this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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And still we’re at 4% market share. They don’t seem to be doing a very good job.
Obviously, it's Microsoft what did you expect? A job well done?
Its 3.88%, not 4%.
But I think we are hitting 4% quite soon.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/
When i first got here we hadn't even hit 1% yet. Open source scares Microsoft because if they fuck up they are done but we have a million distributions with a million different mutations its perfect evolution we cannot get worse only better.
Oh, it can get worse. If Windows market share should really plummet, it won't be replaced by a heterogenous distro utopia but some company like Canonical or Red Hat or a new one will get their distribution to fill the gap. And call me a cynic but I doubt this will be immune to enshittification.
But even that scenario is better than what we have with Microsoft and Apple. The FOSS world would still benefit like it does from the Steam Deck developments.
Well, no offense intended, but that is cynical. The only way for enshittification to hit Linux would be if only one group controlled it. When IBM/Red Hat discontinued CentOS, the community immediately moved to fill the gap with AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux.
That said, yes, things can always get worse. I don't think Linux is immune to having problems, but not on the scale of what's happening with Windows with their Copilot garbage.
My response to that is Flatpak. 16MB of software requiring 700MB to download and consuming 2.8GB of disk space. Linux absolutely can be bad, due to cultural issues.
(My example software above is Handbrake. I'm sure someone's going to "well actually" me about this, and I don't even care. I don't see how it can be justified, and I'm kind of curious to see if someone can do it.)
it's great for applications that are notorious for requiring specific versions of libraries and can cause dependency hell. moves unnecessary system dependencies into a sandbox. for me this means i don't have to enable multilib to install Steam and pull in 32 bit libraries on my root.
while it does take a lot of disc space it doesn't duplicate dependencies in most cases. i would say you receive some good benefits at the cost of a bit more disc space, such as increased security, easy installs, explicit app permissions. it's great for when you have to install a proprietary tool in that you gain control of what it's allowed to access.
But it appears like we're in a situation where it's not used for specific situations, but for lots of different things. Just a few Flatpak programs starts to chew through a significant amount of disk space, and some programs are only being distributed as Flatpaks.
flatpak distribution is generally done by the developer as a common packaging method. if a distribution wants a native install it's up to package maintainers of the distribution to support the application. although the package maintainers have to make sure they're packaging the right versions of dependencies which becomes a problem known as dependency hell.
in your example of handbrake it's true the main application is pretty small but that's because it relies on libraries and is a wrapper for ffmpeg. even if you install through a package manager you still need to compare the total size of dependencies.
the disc space usage becomes a problem due to installing libraries both natively and in sandbox. however if you keep a relatively small system install and install applications through flatpak the disc usage will be pretty negligible. if disc space is really a concern then using something like btrfs with compression+dedup would probably solve most problems.
It just seems like it's a lot of papering over a fairly substantial problem. While the example I gave was Handbrake, which does seem like it should be a unique example, every other piece of software that I check Flatpak versions of also had ludicrously wasteful storage issues.
I'm aware of dependency hell, but it seems to me that most software doesn't have that as a problem, not if the libraries are sensibly maintained? After all, the fact that upgrading a library can improve all the software that uses it seems like it's usually a positive thing. And the ballooning storage requirements of Flatpak make it a tool that should be used occasionally, rather as a primary way to release software. Using a filesystem that can detect duplicates would help, but itself also seems like a special-case kind of solution, and not a great solution to turn to just to avoid what seems to me to be a significant issue.
We are already (mostly all of us) stuck with one company's systemd. We're already on some portion of what you're describing. As long as we use FOSS I think somebody will be able to fork any software that starts turning to shit with ads, LLM everywhere, spying on your activity, etc.
Thats a very cool perspective. I hadnt considered this. Everyone seems to be hating on linux‘s fracturization but it does remind me of evolution now that you mention it.
Principally correct, but please note the difference between "open-source software" (OSS) and "free and open-source software" (FOSS). They are two related, but different philosophies, and principally, GNU/Linux belongs to the latter rather than to the former.
If FOSS ever fails, it's going to be because of ridiculously stupid pedantry like this.
"I'd just like to interject for a moment..."
Well the principle i was talking about requires free forking which would make it foss.
Not the best job, but I guarantee it’s having an effect.
I say this as someone who finally gave Linux another chance about a month ago (due to annoyances with Microsoft) and it’s going really well!
Even a noob like me can just install KDE and learn a few “launch through steam” tricks and I’ve had very minimal issues!
I think a lot of the casuals like me still think Linux is all terminals and command lines, but it’s clear it doesn’t have to be now. And Microsoft’s campaign is what pushed me to come look again!
Market share is going to be a pretty bad metric for this kind of thing because businesses and government are going to stick with even old ass windowsnl installs long after any normal user would have at least upgraded, if not moved to Linux.
Just in my office alone there's got to be at least 50 PCs running windows, and I bet half of the people here don't even have a machine at home, so that's 75 PCs or so amongst just me and my co-workers, and even if every assumed worker went Linux today we'd still be at over 50% windows market share of people who work at my office.
So like, unless multiple businesses and governments that have shown to not care already suddenly decide to were never going to see 50% adoption
Unless we stop including businesses and similar in that share stat.
You may be right, but I think, that in the long term it is possible for Linux to overcome Windows in market share. Also,Germany(the Government of Schleswig Hstein to be Accurate) recently decided on switching to Linux and other Foss Software for their offices. This means, 30.000 workers not using Microsofts bullshit.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/
I guess a better metric might be the Steam Hardware Survey?
And rising
You must be joking. 4% is kind of huge. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of users
And it's been less than a year since we passed the 3% mark. Linux adoption is accelerating rapidly, and that's only going to increase as its market share continues to grow and more vendors start supporting it.
It's more than that, this is why such a small percent number can be so misleading. There are billions of computers active in the world, even if we limit ourselves to only desktops and laptops, nearly half a billion personal computers are made and sold each year (Lenovo alone sells over 80 million every year). Under 4% we are talking about roughly a hundred million devices running Linux desktop.
We aren't at 4% yet. Linux is currently sitting at about 3.88%. Its not that far till 4%,but it still isn't 4%.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide/
Be glad that it's actually growing. It used to be so much lower.
And we're gonna make it grow so much more.
Got any sources? I like following that but I never remember to bookmark
2025 year of the Linux desktop gooooo brrrrrr