2025 the year of Linux

[sinfulosd]

Wouldn't it be funny if every single tech software (Google chrome, Firefox, Steam, Epic games, Discord, Pale Moon, etc...) decided to end support on Windows 10 on exactly October 14, 2025, when Microsoft is gonna end the support on it?! This move could force MILLIONS to either switch to Windows 11 (Highly unlikely, due to the minimum requirement of the OS, gatekeeping the regular users to upgrade), or they'd all switch to Linux.

I know it's very unlikely (almost impossible) for these companies to just end support on the same day the OS's support is over (Despite that Google and steam have their own Linux distribution/projects, giving them much more benefit off of this move, and the majority of other software is seeing A LOT more improvements on Linux than Windows) and they'll treat it, just like how they've done with Windows 7 (They may even give Windows 10 more than 3 years of support), but can't these companies give Microsoft the same petty treatment that Microsoft has been giving to everyone?!

What do you guys think?

[Pentium4User]

Some users will switch to Linux, but the vast majority won't.
They don't want to learn a new OS and often also need Windows for specific applications.

A huge amout of e-waste will be produced and Linux/BSD users can use that.

[Moonchild]

If they do I'll jump in and build modern Firefox for Windows 10
And others would do the same for Chrome based.

Other companies would thrive that continue to support it in their software.

I'm 100% sure there wouldn't be a mass move to Linux, at all, because Linux is simply not accessible enough for the vast majority of PC users.

[RealityRipple]

Is that really true if all a ton of people run these days is a web browser? As long as you can run Chrome on it, would they even notice Linux is running underneath?

[Moonchild]

Is that really true if all a ton of people run these days is a web browser? As long as you can run Chrome on it, would they even notice Linux is running underneath?

For "web junkies" it wouldn't matter, but those are hardly PC users. They would actually be better off just using a tablet or something (and many already do). Also, that group is most likely already on Win 11.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

because Linux is simply not accessible enough for the vast majority of PC users.

Not sure if this discussion belongs here or to the "off topic" bar.

Off-topic:
Maybe we should define "user". I guess I might not be a "typical user", being one that started using computers at work, with a variety of OS's, at the time of punched cards. I never felt at ease with Windows (and it is 20 years or more I don't need nor use it), perhaps because it does not come with a pack of manuals to study ... maybe modern Linuxes as well (butu there are at least the man pages) ... which is the way I learned e.g. VAX VMS, or Unix on Sun or DEC w/s (and for me Linux, despite the Linux Is Not UniX pun, is just another Unix flavour ... or set of flavours).
But sure, if the "typical PC user" is like the typical user of a TV, or of a washing machine, or microwave oven (or maybe a car driver, I do not know, I do not drive) I guess they could use any canned OS provided off the shelf with the machine, and go along with it.

[Moonchild]

Not sure if this discussion belongs here or to the "off topic" bar.

Probably better in the Off Topic bar, to be read with a drink

I'll move it.

[Mæstro]

How many ‘Years of the Linux Desktop’ have we had this decade?

Firms may pay for extended technical support after Microsoft refuses it to private users. Developers would keep writing for Windows 7 (and XP before it) years after this deadline. It is more interesting to see that, in the Anglo-Saxon countries (data for Britain, the antipodes, Canada and the US), about one in four desktop users today use Macs, while Windows’ share has declined to about two thirds. I do not know how much iPhone usage, Windows’ inherent problems or other factors have motivated this. I do know Mac has received more attention from developers lately, never mind how we are now in the strange place where newer Macs run iOS applications and Windows runs Android.

Is that really true if all a ton of people run these days is a web browser? As long as you can run Chrome on it, would they even notice Linux is running underneath?

Chromebooks do literally this, and they do not notice. I even know some who refuse to use Linux Mint, but accept a Chromebook with open arms. (I will say nothing about Android’s nature.) When I think about it, I am surprised nobody has imitated it by (say) installing Firefox onto a Raspberry Pi.

