I know this might be a couple months old, but I didn’t know we already passed 4%.
I don’t think Microsoft (or Apple) want people to have personal computers anymore in the way that PCs have historically existed. That is to say, they don’t want your computer capable of running arbitrary code of your choosing. They don’t want your computer to have the potential to do everything, to run everything, to make anything.
They want to control and lock down all aspects of your machine and what it can do, retain ownership of hardware via software licenses, and monetize every click and keystroke.
Microsoft doesn’t want you to have a functional computer anymore, they want you to have a dummy terminal that runs Office 365 and Copilot.
They want PCs that work like smartphones, with apps completely self contained and unmodifiable, where the OS is a black box that no one but them can see in to.
I think if it was up to them, and latency was low enough, they probably would have pushed some kind of “fully remote convertible laptop” where they literally own everything you do in a cloud, I don’t even want to search if this is a thing that exist already
I don’t know that I agree. I think they do. However:
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Apple only wants you to be able to do those things if you’re buying the software through their store. Honestly I’m shocked they still allow you to “sideload” software on MacOS. They can be very unpredictable sometimes. And;
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MS only wants you to be able to do those things if you’re looking at their ads and they’re monetizing your data.
This is EXACTLY right.
They are dividing users into two groups. Unintelligent users who run Windows or MacOS in an extremely controlled limited way with AI assisting and monitoring everything remotely and reporting it back to the mothership…
Or people who are above an IQ of 85 and willing to learn to use Linux.
I’ve had LMDE on a USB stick for a few months now, waiting for the right time to boot it up on my wife’s PC, and she finally agreed to try it tonight. Cross your fingers, boys; we may soon have another convert.
What’s your review of LMDE over Debian? I recently took the Linux desktop jump recently and started with Linux Mint.
I really didn’t like the Mint desktop as it seemed very dated, so I’ve switched to Debian/KDE. It was only much later that I realized how easy it would have been to just customize my window manager instead of getting a different distro. Having said that, I’m really digging Debian in spite of Nvidia issues being a headache, and Debian’s glacial update pace making me look longingly at Arch.
I also didn’t like the way Mint looked/felt, even though I’m aware of its popularity and good reputation.
I’m on Pop!_OS which is mostly a GNOME desktop, but they do add [remove] features and it’s very smooth and clean. I guess this is one of the miracles of “linux” where we can all be using “linux” but with 1500 different varieties.
Yeah, I’ve heard really good things about Pop!_OS, especially for Windows migrants.
I like Debian a lot, and Mint seems fine too, but I don’t like the styling, or Cinnamon really. I use Fluxbox (WM only, no DE) with a bunch of tiny customizations.
The main reason I picked it is that I like to tinker and she doesn’t, so I think that Cinnamon will be the easiest for her coming from Windows 10.
We both have AMD GPUs (and she has a AMD CPU too) so I haven’t had to deal with Nvidia headaches.
I like the glacial updates so things don’t break as easily. I don’t want to spend hours fixing a system (hers or mine tbh) unless I have to. For anything that I need the latest features for, there’s usually a repo I can add to Aptitude or a Flatpak.
Yeah, the rock-solid stability of Debian stable is definitely a huge plus. I thought I would be okay with less frequent updates, but I changed my mind when I realized cool updates like KDE 6 won’t make it to stable probably until next year T__T. Even Nvidia 555 drivers probably won’t even hit backports for a while. Clearly the responsible thing to do here is to add an Arch install alongside my Debian/W11 dual-boot 😛
Not using a DE sounds intriguing, I might give that a try once I find my feet on desktop Linux. I’ve been around *nix systems most of my career, but I haven’t used a Linux desktop as a daily driver in like 15 years. It’s funny how much has changed, and how much hasn’t.
🤞 Make us proud, bud!
How much of this is decline at the expense of Windows 11, due to Steam lowering barriers to entry, fatigue with Windows’ hard selling, and/or extending the useful like of hardware that W11 abandoned.
I 100% put money on the fact that linuxes surge in popularity and usability is 100% because Valve, a multi-billion dollar company, stepped in and started dragging it forward in ways that the fractuous nature of the community never could.
Windows 11 being a spytastic invasive dogpile was just extra fuel on the fire.
The fuckery Microsoft has been doing with trying to outright trick people into signing in to the OS with a Microsoft account and using things like OneDrive combined with just how good Proton has gotten pushed me to make the switch full time a year or so ago for my personal usage.
Nearly zero. Gamers make up less than a rounding error of desktop installs.
Wut? It’s an industry bigger than football and TV and film combined! Somebody’s getting all those games and they have to be played on something too.
Gamers do, the vast majority of which are mobile gamers. Followed by console gamers and then PC gaming which makes up less 15% of industry revenue.
First off, I DO NOT count ChromeOS, but whatever.
Secondly, when is 18% of anything “dominant”??? The fuck? Arstechnica back up off the pipe.
They probably mean of Linux flavored ps coverage.
(I’m aware Mac is very different than Linux, but it is more closely grouped with Linux than Windows)
You’re welcome guys. I installed Linux on an iMac yesterday. It was all me.
Yes those can be a pain. Might be worth to give it a try though before ruling it out entirely. I did manage to get my old (non-mac) laptop working that had the combined intel and nvidia gpus that were a pain.