I see this comment every year, for 15+ years that I’m active in the community, and yet I don’t see the promised hoards of Linux fanboys rioting on the streets wanting to burn down Redmond and 1 Infinite Loop.
Oh right, Linux on Desktop lost. Stop trying to make Linux on Desktop a thing.
Linux on the desktop is fine. 80% of Windows software runs carte-blanche, and the native ecosystem kinda embarrasses Microsoft's attempts at making Windows feel like a cohesive experience.
Of course, that's just my N+1 anecdata. I've been using Linux on my main PC for two years now without much issue, but ymmv.
I have tried using Linux for desktop and just sucks. I just need something that works and something that I need to chase a xyz problem after an each upgrade.
I still chase these issues for server dist upgrades, but at least I don't have to do for my desktop.
Dependency management utterly sucks in Linux. I can still run windows 98 binaries on win10.
Running Win98 binaries is not a bragging point. I read archived diskmags through Wine, and all I need to do is double-click the .exe file to get it to boot up.
> I still chase these issues for server dist upgrades
Yeah, I don't doubt it. Full OS upgrades are always dangerous, as proven by the Windows 8 -> Windows 10 install fiasco or the Catalina wipes. LTS distros tend to get ~5-6 years of support though, so it's not like you're going to be forced to reinstall for another few years.
Linux, Windows and MacOS are all different flavors of the same shitshow. I can assure you that package/dependency management is not one of Linux's shortcomings, relative to it's competitors.
What the hell? That's one of the biggest things desktop Linux got really right! Sure older binaries don't work but you shouldn't be flinging binaries around anyway.
as a windows user as my daily non-development driver unless that percentage hits 98%+ AND can maintain that I don't think many people are going to convert
I was with you 3 years ago, but Microsoft pushed a major update that caused random BSODs on my motherboards chipset. I switched over to Linux full time and haven't looked back, though to my knowledge the BSOD issue is still prevalent in Lenovo's Haswell prebuilts.
All it had to do to "win" was be available to those who wanted it, which was the case.
Mobile Linux is no different and in that sense it's definitely winning now.
Linux is used as the primary OS for many developers, it has a market share comparable to OSX and Windows there. PopOS has made desktop Linux intuitive even for people who don't care what's running on their machine.
With Apple and Microsoft effectively abandoning their desktop OSes it's very likely that Linux will become the dominant desktop OS even among non-tech-literate users.
I think your hand slipped and replaced "I hope" with "it's very likely". Whether or not PopOS is intuitive is a separate question from whether or not Linux will dominate on the desktop.
Apple and Microsoft "abandoning" their desktop OSes is a dubious claim at best but in a magical world where they did, their "non-tech-literate users" wouldn't flock to Linux, they'd be happy they don't have to restart their computer for updates as often anymore. Non-techie people aren't going to move to a new OS except when they get a new computer. Even when they get a new computer they're just going to use the pre-installed OS. This is a fantasy.
These things have inertia. People who don't know computers aren't arbitrarily just going to decide to switch to a new OS where they have to relearn everything and their software doesn't work and there are moderately more driver incompatibilities that cause errors that confuse them. It's just not going to happen.
