this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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It peaked at 4.05% in March. The last 2 months it went just below 4% as the Unknown category increased. For June the reverse happened, so 4.04% seems to be the real current share of Linux on Desktop as desktop clients were read properly/werent spoofed.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sorry, I stopped playing factorio on my work Linux computer. I will play next month to get us back up.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't worry, I've been playing plenty of Linux factorio for the last few weeks to make up for it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

Thank you for your service

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Man i hope linux becomes more popular

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I see multiple posts on reddit everyday asking for advice for migrating to linux. I think linux userbase is increasing a lot since Window's questionable recall announcement.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

And the valve steamdeck But some people install windows on it which defeats it's linux purpose

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

I feel like both "people who install windows on the steam deck" and "people asking for advice for migrating to linux on reddit" are just vocal minorities which you encounter on the internet but don't really influence the Statcounter's results in a meaningful way. Generally (from my view) it's the kids who got a steamdeck for xmass and the coders who use ubuntu for work influencing the numbers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

true and the kids want to play their favorite game but they cannot on steam deck or its hard

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Nevertheless, Valve's work with proton has pretty much crushed the argument that Windows is needed for games. That use to be a major sticking point, preventing people from leaving Windows - but now not so much.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

If you play games that requires anti cheat It's gonna be harder to switch

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Almost all anti-cheats work on linux or offer linux integration or builds. It's the scummy unethical publishers who run the typical games that uses anti-cheat who refuse to pay engineers to make the minimum effort to support linux. Because it would undermine some of their bullshit claims used to manipulate their players. Fortunately for some people like myself, the typical game that requires anti-cheat is not a game they would want to play anyways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

Ohh okay I have never seen a anti cheat that supports linux

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

There's some other good ones too, but fair point

[–] [email protected] 1 points 56 minutes ago

I just found out halflife alyx is windows only but maybe proton

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A lot of mods are also windows locked too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Nexus mods is working on a Linux client which is really exciting! Also Steam Workshop works on Linux. This covers a ton of use cases.

Not saying everything is 100% perfection, but it's easier than ever to switch, and only getting easier.

I imagine "Windows locked mods" would probably also benefit from just disconnecting the internet and keeping it set up just the way one likes it, since MS is gonna drop Win10 soon.

That's the case with WMR VR headsets. Sadly don't see those getting cracked to work on Linux any time soon. :(

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

I just saw the news for Nexus mods like 20 minutes after I posted that. Hopefully it can be integrated well soon.

But yes, over time, things will continue to get better. Even Nvidia finally started working on open drivers for their GPUs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

This is probably a good place to ask, but when ditching windows for Linux, what's a good distro to go with? Preferably one that has a good WINE interface.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I've seen a lot of people move to Mint or Pop_OS or Kubuntu. They're Debian based so updates are pretty stable.

I personally ended up with EndeavourOS using the KDE desktop environment. I have a steam deck, so this felt very similar to me. This is Arch based so sometimes updates break things, but I've had more success here.

Also remember that no distro is problem-free, but neither was Windows. The longer you commit, the easier it gets.

EDIT: If you're hesitant to fully commit at first, I also recommend dual booting with Windows. Over time you'll use it less and less until one day you feel like reclaiming the disk space.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I tried doing a dual boot to Mint awhile back, I did the mint backup at the start like it suggests, changed some things, broke it, restored from the backup thinking it was great id already made one, and broke the WHOLE pc.

I had to pull the battery on the BIOS to get it to go beyond a black screen when turning on.

It was terrible.

It seem to recall at the time recommendations about not doing dual boot, and if you wanted to dual boot, remove the main OS drive when you install Linux. Then put it back in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

If you're hesitant to fully commit at first, I also recommend dual booting with Windows. Over time you'll use it less and less until one day you feel like reclaiming the disk space.

I have a 10 year old laptop that I had to get rid of the hard drive for and am installing an nand drive and want to use to re-familiarize myself with Linux on it. Especially since my main desktops are too old to upgrade to Windows 11(not that I'd want to anyway) and I figure going Linux now will save me from scrambling when the pooch gets thoroughly screwed after Win 10 updates end.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd personally recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition. After distro hopping for a bit, it has personally been the best one for working right out of the box, both for my games and for my peripherals.