But sure, if the "typical PC user" is like the typical user of a TV, or of a washing machine, or microwave oven (or maybe a car driver, I do not know, I do not drive) I guess they could use any canned OS provided off the shelf with the machine, and go along with it.[/offtopic]

This is how it has been for decades: Microsoft won its monopoly in the nineties by dealing with Intel. There was perhaps a time about twenty years ago when educated laymen could be expected to know how to reinstall Windows, for periodic reinstalling was the received wisdom for Windows rot, and the involved skills could transfer to installing Linux.

[Night Wing]

I am not a power user in Windows or Linux. Just a non-technical person. But I knew enough about Windows 7 to not get myself into trouble with Windows. Ditto for Linux. When Windows 8 was released in October of 2012, that was my "fed up point" with the Windows operating system.

So I started to look at linux distros. Yes, there are many linux distros. Those who champion Windows say that is Linux's disadvantage. But I found out that was "not" the case. Many linux distros has a "live" version for the their iso's. Once the iso is burned to a flash drive, a person can play around with the distro and compare it to the Windows operating system they are using whether it be Windows 10 or 11. This way the iso never formats the Windows hard drive.

If one linux distro is not to one's liking, that person can try a different distro. My favorite desktop environment in linux is Xfce because it is easy to learn. So I look for distros which offer this desktop environment. And there are lots of customizations under the hood. The repository in the distro has thousand of programs too.

At the computer repair shop where I volunteer at, we have lots of customers, the majority of them running Windows 10 and a few running Windows 11. We have seen many Windows 11 customers come in and they are fed up with the automatic updates, the ads, etc, etc. And if there is a bad update which is causing problems, one might have to wait until Patch Tuesday and hope the update fixes the previous bad update. BTW, speaking just for myself, Windows 11 has morphed into an advertisement and data mining platform.

At the shop, I have a desktop tower with three SSD's in it. The first drive is installed with Linux Mint, the second drive is installed with MX Linux and the third drive is installed with Debian. People can play around with this tower computer at no charge to them. This allows them to get to used to one of the distros and they can compare it to the Windows computer at their home. The age of most of these people are in their 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. The younger crowd in their teens, 20's and 30's use a smartphone.

Most of these people in the older age groups in the paragraph above like Mint because it is easy to learn with Xfce. And we have found out they like to access the Mint forums where the Mint community is friendly and can explain things in a not too technical way. Click on the link below and see how many topic forums they are.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/

And I will give an example from my own personal experience. I have been using Mint since January of 2013. But this year in January of 2025, Mint 22.1 (Xia) was released. From 2013 to 2024, the Grub Menu was always included in every version. But some developer at Mint decided to do "hide" the Grub Menu. And at this time, that developer has heard about it and I think he never realized how many people use the Grub Menu. I use the Grub Menu to access all three of my SSD's running different linux distros in two of my desktop tower computers (total of six hard drives).

I need the Grub Menu so I started to do some research to get it back for me. And where did I find the answer? On the Mint forums and the topic thread is below. So I followed the "easy" instructions which were given in "laymans terms" (plain english and not in power user speak).

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=429335

And I do not use the linux Terminal much either. Since I am a non-technical person computer wise and not a power user, if I can learn a linux distro, anyone can.

Going back to 1998, I think back then, Windows 98 had a market share of 98%. Fast forward to today and I think the Windows operating system market share wise is between 62% to 69% depending on what article you can find and read. I think linux's market share now has grown to between 3% to 4%.

But market share is not the point. The point is, what a person likes and what works for them computer wise. For me, linux was the best choice.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Yes, there are many linux distros. Those who champion Windows say that is Linux's disadvantage.

I guess that could be confusing for the average user. Recently I started frequenting a (national) forum of Ubuntu users (and even *ubuntu has many variations) and I found an ecology of users quite different from the one I was used on tech international mailing lists/forums/Usenet NGs. People who try strange things hardware-wise or network-wise which I'd never imagined to do (and usually mess up everything ), or users which essentially equate a "distro" with a "desktop environment" (DE).

For me, which (after SunOS, Solaris, DecWindows, Ultrix, Tru64 and some HP-UX Unixes) have used only two distros (openSusE and (X)ubuntu), the main if not only criterion to choose a distro is the quantity of useful applications in the repository. Frankly I don't give a damn (cit.) about the default DE of the distro, one of the first things I do is junk it and run without DE with my favourite fvwm window manager (in "your system your way" spirit).

