I couldn’t find it is in the article, is this new purchases, or how is this measured. If a computer ships with windows and I install mint on it, how do they know where that tally goes?
I use arch btw
I’m not in the US, but here in the UK I made the switch too.
I went from Windows PC + Windows laptop ~2 years ago to now having a Linux PC (ZorinOS), Samsung tablet and a home server running Proxmox with an Ubuntu VM for Docker.
Never been happier with my setup. The grass truly is greener over here.
I still use windows because of Visual Studio. I used to use Mac OSX because of XCode and I honestly don’t understand people today who still use Windows or Mac for anything other than Development.
If there was an alternative to Visual Studio for Linux I wouldn’t think twice.
People who use windows or Mac for anything but development do so for the same reasons as you, they are locked into some features. For example, at home I need a local music library manager with local sync to my phone music app and smart playlists. Mac is still the only platform with this.
At work I need MS exchange integration and all the features of native office. Even the Mac version isn’t good enough for my workflow.
My only hope would be to turn to emulators or something like that, but at that point I’m not really running Linux anyway. I’m just running something else in a container inside Linux.
MPD works pretty well for the music thing, and, I don’t know if this is would be an option for you, but I programmed my own smart-paylist-generator in rust as a hobby project to get control of my 500Gb (around 10,000 100% legally acquired tracks cough, cough) library. The additional control over the algo meant I got something that works waaaay better than pretty much anything else I’ve tried (including Spotify suggestions, etc. — the only thing I still use is Bandcamp for new artist suggestions); if you have the time, I highly recommend a homemade solution like that. It is a lot of work though.
The only thing I really miss about visual studio is the automatic profiler. Everything else just felt archaic, bloated, slow, and unintuitive. Adding one line in cmake often does the same thing as clicking through five submenus which never once got updated since 2012.
Visual Studio is a relic of the past. Does anyone still use it?
Every year Linux fans:
👐 It’s happening! 👐
Just made the full switch meself this past week!
Welcome Mr. Krabs
I mean good for the desktop experience on Linux, its taken the movement of most desktop apps to the web to make OS choice basically immaterial. I’ll still nitpick some things in linux that are still worse than Windows (i’ve replaced my htpc with a cheapo N100 and its better in most ways, worse in a few smaller things), but the most important thing is that the things I mostly use a desktop for (namely media consumption, browsing, some game streaming, and docker containers) its more or less the same as using windows or macos.
Just switched to Linux for my daily driver laptop!
It would probably be more if there weren’t so many Linux gatekeepers that tell people to “go back to Windows/Apple” when they ask a questions.
Did this happen to you in particular? Most tech oriented people (and Linux users by extensions) are generally chill
No its just a common trend I see when I look for answers to questions I have about aspects of Linux. I work in tech and know lots of tech people. Chill is one of the few terms I would use for them hahaha.
Still far too low, considering that the US is now a police state.
I started running openSUSE Tumbleweed full time at the beginning of this year!
I truly must thank the folks at Steam/Proton, GE-Proton, and wemod-launcher on GitHub for allowing me to play my games exactly like I did on Windows. I can’t stress to anyone who isn’t playing on Linux just how good it really is (for me, at least)!
I have beaten at least 10 games while on Linux. Games like: Metaphor: Refantazio, Persona 3 Reloaded, DOOM: The Dark Ages, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Mass Effect Legendary Edition (all three games), Oblivion Remastered, and recently System Shock (Remake). Just to name a few off the top of my head!
I still have a Windows SSD dedicated to anything I MUST use on there (mainly modding games, logging back into openSUSE, then pulling those files straight from the Windows SSD onto my openSUSE SSD, fucking love that!), but that is mostly being unused because I found the wonders of QEMU/KVM Virtual Machine Manager. I use the VM to sideload apps onto my iPhone, for save editing, or for testing a Windows only app before trying to run it with Bottles or something else.
Logging into Linux feels like home, while logging onto Windows feels like someone else’s home. :P
I share your enthusiasm. I wanted to learn Linux because so much scientific computing in my field relies on it, but when I dual booted, it was too easy to just retreat to Windows as the path of least resistance. I decided to fully make the switch to Linux as an attempt to force myself to learn stuff, but the big thing that held me back was nervousness about gaming.
Turns out that this fear was completely unfounded, and I have been utterly astounded at how easy gaming on Linux was. It wasn’t completely pain free, and there were a couple times that I needed to tinker somewhat, but it was no more difficult or frequent than I needed to do similar stuff on Windows.
I get what you mean about logging on feeling like home. Besides the scientific computing, a big part of what pushed me to Linux was how ambiently icked out I felt by using Windows — it didn’t feel like mine. Running Windows feels like renting a home from a landlord who doesn’t respect your boundaries and just comes in to make changes while you’re sleeping. Like, it’s not even about whether those changes are good or bad, but how weird it feels to constantly be reminded that this home is not truly yours.
What field are you in, if you don’t mind a stranger asking?
I wish I could have an interesting backstory to why I wanted to switch to Linux, but mine is much more simple! I just saw how well the SteamDeck was running some of the games I was throwing on it, and was pretty impressed! So, I pulled a spare SSD out of one of my old laptops, chucked it into the desktop, and started the install for openSUSE Tumbleweed because I had heard it was “one of the most stable distros” and was sold since I have always messed my Linux installs up! (I was also dual booting on the same laptop I pulled the SSD from, so that could have been a lot of the issues I had)
Gaming is definitely more simple once you acclimate to the new OS you are using. It was like when I used a Mac for the first time, and didn’t find it very good to use, but now I can get on one and do a lot more things now that I understand the system a little better! If I need to look something up, I just always add openSUSE Tumbleweed, and generally find what I need.
I used some tools (ChrisTitusTech, and StartAllBack mainly) to make Windows bearable, but never liked not having the control over MY system. It is definitely weird when I am on Windows. I usually check to see if that nasty Recall system somehow installed itself on there, or something similar. Heebie jeebies!
Just switched last month and I love it so far (:
Woooo! Year of the linux desktop baby!!
- pumps fist in air*
At some point companies will be forced to accept that they’re losing out on revenue by not releasing a linux version of their software.
And the Windows version through Wine will still run better than the native… As is tradition.
