has option to copy absolute file paths. Sometimes copying them is easier
- If you see GNOME’s file picker, the path is hidden unless you know magical combination of CTRL+L that shows and allows to edit the path
Good tips thank you!
The major difference for me was that drives are shown in the mnt folder
This is not intuitive but like much other, makes sense once you know it
Oh, and two more random tips:
- commands like
df,lsblkormountcan help checking out state of mounted filesystems - file pickers usually support drag&drop, whether it’s a file or directory that you drop onto it
- commands like
This isn’t intuitive because you can mount anything (mostly) anywhere you want under any path. The whole Linux ecosystem never decided one standard path or mounting method. If you want a disk to be mounted under
/home/$USER/Gameswhere/homeis also mountpoint to something else, you are free to do so. Desktops automate it and expose UI controls, yet again some apps are from GNOME world, some other from KDE or else and they have different UX and way to expose mounted storage. And I agree it’s not ideal, especially for newcomers.
I think it’s going to take a Microsoft catastrophe, something that disables machines for at least a few days. I’m thinking maybe a buggy windows update.
Or a forced update to windows 11 on machine that doesn’t support it. That would break the windows install for good. Either they will find a way to install windows again or take it to somebody who installs windows on it again. Maybe maybe they’ll find out about Linux.
Meanwhile total recall happening with AI+Copilot
I’ve noticed a LOT of pushback against the ads in MS shit. Microsoft has become greedy (well what am I saying, they’ve always been, kist really effin more greedy now) and somehow seems to invest even less in development. All Microsoft apps I see today are just painfully painfully bad. Again, not that they’ve ever been particularly good at anything besides keyboards, but lately it’s been comically worse.
I’ve seen Linux desktop grow significantly now, and I really do see it happen that Linux crosses that threshold where there is just no more stopping it
Office and Adobe Web native apps? What sources do you have?
But there’s also the Google Office Suite as another online office suite in addition to Office 365
You know that’s not what “native” means, right?
Web native.
I honestly don’t care about dethroning windows or anything related to it. All that matters to me is that my Linux system works the way I need it to…
You say that because you don’t realize the benefits:
- Better support for Linux with any new PC hardware on day 1. This includes things like USB devices, monitors, KVMs, UPS, everything.
- Better support for all commercial software in general. More software will become available and it’ll be higher quality.
- Vendors will be forced to test all their stuff on Linux which means it’ll all become more reliable and less glitchy.
- There will be more diversity in software and distros which means widespread attacks (aka hacking, worms, viruses, etc) will have less success and smaller impacts.
- The more Linux users there are the more Linux developers will result. It’s also much easier to start learning how to code on a Linux desktop than it is in Windows.
- Better security for the entire world. Linux has a vastly superior security architecture than Windows and a vastly superior track record. The more Linux users there are, the harder it will be for malicious entities to break into their PCs which translates into a more secure world.
- It’s much easier (for experienced users) to troubleshoot and fix problems in Linux than in Windows. This will lead to support teams everywhere getting frustrated whenever they have to deal with Windows users (this is already the case for many software vendors, haha). Therefore, it makes support people happy and easy going. Who doesn’t want to reach a happy, helpful person for technical support instead of the usual defiant/adversarial support tech? 😁
- The worst sorts of hardware vendors won’t be able to get away with their usual bullshit. For example, if there were enough Linux users HP wouldn’t be offering extremely invasive 2GB printer “drivers” because their Windows customers would know enough Linux users that they’d be rightfully pissed and not depressively submissive like they are now.
- When you do have a problem it will be easier to find a solution because the likelihood that someone else already had it and posted a solution will be higher (though admittedly this factor doesn’t seem to do much for Windows currently because of how obtuse and obfuscated everything is in that OS).
There’s actually a lot more reasons but that’s probably enough for now 😁
There will be more diversity in software and distros
I wish, but I doubt it. If we get to the point where there is a mass migration from Windows to Linux, it will almost certainly be concentrated into one or maybe two big distros. Probably Ubuntu.
Today, most proprietary software vendors only support Ubuntu and RHEL. Look at AMD. The ROCm installer supports Ubuntu 22.04, RHEL 9, and SLES. That’s it. Not even modern versions of Ubuntu. And it’s extremely ornery about dependencies. Python 3.8 or 3.10 required! No 3.9! No 3.11! Trying to get it to install on any modern Debian-based distro is the ninth circle of Dependency Hell.
Right now it’s sort of up to Nvidia and Wayland. Desktop sound is in good shape, desktop color (profiles and matching) and fonts are not there yet. Ray tracing and hdr have proven how much of a second class citizen desktop Linux is, so right now the most important factor is the SteamDeck for pushing the envelope to implement new tech. Chinese and German goverments moving to Linux helps but to be honet, I think that the “office and browser” use case is pretty well covered.
Possibly. But it’s also pretty common in many instances of technology adoption that as more users come, the quality gets worse, and while open source doesn’t have to worry about a shareholder-driven profit motive driving it, it’s still easy to wind up with a muddled focus. I wouldn’t expect that Linux and all of the associated software projects that make the functional desktop are going to be an exception overall. If you’re an open source developer working on a project now, basically any user is some form of power user, and it’s easier to find consensus of what to prioritize on a project not only because Linux users tend to be better about understanding how their software works and are actually helpful in further development, they’re also likely to direct development towards features that make software more open, compatible, and useful.
Now fast forward to a future where Linux is the majority desktop OS, those power users are maybe 5% of the software’s user base, and every major project’s forum is inundated with thousands of users screaming about how hard the software is to use and, when bug reports and feature requests are actually coherent, they mostly boil down to demands for simpler, easier to understand UIs. I can easily imagine the noise alone could lead to an exodus of frustrated developers.
Some things are better for NOT trying to be the answer for everyone.
better security for the entire world…
The moment Linux takes over as a dominant desktop/laptop OS we’ll start seeing a metric ton of the windows hackers follow suit to attack us. We’ll end up in a situation where they’ll probably go after some random kernel bugs that nobody else.has found yet or just don’t think are critical/exploitable. Or they’ll just attack the biggest, most widely used distros, going after people using them and any derivative distro similar enough for their malicious tools to work on it.
In general though, it would be a good thing for Linux to become a lot more prominent in the desktop/laptop market for general users. Especially since I imagine thanks to Linux being open source, people would be able to stop these malicious actors from doing damage much quicker (even though I imagine the majority of normal people switching over would almost never update because they’re used to forced updates and not having to do it themselves).
People don’t realize this enough.
There will be just as many vulnerabilities found with Linux distros as there are with Windows as soon as there’s real interest in finding them.
Not saying we should stop linux adoption or anything, but there’s a massive illusion that Linux is more secure. It isn’t.
I mean it might be more secure, it might be less secure, we just can’t read through the source for windows, so we won’t know until linux is attacked as much as windows. It would (will?) definitely be interesting to find out.
