When did you start to realize Linux will never become the future of desktop computing?

[TaterChip]

The only thing holding Linux back is no centralized authority and to do the slick advertising of Windows and Apple. Linux will never have that money, as there is no real profit motive in open source. Also most peoples first exposure to computers was Windows. Enterprise is also deeply invested in Windows and won't spend the money to change. Linux is the desktop of choice for those in the know. I am a total GUI guy and use Linux. I really don't care if it becomes the desktop of choice, I only care that it is there so i can use it.

I guess I'm just ancient. I go back a little farther. I started with a Commodore 64, then the 128, and then switched over to MS DOS machine. Been with MS until last year when Mint allowed me to finally make the switch. Best thing that has ever happened.

And because of my years under MS Dos... if it's not GUI then It's probably not something I'm willing to tackle. The only command I have learned is xkill

I personally view Linux as a far superior option. Primarily because of the motivation behind it. MS is all about lining their pockets, so if it takes spying on their users, and collecting as much data as possible to sell then that's what they will do to fatten their pockets. I've been with them since the beginning and I started to see that mindset shift after winXP.

In comparison, most of Linux seems to be about solving problems (either for the software devs, or just in general) Sure they would like to get rich off their work, but that is not the driving force. Thus you actually own your machine and what it does, versus some corporation trying to tell you what you can do with the machine you bought and paid for.

Seeing what I have seen through the years...

Linux = freedom & Privacy

and that is the primarily reason I no longer drink the MS koolaid

As someone from the outside looking in, I fear that in 10-15 years Canocical will be just as bad as Microsoft. I can see some of those traits coming to the surface...and why I hope someday I will be able to find a Debian based distro that will work for my needs.

[TaterChip]

I can see a huge change in OS soon, Windows 10 users better disable all updates or switch to your flavor of linux. MS is going to force upgrade 10 to 11.

Win10 was my last. When I had to replace my Win7 machine it came with Win11. There was no way I was giving up that much control over my machine so the first thing I did was replace Win11 with Linux. I never even booted it up under Win. It's still running an older version of MX Plasma. My daily driver is Running Mint 21.1 Cinnamon.

[Dullard du Jour]

I used to be strictly PC because I could build them, then I got my first laptop, and I haven't built our bought another tower. I like the battery backup capabilities since our electric company sucks. Now that we live a mobile life the smaller form factor of a laptop just makes since.

I am looking at the future though. When my MSI gaming laptop dies... do I pay big money for a Linux based laptop, or just buy another NUC and mount it to the back of my 27" monitor since it will most likely do everything I need. Either way I will be running desktop until the very end. I hate trying to do things on my phone. If we ever stop traveling, then I will most like go back to a dumb phone, or go phoneless. I suspect there are others here that can relate. Fort the first part of my life there wasn't cell phones. I can easily go back to that. The main downside is there aren't payphones that you can walk to when you break down.

In contrast, my wife spends most of her time on her fruity tablet or phone.

I have known people that travel for work and live out of their travel home and a NUC is perfect for this. A NUC and a monitor for inside the camper, a laptop for the coffee shop or anytime outside of the camper. I like NUC's and think they have a strong place in the home for older couples, especially if they are in a smaller living space. I have maybe 3 apps on my iPhone 7 Plus, a browser, a pedometer, and an app for my dash camera so it is obvious I have little use for a cell phone other than to make calls. However, I do plan on a larger tablet to mount in the car for travel purposes and other uses when traveling.

[Dullard du Jour]

I can see a huge change in OS soon, Windows 10 users better disable all updates or switch to your flavor of linux. MS is going to force upgrade 10 to 11.

Win10 was my last. When I had to replace my Win7 machine it came with Win11. There was no way I was giving up that much control over my machine so the first thing I did was replace Win11 with Linux. I never even booted it up under Win. It's still running an older version of MX Plasma. My daily driver is Running Mint 21.1 Cinnamon.

Win 7 was my last. When MS started the closet updates to Win 10, I used the W10WIWI (Windows 10 When I Want It) created by a French IT fellow to remove the code for updating to 10. I knew then that 7 was my last MS OS. I started looking at Linux again and frankly, was turned off from Mint due to the crappy green colour of the web site. Well, actually, I don't care for most colours of green anyway. But Mint continued to be the more mature and better supported of most Linux options available to a person moving from Windows to Linux. The move for me was easier as I was retiring and no longer needed to use the software used in the corporate world, which is mostly MS.

[TaterChip]

Maybe you thought the transitions were easy. The transition from Win 7 to Win 8 was more shockingly different than going from Win 7 to Mint 19.1. The there was the almost about face from 8.0 to 8.1.

It was real shocking for my wife. Shen went to bed on Win7, woke up to win8.

To put it mildly... She wasn't happy.

At that point, I think I looked at Mint 19, but didn't see the software I needed, so I deleted some thing and made sure Microsoft could never screw with our machines again.

[TaterChip]

Linux may not be 'the' future of desktop, but it is 'my' future of desktop. I'm done with the spying and/or being force-fed what some corporation marketing types (M$ and Apple), think I want or need.

