When I was part of the KDE marketing working group, we always talked about 5% being the magic number. If we hit that, then the avalanche of ported and supported third party software starts. It’s a weird chicken and egg thing. Looks like we’re close!
Okay, I guess I’ll say it. Year of Linux Desktop!
which one?
My journey to Linux pretty much started with the reddit thing. I moved to Lemmy and started slowly eliminating corporations out of my life.
This is very good. The higher those numbers go, the more pressure there will be for better official support for both HW and SW.
FOSS is fantastic. But lack of options (FOSS or paid) for a few of my use cases keeps me stapled to Windows and WSL. Unfortunately. I’m hoping the momentum shifts.
2024 YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP
I’m replacing a couple of really old PCs at work with slightly less old PCs and I know they don’t meet Windows 11 specs without workarounds. I’m thinking about taking the leap but I need printer support to work. Otherwise something like open office and a web browser will do what I need. What distro should I start with? I don’t have time to find a perfect fit.
I’d say keep it basic with Ubuntu. It’s not exciting, but it ‘just works’ out of the box and there’s TONs of support if you can’t figure something out.
2nd. Ubuntu is the place to be if you want your best chances for immediate compatibility, and search results will favor your popular configuration if you have issues.
3rd, but I recommend getting the kde variety (used to be called kubuntu). This will give you the most windows like experience. Regular Ubuntu ships with gnome and has a different feel to it.
Also, gnome suxxxxxxxxxxx! There, I said it!
Meanwhile in India: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/india (14.51%)
Wowzer, ok, that’s seriously impressive though, like in 2022 I feel we were stuck at 2-2.5% and in 2023 we passed 3% for the first time and now we’re at almost 4??? That’s like DOUBLING the market share in a year
I switched my gaming PC to Linux two months ago and I’m loving it. I’ve only had to boot my Windows drive twice.
I mean, it’s no secret that the SteamDeck is a huge reason why. Praise Gaben, may we game on every platform equally.
3.82% is actually pretty damn good. And if Windows 12 pushes us into a subscription model I can see that gap rising.
Also, if/when DirectX gets native Linux support, or DXVK/VKD3D matches the API in performance, that’ll be it.
Personally I’m thanking Valve for this.
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Hi from Turkey, We have nore linux users than MacOS users and I tell everyone I know to switch like the foss evangelist I am
India is the eye opener … an enormous market of 1.5 billion people and the majority of them are too poor to pay for any specialty OS …
it’s going to turn into a futuristic dystopia down there … people living in slums but scrounging up old neglected and forgotten hardware to bring them back online with Open Source Software.Edit: I don’t normally make big corrections or changes to my comments but after rereading this, I think I went a bit too far with my assumptions about another country and culture … thanks @embed_me@programming.dev for putting it to my attention
Ok as an Indian allow me to interject. The reason people use linux is not because of poverty. Even the cheapest laptops come preloaded with activated windows.
We get introduced to Linux based OSs in schools. That plus people are heavily pushed into engineering and lately computer science and software engineering.
I was probably too hasty in my assumptions … simplistic, stereotypical maybe even a bit racist
I just thought it made economic sense … why build an entire economy or business using foreign owned software and basing it all on a foreign company, especially one with unknown loopholes that would put the company’s and country at risk by a foreign power.
Thanks for the correction and insight … I’ll be more careful about my assumptions in the future.
Thanks for acknowledging it.
Also another thing you are wrong about: You may be surprised to know that the second hand market for computer electronics is non-existent. As far as I know, there are only a handful of cities in the whole country where there is a second hand local market. Cheap electronics don’t last that much and in laptops there are only so many components you can buy separately and install. (Overwhelming majority of the computers are laptops, not the traditional CPU towers)
Also another thing I failed to mention is, the government tried to make a distro for govt use at one point but idk if anything came out of that. But I want to say there’s definitely a growing presence of linux here
Are you from kerala?
No. What prompted such a random guess?
It was not so common to use linux in schools in other states and in kerala, all government schools use a Kite Ubuntu which is fork of lts ubuntu. Its like the law to use free software for education in kerala. Me also got introduced to linux from school so i expected you are from kerala too. And Free software is most popular in kerala afaik.
The intensity of free software user group in kerala shows it too https://fsug.in/
Oh. I studied under a Gujarat board school. We had mint in our computer labs and textbooks 8 years ago. Idk what they’re now
