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::: spoiler References
Hot take (?): For anyone who has made the switch, it was the year or the Linux desktop. π€·ββοΈ
I remember it so clearly. "Ooh, multiple desktops. It'll take forever until Windows gets this." (It was 1996. Newbies should try messing with fvwm. Now that was configurable.)
Every Year Is The Year Of The Linux Desktop!
That's a fun take! My year of Linux was 2007.
Same π Around 2004 ish I started experimenting with live CDs of some KDE distro. I managed to also corrupt one of my hard drives doing so. Not a fun day I remember. But I learned some valuables that day, for sure.
2017 for me!
(I had been using Linux on some systems since 2002 and first tried it in the late '90s, but 2017 was the year in which I ditched Windows even on my gaming machine, permanently.)
Mine will be this year, I only have 1 system left to put Linux on.
I'm just currently learning some RAW photo editors before I cancel my Lightroom sub.
Fusion360 was dropped a few months ago when FreeCAD went 1.0 (after I learned it enough of course)
Welcome to the family! π€π€π«
At this point all my systems (except the Windows machine) are running Kubuntu, and NGL it's awesome.
Sounds like a good entry point!
Nah I definitely was giving stuff up to use Linux back in the day. Really, I'd say 2021 was when things got REALLY good.
I'm assuming you mean gaming? Yeah, I rarely boot into Windows these days, honestly.
Whatever it is though, it's always a compromise. There are things with Windows we can't get on Linux still, and there have been things with Linux which Windows still hasn't provided, for decades. Either way you go is a trade-off. But when I installed Linux and started using it more than Windows, I consider that my year or the Linux desktop. When the only thing I booted Windows for was to launch Steam.
mine was last year
mine is this year!
And for many - it will be π
I'm more surprised at PewDiePie, tbh. Jason runs a Mastodon instance, with the account [email protected] (I'm hoping that by leaving out the @ sign before the local username, that won't send him an unwanted notification), so the fact that he's also a Linux user is less surprising. I don't watch PDP, but I gather he has a very large and impressionable audience, so him promoting Linux should be good!
I was surprised to see him promoting Linux as well. People should not be shy about this.
PDP is actually running his game videos on Linux? That would be pretty amazing.
He doesn't do a lot of gaming videos now, but it does seem so. He talked about Proton and running OBS, so for anything Linux compatible via Proton is likely that's what he's doing
I've had this in my .zshrc for a while: alias $(date +%Y)="echo 'YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP'"
If you type the current year in your terminal, it will say "YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP" lol
Just checked NotJustBikes YouTube, they got some good content there
Ok I love bike lanes now. Since 1996 is a true OG
Ok I love bike lanes now
Ok but if you haven't already, you really should watch the channel's videos. They're insanely good, and show why good city design is good for bikes, but it's not just bikes.
I just checked and it was 1996 for me as well. I started with DLD and a 2.0 kernel. Man, those were hard times. There was no internet, I could only dial into a BBS, where I could chat with people who were using Linux. If I had problems setting up dial-up? Well... Also getting a printer to work still haunts me to this day.
I read it in my head in his voice.
If '25 isn't due to people knowing win10 is going to die, '26 will be when they realize it's dead. Started during <10.whatever Ubuntu but have been running windows because I own a nvidia GPU that I want to use to play games. I'm confident in bazzite to go full time this year but I honesty want steamos on my main PC. I've used it for however many years since first batch steamdecks arrived and I love it. I promise to be a fanboy if steamos can do nvidia egpus and vr headsets with less that 5 minutes of tinkering.
Steam OS is not, and will not be a desktop OS. Bazzite is the desktop OS you want. No need to wait. The future is now.
I've seen a lot of comments online of people saying they'll leave Windows 10 once SteamOS has general availability. I fear that'll lead them to having a bad experience with Linux because they'll be expecting a desktop OS but instead receive an OS that turns their computer into a console. There's a couple features Bazzite has (like printer drivers) which you might want on something replacing Windows 10 but you probably don't care about if you have a handheld or a steam machine
SteamOS (the deck) does have printer support now.
Valve does seem to be putting affort into making sure the desktop mode is a complete experience.
Doesn't it boot straight into steam big picture? That alone should be a deterrent to most people wanting to run it as a desktop OS.
The steamdeck has a desktop mode, which uses KDE plasma.
It's arch KDE under the hood, as long as a terminal is accessible and you have root privileges you could probably run an airplane on it if you'd like. The relevant point is the default setting, the thing that nobody changes and why google's paying apple 18 billion per year.
Lulz, normal people don't give a crap about Windows 10 not being updated anymore, they won't even realize it and worst case they'll get a new computer when they get a warning that their hardware is no good anymore.
You need a minimum of tech knowledge to care and there's only two generations with a higher % of people who have that, the X and millennials. Zs and Alphas use mobile devices and hit a wall when they need to use a computer.
Lulz, normal people don't give a crap about Windows 10 not being updated anymore, they won't even realize it
To this day, many "normal people" use Win7 (and even XP) despite it being dead for a long time.
Nonetheless IMO MS will somehow keep W10 on life support for quite some time after october of 2025 just for those people to finally switch to W11
Yeah I also expect MS will see W11's poor uptake (iirc, W10 actually increased market share over the last 12 months) and will see it as necessary to extend. Probably more to reduce the risk of bad press from a serious security incident, rather than because they're afraid people will switch to Linux.
On the other hand, Microsoft is unbelievably good at screwing things up. They could totally dump 10.
I mean, they have to support LTSC anyway, so it would be easy, but still, MS be MS.
As much as I like SteamOS, it really bothers me that it deletes Waydroid when it updates. Idk why it does that but it's irritating. Does Bazzite have the same issue?
This is a feature, not a bug.
Immutable distributions will revert themselves to stock (spare your home folder) on update. If you install your apps via flatpak this won't happen.
Since waydroid is not available on flathub, I believe you will continue to have this problem unless you leave immutability turned off completely, which defeats the number one safety net you have against yourself.
Bazzite doesn't have this issue. Waydroid actually comes pre-installed as part of Bazzite
I've been hearing this for every version of Windows since XP. If Linux is to become mainstream, relying on Microsoft's fuck-ups may not be enough.
Recall and AI in general is something normies understand and hate, and that's the fuck up windows is making. Even apple did briefs trials and immediately realized what a mistake they made. And if you haven't been involved in it, you have not fucking idea how far proton has progressed Linux gaming in the last few years and that wouldn't have ever happened without valve.
Yeah.
A bigger thing to me is that some OEMs seem to be offering Linux for a discount. Thatβs massive, as it will draw in βnon expertsβ who donβt know the difference (or care), but very much know about sticker prices.
Also, the user experience is also bound to be much better when a manufacturer provides a tested and supported operating system, especially for "non-experts" for whom a terminal is an arcane inscription tablet.
Ha!
Have you seen the bloatware they ship with Windows? It somehow manages to be so much worse than base windowsβ¦ itβs honestly much better if they donβt touch the OS at all, barring the absolute bare minimum of making sure input works.
Iβm being cynical: I know some OEMs do make kernel contributions and such. Still, the βgenericβ support distros/chip makers provide for free is better, given their track record.
