Will I wake up one day to see everyone using Linux.
I think the proposition of avoiding American tech in general will become more and more attractive in the coming years. Governments are already trying to move away from Microsoft for national security reasons. That’ll have the knock-on effect of putting Linux and Libra Office in front of more people at work and school.
In combination with the advances in Linux gaming, This may be the first time since the 80s where the OS you’re first exposed to will be anything other than Windows or Mac.
This may be the first time since the 80s where the OS you’re first exposed to will be anything other than Windows or Mac.
We’re already well past that point, honestly. Kids graduating high school this year grew up on iPadOS and ChromeOS. Last year I taught someone who is going to college this fall how a directory structure works.
As for me, our household is a Windows-free environment (except for a VM on my personal laptop that I use for DRM’d ebooks). We’re Mac-free except for my work computer. My kids are learning Linux as their first real desktop OS (previously they had only used school Chromebooks), and it’s been pretty smooth sailing.
Even pre-covid I was running into kids at the college I worked at at the time who didn’t know how to use a mouse or a flash drive.
It’s also possible we’ll see something like a EU law forcing PC manufacturers to offer a choice for the pre-installed OS on devices they sell.
Whilst that would be a great idea, top EU politicians tend to be in the pockets of Big Tech and the EU Parliament is currently majority Rightwing, so it’s doubtful such a thing will happen.
Linux is the most deployed OS on the planet, and the comparisons are not even close.
If you mean just for Desktop, it depends on what’s happening with the MacBook Neo, and if Microsoft gets their shit together and reverses course I suppose.
It’s been gaining a pretty linear 0.5% market share per year for a while. Which is up a lot from the historic pattern of always being about 1%. Unfortunately I think the bigger trend is people giving up on personal computers and using a phone or tablet.
I think it’ll be interesting to see what happens when the AI bubble pops. A lot of people want to hold off on switching OS until they get a new computer, but the absurd prices of RAM and GPUs are stopping people from doing that.
Well, the absured prices of some PC parts might actually drive some Linux adoption purelly because replacing an aging Windows install with Linux is a guaranteed way to extend the usability of the hardware, even for really old stuff (for most people, less so for gamers).
That said, the vast majority of people use whatever OS that comes pre-installed in their PC when they buy it.
I think you hit it: market share is going up as the market shrinks. Same (or even lower) number of Linux desktop users, but desktop users themselves are dwindling - migrating away. I know a scary number of people who use their phone for everything and are basically clueless at a desktop with a mouse and keyboard.
Best guess is slow growth that eventually plateaus around maybe the 10% mark if we’re lucky.
People are slaves to comfort, and ultimately that is what Microsoft and Apple are trying to sell. They want something that idiots can’t break, and they know the best way to do that is lock down the OS so much that you’re hardly able to interact with it at all. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people fundamentally unwilling to expend the very, very small modicum of brainpower necessary to use Linux these days, and I just don’t think there’s any chance of reaching them.
Things will mostly plod along slowly but then there will be some big event that causes usage to jump in a huge way, but not in the way that nerds like us want to see.
Actually, that has already happened. Linux is the most used OS in the world. But that’s because it underlies Android, and that’s not what most of us mean when we are talk about average people using Linux. We want to see people embracing open technologies and while Android might be open compared to Windows, it’s not open in the way that we want to see.
If Linux on the desktop ever takes off in a big way, I bet it will also be in a way that makes me say “that’s not what I meant…”
Slow and steady, with occasional spikes when a government or mega-corp does something particularly terrible.
You never know … maybe THIS year!
The way windoze 11 is going - people really hating it - you never know, but I’m not holding my breath. Linux is still very niche, and people are wary of “strange” “new” things, especially FREE ones - where’s the catch? I’ve seen it surge and blossom over the years, but it’s still got a really tiny install base (as long as you don’t count Android and embedded tech, where the OS and kernel are largely irrelevant to the user). But I don’t see people moving over to Linux in droves any time soon, really: I’ve seen too much.
