Is that including Steamdeck in that 3%, or users becoming aware of Linux based on Steamdeck? 3 percent may not seem like much but it moves the 2 percent from 1 in 50 people to close to 1 in 30 people. So more chance of bumping into a fellow user. I met up with an old work colleague just before the pandemic, we got to chatting about computers he mentioned he had dumped W10 for Mint around the same time I’d dropped W10 for OpenSUSE. Seems the Windows 10 was a tipping point for more savvy computer users who understood there could be other Operating Systems out there besides Windows or MacOS.
You can say something like “I’ve been here before the Steam Deck” or “I’ve seen the SystemD holy war” or any of the earlier changes around linux you’ve encountered
The irony here, for me, is that after 2 years of not needing windows at all, even for gaming, I’ve had to tuck my tail and return to windows to play Apex. It’s been solid for 2 years, but about 2 months ago I started getting weird file validation errors. A patch seemed to fix it, but then last week its come roaring back and its unplayable. I’ve tried all the tricks, validating game files (always finds files that need to be redownloaded), clearing game cache, completely uninstalled, trying the flatpak version vs deb, etc etc.
The most irritating thing for me is that I dont have a clue who to report this too or what kind of information I can provide. I was using inotify tools to see what was happening to the files that corrupted them, but there is nothing I can see. It appears as though the corruption happens when steam is accessing the files (but there is no obvious writes happening, its all reads as far as I can tell. But who do I file a bug with? the proton devs? Apex devs? Steam devs? PopOS devs? Steam support will tell me to pound sand.
I finally changed to Linux this year for good at least on my personal devices. I stayed on Windows just because of MS Office because I was doing work on my personal PCs at times. I needed Excel because I can’t stand LibreOffice Calc and only just recently learned about OnlyOffice. With having my work provide a PC though during COVID to all employees, I don’t need Excel on my personal PC anymore so I made the switch to Linux Mint. Tried a few different distros but just like the simplicity of Mint and Cinnamon is much better than Gnome for me.
I agree with this, and the GUI is simpler on Calc. Pivot Table, Filter indeed great in Calc, and I love how having snapshot for each file portable not depends on the OS file history.
Last I love how now days I can use LibreOffice more than ever than 10 years ago… !libreoffice
I haven’t used it in a while but I remember tab not autocompleting a formula I was typing and I also remember that if you started a formula with a + it wouldn’t handle it. I type a lot of formulas that I start with a + because it’s easy to do on the ten key. But it was more that a lot of small things and keybindings were different from Excel and because I needed to use Excel at work, it was annoying to have two separate workflows.
Online office365 excel is a thing if you need to use for work, etc. I have been almost exclusively using Linux for work since 2017 now. There are some apps for linux like MS Edge, MS Teams, Teamviewer, Webex, Zoom etc. But to fill the excel void I just login via the web browser. It is not 100% identical to using the native Excel App but close enough that I don’t need Windows. LibreOffice was working for casual excel tasks but I found it removed the auto table row shading from excel documents, and when submitting reports it was best to keep the look consistent.
You jest but as you know this really is something Linux users have had to do with many things, like games. Game works with wine/proton but only has windows support? You’re a windows gamer now. If you use linux and FF, some sites break unless you spoof as windows and edge. We have been doing this to ourselves, hopefully it gets better.
Linux needs better multi-monitor support. It’s better than it’s ever been, but it’s still janky and giving black screens on tertiary screens at times.
EDIT: It’s funny how the comments are all over the place. “works for me”, “it’s broken on KDE but works on XFCE”, “it’s broken on XFCE but works on KDE”, etc. I think that’s a good sign there are problems with multi-monitor support.
How many people total do you think use more than display? How many Linux users or users that would be willing to use Linux would want more than one display? I’m betting it’s a lot if not most. So while it may not be a big factor it probably is a factor that applies to most. Then you add up all the other stuff that just doesn’t quite work right and you lost the incentive or motivation to switch.
I’ve been messing with this on and off for a few years now and I still haven’t seen support for multiple monitors running at different scaling levels (like running a 4K monitor at 125% alongside a 1080p monitor at 100%). This is a feature I use in Windows on one of my setups. I hope this gets some attention soon. I run Linux on most of my machines but this problem still gets in my way on others.
Plasma on Wayland can do that I’m pretty sure, and if you don’t have an Nvidia GPU Wayland is fine nowadays. Hell, even if you have an Nvidia GPU it’s mostly fine nowadays.
Funny because Plasma was the only desktop I tried which game me weird monitor issues Even Windowmaker worked flawless for me, and my XFCE(Desktop) / i3wm(Laptop) never failed with 3+ monitors
Yeah, KDE was also my first DE but immediately switched to Gnome for 3 Years. Till now after having an AMD card. I guess a lot has changed, i also got way too much issues years back then with Nvidia.
