Linux distros never cease to amaze me; the fact that communities come together and coordinate to tame the eldritch horrors of package dependencies, kernel versions, system layers etc is nothing short of a marvel.
From the bonkers stability and reliability guarantees of Debian to the tightrope-walking offerings of Arch, we are truly spoiled for choices.
I've been using Linux for over two decades, it has gotten so much easier over the years. I think the biggest consistent issues I still have is wayland/nvidia/amd, capture cards, modern suspend (modern standby/S0ix) and non-existent professional 2d/video/audio authoring (no real photoshop/illustrator/premiere/avid etc. replacement).
But there is so much else that just works nowadays that was a nightmare 20 years ago, the blutooth stack has gotten way better, audio is crazy good at this point (pipewire), gaming is incredible (all thanks to valve/proton), blender of course and moving so much stuff to the modern web (as well as electron) has opened up so much for linux by accident (like video conferencing, finally a decent office suite with google docs, figma, etc.). Of course the development/sysops story has always been better than anywhere else since everything is Linux on the server already anyway so its always been very friction less.
I can realistically see that changing in the next few years with the arrival of WASM/WASI as it effectively provides a new set of compile targets for many of those apps to run in new contexts.
Photoshop is already moving to become a web based application as a result of it for example.
Yes absolutely that's going to be great for Linux, like adobe et al is never going to support Linux of course, but once they target wasm on the web we get it. Now we just have to figure out a way to trick Nvidia and AMD to give us proper Linux drivers.
For photoshop/illustrator, windows vm's work just fine. I will say though, I snagged affinity's photo/designer bundle last black friday and have been very, very impressed at how performant they are.
Shame they don't have native linux support really.
How do you get 3d acceleration to work in Photoshop in a windows vm? Using the latest virtualbox with opengl enabled and the creative cloud, Photoshop doesn't work properly at all. The only way I can think of is using GPU passthrough but that's still very iffy
I've done that in the past but it wasn't very reliable, it seems incredibly easy to leave the GPU in an inconsistent state requiring a reboot, I've found IOMMU pass-through is absolutely not reliable enough in a professional or "poweruser" setting. But I'm sure it works fine for gaming and more casual users who use Arch Linux or something where reliably doesn't matter anyway.
I just finished a new build today. I’ve been daily driving macOS since about 2006 but tomorrow morning my main dev rig is a fresh Debian 12 workstation running KDE :)
Congrats! I am certain you will enjoy it! :) It's a GREAT time to choose KDE Plasma 5 on Debian 12 - the desktop is at its peak in terms of polish after many years of incremental refinements, and the non-free-firmware-choice Debian made for the 12/"bookworm"-release rendered it much easier to use for most people.
The only reason I still have a Windows partition at all is for games that I can’t run on Linux yet like Valorant. Nearly everything else runs perfectly on Ubuntu thanks to Proton.
This, and the occasional firmware flash utility that only has a Windows or MacOS build.
I am all for a great linux desktop experience but I don't think getting very popular can happen without making a lot of changes that erode the very reason we migrated to a Linux desktop.
I speculate that many of the most controversial changes in GNU/Linux were rooted in chasing after this goal.
I've been using systemd for a while, which I'm surmising is what you're referring to when you say controversial, and it's frankly not a diminished experience for someone that wants a consistently working desktop. The amount of things I used to have to hack into my OS were substantial, these days they're nearly nil and applications have common interfaces to plug into.
I'm not sure what, if anything, I materially gave up other than that all of those components have a contracted API now so all future components will need to adhere to that API.
Systemd is a big one, a diminished experience is not the issue, deviance from core unix principles and chasing market share instead of pleasing existing users was the big problem i observed.
For example, OpenRC had comparable boot times as did systemd and it was modern and stuck to the "do one thing" principle. Systemd was chosen because lennart and corporate/rhel people who have influence and a financial interest in expanding market share pushed it. Just like how things are done at apple and microsoft.
I think it was the developer of Krita who said, it cannot just be open source/Libre - the software has to actually be good. There is a lot of truth to that. FLOSS stuff is good at bringing in the folks that see the point of view of Richard Stallman but that will only go so far... well like 1% of user share far.
I feel there is a moderate middle path when it is possible to get Linux desktop to a state that many can use it but without compromising on the flexibility it can provide. Distro's like Linux Mint are so close nowadays, in a way it is very boring. But boring is what you want. It doesn't just tumble over for like... reasons, but it also it really easy to use if very predictable.
Listening to existing instead of potential users (market share chasing), not screwing over users and unix design philosophy are what are important to me. What you said can be acheived while sticking to those. If I want windows or macos I can use those.