I am enjoying reading everyone's posts on this topic. It's a good post topic OP, thanks.

That's me in a nutshell. After all the Microsoft installed spyware I had to delete from my Win10 machine, I knew there was no way I would be able to stay in that ecosystem. At that point I made the decision to learn what I needed to make the switch to Linux. The more I learn, the happier that I'm here.

When my win7 machine got replaced with a win11 NUC. It's first bootup was with MX on a thumbdrive. It's still running MX today. At 50, I decided to make a life change an Microsoft has lost me forever.

[TaterChip]

Linux is unlikely to ever be a mature product with a major market share.

That's a pretty rich statement, considering that Linux absolutely dominates supercomputing, servers, the cloud, the "Internet of Things" ("smart" devices, cars), and even smartphones (Android). And has done so for years. Thanks for the laugh. ...

Note that none of the items on that list include desktops (or laptops), which is what this is about and what the OP was referring to .

I have never thought that Linux would be "the future of desktop computing". It's ridiculous. No Linux distro has the resources, not even Red Hat.

There is such a thing as Linux for the non techie masses, ie. Apple OS (both desktop and mobile), Android, and Chrome OS. Android and Chrome OS use a patched version of Gentoo kernels. Apple uses a Unix plug in compatible kernel and is very similar to Linux, as Steve Jobs said himself. They did have the resources to make Unix sell to the masses, in which GNU/Linux has failed dismally. And they largely did so by replacing the entire Linux graphics stack.

IMO ChromeOS scares me about as bad as Windows. I have been on a quest to distance myself from Google because of their practices. My last main hurdle is my phone, and I've been trying to learn about de-googled ROMs and what that entails.

[TaterChip]

I have known people that travel for work and live out of their travel home and a NUC is perfect for this. A NUC and a monitor for inside the camper, a laptop for the coffee shop or anytime outside of the camper. I like NUC's and think they have a strong place in the home for older couples, especially if they are in a smaller living space. I have maybe 3 apps on my iPhone 7 Plus, a browser, a pedometer, and an app for my dash camera so it is obvious I have little use for a cell phone other than to make calls. However, I do plan on a larger tablet to mount in the car for travel purposes and other uses when traveling.

Back before my stroke I used to go out overlanding for my photography. I can confirm that having a tablet with your maps on it is a game changer.

My MSI is massive heavy for a laptop so it doesn't get carried out. It is actually closed up over on the side, tied to a 27" monitor and used like a desktop with built in battery backup.

[TaterChip]

Win 7 was my last. When MS started the closet updates to Win 10, I used the W10WIWI (Windows 10 When I Want It) created by a French IT fellow to remove the code for updating to 10. I knew then that 7 was my last MS OS. I started looking at Linux again and frankly, was turned off from Mint due to the crappy green colour of the web site. Well, actually, I don't care for most colours of green anyway. But Mint continued to be the more mature and better supported of most Linux options available to a person moving from Windows to Linux. The move for me was easier as I was retiring and no longer needed to use the software used in the corporate world, which is mostly MS.

The software was my biggest hurdle. It took me a while to find suitable replacements for my win programs.

[Dullard du Jour]

Back before my stroke I used to go out overlanding for my photography. I can confirm that having a tablet with your maps on it is a game changer.

My MSI is massive heavy for a laptop so it doesn't get carried out. It is actually closed up over on the side, tied to a 27" monitor and used like a desktop with built in battery backup.

I do genealogy and a tablet is ideal for snapping photos of grave sites, as well as a map to the graveyard. A cell phone is too small and too limited, and a laptop is just too bulky. I had a Samsung tablet for a number of years, it finally died. I never did like it or the Google environment to be honest. I am waiting to see what iPads Apple releases this March or April. My only reservation about an iPad is that I cannot put Linux on it due to the processor type.

[Hoser Rob]

... IMO ChromeOS scares me about as bad as Windows. I have been on a quest to distance myself from Google because of their practices. My last main hurdle is my phone, and I've been trying to learn about de-googled ROMs and what that entails.

That's a valid issue but it's really practically impossible to completely de Googleize yourself if you go on the web. Even if you did so you would break a lot of sites.

And the truth is that, as with geeky Linux fanboys/fangirls, there just are not enough privacy zealots to make something that's focussed on privacy successful. Most users will sacrifice that for convenience.

[all41]

Easy for me: I never wanted Linux to be anything like windows to begin with.
Being like windows is likened to a flea climbing an elephant's rear leg with romantic intentions.
Probably not happening.

[Hoser Rob]

Maybe you thought the transitions were easy. The transition from Win 7 to Win 8 was more shockingly different than going from Win 7 to Mint 19.1. The there was the almost about face from 8.0 to 8.1.

It was real shocking for my wife. Shen went to bed on Win7, woke up to win8.

To put it mildly... She wasn't happy....

I wouldn't have been too happy either.

Fortunately I first installed Linux a little before Win 8 came out. The pre release had come out and a couple of IT guys I knew were testing it before the official release. I did not like what I heard, esp. the "start menu" that was more like a mobile device menu, with no grouping or submenus.

