
Windows 10 Bleeds Users While Ubuntu Linux Enjoys an Astonishing Increase - nickosmark
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/05/06/windows-10-is-bleeding-users-while-ubuntu-linux-enjoys-an-astonishing-increase/#4cb55ba23ccd
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gamblor956
People can't go to work and log in, ergo, a noticeable drop in Windows 10
usage, because Windows is used by _a lot of people at work._

But, since we are looking at _relative_ market shares, that means every other
OS' share goes up, even if the actual number of users remains almost the same.
(And the article points this out at the end.)

This will be followed by each of those OSs seeing massive drops in relative
market share once people go back to work and all the dormant Windows 10
computers start running again.

~~~
alexfromapex
If all companies stopped using Microsoft Word / PowerPoint / Excel and
switched to open source I bet you’d see a 60% decline in Windows desktop use
at least. Office software compatibility is the golden handcuffs of corporate
Desktop OSes.

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akmittal
Ubuntu is becoming more and more suitable for normal users. Most of the work
is done in web browsers these days. I do ubuntu minimal installation and
almost everything works out of box. More people would be using if laptop
makers start giving ubuntu as default option.

~~~
wincy
You still get weird gotchas. My wife wanted to install Microsoft Teams to talk
to our doctor. She got the the Linux download page then asked “should I
download the .rpm or the .deb?”. Luckily I was there to tell her. Then she
installed it like a champ and got it working, so that was nice.

But there’s no way she’d have just “known” this, and it’s just another hurdle
to non technical users. Why should you have to know that Ubuntu is a
downstream distro of Debian to install a program?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Why on earth would someone talk to their doctor with such a product?

~~~
lowtolerance
Because most doctor visits right now are “telehealth” visits and as a patient
you have zero say as to what platform your doctor chooses to use.

~~~
Sir_Substance
My experience is that people will be happy to use other things if you just ask
them to, and have a ready-to-go solution on hand.

Just say "teams doesn't work well on my computer, it's very poorly made. Can
we use jitsimeet? It's much easier for me." and them drop them a jitsi link
without waiting for their response.

Teams is the official video chat at my company, I've been successfully
ignoring that for more than 2 months now. At this stage, jitsi usage is
starting to spread to other teams.

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bdcravens
> Ubuntu’s overall share of operating system usage ballooned from 0.27% in
> March to 1.89% in April.

This is when a new version of Ubuntu was released. Since it's measured by web
visits, this could be a bunch of people installing 20.04 in a VM and checking
it out

~~~
lostmsu
Yep, can confirm, did this.

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Gollapalli
>One key thing to note: Ubuntu isn’t seeing a 599 percent increase in
additional users. That jump represents its increase in overall operating
system market share from month to month. But it’s still an astonishing number

So... a whole bunch of servers using Ubuntu got fired up?

~~~
tssva
The numbers being reported are based upon visits to websites which are part of
the NetMarketShare data collection network, so a bunch of servers using Ubuntu
getting fired up wouldn't account for the increase.

An increase in market share higher than the increase in actual users would be
accounted for by the size of the market overall decreasing while the number of
Ubuntu users either stayed the same, increased but at a lower rate than the
increase in market share or decreased at a rate lower than the decrease in the
number of users of other operating systems.

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JoeMayoBot
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) allows Windows users to install a Linux
distro (several downloadable from the Windows Store) and WSL 2
([https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/wsl/wsl2-index](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/wsl/wsl2-index)) recently arrived. There's mad bit of satisfaction
in being able to do this and it's useful. I was able to work on a Python/Linux
stack project and other developers on the team were using WSL too. You can
even open a WSL terminal in VS Code.

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mpfundstein
I would love to use Ubuntu as my main device but unfortunately there are
always some stupid driver issues. I tested Ubuntu 20 last week and couldn't
get second screen working through HDMI. For the sake of it :(

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grizzles
I'm a recent Fedora->Ubuntu convert. I recently found a multi monitor hack for
the Gnome dock that has had a hugely positive impact on my productivity. It
allows you to localize an app to it's respective dock / monitor with this one
weird trick:
[https://github.com/ericbets/essential](https://github.com/ericbets/essential)

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bobowzki
Is 2020 the year of the Linux desktop?

~~~
Alekhine
No, and it never will be until:

Open source creative and professional tools are on par with proprietary tools
(MS Office, Adobe) in terms of function and UI,

GUI applications are written for every conceivable setting a non-technical
user would need,

Gaming is easier (it's getting better)

And, Ubuntu, Mint and other popular distros streamline everything even more so
that even an idiot (and lots of people are idiots when it comes to tech) can
use it.

Once those things happen, there is a chance we'll carve out more of the
market, and create a snowball effect. If 10% of the market starts using Linux
because OEMs preinstalled it to cut costs, software devs will notice, and it
will only get better from there as more popular programs are ported to Linux.

~~~
err4nt
TBH we don't require open source desktop software equivalents to popular
windows stuff, just good enough web based software. I don't think Adobe is #1
in their market anymore, there's a lot of competition from things like Figma.
Same with office, we use Google Drive and so I feel like it should easier than
ever to switch!

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photoGrant
Windows allows the Linux layer and Ubuntu is the most popular option. Because
the Windows market share goes down slightly doesn’t mean the new ubuntu users
are exclusively separate users. There’s just an addition funnel of access now,
creating more ubiquity amongst platforms. Yay!

~~~
7786655
These statistics are collected from web browsing activity. I doubt many people
are browsing the web from WSL.

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fanatic2pope
Canonical is prime acquisition material.

~~~
igravious
After IBM acquiring RedHat I'd place money on Microsoft acquiring Canonical.

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acd
Windows will become an emulation layer in Linux. Why? Microsoft makes most
money from cloud subscriptions.

~~~
contextfree
Microsoft already develops and ships an emulation layer for Windows on Linux;
SQL Server for Linux is built on it.

~~~
dTal
Wait what? There's an official Microsoft-sanctioned version of Wine?

Is this obtainable standalone in any form?

~~~
contextfree
I don't think so, and it's not really a "version of Wine" since I don't think
it has any support for GUI apps.

