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

[mediclaser]

This question is for those of you who honestly thought Linux would be the future of desktop.

I was so excited when I tried Linux for the first time in 2016. It made my very old laptops work again and even made them perform faster than Win XP. After using it for 2 years, I noticed improvements in user-friendliness, software apps getting updated fast and modernized, and new distros were coming out (I wish I had the time to try all the existing distributions). I was very sure Linux would be the future of desktop computing and I was not alone (apparently).

Then for what ever reasons, Linux started getting less user-friendly. I now have to figure out missing packages and install them, or find and learn next-level config settings to make things work like they used to. Flatpak and similar bloatware are now getting pushed. Installs now tend to fail or won't start at all.

At first, I enjoyed reading technical arguments on things like sytemd for the sake of learning from the Linux experts and knowing how they think. Nowadays, all I want is to make my installation to work with less hassle.

I no longer think Linux will take the top spot in desktop computing anytime in the future.

[Pjotr]

My experience is considerably better than yours. Slick, rock-steady, reliable, ever easier and ever more advanced. That's what desktop Linux has been for me (starting in the summer of 2006).

The question is not whether Linux will become market leader in desktop computing. Of course it will; it's the very last niche in computing that it doesn't dominate yet.

It's just that this future might be less pleasant than we would think.... My prediction: in the coming years, let's say in a decade, I'm convinced that Windows will eventually get a Linux kernel.

Microsoft simply can't keep up with its own Windows kernel, much like it wasn't able to keep up with its own web browser Internet Explorer. Windows literally becoming a Linux distro is the logical path to take for Microsoft. But will we like that?

[t42]

This question is for those of you who honestly thought Linux would be the future of desktop.

Open source is not about competition.

Anyway bonus point to OP for not using the phrase "market share".

[spamegg]

(The question is not for me, I never believed the whole "year of the Linux desktop" thing.
That's really silly; FOSS was never the future in anything average-user-oriented.
Remember the failure of 90s-early 2000s commercial desktop Linux?)

Desktop has been declining in general, also on Windows and Mac.
The fact is, we live in a phone world now.
Everything is for phones.
Companies don't care much about desktops.
There are billions more phone users, and you can lock them all up in phone contracts.
Not to mention, phones are like a fashion item now, status symbols,
and they also keep losing phones / getting them stolen / broken,
so they keep selling new versions of phones over and over.
Everyone uses laptops. Desktops are not "sexy enough".
Laptops are not "real desktop".
And companies like Canonical are moving towards immutable server-oriented stuff.
Nobody cares about "old school average joe desktop user" anymore.

The web is also made for phones now.
When was the last time you saw a website that didn't look like it was made for vertical scrolling on a narrow phone screen?
Desktops also followed suit. Win/Mac/Linux, all three.
We had the whole "phone-ification" of desktop user interfaces.
Ridiculously over-simplified touch-screeny crap, Mac clones, etc.

Next, the desktop will be infected with AI integration.
My opinion is that the future of desktop is quite bleak in terms of
user friendliness, usability, features, and overall "fun" and "pleasantness".
We had a sort-of "golden era" in late 90s-early 2000s-2010s and now it's over.

Windows and Mac desktops will continue to decline or stagnate.
Linux desktop will be the only place where it's still decent,
and has some passionate people working on it, where some innovation can happen.
But it will remain splintered with forever changing APIs and stuff,
or "restart from scratch, rewrite" stuff like Cosmic.
Bloat is inevitable, when Linux people get tired of it, they'll restart over.
Serenity OS or Haiku maybe?
Then people will complain about "lack of unity" again.

Now I'm not complaining, Linux is awesome in my opinion.
But I never had any expectations to begin with.
I'm happy to live in a small niche corner.
Mint / Cinnamon works and it's nice enough.
It has good people behind it who listen to us.
Systemd is great.
I never use Timeshift, nothing ever happened.
I don't care about fancy advanced features or bloat-free-ness too much.
I've just accepted it and moved on, focusing on actual work.

Just my two cents

[NFA]

what spamegg said.

[CloneWerks]

I've seen the "future of desktop computing".

It's "subscription" model software-as-a-Service, You-pay-for-the-hardware-but-corporations-control-the-box, Web-Centric, Cloud-Backup, "all-your-data-are-belong-to-us"... and I want no part of it!

Linux has been treating me very well for the time I've been using it.

Then again, it seems like I always went against the grain. Amiga when everything was going PC and so forth.

[MurphCID]

Probably 2000. But what Spamegg said as well. Linux is still too much of a "tinkerers OS" and not ready for those who just want to turn it on and have it work.

[MiZoG]

Linux desktop lost the rendezvous with the future when Canonical was invested in the bigger-than-life project of "unity" following Microsoft's steps in seeking a joint platform for mobile and desktop. Canonical was the only Linux company with an actual footing in desktop. In the meanwhile KDE4 & Gnome 3 debacles gave Microsoft valuable time to regroup. At the time when Windows users were suffering in the transition to Metro UI, Linux desktop went into an unprecedented -even for Linux standards- fragmentation. Our favourite Linux Mint is in fact a by-product of this fragmentation.
Now desktop in general has become less relevant. Smartphone is the first computing device hundreds of millions of people came to familiarize themselves with in Asia and Africa. All over the world smartphone has become the computing device people spend most time with. Perhaps in ten years Windows will run on top of a Linux kernel. Who knows. But then it won't matter. It won't be the future we were looking forward to.

[BwingBob]

Probably 2000. But what Spamegg said as well. Linux is still too much of a "tinkerers OS" and not ready for those who just want to turn it on and have it work.

