I have a feeling there will be a critical threshold crossed that will explode Linux’s popularity and install numbers and I think we’re getting close to that point now.
Just in time for the Rust debate to kill its momentum development wise! (/s, likely)
I’m unfamiliar with the “Rust” situation, has something gotten crusty or something?
Long time “old-school” kernel maintainers don’t know Rust and don’t want to learn Rust (completely fair and reasonable). But some of them don’t want to work with the Rust guys for lots’o’technical reasons.
It’s by far not an easy situation technically. Like this is a huge challenge.
But some of those old-school C guys are being vocal about their dislike of Rust in the kernel and gatekeeping the process. This came to a head at a recent conference (Linux Plumbers Conference?) and now one of the Rust maintainers has quit.
The big technical challenge is being confounded by professional opinions.
The un along with other governments are requiring all software including open source to be validated by a 3rd party security audit, C is notorious for its memory leaks and so switching to Rust is almost legally mandated but C is the foundation of modern society and switching will literally require rewriting linux from the ground up since Rust didn’t exist when it was made needles to say developers are not happy having to essentially learn a new language and start from scratch only harder because they can’t change anything they just need to rewrite it in another language and get nothing in return but happy bureaucrats as happy as bureaucrats can be anyway.
Yea that whole Rust drama is a pain. Linus unfortunately brought this upon himself. I believe he is also the guy that can fix it be either: Let’s remove Rust from the kernel again or… Saying: Just deal with it, we also support Rust, but Rust isn’t mandatory.
He can focus on solving the technical problems. Like have a list of things that has to be done in order for people to be happy with it. Missing feature? Starting guide? Limit what features can be used? C to Rust converter? He does not have to solve it alone, like he did with git. He just need to decide the direction.
I don’t think so. At this point Linux isn’t really held back by software availability - 90% of things are web based now and games apparently work pretty well (certainly better than on Mac).
The main issue is hardware support and driver quality. Especially on laptops, if you install Linux you’re really rolling the dice on whether or not you’ll get something that works.
Someone always replies to comments like these with “it works for me!” which is not really relevant when it has to work for everyone.
For a while at work I was in the Linux slack channel even when I was using a Mac, just to follow the amusing problems people had (and they had a lot!).
Then I moved jobs and have a Linux laptop… I get to experience it first hand. Hard reboot when it runs out of RAM, or 20% or the time when you undock it. Doesn’t work at 60Hz/4K on some work monitors but only if you are using HDMI. The exact same laptop model & OS works for other people. Battery life is hilarious. I don’t think I’ve ever got over 2 hours.
I have a lot of experience with Windows and some with Linux.
The driver problems with Laptops are not only on Linux, though it is a lot more common, depending on the manufacturer Windows also has a ton of problems if you don’t want to use the 8 year old pre-installed driver that was never updated.
And Linux is held back by (proprietary) software availability as well. Most of the time it would be Microsoft Office (a lot of people I know complain about alternatives like Google Docs or Libre Office not being up to par by a long shot). Another big thing is Games. Sure, most of them work quite well out of the box, but if they do not it would be beyond most of my friend groups skills to fix it. Not to mention the massive library of competitive games that some people play exclusively that just don’t work at all.
I think that’s wishful thinking. The vast majority of people simply don’t give a shit. While the enshittification of Windows continues, Linux numbers will slowly go up. But I’ll be quite surprised if I see it go over some significant margin like, say, 25% during my lifetime.
Back when it was creeping up to 3% i said its probably 5% and i still hope its that because we are getting really close to global 5%. The other thing is it should probably overtake unknown because then you can really call it the third most popular option without some old windows versions getting in the way.
Next year will likely explode.
There are those of us who think windows 10 is passable, have used it for many years, and were never planning on switching to Linux because we’re normies.
Windows 11 changes that, and when security updates for Win10 end in 2025, I’m switching to Linux.
Crazy to think that one of twenty people I meet outside use Linux
I doubt one in twenty people I meet outside even use a computer regularly.
Yeach i have a high suspicion a lot of those gains is not ( or not only ) beacuse linux is gaining popularity but beacuse desktop pcs are loosing one. Especialy if the methodology is based on web stats ( i myself quite often use smartphone to browse even if i actually use pc right now to do whatewer im doing right now ).
This is measuring desktop market share only. You can click to see all platforms where you can see Windows seems to be losing most of its market share to Android in the last few months.
Your assumption is that 100% people you meet outside use a Desktop PC at all.
Well what a intelligent decision it was to bombard people with ads in OSs that were paid for.
I switched the day Microsoft clickbaited me into clicking on an ad while testing the new outlook with the paid 365 subscription I had. At this point I was having a constant stream small annoyances at least every week since Windows 7.
My host is running Linux mint now and 365 was replaced by only office (since this seemed to be the most similar and compatible office package I found). Trouble free since January. Battery lasting twice as much. Zero work lost because of unexpected update reboots 👍🏼
I’m so happy, I even bought a Steam deck to support Valve/Proton
Ah youre one of the lucky ones. Battery life on linux is really hit or miss. Sometimes double, sometimes half, sometimes the same. This is because every laptop has to have its own profiles which is not easy to do because that means every laptop has to be owned by someone who can and is willing to develop patches for it.
Not surprisingly norway is the highest(i could find). Kinda dissapointing as someone who lives in sweden where its really low. Sadly i see this in everyday life as well. Everyones so tech ignorrant in everyday life and most people just find it strange if you dont use the same stuff as everyone else(tbf the culture is also like that) so everyone uses windows with all the spyware. Im not even kidding most people i know use edge and bing…
As a Norwegian, that got to be our coolest stat, however I have no idea how it can be true. Even in my engineering bubble there aren’t that many people using Linux. It’s all Windows and macs for home computers.
I dont live in norway so i cant say but the number of github users is also really high in norway if i remember right and most norwegians i know are pretty tech literate so i could believe this stat. But you never know how accurate the measurments are and how well your social group represents the whole country. For example hungary only has 3.4% while if i had to guess i would have said like 8~10% because i knew so many people who just used it because it was faster/worked better/was cheaper.
“Unknown” is my favourite OS personally
100% probably some privacy protected flavor of Linux that doesn’t show up on whatever survey they used