[Mæstro]

I am not a power user in Windows or Linux. Just a non-technical person. But I knew enough about Windows 7 to not get myself into trouble with Windows. Ditto for Linux. When Windows 8 was released in October of 2012, that was my "fed up point" with the Windows operating system… I have been using Mint since January of 2013… And I do not use the linux Terminal much either. Since I am a non-technical person computer wise and not a power user, if I can learn a linux distro, anyone can.

I am a fellow layman. My only, begrudging terminal usage, beside very rare, ad hoc recipes blindly obeyed for specific technical problems and frustrated attempts to use Youtube-dl during Invidious outages, comprise of two password generators, one-time and ordinary; I dislike Flatpak and GUI versions are not available for Debian 10. I had bought one of the last Windows 7-released computers in 2012 and knew I would never switch to Windows 8+. I would have switched about 2016 had I not suffered the delusion that Linux also required antivirus,* or else in mid-2020 if not for a macroeconomics course insisting I use Excel proper. As it is, I installed LMDE 4 on 17 Ⅻ 20. I feel neutral about having switched; Windows 7 seems to have run a few degrees cooler,† so I traded this and Civ Ⅲ and Ⅳ for security patching and US$50 a year saved in antivirus. In either case, my UI has been imperfectly traditional: Classic on W7, the XP theming in Cinnamon for LMDE 4. (I realise I could get better results with the W7 theming.) I have tried Mate and Xfce, but find Cinnamon much easier to use.

For at least a decade, Linux has been accessible to the layman. (I do not deny that it could have been earlier, but know too little about Linux’s stability and Wine’s capacity before 2015.) Application support is the chief reason I could imagine somebody staying bound to Windows unless he is confused like I had been. I think there would be value in surveying Windows and Mac users, without asking them directly about Linux, about whether their usage habits are such that they could not use Linux as well as whatever they already do. A survey of former Windows users who switched to Mac would also be telling.

*I forget how I came to believe this. Likewise, I would have switched to Pale Moon at least a year earlier if I did not believe ~2018 that Ghostery and Disconnect were the only way to block third-party trackers.
†Your post inspired me to research further. It appears that this is because Windows’ power options allowed capping CPU usage at half and underclocking to 1·0 GHz, whereas Linux’s cpufreq permits underclocking only to 1·4 GHz and I have never discovered how to impose caps.

But market share is not the point. The point is, what a person likes and what works for them computer wise. For me, linux was the best choice.

Aye. Seeing the Windows monopoly convert into duopoly is mildly welcome, if I have seen too many applications targetting just Windows and Mac yet neglecting us as before. It would be ideal if operating systems were all developed like Linux or ReactOS: open and not-for-profit. This would require larger social changes affecting the overall economy.

The age of most of these people are in their 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. The younger crowd in their teens, 20's and 30's use a smartphone.

Even Generation Y prefer smartphones? I have Y and Z friends, one of whom uses his mobile almost exclusively, yet he used AOL and Skype when they were current and knows how to use a computer, but the others use traditional PC.

[Basilisk-Dev]

Is that really true if all a ton of people run these days is a web browser? As long as you can run Chrome on it, would they even notice Linux is running underneath?

Around 10 years ago I worked at an office supply store. I had this one customer who's grandson install Linux on his machine and he said it worked except when it came to installing printers. He said he couldn't get the printer to install no matter how many times he tried to run the installer exe for the drivers from the included CD. Obviously on Linux you'd use CUPS to configure the printer, not a Windows exe file.

I encountered a few different customers with non-Windows machines that had issues like this. That was when I came to the conclusion that for a lot of non-technical people Linux isn't going to cut it if they don't have someone to hold their hand through the process. For simply web browsing and maybe running an office suite it works for many people, but as soon as they try to do something on Linux that works differently than it did on Windows they are likely throw up their hands in defeat and ask someone to reinstall Windows on their machine if they can't get the help to resolve it.

