2023 year of Linux desktop!!1
Idc if we are not on reddit anymore, this joke doesn't get old
Like the year of the linux desktop
https://youtu.be/N4FlL1FCbvA Time for your annual viewing of year of linux desktop promo video!!
I technically started with Steam Deck and finally took the plunge of partitioning my daily driver to install Linux Mint back a few weeks ago.
No regrets....
I'm a developer (web app predominantly ) and find I can use it for about 80% - 85% of my daily workflow. Things I miss and can't substitute are mainly around image editing / vector editing where GIMP and InkScape are just not there for the way I work.
Loving my time with it and would highly recommend anyone on the fence take the dive and give Mint a go. It's incredibly familiar the moment you boot it :)
I've been on Linux for a while and at this point must people use their computers as glorified thin clients for Chrome.
This has made Linux way more viable as a day to day OS. Valve is working very hard to make games viable and is seeing some success.
The major blind spots remain industry specific software outside of software dev. Things like Adobe suite and Microsoft office for example. They often have a Linux equivalent but it rarely fits well into industry standard work flows.
Microsoft office
I'm rather impressed with the MS Office compatibility and comparability of FreeOffice - https://www.freeoffice.com/ The free version trails the paid by one release... seems like a fair compromise. It's not pure FOSS, so purists might not like it, but it really gets the job done, especially with rountripping documents. There are always corner cases where things go boink, but hell... things even go off the deep end between versions of MSO.
This hits the nail on the head.... I can get by with GIMP or InkScape or Photopea but they don't quite cut it when I have job going out worth a few grand I want all the tools, checks peace of mind of the locally installed app. I also find GIMP convoluted to achieve basic tasks. Even things like resizing images to canvas etc. Feels clunky by comparison to say Affinity Photo.
Either way, I can never get 100% away from the big boys as ultimately I have to test natively in Windows and Mac OS so it's not the end of the World having to boot into Windows or Mac OS occassionally to undertake the tasks required :)
Welcome to Linux! I've been using it since 1996 and doing design using FOSS tools for years. (At first, I needed to a separate computer for Adobe products for years, but switched full time to Linux a long time ago.)
A couple of quick suggestions of other apps to try:
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Krita, for image editing & painting https://krita.org/
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Penpot, for UI layouts (including website design), prototyping, and flow; a great replacement for Figma and Miro. https://penpot.app/
There's a big list of FOSS design & photography software @ https://pixls.us/software/
And a huge list of alternatives @ https://codeberg.org/RayJW/awesome-foss#user-content-creativity (linked to creativity, but there's tons more on that page)
+1 for Krita. I've been using Linux since 2015, and to this day haven't completely got my head around GIMP. I know Krita is designed for a different purpose, but it's a lot easier to use for quick touch-ups, which is all I want.
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Have you tried Krita for image editing? I prefer it to gimp
While I've used Linux on and off for years, the steam Deck was really the thing that convinced me that I can actually drop Windows. My laptop has been ruining mint for a few months, and it's working for me. My desktop is going to be fully switched soon
Have you tried https://www.photopea.com/ ?
Hi there, yea I have tried it and kudos to the developer it's an awesome piece of kit.
Unfortunately, for me at least it's just not the same as running native Affinity Suite (which is my go to). We occassionally produce print work for clients as well as developing UX templates and I can't seem to replicate my workflow in Photopea or any of the other available apps. I wish Affinity would produce a Linux version but when asked, they said the uptake just wasn't there to make it worth their while :(
I'm really pleased I have managed to move the bulk of my work over to Mint and ultimately, I will always be left having to test applications natively in Windows and Mac OS so it's not the end of the World I suppose as I can't ever fully get away from them.
Have you tried photopea.com?
What do you use for office?
FreeOffice - It's not open source but it's the best offline doc system I've found. It's essentially equal to Microsoft Office and well worth it.