Murph,

Not sure I agree. I use Linux everyday for both work and play and it just works for me. I learned some time ago to "tinker" inside of a VM so not to trash my main machine.

I started dipping my toes in Linux back in the early 2000s, but it really did not work for me until about 3 or 4 years ago. I realized that I could do everything I need to do in Linux and made the switch permanently. So for me it was actually the future of desktop computing.

Bob

[Dullard du Jour]

This question is for those of you who honestly thought Linux would be the future of desktop.
.
.

Sticking strictly with the question. Somewhere between 1991 and 1993. About every 5 or 6 years I would take another look and saw that nothing had really changed, except for the existence of more derivatives. Started watching Mint in earnest about 4 years ago and made the move last year, after I retired from a world wide corporation that was heavily based in MS products.

Linux is unlikely to ever be a mature product with a major market share. This is due, in part to the lack of cohesiveness and direction between all the derivatives. The problem with open source software is it is all ego driven. Not always a bad thing but if there were as many derivatives of MS Windows as there are of Linux then it is likely MS would not be as mainstream as it is. Popularity can have its pitfalls.

Millions of people can love Linux, but it is hundreds of millions of people that want a consistent experience and were willing to pay MS for that.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...Millions of people can love Linux, but it is hundreds of millions of people that want a consistent experience and were willing to pay MS for that.

Windows? Consistant?

[motoryzen]

Desktop has been declining in general, also on Windows and Mac.
The fact is, we live in a phone world now

I couldn't care any less what the majority of individual's prefer and say so with their wallets or more applicably, unfortunately..., they're credit cards.

Nothing will ever beat what a good REAL desktop (PC in terms of raw performance, easy of repair AND customize-ability .... ) can do.

There have been a few OEM's try to make a laptop be as big or good as a desktop.and still fail

There have been plenty of attempts for a desktop PC to be as power efficient AND use the same or less power than the laptop-same-costing counter part...but still fails in one or two piece of that comparison

Yes..smartphones have improved in terms of great gaming capabilities, but your dime a doze hardcore gamers AREN'T gaming on a sub 8 inch screen in their hands for fps shooters and L.O.L. type games nor a pretty heavy variety of other gaming genre's save for maybe more classic titles from decades ago that don't require fast-variety input.

Laptops have their place
Desktops have their place
Smartphones have their place

So many people have been saying for literally decades " the desktop is dying". And yet.I'm STILL seeing plenty of cpu and gpu varieties from intel, nvidia, and AMD. This also doesn't include the little by little traction that RISC V is gaining per Wendell from Level1techs across the years.

So..sorry..Desktops aren't dying....they are not going anywhere anytime soon.

[Pjotr]

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.

As said: the final niche where Microsoft Windows is hiding from the storm, is desktop computing. The very last stronghold. It's like Granada before the fall. But it's only a matter of time before the big guns of the King will breach the walls.

[Jymm]

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.

[Dullard du Jour]

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.

As said: the final niche where Microsoft Windows is hiding from the storm, is desktop computing. The very last stronghold. It's like Granada before the fall. But it's only a matter of time before the big guns of the King will breach the walls.

Glad you had a good laugh. Really, I am. The OP statement was about desktop use. Desktop numbers are at the dumpster level of existence, there is essentially zero focus by the numerous derivatives ( the nature of open source and ego ) to have a consistent GUI or set of programs from system to system. Mint has three different DE that work in different ways, that is not consistent, but it does appeal to the average desktop user that wants an desktop environment that they find more suitable. The desktop system is a victim of its own popularity.

Hope you day is full of laughs and joy. Really, I do.

[Dullard du Jour]

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.

Precisely.

[Dullard du Jour]

...Millions of people can love Linux, but it is hundreds of millions of people that want a consistent experience and were willing to pay MS for that.

Windows? Consistant?

MS ethics and corporate tactics aside.

Sure it was. Each series of Windows, whether it was the 3 series, or 95, 98, 98SE, 2K, 7, 8, and later series kept enough GUI and other MS program similarities that users and the corporate world could easily transition from from series to the next. That is at the desktop and server level.

[gomerpile]

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.

[MurphCID]

Probably 2000. But what Spamegg said as well. Linux is still too much of a "tinkerers OS" and not ready for those who just want to turn it on and have it work.

Murph,

Not sure I agree. I use Linux everyday for both work and play and it just works for me. I learned some time ago to "tinker" inside of a VM so not to trash my main machine.

I started dipping my toes in Linux back in the early 2000s, but it really did not work for me until about 3 or 4 years ago. I realized that I could do everything I need to do in Linux and made the switch permanently. So for me it was actually the future of desktop computing.

Bob

Very good points Bob, but for me, there are still just certain things that Windows (and Apple) do much better than Linux, and I still think for the Average user (i.e. my wife and kids), Linux is not, and I doubt will ever be the "Turn it on and it works" system they want. Also they constantly comment that Linux "looks old and ugly" compared to either Windows or Mac OS.

[Samarian Sunset]

...Nothing will ever beat what a good REAL desktop (PC in terms of raw performance, easy of repair AND customize-ability .... ) can do...

That's the way I feel too. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one using a desktop when everyone else is on their phone or here at the Mint Forums on their laptops. My wife has a laptop and I can't type on it, the keyboard is to flat and compact, I need a full size keyboard. Of course I could use a full size keyboard with a laptop buy why? I don't need to take my computer to the grocery or hardware store so don't need a laptop...and I do like the fact that I can switch out desktop components or upgrade it. I've had only two computers since 2000 both desktops, both kept working by upgrading them. I know most don't use desktops these days, but there's still fans and I'm one.