[Night Wing]

For simply web browsing and maybe running an office suite it works for many people, but as soon as they try to do something on Linux that works differently than it did on Windows they are likely throw up their hands in defeat and ask someone to reinstall Windows on their machine if they can't get the help to resolve it.

You are correct in your comment above. The problem most new people have with any linux distro is making their printer work. In Mint, the computer will see the printer, but when the newbie attempts to print something on the printer, it won't work. That is because the driver for the printer is not installed. They have to install it. But the driver for the printer is there. They have to go through some tabs to find and install it. Once installed, there has to be a reboot of the computer.

This is the main reason they give up in a very short amount of time. They need some "hand holding" or "spoon feeding". At the computer shop where I volunteer at, we do not mind hand holding or spoon feeding. Is it because we will get money from them? Yes, but in a secondary way. The primary way is by "remote control" of their computer because we are located in a small rural town and lots of our rural customers live 30 or more miles from our shop.

We have mostly grown by "word of mouth" advertising by being able to solve our customers problems. The remote control we use is a program named, "RustDesk". When the shop fixes our linux customers problems, we always ask if we can put RustDesk on their computers so they don't have to drive 60 miles round trip from their home to our shop and back home again if they have a problem which we can fix remotely.

They allow us to do this because when they are experiencing problems with linux and cannot figure it out, we can and they know it. So the shop has gained their "trust" to solve the problem. If I can fix the problem remotely using RustDesk and solve it within 15 minutes of time, we do not charge them anything. If the problem takes 30 minutes or more to solve, then we charge them and take their credit card info over the phone.

By using word of mouth advertising and using RustDesk, the shop stays busy work wise. And when we put RustDesk on our linux customers computers, I always use the AppImage for RustDesk because it does not need to be installed. Just given permission by the distro to run. The most recent versions are at the link below.

https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/releases/tag/1.3.7

At the time of this posting, the newest version is the one I use below.

Code: Select all

rustdesk-1.3.7-x86_64.AppImage

The YouTube video for RustDesk is below and it is very similar to TeamViewer, but much better than TV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSmMZj-hpfs

This is why we have a lot of older customers who want a different operating system other than the Windows operating system and a linux distro appeals to them when they start getting comfortable using it. We also always tell them YouTube has a lot of information about doing things in linux. And if our customers are not heavily into Window 365 (Office), we tell them about free "Office Online" with the caveat Office Online is using Microsoft servers so their info is being stored by Microsoft.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microso ... tured-apps

But LibreOffice, which is the default office suite in many linux distros, is fitting the bill nicely as a very good substitute. In closing, 2025 may not be the year of linux, but we who use linux distros do not care if linux never reaches the Year of Linux.

[Moonchild]

What I think some people tend to overlook when it comes to "needing guidance" when migrating to Linux, is that in most cases, when a hurdle is encountered, in Windows, someone can self-discover the solution to do something quite easily either through experimentation, looking through the GUI, or similar low-threshold methods. In Linux, it often isn't the case. e.g. "you have to configure it through CUPS" doesn't actually help someone with how to do that, because CUPS isn't exactly user-friendly or very accessible. The same goes for other parts of the O.S. and not helped by there often being multiple ways to achieve the same thing based on what flavour of Linux someone chose to install.
I can just look back to my own initial exposure to Linux. I had a lot of trying and giving up happening because I would inevitably run into dead ends where I had no idea what to use to achieve something, it wasn't discoverable, and what guides there were, were either incomplete or did not apply to what I had installed.
I'm not saying one or the other is better, as that's not what this is about. I'm just looking at this from a new user perspective. Yes, Linux distros have come a long way from their inception, but inevitably you'll run into something that has it default back to its UNIX roots, i.e. you need to start messing with the CLI, config files, extensive research online how to do something that should be simple, etc. Now that's great if you want to be fine-tuning or tinkering with your O.S., as the same can be done in Windows in the registry and the likes, but for most end-users the O.S. needs to be an interface to their hardware, network and internet, and otherwise not get in the way or require research to configure something. Linux isn't quite there yet, so no, I don't believe 2025 will be the year of Linux, just like the 2 decades before where there's someone every year proclaiming the same.
Given the absolute absurdity of PC hardware, especially GPUs, going on right now, I'd even say that it's more likely that more people will switch to a Mac than to start using Linux, if they are forced to move off of Windows.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

