Linux has over 6% of the desktop market

[UCyborg]

Someone installed it 3 years ago on their distro with KDE and it apparently just worked.

https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/xc8c5e/how_is_it_that_the_running_kde_with_compiz_yields/

Guess I assumed it'd be more complicated. Though looks like it is on current Cinammon.

[Night Wing]

I have been surfing YouTube today on a number of topics such as longboard surfing, standup paddleboarding (sup) which includes surfing waves with a sup, field archery, saltwater fishing, flounder gigging and "linux".

I ran across this video today and it has a lot of good information in it on why Windows 11 is basically helping Linux gain market share. The one thing I do not agree with in this video is the promotion of "Wine" for running windows only programs on linux. From my own experimentation with Wine, it is "hit or miss" if you get my drift.

As for the comment on maybe "The Year Of The Linux Desktop" might be at the end of 2026, that might be a stretch, but not a far stretch. With the strides Linux is making in our small town where I live computing wise and worldwide, the "year of linux" might be at the end of 2027. Just a guess on my part.

But getting back on topic. The video is a good look see for someone who is contemplating on making the move from Windows to Linux. Just like I did back in January of 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCTEoYTKoS0

[moonbat]

Can you get Compiz working on something other than MATE these days?

Worked great for me when i was on Mint XFCE.

[frostknight]

I have been surfing YouTube today on a number of topics such as longboard surfing, standup paddleboarding (sup) which includes surfing waves with a sup, field archery, saltwater fishing, flounder gigging and "linux".

I ran across this video today and it has a lot of good information in it on why Windows 11 is basically helping Linux gain market share. The one thing I do not agree with in this video is the promotion of "Wine" for running windows only programs on linux. From my own experimentation with Wine, it is "hit or miss" if you get my drift.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCTEoYTKoS0

proton from SteamOS

or winboat are more likely to be good if I had to guess but even they probably have their flaws.

[UCyborg]

WINE can be useful, especially for software that isn't too convoluted.

Messing with Linux Mint in recent times, I installed latest stable WINE 11.0 on it today. Then decided to try one very specific program on it, VCDS. It required one specific geeky Linux skill, adding udev rule for the program to have access to diagnostics interface (HEX-V2 in my case) over USB. But other than that, it went smoothly. Even updated the firmware on the interface, which survived without getting bricked in the process.

It's a bit slower compared to running it on Windows, eg. windows being populated with larger number of measurable values exposed by various control modules take couple more seconds to populate. With my specific laptop, scanning my specific car model, it took 1 min 20 s to scan all control modules for fault codes. On Windows 10, it takes exactly 1 minute.

It's cool seeing that kind of software running on Linux.

[jarsealer]

Messing with Linux Mint in recent times, I installed latest stable WINE 11.0 on it today. Then decided to try one very specific program on it, VCDS.

I almost mistook that name for VSDC https://www.videosoftdev.com/, a video editor I remember using years ago on Windows 7.

[Mæstro]

When I migrated to Linux, I had confirmed that my visual novels all ran in Wine. All of them worked on Windows 2000 and up, so I faced no difficulties here. Since I have got Virtualbox 6 working with sound in 2025, I have instead been using an XP virtual machine for any Windows software which has interested me. One casual game from 2001 which I tried, Snake Arena: Special Edition, sets the colour depth to 16-bit, which created lag in Virtualbox, but ran properly in Wine after toggling some monitor settings until I came to the final level in its first game mode of two, which needed to be completed before unlocking the other mode. Beating the final level in the first mode failed to unlock the other as was intended. I have not attempted to diagnose this further, but is remarkable as the only time that I have ever encountered errors with Wine (4·0).

[UCyborg]

VCDS worked on XP for a long time and likely still does, so along with your visual novels, they may not be the best to stress test WINE. Although that 20 seconds difference I observed is not insignificant IMO. Could modern hardware on the more expensive side just brute forces its way through and minimize these differences? I also realize my choice to support AMD at the time rather than already well-off big bad Intel has consequences[*]. Though, I'm not even sure if expensive hardware helps Pale Moon much when it comes to handling heavy sites.

There are people that report WINE ran their games with same or better performance than Windows. I've yet to observe that. There was always some hit, even if small in the best case scenario. A lot of success reported these days is thanks to DXVK. But I was told for pre-Vulkan GPUs, things aren't better than in the bad old days. But for certain buggy games, there may be differences where they crash or not crash, compared to Windows. One amusing example of programming error, certain plane disappeared from GTA: San Andreas with Windows 11 24H2.

I wonder if any current version of Firefox or Chromium even launches on WINE. Stock versions are Win10 exclusive. What's the point? They use a lot of WIN32 API calls.

[*] That remark is more applicable to desktop computer of mine as I have that laptop because I only really needed a basic PORTABLE computer for one short period of my life.

[UCyborg]

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/dual-booting-windows-linux-total-harmony-2025

[Mæstro]

VCDS worked on XP for a long time and likely still does, so along with your visual novels, they may not be the best to stress test WINE.

My goal has not been stress-testing. Visual novels were, when I migrated to Linux, the only software I meant to keep for which I could not find Linux versions. Being creative works, visual novels cannot be substituted, although a port exists for one’s engine. Back then, I had tested Qemu for virtualisation and suffered sound problems. I wrongly concluded that the fault was in Debian’s virtualisation support, when in fact it was Qemu. It was only last year that I bothered to try Virtualbox, and it has worked splendidly for all my purposes but that one odd game which degrades the colour depth. Running an XP virtual machine lets me feel I have got my free choice of contemporary software to run, a feeling which i have never had with Wine, which happens to have sufficed for the purpose of preserving my access to some favourite stories.

[UCyborg]

Not stress-testing per-se, may just appear that way in context of WINE.

[Mæstro]

I remember someone quipping long ago that Sid Meier’s Civilization Ⅲ (2001) fails in Wine. I have been proven wrong.