Comment on Linux desktop market share has hit over 10% in North America
JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 13 hours ago
For as long as I can remember it’s always hovered around 4-5%. Even 5% seemed like a magical number to cross. To see it hit double digits in a span of a few months is crazy. I wonder how they’re gathering the stats for this? What gave Linux a boost. Surely it wasn’t the Steam Machines by themselves that caused this boost.
What gave Linux a boost.
My guess is summer. Perhaps people waited until they have more time to switch from Windows to Linux. And holiday means less work computers – which are all Windows machines – being used.
Cloudflare Radar also shows a sudden jump from 3.5% to 5.5% from June 15 to June 29. It has since come down to 3.9%, which is still about 0.6 percent points higher than previous average.
This was the case for me last summer. Waited until the start of break so if anything went wrong it wouldn’t be too much of a nightmare. Wouldn’t be too shocked if others took similar opportunity. Depends a bit how many people have any sort of proper summer holiday these days though.
Im guessing it was Microsoft shooting itself on the balls over and over
I think it’s due to how easy it is to set up now if you have a decent AI model to chat with. All the IT is taken care of if you ask the right questions. Instead of having to scour forums that may or may not have your answer, now you have an IT guy in a box who can take care of pretty much everything for you.
You don’t need an LLM to setup Linux, it is as easy, possibly even easier than setting up Windows 11. While LLMs can provide some help in troubleshooting, they can be just as wrong. If you think they can’t be, quite frequently actually, you are living a dangerous life.
I was gonna say what do you need an AI to use a 3 button graphical user interface for? Almost every distro besides Arch has figured out the ux for os install.
It’s handy when your video card drivers update in the background and then stop working. Then you get to learn fun commands like nvidia-smi to try and figure out what the hell is going on.
Linux is good, but there is still a pretty heavy need to get around on the command line. While I’m no fan of Windows anymore, at least you can point and click your way through a fair amount of stuff natively. Having a built-in Device Manager clone would be handy.
Also, setting up a multi-function printer/copier/scanner can be pretty ugly. Yeah only old people print, but they are still around. Tinkering with brsaneconfig4 to set up a scanner is a handful.
For most laptop users who don’t do much with peripherals and hardware, you’re pretty good. If you connect anything kinda odd, you’re going to have to work for it.
I use an online platform to connect to my car for diagnostics and the USB to OBDII cable requires specific drivers. I am thankful that the manufacturer did supply them, but I’ve had a few devices like that where it was just a dead end.
keimevo@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 12 hours ago
Did you know Proton is 8 years old? Steam launched on Linux in 2013. Gaming on Linux is a 10+ year old endeavor at this point. I remember the days of Steam barely running through Wine and before Lutris and Bottles and Heroic.
The part about old Windows PCs running like shit has been true going back to like Windows 95 when I first started using computers. Building PCs as opposed to buying a pre-built has always been a $1000+ venture for me.
There’s something else happening here. If I had to guess, everything being mentioned plays a factor into it but the zeitgeist surrounding Linux has finally shifted far enough away from being for nerds and terminal only mode to being “user friendly” enough for large swaths of people to switch. More than that though is the privacy issues with AI and Age verification. That seems more pertinent amongst Windows switchers than ‘gaming is good.’ Nobody want’s to be bombarded by Copilot all the time.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
Yup. Linux has only gotten better as Windows has only gotten worse. It makes sense that at some point Linux would seem a better option to a growing number of people.
keimevo@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
8 years ago, compatibility and ease of use weren’t quite there. This has changed a lot in the last 3 or 4 years, I would say (having followed linux gaming for around 30 years).
That is true, but there’s a difference now; for the first time in history Moore’s Law has reversed: instead of doubling compute power at the same cost every X months (depending on the part), we’re now having less compute power at the same cost than the previous Y months (we as in we consumers, not the hyperscalers, of course).
Windows has always been resource intensive, but it’s the first time that new computers, at the same price, have less resources to run than new computers the year before. Of course Linux is affected too, but as it runs well on pretty much everything with some tweaking, it’s a much better choice now for every 12 year old kid that likes to play games and does the technical support in the family.