... because I would inevitably run into dead ends where I had no idea what to use to achieve something, it wasn't discoverable, and what guides there were,

... start messing with the CLI, config files, extensive research online how to do something that should be simple, etc. Now that's great if you want to be fine-tuning or tinkering with your O.S., as the same can be done in Windows in the registry and the likes

Well, I share a similar experience in reverse with Windows! The few times I needed it, I did not know how to look, and playing with registry is sort of black magic. On Linux there are always man pages to look (and "apropos" to find them). Concerning command line and config files, hopefully a single plain config file per app (lime my beloved FVWM has .fvwm2rc) they are for me the easiest way to use, to remember/reproduce what to do, and to tell somebody what to do (muche easier to say "edit keyword so-and-so in file x.y" then "go the menu->submenu->sub->sub and find an item to be edited". But I learned Unix (before of Linux) on pile of SunOS hardcopy manuals !

... we who use linux distros do not care if linux never reaches the Year of Linux.

Or may be even be glad of it ?

[Moonchild]

playing with registry is sort of black magic

Well, it'd be something you'd want to look into if and when you want to have that deep level tinkering. Otherwise you never have to touch it in your life. And that's part of my point -- you never have to touch it. But my experience with Linux is you always at some point have to touch the Linux equivalent. And the biggest problem with man pages is, has always been, and will always be, that you need to have prior knowledge of the commands needed. If you don't know which of the hundreds of commands you need then you also can't do "man {command}" to know how to use it... It's a chicken and egg problem of a sort. If you already know the command then man can be a refresher of things you already know. if you don't then you're also locked out of the documentation you need.

The few times I needed it, I did not know how to look

For just about all things there's some logical path in the GUI to get to it. It's organised, for lack of a better term. You can "click around", or methodically think a second where something might be, and you are pretty likely to find it, without knowing the exact name of it. And if you don't know at all, you can just start typing a keyword in the start menu, e.g. "printer":

printer.png

That's what I mean with being "discoverable".
And there's always F1 for help, anywhere

[back2themoon]

Wild guess: those Microsoft ESU become "freely" available instantly and Windows 10 happily lives on at least until October 2028. Linux mass adoption will have to wait, again.

[Lucio Chiappetti]

playing with registry is sort of black magic

Well, it'd be something you'd want to look into if and when you want to have that deep level tinkering. Otherwise you never have to touch it in your life. And that's part of my point -- you never have to touch it. But my experience with Linux is you always at some point have to touch the Linux equivalent. And the biggest problem with man pages is, has always been, and will always be, that you need to have prior knowledge of the commands needed.

Concerning the registry, I had to play with it some 20-odd years ago (Windows NT). We were supplying a set of PCs to the European Southern Observatory, controlling the generation and storage of spectroscopic masks. They had to be Windows because the software for the laser cutting machine (from a third party) ran under that only (we had to get a waiver from ESO, their official system was HP-UX). And we needed some non-default behaviour on the network connection (we knew what we wanted, we had to find out how to do it). I concord that this is not something a home user will need to do.

Concerning the man pages, the "apropos" command is an useful way to find out a list of man pages by "subject". But the main problem is that "modern" OS's (I guess this woould apply to Windows and Mac as well as Linux and all Unixes) provide an excessive number of commands (executables, apps, or whatever you will call them) without any priority or importance order. For me (coming from HP RTE and IBM VM/CMS into Unix and VAX VMS at the same time) the "user OS interface" was (is) essentially a glorified file manager (copy, delete, move, rename ...). One of the first things I did under SunOS (beyond reading the paper manuals) was to list the content of /usr/man, scanning the man pages to tell "interesting" vs "irrelevant" commands. A next step (since at the time we had a co-existence of VAX/VMS and two Unix flavours) was to write a set of scripts or aliases we called the "Uniq interface". I still use "del" or "copy" etc. under Linux
Again ... I am definitely not the typical home user.

[Night Wing]

Given the absolute absurdity of PC hardware, especially GPUs, going on right now, I'd even say that it's more likely that more people will switch to a Mac than to start using Linux, if they are forced to move off of Windows.