I also saw a difference shortly before switching to AMD with animations on KDE (Gnome went nice with Nvidia). They were either loading, caching or just lagging or smth when hitting the Overview feature (Similar to Gnome super button). This small uncomfy issue instantly went away with AMD for unknown reason.
Plasma is probably the worst out of the few bigger DEs. If you don’t replug the monitors the same way to the video card, the toolbars you have configured disappear and you cannot copy it from a different display or even make all toolbars identical on all monitors…
Xfce have a hard time recognize recently plugged in monitors. I have to restart the PC with the monitors plugged in to have a 50/50 chance to make it work. Or just switch to Cinnamon and make it wok right away.
I haven’t had any multiple monitor problems since switching to KDE that weren’t actually Nvidia driver issues. My “TV” is a third monitor on a long ass HDMI cable.
My only remaining issue is that wayland has slightly more input latency when playing games, enough that it’s noticeable (or a very convincing placebo effect).
This makes it so that I have to use X11 and that I have to disable compositioning when playing games as my displays have different refresh rates. All in all, not a big problem but looking forward to be on wayland for good soon.
I had the reverse experience. I have had no issues with multi-monitor (OpenSUSE, nVidia driver direct from nVideas own maintained Opensuse rpms) but on Windows I’m having Windows open black, or delayed, not recognizing external display, etc. Too many variables to make proper apples to apples comparisons.
This ^ I ended up loading up NixOS and Gnome desktop for my wife’s old computer. She is not a computer person and was struggling with the slowness of W10 but also how complicated and inconsistent the interface became. She seems placated now.
Things that should have disappeared 30 years ago are still problems in the operating system. Not least of which is the handling of locales. I cannot transfer Excel files from my Windows machine to my Linux machine because my Windows machine uses points to denote decimals (as in most companies and homes in South Africa) while Linux does a hard-enforce of the documented standard in South Africa which is a comma for decimal. This breaks my files and I am unable to perform calculations on Excel files due to this. Ridiculous, relevant and sad.
I was previously unaware of the kernel doing such things.
People are indifferent, unknowing, fearful, or just plain lazy to learn new apps. Got to get Office, QuickBooks, Quicken, Adobe, and other major apps to run on Linux.
Most of these are fringe cases nowadays, and often used in environments where the user has no control over the OS anyways. I don’t really use Office at home (for the three times per year, LibreOffice is good enough and that’s what most Windows users I know run at home anyways).
Also it’s not as easy as to just “get Office, QuickBooks, Quicken, Adobe, and other major apps to run on Linux”. The wine project is doing miraculous work already IMHO…
While I agree with you on the advantages (performance, stability, reliability, security, customization, privacy, lightweight nature, no corporate bloatware, etc) of Linux, its rate of adoption is considerably weak and consistently weak because of various reasons and causes that your article does not mention.
“Your article doesn’t mention the real reasons, which conveniently enough I won’t list either.”
While I do like Excel, its handling of values as dates is also a big issue that has hit a lot of people in the past – the format is just not very portable or exchangeable. It’s not just an issue from Excel to other solutions… my point was rather that it’s not a “Linux” issue and the way it was worded sounded like the kernel had something to do with it.
I get your point, but the guy you quoted also has a point. For a non-techy person it’s really hard to understand the boundary of the OS, so where the OS ends and Apps begin. And tbh, even to a techy person, there isn’t really a hard border there.
For example: Is the DWM part of the OS? On Windows, definitely. It’s not the kernel, but it is the OS. You cannot remove or replace it.
On Linux, maybe, maybe not. It’s definitely part of the Distro, but you can replace it. But on the other hand, on Linux you can even replace the kernel if you really want to. So maybe replaceability is not the criterium? But if it isn’t, wouldn’t that make everything that came in the distro part of the OS?
On Windows, that’s kinda the case, with e.g. Edge being an integral, non-replaceable part of the OS.
And then you get into the territory of the “Linux is only the kernel” purists, that follow Stallmans fever dreams. They might say, Linux isn’t actually an OS at all.
And at the latest once Stallman’s speech has been quoted will anyone who is not a hardcore Linux philosopher say “Screw you guys, there is no point to this”.
You would have to Give SUSE / OpenSUSE a try. It has Yast2-GUI so everything from setting up a samba share, ftp server, to kernal tweak, system services, and boot setup can be done entirely in the GUI environment. Very similar to how the older Windows Control Panel looked. Also One-click install for rpm files. Oh and system rollback if you blow up the system, no command line fixes needed.
As someone else has said, on distributions that go for ease of use, the terminal isn’t really needed.
However, I do consider it a convenience feature even for users who are not savvy with it: You can either troubleshoot an issue by giving instructions like “Open application X, navigate to Option, open Tab, press Button, then enter Text, hit OK and repeat for each” or “copy and paste this command into your terminal”. The amount of work on both sides is likely lower plus there’s less room for error.
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