[t42]

Again to the subject line: the Linux desktop computing may be defined as a framework for running software, and it's level now so advanced that we may say it is already in the future. One of the latest examples is the inclusion in the Linux mainline tree becachefs. You can have it already in kernel 6.7

Code: Select all

┌──2024-03-03 21:14:35 @ ~
└─$ sudo bcachefs version && lsmod |grep bcachefs
1.6.3
bcachefs             1912832  0
lz4_compress           28672  1 bcachefs
lz4hc_compress         20480  1 bcachefs
xor                    20480  1 bcachefs
raid6_pq              122880  1 bcachefs
libcrc32c              12288  4 nf_conntrack,nf_nat,bcachefs,nf_tables

I hope that under constant pressure of Windows refuges there will be no Linux simplification to the level of kitchen appliances crowned with removing of ... terminal and package management system

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Actually, I do not feel Linux will never become the future of desktop computing. I feel there will come a time (although I'll probably not live long enough to see it) when businesses will become fed up with Windows' and Apple's shenanigans enough to begin to switch over to Linux systems company wide. the increasing cost of Windows and Apple compatible software (I'm looking at you, Adobe) alone may be enough to trigger the switch. Bigger companies can afford to create their own software (or farm out the creation) to replace the Windows/Apple only software they have been depending on if there isn't Linux compatible software that can be used again.

As far as home users go, if someone sets up a computer for a user correctly, they may never need to touch the terminal ever or, at worst, type in a simple alias for the occasional command they may need. If people's first computers were Linux based, they probably would feel to intimidated by Windows to ever try it.

[BG405]

Linux has been the future of desktop computing for me for the past 8 years!

Dedicated desktop user, even have an old HP Pavilion laptop that I would put Mint on except it has a BIOS that does not permit booting from a USB port.

Have you tried using a PLOP Boot Disk? There are images for a 3½" 1.44M floppy disk and also, I believe, for a CD. I just dd'd the image to the floppy and it worked on my old Dell desktop.

I have the floppy image: if it's OK to post it here I'm happy to.

[Dullard du Jour]

Linux has been the future of desktop computing for me for the past 8 years!

Dedicated desktop user, even have an old HP Pavilion laptop that I would put Mint on except it has a BIOS that does not permit booting from a USB port.

Have you tried using a PLOP Boot Disk? There are images for a 3½" 1.44M floppy disk and also, I believe, for a CD. I just dd'd the image to the floppy and it worked on my old Dell desktop.

I have the floppy image: if it's OK to post it here I'm happy to.

I am not familiar with the PLOP Boot Disk, so I will take a look at it. The HP does have a CD rom drive but the .iso is too large for CD roms. I tried burning it to a DVD but my DVD drive at the time failed to do a good image. I now have a new external LG DVD drive and should give it a go. I only use the laptop (Win XP) now to check my internet connection when the connection fails. Gives me a second way to rule out any issues with my PC. If I had Mint on the HP, I would likely find some use for it.

[BG405]

PLOP Boot should work with USB optical drives as well as USB flash drives, etc. if that helps.

[ajgreeny]

<snip>
As far as home users go, if someone sets up a computer for a user correctly, they may never need to touch the terminal ever or, at worst, type in a simple alias for the occasional command they may need. If people's first computers were Linux based, they probably would feel to intimidated by Windows to ever try it.

Well said!
I'm already there; whenever I have to use a Windows computer I end up feeling more lost than I ever did when I first used Linux back in 2004.
Back then the DEs were more what was expected after becoming used to WinXP but now I am completely mystified by Windows and even by such things as MS Office; why does Ctrl+V not simply.paste what was copied and not not take you through a submenu of various other options? Very annoying and unneeded! And why no context menu from a right click? That is second nature to me now.

[TaterChip]

Again to the subject line: the Linux desktop computing may be defined as a framework for running software, and it's level now so advanced that we may say it is already in the future. One of the latest examples is the inclusion in the Linux mainline tree becachefs. You can have it already in kernel 6.7

Code: Select all

┌──2024-03-03 21:14:35 @ ~
└─$ sudo bcachefs version && lsmod |grep bcachefs
1.6.3
bcachefs             1912832  0
lz4_compress           28672  1 bcachefs
lz4hc_compress         20480  1 bcachefs
xor                    20480  1 bcachefs
raid6_pq              122880  1 bcachefs
libcrc32c              12288  4 nf_conntrack,nf_nat,bcachefs,nf_tables

I hope that under constant pressure of Windows refuges there will be no Linux simplification to the level of kitchen appliances crowned with removing of ... terminal and package management system

I have no idea what your talking about here. But as a refugee, I have no desire for Linux to change what can be done with CLI, all I ask for is GUI options. I was around with MS DOS and CLI reminds me too much of that, albeit way more powerful. IMO, having to remember all those commands again would be a regression from being able to visually click on something. That's one thing I love about Linux.

There is the CLI for the purists that wont touch a GUI, and the GUI for folks that don't want to remember a bunch of code. The best of both worlds.

My first introduction to Linux was around 2006. My venomous mentor ran it, and he was strictly CLI. Back then I didn't even know about the advantages of FOSS, and I probably wouldn't have even listened if I had to use CLI,