I switched to Linux for work because docker for macOS always uses 100% of every core given to it. I wonder how much electricity is wasted on macOS docker for every dev using it.
Ive not always had 100% CPU issues, but with multiple companies and various applications, Docker on Mac will use a lot of resources and cause fans to spin up which would never do so under any circumstance. It could be the terrible AV/"security software" conflicting with a VM, but the results are always the same.
If we are just going to be using VS Code or IntelliJ and run Linux, what are we even using MacOS for? The terrible UI?
That’s a good point - we do have AV scan software which is mandated by SOC2 / ISO nonsense. Why Apple - the richest company on earth - is apparently so “bad” on security that we need 3rd-party malware app to “protect” us is a mystery.
Your comment answers itself: it’s nothing inherent to macOS that needs AV scan - it’s the company policy, often driven by external compliance requirements and perhaps a lack of understanding - that leads to the outcome where multiple redundant AV mechanisms end up in your machine.
Somehow it’s always at 100%, battery draining, laptop hot as hell. Quitting docker always solves it. It isn’t the workload. All devs have same issue. Maybe something with Postgres / redis containers (?)
It is more the spirit of it and how it is used by the users rather than the technicality of it. I mean Android has a Linux kernel but it is not used in the same way as a desktop computer.
Android isn't there because it's a mobile operating system which is why it isn't there. Chrome OS is a desktop operating system built on top of Linux.
The idea that some of the Linux community has that anything that makes Linux actually user friendly or gives it wider appeal and gets popular no longer counts as "Linux" is a self defeating mindset.
Chrome OS is a desktop operating system built on top of Chrome, using the Linux kernel to jungle Chrome processes.
On some selected models, one is able to start a sandbox version of a GNU/Linux distribution, just like WSL on Windows.
Android Tablet with keyboard and mouse do provide a desktop experience, which doesn't matter for Linux desktop, as the userspace is Java/Kotlin, ISO C, ISO C++ and Android specific native APIs, zero POSIX.
Chrome OS "is" Linux, but it's like the Borg assimilating the good guys... It's a giant spyware machine reusing open source and doesn't feel "free as in Freedom" irrespective of the license details.
The usual pat in the back to count anything with Linux kernel as GNU/Linux, except Google can exchange Linux kernel with Fuchsia's zircon and no one on userspace would notice it.
Just to pour some water on this otherwise joyful news, the ratio of desktop computers to average people is in decline as mobile devices and smart tv's render them redundant for the casual users for whom even Windows was always too complicated.
Linux users are just less prone to jumping ship, because on average, we actually USE our devices more, as something other than a simple appliance.
I expect this percentage to grow, but not because the world has suddenly decided to adopt Linux; rather, because it has largely decided to ditch desktops.
It actually is Unix, depending on your definition. If you define it as meeting the standard, it is. If you define it as being the same changed code base, it's not.
There is one group which owns an artificial, government-created construct: the trademark to "UNIX". That is far from the final word on what constitutes a Unix. The social meaning of words goes well beyond whoever owns a government-granted monopoly on them.
OpenGroup manages that social construct, the government stuff is just there to protect against misidentification and encroachment. The standards for Unix, Sockets, and LDAP were all transferred to OpenGroup to manage and they've done so.
A single entity generally doesn't get to manage the meaning of a word. The real meaning is in our collective heads, and Linux is a Unix for most people in the field. Even the ones (like myself) who are fully aware of OpenGroup and the UNIX trademark.
In fact I consider Linux a Unix specifically to annoy the sorts of people who think OpenGroup has the last word on what constitutes a Unix. ACAB.
Timely but I dare ask: I need to rework my thinkpad, still in good shape but with an older ubuntu distro. Reasonably fluent linux user but not expert, primarily dev workflows - what's the recommendation?
- Before 35: Mostly ubuntu, latest version (install after a couple of months of general availability)
- After 35: ubuntu LTS versions (install after a couple of months of general availability). Since 16.04 I've been on LTS only; should have done that earlier.
unless you really need a very new version of a piece of software, the safest bet will always be the latest LTS version of Ubuntu. You could perhaps just upgrade your laptop OS with the software package GUI?
Fun fact: You don't really need to install any of the "flavors" of Ubuntu to get the various desktop environments (KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon, etc.), you can just install them as a package! (`apt install kde-full`). You can switch between them when logging in.
may we consider the other 3% (3.23) as linux as well ?
if so linux total market share is about 10% (including chromeos since you can install linux apps on them as well)