I like the UI, it's about at my tech level/needs. I have little to no complaints about it, which is as good as it gets.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is one of many comments I've seen on several posts that have recommended Mint. I'm currently playing around with Ubuntu, just because it's the one I'm most familiar with from back in the day, but since the drive I'm using is temporary I might do a wipe and then load Mint and see how that operates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago

In my experience, experience with one distro is experience with them all. 90% of what you are familiar with will be either similar or completely the same. So definitely give LMDE a shot.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 days ago (5 children)

The youtuber matt from thelinuxcast sucks.

I am regular user, i don't code for living and my job is not tech related. I wanted to try linux and many of you guys supported and now I'm using Linux since 2 weeks its linux mint. That matt guy was so against linux mint that i thought it was shit too. But when i installed and started using it. It has been a smooth journey. Many people in linux community were helpful. But people like matt really make it for us regular guys scared to use linux. I really hope many good linux user help regular people switch to linux and increase this number.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago (12 children)

Mint is great and is absolutely enough for most people using computers, still as of now. It comes with its limitations though:

  • By default it runs pretty old kernel. This is fine if your hardware is at least 3 years old. It allows to easily switch to newer kernel with just few clicks, but I expect newbies to not be aware of this at all. Oh, and I don’t know if it offers some custom kernels like tkg etc, which some might want to squeeze best gaming perf etc.
  • Cinnamon is still limited to X11. If you have multi-screen setup, VRR, mixed refresh, mixed DPI etc, it’s better to switch to Wayland. Plus, Xorg server gets less and less maintenance and development. All the innovation moved to Wayland, so the experience on X will remain pretty stale.
  • The Ubuntu base makes it so that for 3rd party software you either need deb packages or PPAs. Some will argue (me included) that it’s not the best solution

All of the above can easily be irrelevant to you and Mint is just perfect for what you need. It’s important to point out limitations of that choice, but crapping on it because you don’t like it is just pointless fuss

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Cinnamon can run Wayland in experimental mode. It's just an extra click during login. Mint also has direct support for flatpaks repositories, with flathub by default directly on the software center.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Any experience you can share on how complete and stable is that experimental session? I probably wouldn’t throw newbie on that

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

There's a bug where flatpaks seemingly disappear from the system the first time you run Wayland. But it resolves with a reboot. It happens too if you change back from Wayland to X11. Other than some minor glitches from very old software that hasn't seen an update in decades, it runs perfectly fine.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (11 children)

Windows 11: Add advertisement to the start menu, add remote Artificial intelligence to your daily live. Require new CPUs and motherboards / hardware, ignoring the market for old computers.

What will they do next?

  • More advertisement.
  • More features that require an always on internet connection?
  • Forced restart for software updates

This is why I expect Linux share to slowly increase until the old computers die and you will not be allowed to choose to boot another operating system besides Windows on your Microsoft-Copilot+ PC that would be your only option.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Next:

  • Must always be online

  • Cost is now $9.99 per month (free with commercial breaks. For now of course.)

  • Everything is stored online (60GB free, $5.99/month to up it to 199GB, $49/m for 400GB).

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

I assume the proportions of people who spoof their OS is slanted towards Linux

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

why do we negate chromeos we are 10% at least so there we really are

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

For starters doesn't it only run apps from the Google play store?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

and what kernel would you say it and android runs? relevant?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

This is the format collision discussion that has no solution so far. A tablet that runs windows is counted as Windows. A laptop that runs android does not. Neither does an android cellphone. It all boils down to web browser user agent fuckery. This is why steam's numbers are more reliable than other sources, they're direct hardware surveys.

But the point is that a steam deck is not (but in a way it is basically just) a PC. There are tablets than run desktop interfaces and now there are laptops that can be used as tablet. Eventually the artificial mobile vs. PC/desktop/laptop schism will stop making sense.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

true, but in this case you can look at the same graph that was linked and see another Linux distro clearly marked that they choose not to treat as one in their headline. seems a little silly to me

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