LibreOffice - If open source is really important to you then this is still the go-to office suite. OpenOffice still exists but it's owned by Apache and fairly behind LibreOffice because it wasn't made a priority when Oracle gave it up.
Google Docs/Sheets/Draw - This is essentially the best and most professional solution. It's not open source, you don't have any control over it, it's Google but thousands of companies use it daily without flaws. I use it at work and makes sense to use it if you are going to be collaborating on documents. If you need to share them then this is the goto office suite.
That said, Microsoft Office is very wine-able from what I found. You absolutely shouldn't need it but you can do it.
Wow, that's amazing! I assume this doesn't really count Steam Deck because usually these stats are from website hits and whatnot.
I remember when we were floundering around 0.50-0.75% or so and 1% seemed unlikely. And now we're where macOS was some time ago. That's pretty awesome!
If this is from website hits, then people like me are going to be unintentionally skewing things in Windows's favor, as my browser always fingerprints as running on Windows.
Yup, and I'm guessing part of what's causing the shift is people no longer needing to do that. Netflix has worked on Linux for years, and very few sites actually care about OS anymore, though many do care about browser (e.g. I often get stupid warnings on Firefox despite sites working fine).
And we're all on Lemmy!
my exact same thought, lol. nice
That's nice. Hopefully it getting more notorious means that HW companies will support it better. But, at the same time, if this is just from the Steam Deck, then, kinda fugged
I dunno, I see the steam deck as a huge win for Linux. It shows people how simple Linux gaming can be.
I wonder what the big drop in Windows and big rise in Unknown for awhile was
That can sometimes be ad/tracker blockers, where maybe they know they got a hit but not from where
This is satisfying great news!
When Linux gaming reaches 100 percent parity with windows, I'll probably switch. Until then I can't really justify it for my home PC. Give it 5 years or so, I've heard good things about... proton, i think it was called?
That is quite the criteria. Windows doesn't have 100% parity with Windows. ;)
As amazing as proton is, Linux will never have 100% parity with Windows because developers and studios can block it. Honestly most games that don't run right now are intentionally blocked or restricted. If you are interested on what its like though I would strongly encourage throwing Linux on a spare drive or partition and installing steam.
I switched recently to Linux and haven't had issues with the vast majority of my games. Though, I don't play many competitive multi-player games. Those seem to be where the issues remain.
It won't ever. It's been very close for the last 10 years. It won't ever be 100%.
A great example right now is "How do you see what driver your device is using?"
In Windows that's going to device manager -> display adapters -> your device-> properties. Easy and can be easily discovered by thinking "I need to know what driver is running what device" and then going to look for a device manager, and following the trail.
In Linux that's potentially lspci or lsusb or lshw or a combination of each with their own arguments. Linux fails almost instantly because you have to type a command. Windows treat the user with respect for their time and don't tell you to stare at a man page for 10 minutes trying to figure out the exact arbitrary letters to add as arguments to some archaic command.
This is been a problem for decades. There are third-party GUIs that don't tell you the driver being used or tie things together like they show the device but not the driver or not allowing you to manage the driver and aren't included with most distros, so aren't discoverable.
Waiting for Linux is a fool's errand at this point.
Windows treat the user with respect for their time and don’t tell you to stare at a man page for 10 minutes
When I run across Error 0x0000011b or whatever, and there's no official documentation on it, it doesn't feel much like respect for my time at all. I'd sooner stare at a man page for 10 minutes than dig through every Microsoft support forum post and try every weird arcane fix.
does this count things such as steamOS & ChromeOS?
Counts ChromeOS as a different OS.
Yeah there's 3% reported, but what do you think that 3% unknown is? Am I supposed to believe it's all Windows users spoofing their user agent?
I spoof my user agent on Linux and appears as a Windows user to websites. So I'm actually contributing to the Windows stat.
@StarkillerX42 @settinmoon why tf lol
No most likely Linux users too. BDS and others
