I made the switch recently for probably the strangest reason.
I’ve been running win 11 for over a year using a shell tool that allowed me to move my task bar to the top of the screen and some other win 10 functionality.
However win 11 removed the ability to move the task bar and my shell program lost most of its functionality. After that I was done.
I’ve Linux off and on since 2002ish so it’s not scary to me and I’m pretty happy with Arch and KDE right now. Still the occasional crash that appears to happen sometimes when watching YouTube.
I'm not in the US, but here in the UK I made the switch too.
I went from Windows PC + Windows laptop ~2 years ago to now having a Linux PC (ZorinOS), Samsung tablet and a home server running Proxmox with an Ubuntu VM for Docker.
Never been happier with my setup. The grass truly is greener over here.
Every year Linux fans:
👐 It's happening! 👐
I ran my first distro in 2009 and had to switch back to PC when I got to college. Finally got around to switching back over earlier this year when my computer wasn’t eligible to upgrade to windows 11. It’s wild how much easier it is to get things up and running now, my 70 year old dad could probably do it and that was not the case the first time around.
I mean good for the desktop experience on Linux, its taken the movement of most desktop apps to the web to make OS choice basically immaterial. I’ll still nitpick some things in linux that are still worse than Windows (i’ve replaced my htpc with a cheapo N100 and its better in most ways, worse in a few smaller things), but the most important thing is that the things I mostly use a desktop for (namely media consumption, browsing, some game streaming, and docker containers) its more or less the same as using windows or macos.
Just switched to Linux for my daily driver laptop!
Finally, the year of Desktop Linux. Twenty years after we were promised. And it's still a pittence, but I'll take it.
I'm on a Mac, only use Linux for server stuff, but the more people we can get off Windows, the better. Let's go!
Still far too low, considering that the US is now a police state.
Thanks, Gaben.
Woooo! Year of the linux desktop baby!!
- pumps fist in air*
Should be 105 percent the way Microsoft treats it's users.
I started running openSUSE Tumbleweed full time at the beginning of this year!
I truly must thank the folks at Steam/Proton, GE-Proton, and wemod-launcher on GitHub for allowing me to play my games exactly like I did on Windows. I can't stress to anyone who isn't playing on Linux just how good it really is (for me, at least)!
I have beaten at least 10 games while on Linux. Games like: Metaphor: Refantazio, Persona 3 Reloaded, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Mass Effect Legendary Edition (all three games), Oblivion Remastered, and recently System Shock (Remake). Just to name a few off the top of my head!
I still have a Windows SSD dedicated to anything I MUST use on there (mainly modding games, logging back into openSUSE, then pulling those files straight from the Windows SSD onto my openSUSE SSD, fucking love that!), but that is mostly being unused because I found the wonders of QEMU/KVM Virtual Machine Manager. I use the VM to sideload apps onto my iPhone, for save editing, or for testing a Windows only app before trying to run it with Bottles or something else.
Logging into Linux feels like home, while logging onto Windows feels like someone else's home. :P
REVOLUTION
Just recently converted myself! It's soooo much better than it used to be. I used Ubuntu as a daily driver several years ago, but I absolutely had to dual boot windows because getting any games running was a massive pain in the ass. Now I just slap a proton build on it and go on my merry way!
I've only had issues with some software that needs to attach itself to steam games, such as Archipelago, but I've been able to figure them all out so far!
Great, but I don't think that graph is showing any particular spike, just a nice and gentle upward trend in share. The article also overlooks that there is a certain element of Windows and MacOS computers being replaced by tablets and phones, while Linux is already an enthusiast choice on the desktop, meaning it will be insulated somewhat and gain market share through attrition.
On the plus side, Steam and Proton and maturing DEs/distros and enshittification of Windows certainly make Linux a much more viable "normie" option than it's ever been. We're a far cry from the CD-ROM of Red Hat that came with my "Intro to Linux" book in 1999 but couldn't use my Winmodem or printer and really preferred to run XWindows in grayscale.
If it's anything like browsers that's about the level were a platform is hard to ignore.
Wow. Thats amazing.
OS reveal party and it's a penguin.
Year of the Linux desktop
Linux is freedom. It's imperfect, fun and yours. It teaches you while helping you do your computing, creative and fun tasks. If you're even the least but curious I encourage you to try it out.
Pretty certain the rate of increase will accelerate over years. Even moreso outside of the USA. Good news for getting more attention to other open source software not just the kernel and core OS utils.
I've actually been using Bazzite-gnome-nvidia image on my main desktop for the past few weeks and I have to say it's very slick.
My main issue with it is with scaling disabled everything seems slightly big or spaced out in comparison to when I ran windows? I've read up and it maybe has something to do with the default fractional scaling but I checked and I'm at 100%.
Other than that I'm very happy with it!
That still seems high to me but actually checking the StatCounter website... it has more or less been steady at 5-ish% for three years?
Ubuntu 10.10 was my first linux. Though 11.04 was released soon after my switch.
My first experience with 10.10 was as a virtual machine on my school issued Dell Latitude D505 laptop with Windows XP, a dual core 32-bit processor and 512 megs of RAM. And boy, let me tell you, it ran like shit. But I knew that it was because I was virtualizing it and didn't hold that against it.
I can't remember what it was called, but I eventually installed this OS on my flash drive that was meant to be eco-friendly for old devices. It had a very green wallpaper. And just used that instead of ever booting into windows by changing the boot order and leaving the flash drive plugged in at all times.
Edit: I remember now. It was called Watt OS.
linux is coming! we are unstoppable*!
* well except if the EU bans operating systems without built in age verification