I will respectfully have to disagree with you on the above statement. In other words, "we will agree to disagree". And if this would be a court of law, I will plead my case below.

Apple computers are expensive and much more so than, lets say an HP computer running Windows in comparable hardware. One can put 2 or maybe 3, if one is lucky, different versions of an Apple operating system on that computer and then you cannot anymore. Apple does this because Apple wants people to buy a new Apple computer from them.

But, I can take that same Apple computer which can no longer load a newer Apple version, whether it be an Macbook laptop or an all in one iMac and I can install a linux distro on it and it will run. I do it all the time on older Macbooks for people with old Macbooks who come into the shop where I volunteer at. And the vast majorities of linux distros are "free" cost" wise. The only example of one which costs money (I think) is Red Hat Enterprise linux.

As for the newer hardware, linux distros just do not cater "exclusively" to older hardware. The HP desktop tower computer I gutted and went with all new hardware, the motherboard on it can handle 128 GB's of memory. I've got one 32 GB stick in one of the memory slots with the three other memory slots empty. It also has a 12th generation Intel i7 processor running at 3.60 processor speed unclocked. I run MX Linux 23.5 (Libretto) Xfce on one of the three SSD's in it.

On the MX Linux distro website, if one has a real new computer hardware wise, do not choose the Xfce iso. Choose the "AHS" iso and one should not have any problems with really new hardware. One can see all of the MX iso's, with their descriptions, at the link below.

https://mxlinux.org/download-links/

As for CLI, the command line is the realm of the linux Terminal. I am not a fan of the Terminal since I do not know many commands, but I know enough to get things I want and need when I am forced to use the Terminal.

As an example. When I want to block a website in Mint from anyone using any browser; I have to use the Hosts File. I open the Software Manager and in the Search field, type in "mintnanny" (without the quote marks). When it comes up, the common name will come up (Domain Blocker). I click on Install and the SM will install it of for me without using the command line Terminal.

If I wanted to use the Terminal I would have to use the code below.

Code: Select all

sudo apt install mintnanny

Then tap my Enter key, throw in my password and follow the prompt. Once installed, the Domain Blocker name is listed under System.

But in MX Linux or Debian, one has to use the Terminal because there is no other way and they have to know the commands to get to the Hosts File. The command to use it is below:

Code: Select all

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Then tap the Enter key, throw in my password, tap the Enter key again and follow the prompt and I am into MX's Hosts File.

And it took me 10 minutes of time searching on YouTube to find it. And that video is below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA55UxFDCTs

The idea one must know a lot of commands using the Terminal to use a linux distro is not true either. I know maybe ten of them. After I find the commands, I write them down in a log book for future reference so I do not forget them since I may use them only one time in a year's time.

Like I said in a previous post in this topic thread. I am a non-technical user of linux distros, not a power user. But if I can learn to use a linux distro, anyone can. Granted, I wanted to learn about linux distros because I wanted to kick the Windows operating system to the curb after Windows 7 and I did. But wanting to learn a linux distro is not like learning quantum physics which is way out of my league. As they say, "It is not rocket science".

[frostknight]

I'm 100% sure there wouldn't be a mass move to Linux, at all, because Linux is simply not accessible enough for the vast majority of PC users.

If by mass you mean more than 3% increase, I hate to say but I agree. Microsoft and their allies just are too arrogant and greedy to make it easy for people to switch to linux.

I speak of no matter what Microsoft does in the short and long term. It seems like they can do just about anything and it barely dent their usage by more than a few % points.

Windows only applications are a huge part of why people don't switch. I don't think it is just learning a new system. There is also a lack of compatibility and not knowing what is compatible and what isn't. Alternatives as well and which programs does wine, similar support.

Off-topic:
This all being said, Arch, has my disdain for their hypocrisy.

They say they do everything still in Keep it Simple Stupid yet they allow a monolithic beast like systemd go crazy in their OS.

Those two things are completely incompatible. Also, they are not lightweight for that same reason

A pity virtualization cannot be as fast as if it was running on your computer directly, if not for this maybe people would be more willing also.