For context, I’ve been using it since [dredges up old memories] slackware was new, so about 1994, when a work colleague and I installed it (off about 20 floppies) onto an old 386sx PC with probably 4MB of RAM. Been using it ever since - and from Red Hat 4 onwards (about 1999) it’s been my only OS on my own computers. I’ve always preferred it, and I’ve seen it grow in so many ways - I’d still use it if it was illegal. I haven’t tried EVERY distro, but I have tried most. These days I mostly stick with Debian or Debian-based distro’s (I’m currently on Mint LMDE).
cool nice to hear from a veteran. my first linux was SUSE just pick it for the cool logo,
Had to do some work with SuSE post Novell acquisition for a customer. IIRC the package manager is a bit odd, but I haven’t looked at it in what nearly 15 years, so I can’t really remember much about it. What I CAN remember involved running packet traces using Wireshark - it was mostly network problems, I think, so nothing to do with SuSE. It was certainly very popular in Europe, though I have no idea what they’re doing these days!
As I see it, if there’s a fast pivot point to Linux it will be when the larger PC makers offer, side by side with a Windows option, a “with Linux pre-installed” option, especially if the final price reflects the cost of the OS license.
Even then, the shift would take years as people slowly replace old machines, a process which itself takes significativelly longer nowadays due to the current insane prices for some PC parts.
Sure, there is a drip-drip effect from people getting things like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine as well as tech types replacing whatever is in the machines of their family members with Linux as a way to avoid having to replace that hardware with newer (and at the moment far more expensive) machines, but I don’t think that adds up to much more that 1-2 per year.
Mind you, this is a point of view based on how things work in Europe and the US - it’s quite possible that things are very different in places like China and developing nations and there are very different pathways and reasons for Linux adoption.
Lenovo is the largest laptop manufacturer in the world by market share, and they’ve offered Linux preinstalled on many laptops and desktops for at least a decade
On select machines.
The manufacturer matters for the option to be at all available, but it’s the seller that matters when it comes to how many people go for it if there is one.
Non-experts tend to chose from what’s right there in front of them in the store front they’re buying from, not a manufacturer option that they’ll only hear about if they care enough and understand enough to actually go look for it.
In my experience most PC sellers don’t put their Linux options right there in front of you side by side with the Windows options and with equal proeminence, and this is as much true for online stores as it is for physical stores.
Lenovo offering it as an option is a pre-condition for people to actually get it but non-techies are still not going to get it if sellers don’t make it as visible and available as the Windows option, which personally I almost never see happen outside smaller techie-friendly PC stores.
Mostly stagnation
I agree with this. There’s no predicting when it will stop. I think it will grow significantly from where its at, but then using Linux will be like using Firefox vs. Chrome. No longer weird/niche, but never the standard or the thing most companies develop for first.
Well Firefox used to be very popular at some point.
People will use “shitty corporate Linux” because no corporation is going to pre-install an OS that isn’t shitty spyware because spying on you is worth money and why on earth would a corporation leave money on the table?
Big jump. To call it slow and steady now is nearly a lie.
A government will send out an RFP to Lenovo, HP, Dell to provide end-user workstations running their government standard distribution. It will be a 10-15 year commitment. This establishes hardware support.
They also establish a support agreement with an office suite.
This combo effectively sets up hardware and software support that becomes available to home users.
It’s almost the same idea as setting minimum wage or travel reimbursements for government workers and private sector follows.
Stagnation around 5% tops.
Depends on your country of origin. Some governments are actively moving to Linux (China) some (US) never will.
I believe Linux will experience a slow, steady growth because the technical alternatives for most Windows features and softwares already exist, making it pretty much a matter of time until people realize it. But the friction, like IT retraining, vendor certified vendor support from Adobe and other shit, and general user habits, are still too high.
Edit: Although, on a second thought, maybe not even that slow given Microsoft incompetence at managing Windows.
Valve’s Proton support bringing gaming to Linux effectively, Windows 10 reaching its EoL deeming millions of perfectly functional PCs as e-waste by requiring TPM 2.0 and a short list of CPUs, and Microsoft’s aggressive and incessant push of invasive telemetry and AI features (like that shit Recall stuff), are certainly driving a lot of users toward Linux. If Microsoft keep making decisions like this, I’m not sure how long they will be able retain their user base.
I expect an uptick every time a major Windows update does something users don’t want. After the uptick some might go back to Windows or switch to Mac. But otherwise it will be a very slow and steady growth for GNU+Linux. I don’t think GNU+Linux will pass 10% desktop OS market share before 2035, it might even take longer.
